Turned toward the silent crowd.
“Someone should notify the coroner,” he said, shaking his head.
A woman’s heart-wrenching sobs tore through the mist. “No!” The Duchess of Southingham broke out of the crowd, ran toward him, and fell to her knees beside Grant’s still body. “Charles,” she cried, leaning over him, shaking his still form. “Do not leave me here!”
“Your Grace . . .” he said, tugging on the distraught woman’s arm. He pulled her free of the body. Helped her to her feet. “Grant’s gone,” he whispered.
And damn it all, his friend had taken his remaining secrets to the grave.
The duchess swiped at her eyes, leaving behind a smear of rice powder and revealing the extent of her horribly bruised face. She hugged her arms about her body, rocking back and forth. “My husband killed him,” she spat, “because he knew I loved him.”
West placed a hand on the duchess’s shoulder, his other loosening about the pistol he still carried. “Won’t you tell me what happened?” he asked softly.
“Southingham forced my confession last night,” she choked out, tears spilling down her cheeks. And judging by what West could see of the duchess’s bruised face, it was a confession that had not come easily. “I tried to warn Charles this morning. To tell him my husband knew. But Charles wouldn’t listen. He said we needed to see this through. That you would kill Southingham. I’d hoped he would kill you as well, and then it would all be over.”
“Over?” West blinked down at her. Good Christ, was the woman mad? The crowd was pressing closer, curious ears, chattering mouths. It would never be over, not once the gossip rags found out. “You expected me to die today?” he said tersely, keeping his voice low. As the duchess nodded, he thought of how Southingham had aimed. How the bullet had flown with such deadly accuracy.
And he knew, with a sickening sense of betrayal, that the barrel of Southingham’s pistol had most certainly been altered as well.
“If your husband knew you were in love with Grant, why in the hell did Southingham come here to carry through with the duel this morning?”
“Because I told him you’d encouraged us.” She looked down. Trailed a finger across the bodice of her pale yellow walking gown, now smeared with Grant’s blood. “That you’d helped us, arranged our liaisons. I told him . . .” She shuddered. “I told him he’d been the butt of your joke for over a year.”
Good Christ. No wonder Southingham had shown up this morning, pistol at the ready. He was probably even now wishing he had a second bullet. “How did you and Grant even know each other?” West demanded. “I never suspected anything.”
“Do you remember that night you and Charles tried to sneak into my bedchamber?” the duchess said, spreading her hands.
“Yes. It was one of the few pranks that Grant and I pulled that failed spectacularly.”
“It didn’t fail.” She shook her head. “You see, Charles made it to my chamber that night. We sent my maid to distract you, so we wouldn’t be disturbed. We embarked on an affair. But eventually we became tired of hiding. Of lying to everyone.”
“Not so tired of lying,” West pointed out, “that Grant ever saw fit to tell me the truth.” It stung, somehow. All those nights at White’s, all those drunken conversations they had shared, and Grant had never once hinted at such a liaison. Then again, Grant had also hidden his plans to kill the queen from his best friend. Had worked, in fact, to throw West off the trail. Had never truly revealed the extent of how much Crimea had affected him.
Suffice it to say, he had not known his friend as well as he’d imagined.
“I can understand a desire to escape your husband,” West said slowly. Softly. “He’s a brutal man.” He shook off the anger that wanted to creep into his voice, knowing that he needed more answers yet. “But none of that explains why you helped Grant plot to kill the queen.”
The duchess lifted a trembling finger to her bruised cheek. “My husband wouldn’t grant me a divorce, even after I told him I was in love with someone else. It was Charles’s idea to kill the queen. He hated her, you see, for everything that happened in Crimea. He said it would be justice, not murder.”
She looked back in the direction where Southingham was lying prone on the ground, struggling against his captors. She laughed, a close-to-maniacal sound. “But it was my idea to pin it on my husband.” Her voice softened. “It was my idea to rifle the barrel of the pistol you carried this morning.” Her eyes swung back to West. “And I am the one who altered the second gun, the one my husband carried.”
