by Anna Randol
Danbury pulled aside the curtain and watched him leave, then with a slow smile he turned to her, his eyes gleaming with anticipation.
The lighter notes of Madeline’s laugher floated over the deeper murmur of Danbury’s voice.
Maddox’s heavy hand on his shoulder was the only thing that kept Gabriel from charging back into the study.
“Fine, but let’s share a drink before we depart,” Madeline was saying.
The heavy wooden door muffled Danbury’s reply.
This was insanity. Hadn’t he learned his lesson with Billingsgate? He shouldn’t have let her out of his sight.
“If you don’t let her do this, she’ll find some way to do it on her own,” Maddox said.
That was the reason Gabriel had agreed. He knew what she was capable of. But he had insisted on some modification of her plan. Despite her protests, he’d be there to protect her the entire time.
As Madeline’s voice whispered through to the adjoining parlor where Gabriel waited, his hand dropped to the doorknob.
“—in Paris?” Madeline was asking. Glass clinked as she poured drinks.
Gabriel’s hand tightened on the smooth brass.
“I haven’t been to Paris in a long time.” Danbury’s response was lazy and unconcerned.
“Really? I could have sworn I saw you there. At a ball.”
“Well, I hate to contradict a lady, but you’re mistaken.” The first note of suspicion entered his tone.
Gabriel gave Maddox a curt nod, and with serpentine grace, Madeline’s friend slipped from the room.
With a slow exhale, Gabriel forced the knots from his shoulders.
“I hear you saved young Evans from that fortune hunter that had latched her claws into him,” Madeline said.
Danbury’s voice regained its swagger. “We gentlemen need to look out for each other.”
“Women apparently do, too. Did you hear they found a girl strangled two weeks ago? And she was a decent girl, a teacher. They think the murderer might have other victims.”
“Not everyone is as decent as they appear,” Danbury said.
Gabriel twisted the knob silently and pressed it forward the merest fraction. Danbury had begun to realize he was being purposefully interrogated.
As they’d planned.
“Surely you heard about it,” Madeline said.
“No.”
“But you’ve been to all the places where the murdered women were found.”
“You do remember, you little liar.”
Madeline gasped in pain.
Gabriel exploded through the door, his pistol already in his hand. Danbury held a fistful of Madeline’s hair; her body was bent backward at a painful angle.
The gun was supposed to be used for effect, but it was loaded. Gabriel barely kept his finger from tightening on the trigger.
Danbury yanked Madeline against him and clamped his hand around her throat. “Ah, Huntford, I feared you’d be behind this.”
“Let her go,” Gabriel ordered.
“And allow you to blow out my brains? I don’t think so. Drop it.”
Gabriel hesitated. Madeline had told him he mustn’t appear to give in easily. Danbury had to believe he’d won. She could handle whatever Danbury decided to do to her.
Madeline’s face darkened under the constriction on her neck. Her chest convulsed as she tried to breathe, rapid spasms across her ribs and stomach.
Enough. Gabriel dropped the gun.
“Kick it under the desk.”
Danbury released Madeline. As she sucked in a rasping breath, he drew his own gun from his jacket and pointed it at her. “Sit, Huntford.”
When Gabriel hesitated, Danbury cocked the gun.
Gabriel sat.
“Get your rope.” Danbury thrust her forward. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice that you had one hidden under the table?”
Madeline walked with small, halting steps to the rope.
“Let her go. Your quarrel is with me, Danbury.”
Although Danbury’s attention wavered from Madeline, his gun did not. “Quarrel? I have no quarrel with you.”
“You killed my sister.”
Danbury shook his head wearily. “All I’ve done is protect my friends from trollops.”
“My sister was no trollop.”
“I thought well of her, too, until I chanced upon her in the park. She flirted like a shameless hussy. On our second outing, she panted while I put my hand in her bodice.”
Only the gun pointed at Madeline kept him in his chair. The perverted bastard. “You took advantage of her. Then you killed her for it?”
