The Slide Into Ruin

by Bronwyn Stuart

  Wickham spoke again. “I seek an audience with the chit’s father. My business is not with her or her bloody gun.”

  Darius made a clicking noise with his tongue as he came back to stand at her side. “Tut, tut, a gentleman wouldn’t use that kind of language in the company of a lady.”

  Harold half turned away from the situation, another snide comment falling from his disgusting mouth. “Is there a lady present? I hadn’t noticed one.”

  Darius’s men moved closer to him, their weapons once again at the ready.

  One of them spoke. “Want me to off this one, miss?” He indicated Harold with a nod and a wink.

  Eliza almost smiled. Her champions were most peculiar. “I think that mightn’t be the best idea but please do watch him. I wouldn’t want him to fall and sustain an injury.”

  “That wasn’t very polite,” Darius told Harold.

  Eliza wanted to know their history with each other. The very quick glance she’d risked had revealed just how much the two resembled each other, now that Darius had shaved off his beard. She had so many burning questions but her arms ached. The gun was very heavy when held up for so long. She had to rest. Perhaps sit down for a spell.

  “My father is very ill and left for Bath yesterday. He isn’t even here. When he is recovered, I’ll send word and then you may speak what you will.”

  “And the money he owes us?” Harold said, clearly ignoring the threat circling at his back and that it was vulgar to speak money with a duke’s daughter.

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Eliza said, her voice sickly fake and just the right amount of sweet.

  “A lie!” Wickham roared and then advanced. “I know you have paid some of his other debts. Mine is his last and I will have the funds.”

  Before Eliza could react, before she could pull a trigger that would do absolutely nothing, Darius jumped lightly down the stair and met the earl halfway. He didn’t speak, only threw his arm wide, his pistol in his hand, and struck the man across his face. Bone crunched and the earl sagged, his hands over his nose as blood began to drip between his fingers.

  Eliza winced. She was responsible for Darius’s actions on her land and on her behalf. One way or another and with nothing left to give or to sell, she knew there would be a cost for this tussle. A cost she couldn’t afford to pay.

  Chapter Four

  When the earl eventually formed coherent words and might reasonably listen, Darius leaned forward and spoke so quietly in his father’s ear, he hoped no one else heard. He didn’t want to add to the bruises to his sire’s ego just yet. “The next time I use this pistol in your presence, it won’t be to hit you with it. If you come back here before you damn well know the duke is back in residence, I will kill you.”

  “I am an earl and you are a bastard,” he spluttered, blood dripping to the snowy ground. “Do you think your threats frighten me? I’ll have you locked up for this.”

  Darius chuckled and walked back to Eliza’s side. “I do not exist,” he said to his sire. “You said yourself that I died at sea after a brush with pirates. I could kill you both and be back on my ship before your bodies cooled.”

  “Eliza would be witness!” Harold cried in a voice pitched higher than a schoolgirl’s.

  “Miss Penfold, to you,” Darius warned him. God, how he yearned to put a bullet in the dandy. From what he’d heard, Harold’s only power lay in his father’s wealth and title. Neither of which impressed Darius at all.

  “I saw nothing,” the brave lady confirmed. “I would also hear nothing. In fact, I wasn’t even here.”

  “You really are a bitch,” Harold said, his eyes narrowed, his fists clenched.

  “I’ve heard enough,” Darius said, and with a wave of his hands, his men escorted a bleeding earl and his furious heir back to their horses. He added as they marched off, “Come back here, and I’ll happily kill you both.”

  “You will pay for this,” Wickham said once he was mounted, blood still trickling from his nose.

  Darius wondered if he’d indeed broken the bone. He hoped so. The man who had sired him was damned lucky Darius had hit him and not shot him. Fleeting surprise lurked that Wickham bled red just like the rest. He’d almost expected blue. “Perhaps. But it has been rather fun. If ever you feel the need for a proper trouncing, come by the house. I’m sure you recall the direction.”

