“Go in alone,” Angus said thoughtfully. “But make him show ye the lad first.”
“He’ll refuse,” Deidre answered.
“Aye, but if ye tell him yer men are storming the place if ye dinnae signal out the window that ye’ve seen him and he’s alive, he might reconsider.”
That could work. “And then what?”
“And then we storm the place.”
Deidre stared at him. “And what does that gain us?”
“Someone in the room with Ewan when the trouble starts,” Angus said, staring back at her. “Yer nae without talents. I expect ye to keep him alive until I get there.”
Tristan looked between her and Angus. “That’s a shit plan. You have no idea what might happen.”
“It requires a great deal of trust,” Darrow said in a low voice.
It had been hard enough to trust Ewan. Now she would be putting both their lives into someone else’s hands. “I don’t know if I can.”
Darrow put a hand on her shoulder. “Your man trusts him.”
“He’s frequently an idiot.”
Darrow smiled. “Your rules are to keep you safe, but there’s no safe way here. It’s all or nothing, love.”
Could she trust herself? Could she trust Angus? She had to. There was no other option.
“How long do you need to be ready?” Deidre asked Angus.
“Not long. Ten minutes, maybe a bit less.”
She nodded. “Sooner is better.”
Angus and the others left Deidre and Tristan alone while they went to prepare.
Tristan sat in the chair, scowling. “You’re both going to die. Some of the rest of us might make it, but you and Ewan—”
“Will be fine as long as you come and save me quick, little brother,” she said, switching to Romani with a grin.
Tristan stared at her. She thought of all the times they’d been like this in some rundown hovel, disagreeing, and he’d leaned back like her father used to and made some asinine quip. He didn’t this time.
Instead, he stood. He looked her in the eyes and said, “I’ll be there.”
“I know you will,” she said. The tears stayed in place this time. “Now how many blades do you think I can hide, and how many do you think they’ll find?”
***
The man Alistair left preferred fists to knives. It was a nice change. Ewan had been punched on a number of occasions, and as of yet, it had never killed him. He was trying to recount every time he’d ever been punched when he heard her again.
Ewan should have been wishing Deidre were hundreds of miles away, but he couldn’t deny that a selfish part of him ached to see her. The blows that landed while he listened to her footsteps coming down the hall didn’t even register. All he felt was the thumping of his heart in time with her shoes as she neared.
When the door opened, he forced his eyes open around the swelling. Heaven above, she was beautiful. How had he ever managed to convince her to give her heart to him?
A stream of foreign curses poured out of her lovely mouth. If they made it out of this, Ewan would have to learn the Romani language. The cursing, at the very least. He would need to know how much trouble he was in. Tristan could probably teach him. Tristan. Had he made it back?
Suddenly she was there in front of him. “Ewan? Ewan, can you hear me?”
“Tristan? I told him to—” There was a purpling bruise on her face. “What happened to ye?”
She was crying. “Tris’s fine. I’m fine. Much better shape than you are.”
He hadn’t lied to her. That was good. That would have been difficult to fix.
Alastair’s voice intruded. “There, you’ve seen him. Wave your flag or whatever you mean to do.”
“The point of me seeing him,” Deidre said, not taking her eyes or her hands from Ewan. “Was to confirm that he was alive. Which he won’t be if he keeps bleeding like this.”
“Medical treatment was not a stipulation of our deal.”
“Then we can all die together when my men pour through here like wildfire.”
There was a long moment of silent standoff before Alastair sighed. “Fine. I assume you want him cut loose?”
“I can’t look at his ribs as he is.”
They removed the ropes. The process of getting him moved, stretched out on the bed, and retied at his hands and feet almost caused him to black out. The healing was going to prove worse than the torture. He must have said it out loud, because Deidre laughed. God, he loved her laugh.
“Bring me a clean cloth and hot water,” she demanded.
“You’re actually going to tend to him yourself,” Alastair marveled. “Do you even know how?”
Deidre ignored Alastair in favor of continuing her ministrations. Ewan wouldn’t have listed nurturing under her most predominate qualities either, but he was happy to spend his last moments with her running her hands over him and murmuring romantic sentiments.
“You’re an idiot, you know that?”
Ah yes, the honey sweet words of his lady love.
“I ought to stab you myself for being so foolish.”
Like angel song to his ears.
“I don’t think you could have lost more blood if you’d been deliberately siphoning it from your body.” She continued to berate him while she cleaned and wrapped his wounds.
He was beginning to resemble something found in an Egyptian tomb as she covered him in layer after layer of bandages. Ewan thought about dying then but Alastair’s voice kept intruding on his peace.
“That’s quite enough, I think. I’d hate for your troops to think something had happened to you.” Alastair gestured to the window.
Deidre looked down at Ewan and squeezed his hand. When she pulled away, she left a small blade behind. While it was encouraging to know she hadn’t come without a plan, he hoped that plan didn’t rely heavily on him being of much use. Especially not now that she’d immobilized him in linens.
At the window, Deidre leaned out and waved a strip of white bandaging. When she turned back, she had an expression Ewan had never seen before. It was as hard as Alastair’s own.