Danbury shifted slightly. “I never said I killed her. Only that she pretended to be a virgin when clearly she was not. It was a test and she failed.”
“You had no right to judge.”
“No right to judge a woman trying to dupe me?” Danbury sounded like a tutor who’d been given a particularly foolish student.
“You’re the liar.”
“No, Madeline and others like her are.” His eyes were wide and earnest as he waved his gun at Madeline. “Can’t you see that? She isn’t a virgin. None of them are, yet they try to trick you into believing it. And she’s worse than all the others. Flaunting it. She almost succeeded in bamming all of London. The brightest minds produced by Oxford and Cambridge, felled by a harlot.”
But Gabriel didn’t believe his noble claims for a moment. “If you were trying to protect your friends, you’d be killing women of your own rank. Loose women fill the ballrooms of London. Instead, you pick poor women on the fringes of society without powerful families to protect them.”
Danbury’s lips thinned. “I never said I killed anyone. But no man deserves to discover that his intended is a whore. That she gave herself to a bloody footman. That she thinks a tearful confession will spare her.”
Gabriel stilled. The earl’s fiancée. Hell, he’d helped Danbury drink himself into oblivion over her death.
Madeline spun to Danbury. “You know I’m not a virgin, so perhaps I can tempt you to let me go—”
Danbury’s eyes filled with triumph and he met Gabriel’s gaze over Madeline’s head. “No, the only thing that tempts me is saving some poor soul from you in the future. Now tie him.”
Angry red fingerprints encircled Madeline’s throat as she walked toward Gabriel. Her hands shook as she secured his wrists behind the chair. That might have been an act, but when her hand clasped his for the briefest moment, her palms were damp. Even she couldn’t have feigned that.
She was frightened.
Madeline’s plan was a good one, but he was finished allowing her to risk herself.
No matter what Madeline thought, she was far more important than bringing Danbury to justice. Gabriel let the small knife slip from the sleeve of his jacket into his palm, and began to cut through the knot she’d just securely tied.
Chapter Thirty-five
“So what now?” Madeline lightened her breathing to frightened pants. The rapid tempo of her heart, however, didn’t have to be exaggerated.
She could guess with great accuracy what Danbury would do, but there was always uncertainty.
Danbury’s expression was a mixture of satisfaction and distrust. “Now I check the knots you tied.”
Madeline slid an inch closer to the door.
“Don’t move,” Danbury ordered. “The gun is still trained on you.”
She stopped with a jerk. She didn’t think he’d use the gun. Given his record, she suspected he planned to mete out his more personal form of justice. But her goal was to maintain whatever illusion he chose to hold. The man had approached her twice to threaten her. He must be eager on some level for her to know the truth. She just needed to make him feel empowered enough to share. “Just let me go. Please.”
Danbury smiled as he walked over to Gabriel, his gait measured. It wasn’t the swagger of a man who knew he’d won, it was the careful approach of a man who’d spent years protecting himself. Yet he
still thought he had them in his control, which placed him squarely in hers.
And he still had no idea what she had really been doing in Paris.
He was about to find out. She just needed to lull him a touch more.
“If you’re trying to rid the world of liars and cheats, why do you only harm defenseless women?” Gabriel asked with a taunting smile.
Danbury stopped.
She frowned. What was Gabriel doing? Danbury wouldn’t calm completely until he’d checked the knots. Besides, she was supposed to be the one facing the barrel of Danbury’s pistol. -
“It bothers me that you misunderstand why your sister had to die. Just trust me when I say I am doing you a favor by freeing you from Madeline.”
She tried to quell Gabriel with her gaze, but he continued to press. “You have no reason for this other than your sick enjoyment.”
