Juliet felt as if he'd slipped the blade beneath her skin, cold and relentless. Merciful heaven, what was he going to do to her?
"This must be done delicately. Delicately. We don't want you to suffer any unnecessary pain. I just have to heat it over the coals until it's nice and hot."
"What—what are you talking about? Please, what are you going to do?"
Rutledge went to scoop out a shovelful of hot coals from the fire. Juliet winced as he jabbed the blade into the glowing orange center. "I am going to alter your face, my dear, so it will no longer be such a carnal temptation to men like Slade. Nor any man. If the blade is hot, it will cauterize the slash at the same time I cut you. You see, I can be merciful."
Merciful? Juliet reeled, bile rising in her throat. "You can't mean to do this."
"Of course, I would rather turn away from this deed. But it is necessary. 'If your eye offends thee, pluck it out.'"
"But the Lord also said blessed are the merciful. There was no violence, no cruelty in Him, only love and understanding."
"But I do this out of love for Him, Juliet, and for you. If your papa, the vicar, were alive today, he would applaud my efforts to save you."
"My papa was a man of peace and love, a man who sought to heal, not destroy."
"And I shall heal you. You needn't fear for your future, my dear. I am not a man bound by beauty of the flesh. I will take care of you, help you repent your sin in the years to come. You will always have a home here with me."
"I'd sooner die in the streets!"
The man actually looked hurt. "You think you'll go back to Slade? That a man like him can love your soul enough to be blind to your ruined face? He'll despise you, be repulsed by you when your face is as flawed as your virtue."
"Adam will kill you for this! He's an expert swordsman. You could never defeat him!"
"It was never my intention to fight him. Although, if he should come here, I'll put a pistol-ball in his chest. I've given the matter great consideration, trying to think of a just price for his interference. It came to me as I carried you from the garden. His punishment will be the image he'll carry of you once this ugly business is finished. Slashed and scarred, branded like some vile harpy. He'll dream of you and wake up screaming."
Horror sluiced through Juliet. Horror at the image of Adam finding her, witnessing Rutledge's fiendish marring of her face. No physical wound Rutledge could inflict on Adam would be deeper, more devastating than seeing her thus.
Adam was a man who already had too many dark nightmares, too many chains of guilt and regret hidden beneath his laughter.
The blade was growing brighter, and Rutledge scooped it from the coals, holding it up into the light. It glowed, the metal hot, the blade hungry.
"It is time." Rutledge paced toward her, the blade glowing. He poised it so near her cheek she could feel the heat on her skin, anticipate the bite of the blade as it found flesh. "The question is where to begin."
Chapter 20
Fury and frustration pulsed through Adam's veins, battle instincts scratching claws of dread against his nerves. He leaned low over the neck of his horse, driving it to faster speeds, his heart hammering.
Blast, had Gavin been out of his mind, allowing Juliet to return to Angel's Fall alone? Yet Gavin had believed Adam was confronting Juliet's enemy. He'd believed she was safe. Otherwise Adam knew his brother would never have let her ride off.
Adam had believed she was safe, too, as he'd tightened the noose about Isabelle. But he'd been wrong. Dangerously wrong. And now Juliet could be in peril.
Bloody hell, he felt so damned helpless. He did not have a clue where to begin searching again for the monster who had hurt Juliet. But he would turn the earth inside out if he had to—to flush out whatever beast had been stalking her.
With every bit of his will, Adam fought to calm himself. He would find her in the garden, safe, mourning her foxglove and her heart's ease, or sitting in the garden house, trying to piece together the broken bits of her dream.
There was no more reason for anyone to attack her now, was there? They'd burned her out, and no one except Gavin and Juliet's angels knew that the haven would rise from the ashes.
He guided his horse around the corner, his gaze falling on the blackened hulk that had been Juliet's home. It still made his breath clutch in his throat, the thought of how easily she might have died that night, the knowledge that someone was twisted enough to unleash that kind of vengeance upon her.
He'd spend the rest of his life keeping her safe.
Adam reined his mount into the garden, glimpsed the mare Juliet had ridden cropping sprigs of grass in the corner of the garden. Relief jolted through him. She was here somewhere.