“Done. Now what do you want me to do?”
Alastair’s smile was cold. “The better question, my dear, is what are you willing to do to save his life?”
Everything. Anything. But more specifically, she’d like to drive one of these knives straight into Alastair’s heart. Ewan was barely recognizable. She’d seen him weather knife wounds and broken bones since they’d met, and she knew he could take a great deal of pain, but this was beyond comprehension. Every part of him was bruised or bleeding.
The plan was for Deidre to stall while she waited for Angus to come and rescue them. She wasn’t certain she could stick to the plan. She wanted to fly at Alastair and claw out his vicious, cold eyes.
“Come, Deidre. Make a suggestion. You know what I like.”
She did know. The thought of doing any of them for him now repulsed her, but she could use his jealousy to gain the upper hand.
“You like to watch,” she said, adding a touch of sultry to her tone. “Is that what you want?”
Alistair sneered. “While it would be amusing to watch him try—and he has proven himself irritatingly resilient—I don’t think your beau is up for the challenge.”
“What about that one?” Deidre asked. She forced her eyes to roam suggestively over the burly thug who’d been beating Ewan when she came in.
“Really, Deidre. Have your tastes changed so much? You never used to like them big.”
Ignoring Alastair, she moved close to the lackey, running her hands where her eyes had been. She tried not to think about Ewan on the bed behind her. “What do you think, love? Can you help me put on a show? I bet you’re not shy.”
Desire flared the thug’s nostrils. He grabbed her hips
in his meaty palms.
“That’s enough.” Alastair said. “Take your hands off her.”
The henchman waited a little too long. Alastair pulled the pistol from his pocket and fired it into the man’s leg. The man screamed.
“Out,” Alastair commanded while he loaded a second shot. He didn’t need to ask again.
“Temper, temper, Alastair. That’s a bit wasteful when you need all the men you can muster.”
Alastair glared at her. “It was wasteful. You and your games.”
“You’ve always liked my games.”
“I find myself growing suddenly tired of them.” He pointed the pistol at Ewan. “Convince me I still want to play.”
If he pulled the trigger, Deidre wouldn’t be able to stop it. If she panicked, though, he would only grow bolder in his threats to Ewan. Deidre closed the distance between them.
“If you don’t want to watch,” she said, “I suppose that means you want to participate.”
She kissed his neck, sliding her hand inside the front of his breeches. The evidence beneath her palm and his quick inhale told her she’d guessed correctly. If the pistol weren’t still centered firmly on Ewan, she could have ended it right then.
“Is that all you want—a little attention?” she asked as she rubbed him.
“It’s not unreasonable,” he said, shifting under her attentions. “Is it, Lord Broch Murdo?”
So that was his game. He wanted to make Ewan watch them.
He wouldn’t get his wish. Deidre could delay with the best of them, and she didn’t need to stall much longer. She just hoped Ewan would forgive her for whatever happened before their rescue arrived.
“Not unreasonable at all.” Deidre unbuttoned the fall on his trousers with painstaking leisure. It worked in her favor that building anticipation and wasting time looked much the same.
She’d wrapped her hand around him again when he stopped her.
“Not your hand. Your mouth.”
Ewan made a strangled sound and struggled against the ropes that held him down.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t wait any longer. “Here, or is there a better vantage point?”
When Alastair turned to consider the other possibilities afforded by the room, the pistol barrel dropped away from Ewan. In an instant, Deidre’s blade slid free of its hiding place against her wrist and home again between his ribs. She heard the bubbling gurgle of a fatal strike and pulled the knife back out. She shoved away from him, rushing to Ewan’s side.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry they did this to you and I’m sorry—”
A gunshot swallowed all other sounds.
Deidre turned to see Alastair, lying motionless on the floor, with the smoking pistol hanging from his fingers. She looked down to see a red stain blooming across her stomach.
It hurt. She didn’t remember it hurting quite so much the last time she’d been shot. Deidre sat next to Ewan on the bed—a posture that quickly turned into a slumped collapse across his torso—and prayed that Angus and Tristan would make it to them in time.
Chapter 23
Regaining consciousness was one of the worst decisions Ewan had made in a long time. It felt like someone had run him over with a mail coach and then lit him on fire. He tried to remember how he got there.
“I see ye’ve finished trying to die,” Angus said from the side of his bed. “About time. I’m sick of sitting in this chair.”
“How long?”
“Few days. Ye got pretty cozy with the brink for a bit.”
Angus handed him a cup of cool water. He coughed when he tried to gulp it down too quickly, and the pain in his ribs nearly caused him to black out again. He tried a second time, slower.
Days. He was definitely thirsty like it had been days, and already his stomach was sending out some very loud sounds of protest. He’d never been put down for days by anything. He remembered taunting Alastair. He remembered the knives. He remembered— “Deidre.”
“Aye, the lass is in sorry shape, too. Though nae so bad as yerself. She dinnae even try to die once.”
He’d been tied up. He couldn’t do anything to help her, and she’d had to . . . Ewan closed his eyes against the memory.