Danbury shook his head slowly. “You haven’t seen what it does to a man to live with a whore. You never saw the mockery my father faced because of his slatternly wife. Did you know she had a daughter? She even had the audacity to give birth to the whelp. Flaunting the fact that she made him a cuckold. At least he had the sense to make her get rid of it. I visited the school a few times to make sure the girl was being raised with morals. But a few weeks ago, I found her teacher was eager to welcome any man with a cock into her bed. ”
The last piece fell into place. Danbury’s connection to the school. His name hadn’t been on Gabriel’s list because the girl had been placed in the school by her mother and probably anonymously at that. The killer hadn’t been a father of one of the students. He was a half brother.
She moved toward the door again. Even if Gabriel had decided on new tactics, she still needed to play her role.
And draw that blasted gun away from him.
She took another step, and the gun swung back toward her.
“Let Madeline go,” Gabriel repeated.
“Let her go? She is the worst liar of them all. I have a duty to remove her.” His words were all the more chilling for his calm.
“Stop with the delusions. You could have discredited her if you wanted to. But you didn’t. You want this, you sick bastard. Who do you think they will blame when they find her body?”
Danbury pointed his gun at Gabriel’s head, his finger notching back the trigger. “They won’t find where I leave her body. Not like the others. She doesn’t deserve to be remembered as a virgin.”
That was close enough to the confession she awaited. Madeline lunged for the door, her hand grasping the handle, commanding the gun’s attention again.
“You will be leaving with me soon enough.”
“Like hell she will.” Gabriel exploded from the chair.
Danbury flailed the pistol in Gabriel’s direction.
Not part of the plan! Madeline abandoned the door as she leaped toward them, drawing her knife. It flew from her fingers even as she knew it would never reach them in time.
The deafening sound of the gunshot exploded in the parlor.
But it was Danbury who stumbled backward, Gabriel at his throat. Her knife clattered harmlessly to the ground as Gabriel landed on top of Danbury and slammed his fist into his jaw.
Danbury swung his pistol, catching Gabriel in the side of the head and using the momentum to switch their positions.
A good Englishman would let Gabriel handle his own fight. A good Englishwoman would probably swoon.
Madeline kicked Danbury in the head.
His head snapped sharply to the side.
Gabriel didn’t hesitate, using the advantage to flip him onto his stomach.
Danbury tried to buck Gabriel off, to no avail. “You have no proof. It will be the word of a bastard Runner and a whore against mine. No one will listen.”
“Wrong,” Gabriel said. Madeline retrieved the rope and tossed it to him. “I spoke to the captain of your ship. He verified that you were in Paris two years ago. And I imagine that after my inquiries, we will soon have reports of other dead women around your family’s plantation.”
“Women die all the time.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed to feral slits as he lashed the earl’s arms together. “You left physical evidence as well. The night rails you used for my sister and Molly Simm are the same as the ones you gave to the lightskirts at Lady Aphrodite’s.”
Madeline blinked. She’d forgotten Lady Aphrodite had mentioned Danbury’s habit of bringing new night rails for the women he slept with. Recreating his victories, no doubt.
Danbury paled. “There are thousands of plain garments like that all over London.”
“No, there aren’t. I’ve looked. You forget that most women cannot afford even simple embroidery, let alone three pearl buttons.”
“You planted the evidence. Everyone knows you’ve hated the aristocracy since your sister died.”
Madeline returned to the door, half expecting to be struck down for the amount of unholy satisfaction that filled her. “I thought you might be fool enough to try something like that.” She threw open the study door, revealing the appalled faces of Lenton, Wethersly, and also half a dozen men who hadn’t participated in her auction. Ian and Clayton stood behind them, their faces carefully neutral.
Danbury kicked his legs in an attempt to stand. “It was a trap, surely you all can see—”
No sympathy entered the assembled faces.
As Gabriel hauled Danbury to his feet, a somber Canterbury escorted Jeremiah Potts and several burly constables into the room.
“Huntford! Stop mauling that gentleman.”
