“Thank God. You’re all right?”
“You found my letter?” He pulled it out of his waistcoat and showed it to her. She sighed. “I had hoped that you wouldn’t find it until much later.”
“Why? Why did you leave like this?”
“Did you not read my letter? My husband is here, in the very house. I could not risk remaining.” Her eyes filled, despite her best efforts to stave off the tears. “I hope you will believe me when I say how hard it was to leave you. And now I shall have to do it twice.”
She began to turn away, but Jonathan pulled her close to him, his lips pressing against her own with barely contained desperation. She could not help but respond. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. She poured into it every fear, every hope that she’d experienced since she met him. When she finally broke away, they were both breathless.
“You don’t have to go away. I know your story, and I believe you. Please, Theodora.”
She turned away again, tried to protest, but he cut her off. He spun her around to face him and put his hands on her shoulders.
“While I was in London, I learned some of what that blackguard had done to you. I learned the rest in your letter. Please, let me help. I am not without resources.”
She smiled grimly. He was ever the aristocrat, no matter how much he tried to deny it. “Jonathan, it is hopeless. If I stay there are two courses left open to me. He will either enslave me again, perhaps kill me, or have me hanged for trying to kill him. Don’t you see? I am his wife. His property. I don’t care if you are a viscount, your father an earl. He has every right to treat me however he wishes. I have nothing, except my freedom in this moment, and if I do not take it, I am dead.”
Jonathan was silent for a moment. He reached out to wipe a tear from her cheek.
“Then I shall go with you.”
Her mouth fell open, and she stared at him. Then she shook her head. “Don’t be ridiculous, Jonathan. You cannot leave your family. They mean everything to you.”
He gently grasped her chin in his hand and moved his face close to hers. “You are everything to me. I finally realized that when I was in London. I could not wait to get back to you, but when I did, he was here and you were gone.”
Theodora wrenched away from him and walked a few paces further into the trees. “If I am everything to you, why did you go to London? Why didn’t you come to me with your questions? Or even say goodbye?”
“Pot, kettle, Theodora. I left for three days. You were leaving forever, and you didn’t even say goodbye. Besides, I knew you wouldn’t tell me the truth.”
Her mouth worked, but she could think of nothing to say in reply. “I left you a note,” she said lamely.
He kissed her again. “Yes, you did, thank God. Now, please come back with me. You can hide until Ravensdale has gone, and we will find a way out of this. You are not going to America. Please.”
“But the scandal,” she said. “What of Julia? She’ll never make a decent match if this comes out and you are a part of it.”
Jonathan snorted. “Julia can take care of herself. She is only fifteen, and the ton has a notoriously short attention span. Besides, anyone Julia wanted to marry would not be so shallow as let this affect him.” He put his arm around her shoulder and led her out of the trees toward his horse. “Stop making excuses, darling. You belong with me—notice I did not say to me. We will find a way...”
He stopped short at the sight of a dark figure next to his horse. Lucien came toward them, a sneer marring his handsome face, moonlight glinting off the pistol in his hand. Theodora gasped and tried to pull away, only to have Jonathan pull her closer.
“Well, isn’t this a touching scene?” Lucien snarled. “You were right, my dear. Your options do not include going home with this...man.”
****
“So, Theodora, how did you manage to meet this man?” Lucien asked in a dangerously calm tone. “While I was in chambers? Did you meet in secret, perhaps make love in our bed?”
Theodora and Jonathan simultaneously exclaimed “No!” but Lucien clearly did not believe them. He flicked his pistol at them, gesturing them apart.
“Get away from him, Theodora. The two of you are nauseating. It is perhaps fortunate that I missed dinner, thanks to you. Have you really been hiding up here, in this backwater, playing a cook? You have rather more character than I gave you credit for, my dear.”
Jonathan, who had been silent up to now, finally found his voice, although as soon as he opened his mouth he realized he sounded like a pompous ass. “Here now, that’s enough. Let us go, and we’ll all go back to the house and discuss this like gentlemen.”