“She did a half-decent job patching ye up. Course, we went and ruined it all getting ye back here, but I suspect she saved your life.”
Deidre had saved his life and he had just lain there. “I couldnae help her.”
Angus frowned at him. “How much do ye remember, lad?”
“I remember.”
“What’s the last thing?”
“The gunshot. She fell onto the bed.”
“Aye, and then?”
And then nothing. “I assume ye rescued us.”
“Aye. I told ye I’d nae let harm come to ye.”
Ewan looked pointedly at his bruised and lacerated body. If this wasn’t harm, he didn’t know what was. Worse, though, he’d sworn that Deidre wouldn’t have to be a killer. Regardless of what she’d had to do in the past, he wanted things to be different for her now. Ewan wanted her to do what she wanted to do, not what she had to do. Gutting someone she used to love, no matter how evil a bastard he was, wasn’t something she should have had to go through.
“She killed him, Angus.”
“Aye, I suspected she might. Somebody had to.”
“It shouldnae have had to be her. It should have been—”
“Ye or I? I’ll nae argue with that, but circumstances being what they were, I’m glad she had it in her.”
It was too late to change it now—he’d failed her. “Where is she?”
Angus gestured to the connecting door. “Laid up in bed, same as ye.”
Ewan moved to stand.
Angus pushed him back down with a hand on his shoulder. “Nae a chance, lad. Yer awake, and that’s encouraging, but yer nae quite ready to be up and about.”
“I need to see her.”
“I’ve no doubt that ye do, but it’ll have to wait until ye’ve been off death’s door for more than five minutes.”
Ewan tried again, but he didn’t even have the strength to push Angus’s hand off him.
“Neither of ye is going anywhere,” Angus said as kindly as he was capable of.
Ewan turned his head away, silent. As soon as he was able, he would . . .
He would what? Apologize? There weren’t enough words to take back what had happened. Ewan had told her he would take care of her. He’d asked her to trust him. In return, she’d had to seduce and murder a man she was terrified of, and take a bullet for Ewan.
Even if she would forgive him, he didn’t deserve it.
“Right. I’ll leave ye to yer sulking. Maybe Rose will take pity on ye and send up something to eat.”
***
When Ewan first woke up, Deidre had heard the voices through the door. She hadn’t been able to make out the words, but when that second low timbre had joined Angus’s, she’d started crying.
She’d been crying for days. First when they’d taken the bullet out. Later, when Ewan hadn’t woken up. Anytime she tried to sit up. Sometimes for no reason at all. It seemed like she would never run out of tears. Rose had become used to it, but Deidre could tell it still made Tristan highly uncomfortable. When she’d heard Ewan’s voice, it was the first time the tears had been joyful.
Then the connecting had door stayed closed. It had been closed for ten days.
Initially, Deidre didn’t think anything of it. He’d been through hell and had only just woken up. His not coming to see her didn’t mean anything. As time went on and she heard him progress to standing and moving around in short bursts, it started to mean a great deal.
Angus had come to see her a few times, but he hadn’t had much to say about it except that Ewan “had some fool notion in his idiot he
ad” and that he’d “come around.” Well, so far he hadn’t come around and Deidre had plenty of time lying in bed to dwell on why.
Deidre had hoped Ewan would be able to forgive her for the things he’d seen her do, but it was becoming obvious that he could not. She couldn’t blame him. Everything that had happened to him was her fault. Could she really expect him to suffer what he had and still look at her the same? Or at all, apparently?
When Tristan told her Ewan had ventured down the stairs and still the connecting door hadn’t opened, Deidre quit crying and set her focus on getting better. If he didn’t want her anymore, she couldn’t just lie around waiting for him to change his mind. Neither was she going to force him to ask her to leave. He might not like the things she was capable of—she wasn’t overly fond of them these days either—but they would see her through to starting over somewhere new.
She thought about Glasgow, before rejecting it. Alastair’s death would leave a void that a person with quick wits could capitalize on, but Deidre realized she couldn’t keep herself separate from the work anymore. Seducing the thug and Alastair had been necessary, but it had taken a toll. Even before she’d met Ewan, with that boy viscount she’d robbed, it had been difficult not to feel guilty about taking advantage of him. No, Deidre no longer had what it would take to seize control of Alastair’s gang.
Unfortunately, she had no idea what else she might do.
Tristan came in with a tray of food while she was trying to sort it out. He immediately slipped into the Romani language. “I know that face. That’s a leaving face. Why are we leaving?”
If she cried again, Deidre was going to scratch her own eyes out. “You don’t have to go. I’m sure Ewan would be more than happy to have you stay, and you’ve done really well with Darrow and the—”
“If you’re leaving, we’re leaving, but I thought you were happy here.” Tristan looked around the room. “I thought we might stay for good this time.”
So had Deidre. “I know.”
“What happened?”
She didn’t want to say it, but everyone knew anyway. “He hasn’t come to see me.”
“That’s all?”
A Dangerous Damsel (The Countess Scandals) Page 21