Adam flung himself from his horse, bellowing her name, his eyes sweeping the trampled garden. Nothing.
He glimpsed the garden house, charged toward it, images playing through his mind. The alabaster curve of her breast as he'd kissed it, the catch of her breath as he suckled her. The wide wonder in her eyes as he pierced her maidenhead, aware he'd just been given the most precious gift imaginable.
Love. The love of a woman he didn't deserve. A woman of quiet courage, of fierce conviction, a woman who believed in justice and the triumph of good over evil. And was willing to fight as valiantly as any soldier ever born for people she barely knew.
Adam charged up to the garden house, flung open the door. He could feel the points of his temper jabbing the way they always did when he was afraid. Knew that once he found Juliet, he was going to kiss her until her knees melted, then bellow at her until her eardrums crumbled.
"Juliet?" he called. "Blast it, Juliet, answer me." But there was no sound but echoing silence.
The mounds of pillows that had made their bed were still tumbled, his discarded neckcloth lying on the floor. Soft lace shadows were pooling in the deepening twilight. But Juliet was nowhere to be seen.
His muscles knotted, his nerves on a blade-edge of awareness. She'd come to Angel's Fall, just as Elise told him she had. The mare was still here. Where could she have gone?
Adam stalked out of the garden house, his gaze sweeping the grounds. What the devil had she been doing here? Poking about?
Suddenly his gaze snagged on a ribbon fluttering in the breeze. What had she called the plants last time? Foxglove? No, fairyfingers. Hell, only Juliet would try to tie the blasted things upright after they were half scorched and ground into the turf.
Adam stalked over to them, to take the end of the ribbon between his fingers. Damn, something was wrong. He could feel it with the same certainty he'd sensed an assassin's blade inches from his back. He could hear the danger deep in his own vitals.
He clenched his fist, sickened as he saw footprints, a man's, a woman's... Juliet's. There had been a struggle. The certainty weighed in his gut like a cold lump of stone, images of Juliet battling some mysterious assailant, terrified, that phantom enemy who had run from Angel's Fall the night of the fire.
Soon it would be dark. How the blazes could he track Juliet if she'd been dragged away from the garden? It would be fiendishly easy to disappear into the bowels of the city with one lone woman.
"Damnation, where could she be?" Adam knelt down, examining the area, praying for something, anything that might give him a clue where she'd gone.
He was just about to stand, to search somewhere else when he saw it. A handkerchief tangled in the branches of a rhododendron, something glimmering, half crushed into the ground beside it. He dug the object out. Cradling it in his palm, he held it in the fading light.
What the devil? It was a golden lily, petals bent, the diamond center dulled with dirt. A link from Juliet's mother's necklace. The one she'd tried to run back into the fire to save. How in the name of the saints had any of it survived? No, Adam reasoned. No one had ever reached Juliet's room while fighting the fire. It had collapsed when the roof fell.
Then how was it possible?
There had to be some explanation. Something
he had to remember. He closed his eyes, then opened them again, his gaze locking on the fairyfingers Juliet had attempted to resurrect. That was it! The day he and Rutledge had argued in the garden, Juliet had said she'd pawned two links from the necklace to keep the shelter running. The only way the golden lily could have gotten here was if the pawnbroker had brought it.
Rutledge? Adam should have felt relief. But instead his nape prickled with wariness. If the pawnbroker had returned the lilies to Juliet she would never have left them to be trampled, forgotten. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.
His gaze scanned the area, noting crushed plants, smeared footprints, Juliet's and a man's larger ones. The signs of a struggle? Or just more ruin from the night of the fire?
He bent over to touch a crack in the stem of the foxglove. It was still sticky, fresh as a new wound.
Was it possible that Rutledge could be involved in all that had happened? Intense sunken eyes blazed in Adam's memory, eyes filled with hatred, loathing, and an almost fanatical aura of worship when they looked at Juliet.
It was one heartbeat from such emotions to madness. Adam had seen it in the officers he'd served, tasted it on the slaughtering fields of the battle of Culloden Moor.
