“Do not dare to insult Her Grace.” The mountain’s expression darkened, sharpening into honed angles. His inhuman size coupled with the blazing anger was almost enough to make Kit flinch. “Her Grace is golden, though I wouldn’t expect a toff who can’t even stay true to his country to understand a lady who is good and kind and loyal. I did not bed her. She would not have me if I tried.”
“You tried,” he pressed, moving his hand beneath the bedclothes with agonizing stillness. Here was the distraction—and weakness—he had been searching for. The butler who was not a butler was besotted with his duchess. If he could throw the man from his course, he could disarm him.
The mountain’s jaw hardened. “I did not try.”
Kit’s hand was nearly within striking distance now. “You wanted to,” he persisted.
“Who would not want to bed a beautiful woman with the heart of an angel?” Ludlow growled.
“She isn’t your wife.” He paused, his hand sliding into position. “She isn’t even your equal. Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“I’m the man who is going to end you,” his opponent snarled. “I’d do it just for the joy of watching you bleed out after you insulted Her Grace in such an egregious fashion.”
Summoning the precious little strength he had after being ravaged by illness for the last few days, he struck with the lightning precision that was his hallmark. With his right hand, he gripped the man’s wrist. With his left, he took a swing, gratified when his fist connected with that wide, stubborn jaw. Ludlow reeled back, the grind of bone on bone, coupled with the unholy strength of a man whose life was being threatened, proving his undoing. His eyes rolled back in his head. One swift twist of his wrist, and the bastard’s fingers opened. The knife dropped to the bed.
The mountain fell backward.
Surprise, force, and the angle had been on Kit’s side. Ludlow fell to the floor with a crash that sounded not unlike an actual mountain being dropped upon the chamber. Kit scrambled for the dagger, clenching its cold, hard hilt in his hand before attempting to rise from the bed so that he could further subdue his opponent. A wave of dizziness assailed him, his vision growing dim for a moment before his need to survive outpaced his body’s poor condition. Somehow, he removed himself from the bed, sinking to the floor, mindful of his wounded leg, the dagger lifted high.
His body and mind fused, becoming a machine. A machine of death. He had killed before in defense of himself, and he would do it again now. Kit raised the knife, intending to plunge the blade deep into his unconscious assailant’s chest, lest he wake and finish what he had begun.
But the chamber door clanged open before he could sink the weapon home, crashing into the wall with such violence that several of the pictures on the wall shifted. And there stood none other than his wife, eyes wide with horror.
“Leeds, put down your blade at once!”
othing could have prepared Georgiana for the sight that greeted her as she stood on the threshold of her chamber to find her husband, pale and disheveled, on his knees alongside an unconscious Ludlow with a wicked-looking dagger raised high.
Her agog mind took in the facts in hasty, telegraphic fashion.
Leeds was awake.
Alive.
Leeds was going to murder the butler.
What in heaven’s name?
And where had he gotten such a weapon?
She rushed forward, an animalistic screech emerging from her throat. “Are you mad, Leeds? Delirious? My God, put down the weapon. You cannot harm Ludlow!”
He was a lunatic. Out of his mind. Perhaps the fever had overcome his brain. There was no other explanation for him to have attacked Ludlow. Why, Ludlow was the gentlest, sweetest man she had ever known. He maintained a hard exterior, but his insides were all soft. He cared for her animals as much as she did. Even the mice.
“Get the hell out of here,” her husband rasped.
“No.” She rushed over the space separating them, falling to her knees at Ludlow’s side. “I will not leave, and you will not harm him!”
“He was trying to kill me, damn it. He is not who you think he is. I doubt his true name is even Ludlow.”
She stared at her husband, who looked like a wild man. Gaunt, pale, hair standing on end, his jaw shaded by dark beard. He was deluded, mind muddled with fever. She had seen it happen before, and she recalled that long-ago moment now, back on the farm with one of the hands. He had possessed enough strength to rip a barn door from its hinges.
“You are ill, Leeds,” she said calmly, attempting reason as she held out her hand to receive the dagger. “Please, give me the blade.”