Lucien laughed. “I never said I was a gentleman.” His pistol unwavering in his right hand, he reached out and pulled her from Jonathan’s grasp into his own. He pressed her back against him, his left arm crossed over her neck. He transferred his pistol to his left hand and caressed her cheek with a red silk cravat he pulled out of his pocket with his right. Theodora paled as soon it touched her skin. Jonathan watched her deflate before his very eyes.
“As you can see, Caxton, Theodora is mine. I will remind her of her place, and we will resume our lives, now that she has recovered from her terrible amnesia.” Lucien purred into her ear, just loud enough for Jonathan to hear, “I have no intention of turning you over to the authorities, my sweet, unless you attempt to do something like this again. I have a much more...private punishment in mind.”
Lucien was holding Theodora firmly, and from the pain etched on her face, it was obvious he was hurting her. Jonathan instinctively moved closer to protect her, but Lucien relaxed his grip on Theodora only to hold the pistol against her temple. Jonathan stepped back. His eyes met Theodora’s. She did not look away from him, but spoke to Lucien.
“If you promise not to hurt him, I will go with you, Lucien. Please. He’s done nothing. He didn’t even know who I was until today.”
“Clearly he knows you well enough, Theodora, whether or not he knew your real name,” Lucien snarled.
“Leave him alone. Do whatever you like to me.”
“No!” Jonathan cried. He moved forward again, only to have Lucien press the gun harder against Theodora’s head. She winced and gave him a look full of pain, love, and something indefinable.
“Please, Jonathan. It’s better this way. It was madness to think anything else was possible.” Theodora broke free of Lucien and turned to walk toward his horse. Lucien trained the pistol on Jonathan, and keeping him in his sights, backed up toward the horse. He stuck his pistol in his coat and pulled himself into his saddle, then reached down to pull Theodora up behind him. Jonathan realized this was his only chance to get Theodora away from him. He rushed at the horse and reached out to shove Lucien from the beast, but Lucien had apparently used the ensuing seconds to put the gun back in his hand. He fired.
Chapter Twenty
Theodora screamed as Jonathan fell, bleeding from the head. She began to cry, great gulping gasps. The air seemed to have left her lungs entirely, and she could not breathe. Lucien returned the pistol to his coat. “Shut up, Theodora. You know how your crying grates on my nerves. That, at least, has not changed.” He turned the horse away from the still form on the ground and started to head toward town.
Theodora could barely catch her breath. Lucien, her husband, was even more depraved than she had thought. He shot a man in cold blood. The man she could no longer deny she loved. She looked back frantically, but Jonathan was not moving. In the moonlight she could see a dark pool beginning to form under his head.
She lost control of herself in that moment and started to flail at Lucien, raining his head and shoulders with blows from her hands. “You killed him!”
He ignored her. His coldness calmed her. It suddenly occurred to her she no longer had anything left to lose. He could kill her, but now that Jonathan was dead, she simply didn’t care if he did. She had found love again only to lose it, and it didn’t matter what he did
to her.
They rode in silence for a while. Lucien sat stiffly in the saddle. Theodora could tell Lucien was waiting for her to say something, to continue to rail at him. After six years attuned to the slightest change in his mood, she knew him better than he knew himself. But she refused to give him the satisfaction, and said nothing.
Theodora thought that they must be nearly to town when Lucien began to squirm, ever so slightly, in the saddle. The silence was getting to him. He wanted to know she was suffering, and she was making it deliberately difficult. She tightened her arms around him, and carefully pulled the pistol from his coat, transferring it to her own pocket. And then, she waited.
Another five minutes went by, with Lucien becoming increasingly agitated. He began to berate her, to call her a whore. She said nothing.
Finally, he could stand it no more. He whipped around in the saddle and slapped her. She lost her balance and slid off the horse. Her teeth snapped together and a sharp pain traveled up her backbone at the impact as she collapsed to the ground in a heap. Still, she waited. Lucien jumped off the horse and pulled her to her feet. She wriggled away from him and pulled out the pistol in her pocket. Pointing it at him.