Adam's jaw hardened. He turned and ran toward the dismal shop that loomed over the blackened garden wall.
Once when he'd lost at gaming, Adam had pawned the ring his father had given him. He'd never quite rid himself of the bitter taste of the experience.
Adam drew his sword and stealthily entered Rutledge's shop. The place was an accursed rat's warren, stuffed with debris, a motley collection fashioned of human misery and suffering. A gold-framed portrait of someone's child dangled haphazardly on a wall. What had caused the owner to pawn it? That same child sobbing with hunger? Or the need of the parent to guzzle gin?
Men like Rutledge were the worst kind of vultures, preying on desperation, picking the bones of people's dignity. Yet now Adam was afraid the man had chosen another quarry.
Juliet. Bloody hell, where was she? She was nowhere to be seen; there was only the sound of voices from deeper inside the building. By the dim light filtering through the window, Adam wove toward the noise, his heart thundering, every muscle in his body tight with desperation, forgotten prayers upon his lips.
But never, in a thousand nightmare scenes of battle, had any sight struck horror into Adam's soul like the scene that greeted him as he reached the back room of the pawnshop. A glowing blade poised a mere hairsbreadth away from Juliet's soft cheek, her eyes wide with horror.
"Rutledge, stop!" Adam commanded.
"Adam!" Juliet choked out his name, the pawnbroker wheeling about, white-faced.
"How—how did you find us?" Rutledge choked out, the blade trembling in his hand. "Come another step and I'll slash her face," he warned.
The slightest flick of his wrist would scar Juliet forever. The thought of her carrying the mark of this madman was unspeakable.
Adam froze. "Hurt her, and I swear I'll kill you."
"You think I care? I'll sacrifice my life, if need be, to protect Juliet from herself!"
"Protect her? You've got a blasted knife at her face!"
"And I'm going to use it, Slade. Scar her so that no man will ever look at her with lust again. I have to do it because of you."
"Because of me?"
"You fornicated with her in the garden house! I saw the two of you together!"
Adam's gut lurched at the knowledge that this man had watched something so searingly private, so unbearably precious. "What the devil business is it of yours?"
"I was her guardian long before you were! A proper guardian, watching through the windows at night. I thought she was an angel, so good. I was afraid for her, afraid she would be tainted by the wantonness of those women. I did my best to frighten her away from this accursed place before it was too late. But the whores infected her with their vile plague, and you—you poisoned her."
"I was the one who defiled her," Adam snarled. "If you want vengeance, strike at me."
"Your soul is already lost to the devil. There is still time to save Juliet's! Now throw down your sword or I swear I'll cut her throat!" Rutledge's knife flashed down to that slender column.
"No!" Juliet cried out. "Adam, don't!"
But Adam glanced from the knife to his own sword, that sword that had protected him in countless altercations. But it had been easy to charge a foe when he wasn't in love with the prisoner. Now the battle instinct honed by countless engagements was dulled, all but frozen, his head filled, not with discovering his foe's weaknesses and capitalizing on them, but rather with a hundred nightmarish possibilities that left Juliet bleeding, dead.
Adam's hand tightened on the hilt of his sword a moment more, then he flung it away from him. It clattered to the floor. "The sword's down," Adam snarled between gritted teeth. "It's down."
Juliet cried out a protest, tears welling from her eyes.
What kind of a twisted madman was Rutledge? And how the devil could he disarm the man before he scarred Juliet forever? Adam groped desperately for some way, any way, to goad Rutledge into making some mistake, giving Adam an opening. "What sin did Juliet commit, except being within reach when I needed a woman to bed? It was my favorite game to play to while away the time I was stuck in that infernal house."
"You could have had any of the other women!"
"I did," Adam lied. "More than half of them. But you can imagine it was small challenge. What entertainment would that be? No, to get Juliet into my bed—that was a far more difficult quest." Adam gave a harsh laugh. "It's not every man who can tempt an angel to fall! You certainly didn't."
"Damn you to hell, don't you dare—"
"Are you telling me you didn't dream of Juliet? Of kissing her, touching her?" The thought made Adam want to retch, but he had to jab at Rutledge's vulnerabilities, set him off balance.