“That gentleman just confessed to murder.” A man stepped forward looking as though he’d been interrupted in the middle of dressing. His waistcoat was unbuttoned and his cravat missing. He stepped to the front of the men.
Madeline studied him. Something about him was familiar, but she couldn’t recall seeing him in London.
Because she hadn’t. She had seen a much grimier version of him training Greek rebels on the streets of Constantinople.
“And who are you?” demanded Potts.
“The Duke of Abington.”
Potts sputtered and lumbered into an awkward bobbing bow. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace. What are you waiting for?” he asked the constables. “Seize the murderer and take him to prison.”
“You might want to check his pockets before leaving,” Madeline said.
One of the Runners reached in Danbury’s pocket and pulled out a brooch containing her hair. No one listened to his sputtered protests as he was forced from the room.
Potts questioned the assembled men. Following the duke’s example, the gentlemen were quick to condemn Danbury.
Madeline used the chaos to attach herself to Gabriel’s side. She needed to throw herself into his arms. She needed to rub her cheek on his chest and hear his heart beat. Then she needed to hit him for not following her plan.
“We were supposed to lure him into confessing, not provoke it out of him.”
“You were nearly strangled. It was my turn to bear the risk.”
“You weren’t supposed to fight him,” she whispered. “I was just supposed to throw open the door.”
“He made the mistake of pointing his gun at you again.”
“That was my intention.”
“My intention was to keep you alive. I didn’t know what he’d do when you opened that door. There was no way in hell I was going to let him have a chance to shoot you.”
“If you’d followed my plan, you wouldn’t be bleeding,” she reminded him.
“Or nearly as satisfied.” Gabriel drew a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it against his cut cheek. “At least for once, you aren’t the one bleeding.”
The inches that separated them were still too much. She tried to content herself with the heat of him warming the skin of her arm. The slightly quickened sound of his breath.
But she wasn’t content.
She wouldn’t be until she placed kisses on every inch of his uninj
ured body. But for now, a slight step brought her hand against his thigh. He shifted toward her, increasing the contact.
The dark-haired Runner from Naughton’s entered the room and went directly to Gabriel. “The night rails from Lady Aphrodite are a match to the ones from the murder.”
Madeline felt her eyes grow wide. “That was a bluff?”
Gabriel shrugged. “Not anymore.” He nodded to the other man. “Thank you, Coulter. I believe Potts might appreciate your help taking statements.”
As Coulter left, Ian sauntered over to join them. “Only you would be smiling during a murder investigation, Madeline.”
As much as she loved Ian, she wanted to throw him and every other person that wasn’t Gabriel from the room. Using great willpower, she said, “I expected you all to burst in at the gunshot.”
“On the contrary I had to use all my talents of persuasion to keep them from fleeing. Well, except for Abington. But I told him to wait for your sign.”
“Abington is a duke?”
“I know. Fortunate, was it not? I was shocked to see him strolling into White’s.”
“Strolling into White’s?” Madeline glanced pointedly at his undressed state and rather bloodshot eyes. The man didn’t look entirely well.
“Well, that’s probably where he was going eventually. I owed him a favor.”
“That you repaid by dragging him to witness a murder confession?” Gabriel asked.
Ian sighed dramatically. “If you put it like that, I suppose I owe him another one.”
“Thank you for your help,” Madeline said.
Ian looked away. “Anything for you, little one.” But then he grinned. “Although now you owe me a favor, as long as we are mentioning such things.”
“I’ll owe you two if you can clear this room of everyone save Gabriel and myself in under ten minutes.”
Ian bent as if picking up a gauntlet. Nine minutes later, he winked as he ushered the last of the men from the room.
Madeline didn’t even wait for the door to shut before she twined her hands around Gabriel’s neck and pulled him to her. Her words were muffled against his mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I won’t ever risk you again like that.”
Gabriel’s lips stilled, then a breath of laughter escaped. Then another. He cupped her face in his hands. “I was about to apologize to you for the same thing.”