  Before the earl could counter, Wes gave the horse’s rump an almighty slap. The animal reared, with Wickham holding on for dear life, and then the beast took off, gravel and snow spraying behind as he went. Harold kicked his heels to his own mount before his horse received the same send-off. The fact that they rode and didn’t bring a carriage seemed strange to Darius. Perhaps the two were staying close by. Damn.

  No one moved until the sound of hooves on frozen pebbles faded but then all at once, his men were laughing and slapping each other on the back.

  Marcus turned and addressed Eliza. “You should have let me kill the little one. I’d not like to hear that voice of his again.”

  Darius turned with a smile but then it fell from his lips. Eliza had no colour at all, her face a sharp contrast to the gun she still held at her shoulder.

  “You can put it down now,” he told her gently, his hand going to the top of the barrel with a slight amount of pressure.

  She flicked him off and then swung the gun to his own face. Darius gulped but didn’t back down. He’d been there in that position several times before. He was no stranger to threats on his life.

  “What are you doing, Eliza?”

  “You aren’t who you say you are.”

  He sighed. “I didn’t ever say who I was.”

  “Are you a pirate?”

  He bristled. Not because she had found him out so much as because she had believed his sire’s words. “I am not. I was, many years ago, but now I am a captain of a legitimate ship. I sail for an American company, for Deklin Montrose.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I brought you the trees you wanted yesterday because I thought your ankle might still worry you.”

  “No. What are you doing here, in this part of the country? In England? What do you want?”

  “Nothing from you,” he was quick to assure her. That was only a lie if her father could not pay in coin.

  “Something from my father? If he owes you money, you’ll have to wait like all the others.”

  “Others?” His blood chilled and he almost shivered. “Eliza, what is going on here? How many times have you had to warn men away from your door? And don’t tell me this is the first—I’ll not believe it.”

  Finally her weapon lowered and aimed for the ground rather than his heart. He didn’t feel any measure of relief. “How many times, Eliza?”

  She shook her head. The rifle fell from her fingertips and she swayed. “I…”

  For the second time in two days, her warm body fell into his arms, light as a baby chick’s, only this time it was dead weight. The bloody chit had fainted. Her head fell back as he lifted her.

  “Duncan, get the door. We have to get her inside.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait?” he asked.

  “For what?” Darius hissed.

  “I don’t bloody know. A butler or a footman or something?”

  “There is no one here.” He was absolutely sure of that. “If there is a man on the other side, I’ll kill him for letting her defend her house and her honour on her own like that.”

  The men scurried to do his bidding. Marcus went first, followed by Duncan and then Wes took up the rear, his pistol still held high.

  The door opened easily enough, not having been locked behind Eliza while she stood with a rifle aimed upon her intruders. Darius’s blood boiled in his veins when he thought about what could have happened to her out there. Just because his father and hers were titled gentleman, it didn’t mean she would receive special treatment when the men in his so-called family were desperate and there was not a soul around to witness their tr
eatment of her. He wouldn’t trust either man as far as he could spit.

  “In here,” Wes called from down the shadowed hall.

  The house was comparable to a mausoleum. Only it wasn’t even fit for the dead. He glimpsed snow. Inside. On the bloody tiled floor. He thought it might actually be colder inside than out.

  Wes had discovered the library where a small fire burned and blankets and bedding were strewn all over the floor. He laid Eliza down on a faded yellow settee with small moth-eaten holes in the fabric. “What the hell is going on here?” he muttered as he looked down on her. In sleep she almost looked at peace, her pale frown lines smoothed out, her full lips relaxed rather than pinched, but the deep, dark shadows under her eyes were even more pronounced.

  Why would a young lady of sound breeding, her father a duke, be so tired, no, exhausted? Was she sick? And where the hell were the servants?