Dark red stained the pawnbroker's cheeks, and he trembled so hard Adam feared a line of blood would well where the knife blade lay. "I fought against such carnal thoughts!"
"I bet you had to fight damned hard at night, alone in your bed." Adam's lip curled in mockery. "But you didn't have the courage I had to take her, despite all her pretty protests. Perhaps you are used to being rejected by a woman you desire." Adam let his eyes harden. "But I am not."
"Stop it, Slade!" Flecks of foam dotted Rutledge's thin lips. "She was an angel! A woman of virtue!"
"Do you think I cared? I lured her into the garden house late at night, by begging for some sort of poultice for one of my old wounds. Claimed it was aching so fiercely I could get no rest. And once she was so far from the house no one could hear her scream, I forced her."
"Adam! No! Can't you see how—how angry—" Juliet pleaded. "It's not true!"
"I like my women that way, Rutledge," Adam sneered, edging toward the pawnbroker. "All those years as Sabrehawk I learned to take what I want. And I wanted Juliet." The man was teetering on the brink of madness, wild rage writhing in his white-ringed eyes.
"Adam, stop!" Juliet cried. "Are you mad?"
Rutledge was quaking, shaking. "No. I saw you together—heard her... she was crying out in passion."
Adam shot him a tigerish smile full of mockery, scorn. "That's what you dreamed of, wasn't it Rutledge? Juliet crying out for you? You should have flung her down in the garden house. I would have willingly shared her once I was done."
With an animal roar, Rutledge drew back the knife to slash at Adam, murder in his eyes. But at that instant, Juliet shoved hard with one foot. The chair toppled over, hurling Rutledge off balance as it splintered with a deafening crash, throwing her out of Rutledge's reach.
Adam dove for the man, crashing into him body-long. The knife slashed Adam's arm, as he fought to subdue Rutledge. It should have been easy enough, but the smaller man fought with the power of a zealot—and that most dangerous of qualities Adam recognized too well, the savageness of a man who did not care if he lived or died.
Adam glimpsed Juliet tearing at her bindings, trying to get free, that single glance fraught with danger. Rutledge slashed at Adam again. Fire spilled in a hot line of blood down his chest. Rutledge broke free, scrambling behind a tower of wooden chests that nearly reached the ceiling. Adam struggled to his feet, diving after Rutledge, but it was too late. The pawnbroker drove his shoulder into the wooden sides of the mounded chests, sending them crashing down onto Adam.
Juliet screamed, a hundred cudgels seeming to slam into Adam, driving him to the floor. Breath was crushed from his lungs, his head swam, his stomach roiling as the falling chests battered him.
He fought not to lose consciousness, fought to get out from beneath the chests, but they had the weight and power to do what Rutledge could not. Imprison him just long enough for the man to escape him.
The room whirled, pitched. Adam glimpsed the pawnbroker scrabbling away from him, knife in hand, those eyes fixed on Juliet, so helpless, struggling against the bindings that still tied her to the chair. Adam knew in that horrifying second that Rutledge wasn't fighting to kill Adam. He didn't give a damn if Adam killed him. Rutledge's one object was to get his knife blade to Juliet's face.
With a guttural roar, Adam tore free of the weight that pinned him. He launched himself at the man, not caring if the knife embedded itself in his own flesh, just as long as he could keep it from harming his love.
He heard Juliet's cry just as the knife flashed at her cheek. Adam dove, plunging his right hand between her skin and the blade at the last instant. He clenched his fist around the blade, pain screaming through him as the knife bit deep, battling with his other hand to wrench the blood-slickened weapon away from Rutledge.
"Adam!" Juliet was sobbing. "Adam—"
In that instant, she tore free of her bindings. Adam never saw her strike, only heard the cracking of wood as she bashed the chair into Rutledge's head. Rutledge shrieked, fell, letting go of the knife as he plunged toward Adam.
It was over in a heartbeat. The pawnbroker fell back, his eyes staring, sightless, at the ceiling, the knife imbedded in his chest.
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