Ludlow moaned, stirring.
Her husband’s jaw clenched. “Stand away, Georgiana. The man is dangerous, and there’s no telling what he will do to you now that his secret has been revealed.”
There was something unsettling about the duke referring to her by her Christian name for the first time while conscious. Something that made her question whether or not a man deluded with fever could seem so lucid. Something that made her wonder how Leeds, a man freshly woken from his sickbed—a man she had intimately tended the past two days—could have produced the knife in his hands.
Hadn’t she seen Ludlow wield a blade once?
“Georgiana.” Desperation tinged the duke’s voice. “Get out of the chamber, and call for the police.”
Her frantic mind seized on the memory she sought.
Yes, Ludlow had used just such a knife to cut the offal from her befouled hem when she’d returned from the particularly grim rescue of a litter of puppies on a downtrodden East End street. She stared at the dagger, and she remembered now how shocked she’d been at the long, sharp blade. The angry-looking point at the end. How odd she’d thought it that a butler would secret such a thing inside his jacket.
Icy tendrils of dread blossomed in her stomach.
It had been the exact knife the duke now held in a white-knuckled grasp.
Dear God. Ludlow, the one man she had come to trust in London, had attempted to kill her bedridden husband under the pretense of sending her to rest. Her large, strong, menacing-looking butler that she’d fancied was possessed of a warm, giving heart. The same man who looked as if he was about to regain consciousness at any moment. There was no way an injured Leeds, who had spent the last few days battling fever and infection, could defend himself once the angry giant awoke.
Georgiana rose to her feet and raced to her wardrobe, throwing it open. She searched with nimble fingers for the prize she so desperately needed.
“What in the hell are you doing, madam?” demanded her husband from behind her. “Now isn’t the time to gather fripperies. There is a madman afoot, and the authorities must be called.”
Of course he would imagine her witless enough to be concerned with rescuing her best chemise when her husband was about to fight to the death with a man who outmatched him in size and health. Not to mention—when he finally awoke—anger.
Thank heavens!
She found the cold, heavy barrel of the pistol she carried with her on animal gathering missions in areas where she needed to protect herself, and extracted it from its hiding place. As she spun back to face the alarming tableau awaiting her, Ludlow stirred.
She trained the barrel on Leeds. “Get away from him.”
Her husband’s light-blue eyes narrowed. “You would sooner believe the innocence of the man who held a blade to my throat than your own husband?”
Georgiana didn’t bother to argue that none of his actions as her husband had inspired any tender feelings of loyalty toward him. “He is larger than you, and you are weak. I am looking after your best interests, Duke.”
He stared at her, cagey as the spy she suspected him of being, before his sense of self-preservation apparently won his inner battle. “As you wish, madam.” His tone mocked.
She ignored the jab, watching as he struggled to leverage himself onto the bed once more. His grunts of pain sent unwanted pricks of symp
athy into her heart. But any such emotion dispersed when her butler regained consciousness with a roar not unlike a battle cry, scrambling to gather his large body into a position of attack.
“Do not move, Ludlow,” she ordered, pleased that her voice contained nary a hint of a tremble. Her mouth was dry, terror and confusion and weariness clawing through her in concert. The peaceful existence she’d crafted for herself in her husband’s absence had been viciously upended in the last few days, and she didn’t know who to trust or what to do next.
Her butler’s head snapped around. When he saw her, the hard angles of his expression softened. “Your Grace,” he acknowledged with solemn reverence. “You were meant to get some rest.”
To his credit, he obeyed her directive and did not attempt to scramble to his feet, but there remained the matter of his attempting to murder Leeds. She raised a brow now, delivering him a withering look of scorn. “Just as you were meant to be looking after the wellbeing of His Grace? Instead, I’m given to understand that you held a blade to his neck and threatened his life.”
Ludlow rubbed a hand over his purpling jaw. “Eh, I wouldn’t have dirtied my blade with the likes of him.”