West gaped at her. “You rifled the barrel?”
“Grant never knew I had done it. He thought only your pistol was altered. But you were too dangerous to let live, you see. I couldn’t take the chance you would tell someone.”
West took a step backward, his fingers tightening over the dueling pistol still grasped in his right hand. While he was relieved it hadn’t been Grant who had plotted to have him killed, he was growing increasingly worried about the state of the duchess’s mind.
He knew as well as anyone that trauma had a way of twisting the soul. Grant had been undone by the events of Crimea. The duchess’s cross to bear was being married to a brute of a husband with no way out. “I rather think you’ll be free of your husband a good long while now,” he said carefully, “as Southingham will very likely hang for this.”
“Hanging isn’t good enough for him.” She lifted a trembling hand to her ruined cheek again. “And can’t you see? I will never be free. I will never be happy, not now that Charles is gone.” Her gaze turned accusing. “You’ve ruined everything, Westmore. You were supposed to kill my husband this morning.” Her voice grew strangled. “And he was supposed to kill you.”
West took another step backward, thoroughly unsettled now. The duchess was placing the blame on him now? For not dying, as he was apparently supposed to have done? How could one argue against that? There was no logic there, no hope for rational discourse. He turned his head, searching the crowd, looking for Mary. He didn’t see her. Hoped she’d gone home.
Knew, in his gut, that she hadn’t.
His wife was too headstrong for her own good, and while it was one of the things he loved about her, he wanted her as far away from the duchess as possible, given the nasty turn in this conversation. No matter how much sympathy he might have for the Duchess of Southingham’s position—and no matter how terrible her marriage, no matter how brutal her husband’s fists—the fact remained that she and Grant had plotted to kill Queen Victoria.
And that was a crime punishable by death.
The duchess was advancing on him now, pushing him back toward Grant’s lifeless body, into the milling crowd. “You were supposed to be his friend,” she choked out. “He tried to protect you by throwing you off the trail. Wouldn’t listen to my plans to have Carlson kill you when we had the chance.” Her hands fisted and she twisted her head, staring at so many people close by. “And now you and your wife will tell everyone what we have done.”
“I do not know that we will have to tell everyone,” West said cautiously, holding up his hands, the dueling pistol pointing safely upward. Though, he rather thought he ought to tell someone—preferably someone who worked at Bedlam. “And if anyone does suspect,” he said in a soothing voice, trying to sort out how to get her to the authorities—and get them to believe his explanation—without causing a ruckus, “we can pretend it was just a prank. Grant always liked a good prank.”
“A prank?” The duchess looked up at him, her eyes wild. “My life is not a joke, Mr. Westmore. Charles’s death was not a joke!” With a feral cry, she lunged forward, grabbing the dueling pistol from his hand. She swung the heavy barrel wildly, gesturing at the crowd. “Get back!” she screamed at the open-mouthed onlookers. “Get back, or I’ll shoot!”
And that was when West saw Mary. Charging toward them, white as a ghost, her hair streaming out behind her like a brilliant brown banner. Her mouth opened in a silent scream of
protest, and then the sound of her panicked voice hit him like a wall of bricks.
“West! Watch out!”
Fear rode spurs up his spine as the duchess jerked the barrel of the gun toward Mary. “No!” he roared, leaping in front of the path of the pistol. He didn’t feel the bullet slam into his shoulder as much as welcome it, knowing that if it was lodged in him, it was no longer a threat to the woman he loved. He looked down at the wound in his right shoulder, the edges of his vision going dark.
The duchess was standing before him, her eyes wide with fear. The pistol in her hand fell to the ground, useless now that its one bullet had been spent. She looked uncertain of her next move.
But that didn’t mean she wasn’t still bloody dangerous.
West tried to pull his own pistol from his pocket, determined to defend Mary to his last breath. But his hand—his arm—wouldn’t work properly, and as he fumbled with it, the duchess snatched the gun from his hand and turned it back on him.