  He removed his gloves, his fingers going to the buttons beneath her chin. He was only going to loosen them off slightly to ensure her breathing was obstructed in no way. No sooner had he undone the first of the blasted tiny pearls, there came a roar of fury and he was knocked off-balance and went over the back of the settee. Darius landed with an oomph as the air was pushed from his lungs, someone landing on top of him.

  “You will not touch my sister, you blackguard!”

  Duncan and Marcus rushed to lift the youth from him, the boy’s ineffectual punches no more than firm taps to his person.

  “Whoa there, lad,” Marcus tried to calm him. “The captain was merely making the miss more comfortable.”

  He struggled in their arms. “More comfortable for what? Would you have lifted her skirts next?”

  Darius was still trying to catch up. Where had the boy come from? And how many more were there? He got up off the floor and stalked over to the now open panel next to the hearth and leaned his head in. The black was impenetrable even for his excellent night vision. “Come on out of there now,” he called, though trying to soften his voice took an ocean worth of effort. “You won’t be harmed.”

  A moan from the settee had Darius abandoning the darkness and dropping to his knees next to Eliza, his hand covering hers as she came to. “Easy there, love. You fainted but you’re all right now.”

  Her blue eyes fluttered open slowly, a thousand questions causing her brows to rise. “Fainted? I have never…”

  “Perhaps you simply like being carried in my arms?” Darius teased quietly, his earlier alarm over her health only backing off a fraction.

  The youth came to life again, still struggling to be free. “Don’t touch her! I’ll kill you for this.”

  On his feet again, Darius addressed the lively lad in a loud, firm voice. “Hush, puppy. I saved your sister out there while you hid away behind the walls where you could neither see nor hear her. What if one of those villains had held her down while the other had raped her? Beaten her? How would you have stopped them? It’s not me or my men you need worry about.”

  Darius expected the fight to evaporate but he tried even harder to escape. “I’ll show you how, you cad, you monster, you son of a bitch!”

  Eliza gasped and sat up, swaying a little but then coming good as she clutched the back of the settee to stare over it. “Nathanial Joseph Penfold. I won’t have you cursing like a common sailor in this house. Now calm yourself and sit down while I attempt to sort this out.” She looked around the room, checking the corners. “Where are the others?”

  A shuffle from the void next to the hearth and three more children appeared. Two girls and a young boy. “We’re here.” The smallest of the three ran across the room and threw himself into Eliza’s arms. “I was so scared. Please don’t make me go back in there again. You said last time it would be the last time. What if the demons had got us? I’d be in pieces when you got back and how would you ever go on?”

  “Sshh,” Eliza crooned while stroking his hair and biting back a smile. “I told you I would come back and get you. Everything was just fine, Ethan.”

  “Who are you?” the younger of the girls asked from her stance next to the pitiful fire, hands on her hips and sharp accusations in her direct gaze.

  He ignored the girl and turned to Eliza. “Your father? Where is he?”

  Eliza’s cheeks gained some colour but it didn’t make Darius feel any more at ease. “As I said to the other two, he has gone to Bath to take the waters. He has been poorly lately.”

  “Bollocks,” Darius countered.

  All four children gasped, the little boy hid behind Eliza’s skirts as she stood. “I beg your pardon, sir.”

  “I say bollocks to your lies. Where is he really? No father would leave his children behind alone in this hovel. He’d have to wish them all dead if he did.” Oh God. Is that what he’d stumbled upon? A good old case of filicide? Was the old duke quite mad then?

  “You go too far,” Eliza charged, her hands fisted at her sides. She turned to the older girl and said, “Gabriella, take Grace and Ethan to the kitchen and warm some cider. Nathanial, go with them please.”

  “I won’t leave you here with these pirates.”

  Duncan cuffed the boy gently but firmly. “Who says we’re pirates then? And is that any way to speak to the lady?”