“I didn’t give you the chance, you arrogant prick,” growled Leeds, looking as if he wanted to lunge toward the butler once more.
She kept the pistol trained in the direction of both fuming men. “Stubble it, Leeds.”
“Do you think I’m not capable of ending some turncoat bastard who’s been on his sickbed for two days?” Ludlow shot in the duke’s direction. “You toffs are all alike. Think no one aside from yourselves is capable of anything.”
“Ludlow,” she warned, feeling suddenly as if she were chastising a pair of recalcitrant students in the schoolroom rather than a peer of the realm and a fully grown man.
Ludlow sent a contrite glance in her direction. “Your Grace, forgive me. You should not be subjected to nonsense such as this. Your husband’s actions nearly cost a very close friend of mine his life. I wished to know why.”
That sounded more like the Ludlow she had come to know, a man she had trusted with the tiniest creatures and her own protection both. A man she had grown to like, even admire. A man she wholeheartedly did not wish to believe a coldhearted killer. “Explain yourself, if you please.”
“You need no explanations from this unscrupulous, mendacious cur,” Leeds intoned then. “There can be no explanations for murder.”
“If I had wanted you dead, that bed would be soaked in your blood, and you’d have long since stuck your spoon in the wall,” Ludlow tossed back, his voice sounding almost bored. He returned his attention to Georgiana. “Regretfully, I cannot reveal the full extent of the situation to you, Your Grace, as I have sworn an oath of loyalty and silence. But suffice it to say that your husband’s stupidity in New York led not only to that wound in his thigh but also to the grievous wounding of a man who is like a brother to me.”
“Leprechaun was not there that day,” Leeds said before she could speak.
“Of course he was,” snapped Ludlow. “You were told he would be there, and so he was. And what was his reward for trusting you? A bullet to the temple. Thank the Lord it only grazed him and the abundance of blood led the brigands to believe they’d murdered him.”
“I was specifically told he would not be present.” The duke’s mouth settled into a grim, harsh line. His eyes were cold, brilliant specks that seemed to burn with intensity.
Georgiana watched the odd exchange unfold with a mix of confusion and caution. It was as if the two men were speaking in another language, when they were both speaking the Queen’s English, and with a pronounced fluency too. Was it her imagination, or had Ludlow’s accents become even crisper in his outrage?
Perhaps they were both elbows-deep in the mysterious waters of espionage. She thought back upon the suspicious letters she’d found tucked into a book in her husband’s library after his hasty departure, all of which had led her to believe that Leeds had been heading to a secret assignment in America instead of the hunting expedition he had claimed.
Her suspicions had been confirmed by her dear friend Daisy, whose own husband, the Duke of Trent, had been involved in a secret branch of the Home Office concerned with the Fenians and national protection, though Trent no longer lived a life dedicated to his cause.
“You’re both spies working for the Home Office,” she declared suddenly, certain she was right. “I dare either of you to lie to my face and tell me I am wrong.”
Good God.
Kit stared at his wife, the ethereal beauty who had allowed his townhome to run rampant with dogs and cats and a murderous butler. Either she was mad or she was clairvoyant or she was blessed with an alarmingly keen talent for observation. For there was no way she would have known. No way she would have possessed even an inkling of the truth about him.
Of course he could not tell her the truth, which, even now as he stood there a shell of his former self, excommunicated from the League, he would never do. But that she would mistake the hulking criminal she’d allowed into his bloody home for a League member…it rankled. It damn well rankled.
He pinned her with a cool glare even as a wave of weariness assailed him. Now was not the time to falter or allow his enemy to gain the upper hand. “Madam, perhaps it is you who is delirious, for I am no more a spy than this vermin you’ve allowed to masquerade as a butler is.”
“Vermin, is it?” the bastard growled back at him, attempting to rise.
“Do not move, Ludlow.” The duchess’s tone was sharp, commanding.
She had courage, he would give the wench that much, in addition to her looks. But it was the foolish brand of courage—the sort that made a lady with a trembling hand train a pistol on two dangerous men with the capacity to disarm her with ease. Besides, London was rife with beauties. Loveliness was hardly original.