“Your Grace . . .” he started, raising his hands. From the corner of his eye, he saw Mary slide to a stop in the slick grass, one hand on the ground, the other tangling in her skirt pocket. Though his head was spinning now, West threw himself in front of her once more, blocking the duchess’s shot, ready to take the second bullet, anything to keep it from firing in Mary’s direction.
The Duchess of Southingham lifted the pistol, tears spilling down her cheeks. “There is no other way,” she cried. “You both know too much.” He heard a hammer cock.
And then the duchess flew backward, a bullet slamming into her heart.
Shocked, he turned. Mary stood like a white-faced statue, smoke still curling about the derringer clasped in her hand, her mouth fixed in a determined line.
And the last thought West had before he fell unconscious was that for a woman who was afraid of guns, his wife had remarkable aim.
From the Diary of Miss Mary Channing
From the Diary of Miss Mary Channing
June 29, 1858
Everyone knows that gunshot is but one of the ways a hero can meet his end.
There is also blood loss, fever, carriage accident, and the ever-popular festering wound.
Not to mention the fact that this hero’s wife might yet strangle him for stupidity.
I fear that while our villain has been vanquished, our happy ending is not yet assured. West remains unconscious, fighting the threat of a fever. I worry his struggle is owed as much to shock as blood loss. After all, he was betrayed by his best friend, and a person doesn’t recover easily from a loss like that. I have stuck close to his side, as I promised I would. And I have regularly doused his wound with whisky . . . just in case.
After all, if there is one thing I have learned from this mad adventure, it is that you don’t sit back and wait for fate to decide what to do with you.
And a little bit of whisky can sometimes save the day.
Chapter 30
West awoke with a start, gasping in awareness.
He could see a thin gray light filtering in through the bedroom window. Beyond that, however, time remained uncertain. So, too, did the nature of his immediate circumstances. He could see he was in his bed, at Cardwell House, but beyond that lay a murky confusion.
He leaned back against his pillow, thinking hard, until the pieces clicked into place. Grant was dead. This was a painful truth, one he was forced to face anew at the start of each day.
With that recognition came the inevitable, accompanying guilt. If only he’d seen his friend’s worsening derangement, recognized Grant’s irrevocable descent into darkness . . .
But then, how could he have, when West had been so distracted by his own demons?
Nearly everyone associated with the plot to kill Queen Victoria was dead, and West rather thought the imaginative story his wife had concocted to explain Vivian’s disappearance was likely not far off the mark. No doubt the woman was now living in the Mediterranean or some similarly far-off clime, enjoying the money with which she’d absconded.
And oh yes . . . speaking of his wife . . . there was this piece to his life.
A smile tugged at his mouth. He was married. Happily so.
To a proper heroine, who carried a snub-nosed derringer about in her skirt pocket and shot villains when she needed to, and who kissed like a bloody siren when she wasn’t tracking down traitors.
He turned his head to see Mary sitting up in bed next to him, bathed in a soft glow. As it always did, the sweet, simple sight of her hit him like a pleasant punch to the gut. Her bedside lamp had been turned up, and she was staring down at a book clutched tightly in her hands, a brown braid over one shoulder, her brow furrowed in concentration.
Had he just been wondering the time? A bit after five o’clock in the morning, then.
It must be, if his wife was already awake.
He shifted, letting out a small groan as the bandage on his chest pulled tight against his wound. It was healing well, no more signs of infection, but he was growing impatient with the grand pageantry of being an invalid. Wilson checked in on him far too regularly, and his family filtered through his room at least once a day.
Mary had been a rock throughout all of it, soothing his grumpiness, making him laugh. He was grateful to have her, but here it was, a bit after five o’clock in the morning, and already he felt restless, restricted to his bed.
The noise he made pulled Mary from whatever story had her so engrossed. She looked down at him, a pinch of concern on her face. “Did you have a nightmare?” she asked, lowering the book to her lap.