****
Jonathan stirred. Through the blood that covered his eyes, he could dimly see Theodora and Ravensdale on horseback, heading away from him. He could hear her weeping, but then they disappeared around the bend in the road. It was so quiet, as if they had passed through a curtain and vanished from this world entirely. He groaned, the pain in his head almost intolerable, and struggled to his feet. He stumbled to his horse, idly chewing grass on the side of the road, seemingly oblivious to the furor that had surrounded them only moments before. Jonathan had just reached the beast when the animal’s ears pricked, and Jonathan heard someone approach from the direction of Longley Hall. He attempted to mount his horse but was having trouble lifting his arms.
The Earl of Longley came into a view a moment later, and he stopped short, his horse nearly shying when they encountered Jonathan on the road. Jonathan slid to the ground next to the horse and leaned against it.
“Jonathan! My God, what’s happened?” The earl leapt off of his mount and with a few long strides was kneeling at his son’s side. “You’re bleeding!”
Jonathan smiled weakly. “Ever observant, Father. Yes, I believe you are correct.”
The earl grinned with relief and pulled out his handkerchief. “Don’t be cheeky. What happened?”
“Ravensdale shot me,” he said matter-of-factly.
“What? Why?” He began to clean the blood off Jonathan’s face, his strokes gentle, his tone calmer than Jonathan knew he must be feeling.
Jonathan winced as his father reached the spot where the bullet had grazed his temple. “Thank God he’s a terrible shot.”
“Indeed. Explain, please.”
“Well, I was standing right next to him, and he didn’t kill me.”
“You don’t need to explain that he’s a terrible shot; I can see that for myself. Why did he shoot you in the first place?”
Jonathan, the foremost expert on his father’s patience, or its lack, could tell that it was wearing thin. “Sorry. He shot me because...well, it’s a bit of a long story, and we don’t really have time. He’s escaping with Theodora, and we have to go after them.”
The earl looked confused. “Who is Theodora?”
“Our cook,” Jonathan said patiently.
The earl peered closely at the cut in Jonathan’s head. “Why is our cook running off with Ravensdale? And I thought her name was Milsom?”
“Ouch.” Jonathan winced again. He brushed the earl’s hand away. “Stop, please, Father, and pay attention. She’s running off with him to protect me. Because she loves me, but she’s his wife.”
The earl sat back on his haunches and stared for a moment. Then he pulled off his cravat and tied it deftly around his son’s head. He said nothing, and Jonathan wondered what he was thinking. Finally, he spoke.
“Ravensdale is the man we heard about in London, isn’t he? The one whose house burned?”
“Yes. He abused his wife. She did not set the fire, but she took advantage of it and fled. She came here, and… Well, I fell in love with her, Father, and she with me.”
The earl raised a single bushy eyebrow. “That is a conversation for another day, my boy.”
“Yes, it is, and I am sorry, Father.” Jonathan struggled to his feet, his head throbbing. “Can we please just go after them? There’s no telling what he will do to her.”
The earl extended his hand and helped Jonathan to mount his horse. “Can you stay in the saddle?”
“Of course.” Jonathan felt a bit wobbly but didn’t dare say so. It was too important.
The earl jumped into his own saddle, resembling nothing so much as a wild Scottish hero, streaks of Jonathan’s blood across his coat. He smiled. “Well, then, let’s go rescue the maiden fair.”
****
The light from the moon brought Lucien’s features into sharp relief. Theodora could see every wrinkle in his face, every furrow in his brow, as he gaped in disbelief at the gun in Theodora’s hand. His expression was pained, as if he had just realized the dog he had kicked every night was about to bite him, and he couldn’t understand why.
“Theodora, what are you doing?” Incredulity colored his voice.
“I have nothing left to lose, Lucien.” She was impressed her voice was so calm, so even.
“What do you mean?”