Aside from that, she had a penchant for gazing upon him as he expected she might look at a pile of dog excrement she’d accidentally stepped in. And she was the reason he’d been nearly butchered on his sickbed. All evidence of her waterfall of failings.
“Your Grace, allow me to explain,” the mountain spoke up into the silence, his voice cajoling.
Far too familiar for Kit’s liking.
“Do not dare to speak to her,” he growled, despite the fact that he grew weaker by the moment and that the sudden, inhuman burst of strength that had enabled him to take the blighter by surprise and knock him out had dissipated like candle smoke in the wind.
The mountain looked over his shoulder at Kit, lip curling with disgust. The scar on his face seemed to twitch. “And just who are you to speak to Her Grace? The cad who abandoned her? The coward who betrayed his country? I should have killed you just for being such a bloody poor husband.”
Kit longed to surge forward, bury his fist in the bastard’s face once more, but the strength was not in him. His thigh felt as if it had been struck with a fiery blade, and his legs were shaky as a newborn foal’s. Beads of perspiration bubbled on his brow, trickling down the back of his neck. He felt as if he could pass out or cast up his accounts at any moment.
“If you could have killed me, I would be dead, you fucking animal,” he countered, scorn dripping from his voice, for it was the only weapon he had remaining to wield.
A roar sounded from the throat of his opponent.
“Enough, or I shall shoot the both of you,” threatened his wife, and damn him if she didn’t sound even a bit cowed by the melee unfolding before her. The only sign that she was at all unnerved was the distinct tell of her shaking hand. “Now I will ask again, and I expect to hear some answers this time. What manner of covert operations are the two of you involved in? Do not bother with prevarication, for I know a lie when I hear it.”
“Your husband is a failed spy,” volunteered Ludlow—if that was even, indeed, the scoundrel’s name. “He betrayed his source and got himself wounded for his efforts. The source was ambushed and nearly killed
.”
Perhaps it was the near-delirious state of weakness he was in. Perhaps it was stupidity. He could not be certain. But for some reason, those words struck a chord within him. Ambushed and nearly killed. He’d thought Leprechaun had been the one to betray him.
He pierced Ludlow with an icy glare. “Who the hell are you, and from where does your information derive?”
A knock sounded at the chamber door, hesitant at first, and then with greater force.
His seemingly unflappable duchess gave a start, but she never removed her gaze or the barrel of her pistol from Kit and Ludlow. “Yes?”
“Begging your pardon, Your Grace,” came a sheepish male voice from the other side of the portal.
“Do go on. What is amiss?” she called in an unnaturally bright voice, as if she were attempting to disguise her current unease. She was so formal, so pleasant and dulcet of tone, that unless Kit was a party to the ruckus before him, he would have sworn she was doing nothing more taxing than reading a book or plying needlepoint.
“I know you do not wish to be disturbed, but His Grace, the Duke of Carlisle is below. He is demanding an audience with the duke, and he will not leave until his request is granted.” The lad sounded terribly young, attempting to perform his job properly and yet not insult an august guest.
“The Duke of Carlisle.” The duchess looked from Kit to Ludlow, then back to Kit. “I have not been introduced to him, though I am aware of his…reputation. Is he known to either of you?”
Kit and the mountain responded as one. “Yes.”
Their glares clashed.
Bloody, sodding hell. What the devil was going on here? He ripped his gaze back to his duchess, who appeared oddly composed and exquisite for a lady who had spent the evening in a chair and even now held a pistol trained upon two men who were easily twice and thrice her size.
His wife raised a brow. “Send him up, if you please,” she called.
he Duke of Carlisle swept into the chamber, dismissing the hovering footman and cracking the door shut at his back with a commanding air that Georgiana imagined was more often projected by generals on the fields of war. He was a hard, forbidding man, and somehow quite different than she had expected, given the stories about his reputation, or lack thereof.
Her Deceptive Duke (Wicked Husbands Book 4) Page 5