  Nathanial was quiet and sullen after that and eventually left the room where the tension had become so thick it suffocated. Whatever had happened to Darius’s plans? He should have just let Eliza go yesterday. He should never have stopped her in the snow. He wouldn’t be there now, in a room where the five of them obviously slept because the rest of the house was uninhabitable.

  “You will tell me what is going on here, Eliza. Right now.”

  “It is none of your business. Thank you for your assistance but you may leave now.”

  He ground his teeth before biting out, “I’m making it my business. Start talking. We’ll not leave until we have the truth.”

  “Aye,” his men agreed, all standing about the room in differing stances of wariness and confusion, weapons in hand and ready for a fight still.

  Eliza finally sighed and sat back down on the settee, her hands clenched in her lap, all colour once again gone from her face as she dropped her clouded gaze. “Our father is dead.”

  “You’re going to have to try harder than that, lass,” Marcus told her. “At least make it more believable so the captain’s conscience can be assuaged and we can go about our business.”

  “It’s the truth,” Eliza confessed with a little sob as she covered her face with her hands.

  “Now you’ve bloody done it,” Duncan said. “Don’t cry, miss. He didn’t mean nothing by it.”

  Darius kneeled before her and placed his hands on her shoulders in what he hoped would be taken for support though he barely knew her. He fought to keep his touch gentle as the ramifications of her words truly sunk in. His stomach pitched like he was back on the decks of his ship in the middle of a storm. “Tell me exactly what happened. Leave nothing out.”

  She wiped her eyes and met his gaze. “The last time the earl and his son were here demanding money my father didn’t have. He…he got quite foxed and then…” Her voice was lost in sobs as more tears dripped down her face and her words were nothing more than shallow intakes of frigid air.

  He should never have done it. He knew exactly three seconds after his arms closed about her slender shoulders and her warm tears soaked his coat that he should not have offered her comfort. As her scent filled his nostrils and her hair tickled his cheek, he knew that as long as he drew breath he would do anything in his power to protect Eliza Penfold and her siblings from his sire’s wrath and his brother’s damaged pride. The two men would be back to collect their money and if the duke was nowhere to be found it would end very badly.

  Damn but he was in trouble. If the Duke of Penfold was in indeed dead, they were all in big trouble.

  Chapter Five

  What had she done? She’d promised her brother that she would never breathe a word of what had happe
ned to their father until he’d come of age and could take the title. Now she’d told a perfect stranger that they were all alone in the world. Worse still, he was the bastard son of their current number-one enemy. But he offered her comfort in a way no one else had since her mother had died. She didn’t know who to trust anymore. Suddenly her plans seemed fraught with flaws, her weaknesses becoming too obvious to disguise. Her tears were not so much the actress in her but the situation becoming too out of control.

  Her mind brimmed with terrifying thoughts. What if the Earl of Wickham showed up tomorrow or the next day? She couldn’t fight him off with her empty gun again and again. But where could they go? And how would they get there when they had absolutely nothing left? She’d known Darius was coming, well, not Darius exactly, but someone. Her father had rambled on about the shipping line in one of his drunken stupors. Most of what he’d said had been unintelligible, only snatches of words like dowry, marriage, Montrose. Enough to worry them all.

  While pondering her family’s dire straits, she’d quite forgotten that she was being held intimately by a man she neither knew nor should want to know. But it felt so lovely. Like someone in this cold world wanted to lend her their strength and warmth. She’d been alone for so long.

  When Darius pulled away, Eliza sniffed and wiped the last of the tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her dress. Crying about their situation wouldn’t do anything to solve it. It didn’t even make her feel better.

  “Where is your guardian?” Darius asked as he sat back on his heels. Did he really have to look at her like that? With so much pity in those large hazel eyes?

  “The children’s guardians are people who would drive a knife in my brother’s back and then murder the rest so they could have the title for themselves. I would not let that happen. It is only two short months until Nathanial comes of age.”

  “So, you are hiding the duke’s death until then? How long has it been already?”