“You killed the girl I was, Lucien, so long ago. Now you’ve killed Jonathan. What is to stop me from killing you?”
Lucien laughed in what seemed to Theodora to be a show of bravado. His voice was a little too high, and the sweat beading on his forehead glistened in the moonlight. “Don’t be ridiculous, Theodora. You don’t have it in you. Although I admit you did surprise me with that fire.”
“I didn’t start the fire, Lucien. It started accidentally in the stove. I didn’t try to kill you.”
“Perhaps.” Clearly he didn’t believe anything she said, but she decided that might be for the best. He would underestimate her now.
She wiped her mouth, realizing blood was trickling from the blow he’d given her, but she kept the pistol trained on his head. “Why did you do it, Lucien?”
“Do what?” Lucien curled his fingers and inspected his nails. God, the man was insufferable.
“Keep me enslaved in your house, instead of treating me like the wife I should have been? I would have been willing to play whatever games you wanted in the bedroom. You were everything to me.”
Lucien’s head snapped up at that. He peered at her with an unusual expression, as if, perhaps, he were seeing her for the first time.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Anything.”
He shrugged. “Do you remember when I proposed?”
“Of course.”
“I told you that there was a beast inside me, and I hoped you would tame it. Do you remember?”
“Yes.” Theodora thought back to the letter she had written to Jonathan. She remembered how she had ignored the cryptic warning Lucien had given her and married him anyway. How could she have known he had meant what he said? She had never encountered such a creature before. In her happy childhood, there were no beasts.
“I knew once you saw the beast, you would leave, and that I could not bear. So I made it impossible for you to try.” He chuckled without mirth, his eyes hard. “Or at least I thought so.” He stepped toward her, but she stopped him with a wave of the gun.
He opened his arms in a pleading gesture. She could almost see his barrister’s brain working, changing tactics to cope with a recalcitrant witness. “Please, Theodora. Perhaps we can start over, you and I.”
Theodora laughed then, a mirthless cry. “It’s too late, Lucien. Can’t you see that?”
She watched his face change again, from silently pleading to quietly angry. The consummate performer in the courtroom, he simply switch
ed personas, trying each of them on for size to see which one would be the most persuasive.
“I grow weary of this, Theodora. Give me the gun, and let us get out of this miserable place and return to London.”
“I cannot do that, Lucien. Let me leave, go to America. I am already dead, as far as the rest of the world is concerned. I can move on with my life, even without Jonathan.” Her eyes filled with tears. “You owe me that much.”
“No!” Lucien startled her with his ferocity, and she almost dropped the gun. “No. You belong to me, Theodora.” His gray eyes smoldered with intensity, and for the first time since she saw Jonathan fall, she was afraid. Even with a gun in her hand, she was afraid, because she knew she could never fire it. His hold over her remained too strong.
As if sensing her surrender, he reached out and pulled her to him in a tight embrace. The gun hung limply at her side.
“Yes, you know it too, don’t you?” He stroked her hair, and she leaned against him, remembering. Her surrender complete, he grabbed her hair and tugged her head back. His face was a mask of fury.
“I don’t owe you anything, Theodora. You are mine, and you will know your place again.” He reached for the gun at her side, and she held onto it, fear and despair renewing her strength.
She was no match for him, but she held on to the gun, keeping it away from him even as he tried to pull it from her grasp. He slapped her again with his other hand, but she but did not let go.
As they struggled she dimly saw two men approaching on horseback behind him. Blond hair wetly streaked with dark glistened in the moonlight, and she heard him call her name. Then the world exploded, and she felt nothing.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Theodora!” Jonathan watched her and Ravensdale collapse in a heap as the sound of a pistol shot reverberated through the air. “Oh, God, no!” He leaped from his horse and ran to her side, his weakness and the pain in his head forgotten. He pushed Ravensdale off her prone form and frantically ran his hands over her body. She was covered with blood, but he could find no wound. She moaned, and he pulled her to him, cradling her in his arms.
Stirring Up the Viscount Page 17