West shook his head. No, nightmares had become a thing of his past. His dreams had been more of the pleasant variety of late, in part due to her.
And in part due to his acceptance—his ready remembrance—of his past.
He felt alive again. In fact, he felt so alive, he was presently considering pulling his wife onto his lap and divesting her of that nightrail, no matter Dr. Merial’s orders to the contrary. The lamplight was turning parts of the thin cotton transparent, and he could see the lovely curve of a small, perfect breast as she reached a hand out to smooth the hair from his forehead.
He gritted his teeth, wanting far more than the nurse-like touch of her hand. A man ought not to have to suffer a beautiful woman in his bed if he wasn’t permitted to touch her. Two weeks into this convalescence, and he was about ready to clock Dr. Merial over the head every time the man appeared with a fresh set of bandages.
Didn’t people understand his life was marching by? There was architecture to study, a wife to pleasure . . . but resuming those things was hardly possible while he was under strict instructions to suffer a full month’s bedrest.
And judging by his wife’s careful adherence to Dr. Merial’s instructions, he was going to have a devil of a time changing her mind.
“I find myself bored,” West complained. His fingers drifted toward the ties of Mary’s nightrail. “It’s after five o’clock in the morning,” he said, a hint of wicked hope in his voice. “Surely there are more important things we can be doing than reading some obscure novel.”
Mary smiled down at her handsome, disgruntled husband. Seeing his petulant frown was like seeing dawn break over the horizon. It meant he was agitated, and that meant he was healing, and not only in the physical sense.
She’d worried in those first few days after Grant’s death that the loss of his friend might set West back, renew the lingering terror of Crimea.
Instead, it had proven a galvanizing force. He spoke of things now that would have shocked her a month ago: a return to his love of architecture, his enthusiasm for her suggestion to build a new wing of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital dedicated to helping soldiers heal, his hopes for a family of their own. If nothing else, Grant’s treachery had highlighted what could happen when a man was unable to pull himself back from an abyss.
And she was glad to see her husband had backed away from the edge on his own.
“Oh, you are bored, are you?” she
asked unsympathetically, batting at his wandering hands. She regarded him with a raised brow. “I suppose you want to talk again?”
“Actually, I had a different cure for my boredom in mind.”
“Well, perhaps I want to talk.” She laid a hand on his bare chest, taking care to avoid the bandaged area, but enjoying the way her touch made his body stiffen in predictable places. “You see, I have a confession to make, Mr. Westmore. I’ve been keeping a list of secrets from you, things I haven’t told you yet.”
“Not another list,” he groaned. “And no more secrets. We promised we would always be open and honest with each other.”
She smiled, her heart twisting agreeably in her chest. Had she once despaired of ever having a husband who included her in his thoughts and plans? Who told her all his secrets, and listened patiently to hers? How much had changed in two weeks. During the time he’d been forced to stay in bed, there had been plenty of time to talk. She’d learned nearly his entire life’s story and suffered through a cataloging of all his various transgressions (not nearly as dramatic or awful as the rumors implied), down to the time when, at thirteen years old, he’d electrified a doorknob at Eton, shocked the shite out of his headmaster, and promptly gotten expelled.
“Which is why I am telling you now,” she agreed. “No more secrets between us. I shall start with Number One on my list. This isn’t some obscure novel.” She lifted her book again, feeling a bit wicked. Using her most seductive voice, she began to read again, continuing right from where she had left off. “Driving close into her, I for a moment stopped my furious thrusts to play with the soft silly hair which covered her mount of love; then slipping my hand over her ivory belly up to her breasts, I made her rosy nipples my next prey.”
He held his hands over his ears, shaking his head. “I can’t . . . that is you shouldn’t . . . Good Christ, you are a cruel, uncaring woman. Are you really reading The Lustful Turk without me?”
“Yes.” She shrugged. “Although . . . it doesn’t have to be without you.”
The Perks of Loving a Scoundrel Page 34
