They said at the same time and put actions to words. The phaeton hardly wobbled a bit as Fiona dropped the flask and took the reins in both hands, slapping them down on the horses’ rumps with a loud cry of encouragement.
“Haw!”
Biting back another inappropriately timed grin, Aylesbury rotated in the seat and lifted his arm until his nemesis was in his sights. “Go to hell, old Crumpky!”
The shot rang out, garnering a terrified whinny from the horses but more importantly catching Crumpky in his chest. The force of the bullet spun him out of the saddle and sent him tumbling to the ground in a cloud of dust.
“Did you kill him?” Fiona asked, still watching the road before them.
Aylesbury watched the riderless horse rear, then trot away shaking its mane. “Relax, the horse is fine.”
“Not the horse. Did you kill that man?”
“I doubt it. I caught him in the chest but on his right. He might survive.”
“That’s too bad.”
Aylesbury grinned. “You are a bloodthirsty minx, aren’t you? Ah, Fates be damned.”
“What is it?”
“Ramsay is still behind us,” Aylesbury told her, taking the flask from where it had fallen in Fiona’s lap and uncapping it to take a long swallow. Wincing, but drawing on it once more. Fiona was right. It was dreadful. “He’s a ways back but I think he must have stopped to pick up that other fellow. I see two men.”
Relinquishing the reins when he reached for them and turning around for herself, Fiona asked, “What should we do? And don’t tell me that we’re going back to the golf club. Even I can see there would be no help there.”
“I’m going to let you off.”
“What? No!”
Aylesbury nodded, setting his jaw. He’d be damned if he was going to see Fiona hurt by that bastard Ramsay. The matter should have been settled the moment they knew Ramsay was behind the kidnapping attempts. Settled firmly and permanently. The MacKintosh men, warrior Scots they were descended from, might not think he was a violent man – and perhaps he wasn’t in a normal situation – but Aylesbury would bury Ramsay in the ground before he ever had another chance to threaten the woman he loved again.
And he couldn’t do that with Fiona by his side. Where he would have to worry over her. Where she might be hurt in the crossfire. “I’m going to slow down around that next bend. The road to the club is not far from there. I want you to jump out and get your brothers. I’ll lead Ramsay off toward Dinton Grange. Get your brothers and have the club manager ring up the magistrate in Oxford. Do you got that?”
“I’m not getting out.” Fiona crossed her arms stubbornly. “No, I’m coming with you.”
“Obstinate wench,” he mumbled, slowing the horses as he rounded the bend and spotted an area of high grasses. Turning he grasped Fiona by the chin and pulled her toward him, kissing her hard. “I love you, Fiona, and I know I’m going to be bloody sorry for this later but …”
“But what?” Fiona hardly had a chance to squeak out before Aylesbury half stood and scooped her up in his arms as the phaeton slowed almost to a stop. Before she had time to latch on to him, Aylesbury swung her feet out from under her and sent her over the side of the carriage. He lowered her as far as he could but let her drop the last few feet. Fiona stumbled back and fell into the grass.
Before she had a chance to curse him soundly, Aylesbury whipped up the horses once more and left her behind, hoping she would have the sense not to chase after him.
Fiona sat up, spitting a piece of grass out of her mouth with an outraged screech. How dare he! How dare he leave her at the side of the road like so much trash! Climbing to her feet, she caught her shoe on the inside of her skirts and fell forward, raking her palms along the sharp stalks of the grass. “Damn you, Harry,” she muttered, slapping her hands together. “I might have loved you forever but right now I don’t like you a whit.”
Hooves clattered on the rode heralding the approach of Ramsay’s carriage and Fiona, fighting the urge to flag him down and deal with him herself, crouched in the grass until it had passed.
Watching the carriage racing away, the anger leeched away leaving Fiona cold with the thought of Harry facing Ramsay and his cohort alone. The confrontation of her imagination was even harder to bear than watching the fight in person as she had done when he’d fought for her before in London. Somehow being there had given her confidence. Now, alone, she was left with nothing but ominous visualizations. She couldn’t lose him over something so senseless.
She couldn’t bear to lose him at all.
A terror like she had never known before nearly rooted Fiona to the ground but some part of her still had the wherewithal to follow what might be his instructions if she didn’t act.
Lifting her skirts, Fiona climbed out of the ditch and set off at a run toward the golf club. Connor and Ian had better be done with their second round. She’d be damned if she was going to tarry about the short course looking for them. They’d be lucky if she didn’t just take their carriage and go after Harry alone.
Chapter Forty-Four
From the diary of Lady Fiona MacKintosh – Jun 1895
How is it that some men are able to retain their titles when they are nothing more than raving Bedlamites? It boggles the mind.
Aylesbury kept up a steady pace but did not try to lose or outrun Ramsay. No, he wanted Ramsay to keep him in his sights. He didn’t want Ramsay to lose interest but to follow.
He wanted the chance to put an end to all this at last.
But how? As he tooled along, Aylesbury considered his options carefully, analyzing the possibilities. If she had been there, Fiona would have surely laughed and made some jest about using his brain instead of his brawn.
Aylesbury laughed. He intended to use both. The greater part of his plan involved the most pleasurable physical dissemination of Ramsay’s person. The proprietary barbarian darkening his soul demanded retribution while his intellect necessitated that he make certain this would be the very last time either he or Fiona would ever have to even think the name Ramsay ever again. Yes, he would get the best of both options.
But where? His ancestral estate, Dinton Grange, was a large one with dozens of buildings. He would need to be someplace far enough away from his people that they didn’t get hurt in the crossfire or taken as a shield or hostage by Ramsay or his henchman but still close enough that the authorities from Oxford would be able to find them. Not the stables then. Nor the manor itself. Both were too well inhabited. The dower house would have been a good choice. It was empty, but too far from the drive to be noticed in passing.
The gates of Dinton Grange approached, and with them, the answer. Since it was his policy to leave the gates to the park open at all times for visitors, the gatehouse was empty and right there on the road. He could pull the phaeton to a halt right there.
Even Ramsay, the dull sod, would not be able to miss it.
And he was too driven by rage to resist the invitation.
Waiting in the shadows of the hallway for his prey to fall into his trap, Aylesbury absentmindedly checked the barrel of the pistol and hesitated. Just a single bullet remained.
One shot.
Two foes.
Cursing inwardly at the foolish fop who didn’t keep his gun fully loaded, Aylesbury wished he had thought to check it earlier and reconsidered his options. The gatehouse was stripped bare but the gamesman’s small lodge would be well stocked. Still it was deeper into the estate along the edges of the neighboring woodland. Not far but with enough open field between that he would make an easy target if Ramsay or his cohort were armed as the other thug had been.
There were weapons at the dower house. His grandmother had kept his grandfather’s old dueling pistols there. It would be a hard run but did the old things still work? There was only one way to find out, and Aylesbury wasn’t going to risk failure on a whim. Nor would he bring danger into his home and risk the lives of his dependents.
Voices sounded outside.
One shot.
It would have to do.
“Where are you, darling?” Ramsay’s voice rang out, a jocund absurdity through the entry hall. “I don’t want to hurt you or your friend. Why don’t you come out now and save me a lot of trouble?”
Aylesbury lifted his pistol to the ready, waiting. There was a low rush of whispers then the shuffle of footsteps across the floor. The creak of a footstep on the stairs. One was going up, the other coming toward him down the hall. Straining to listen, Aylesbury smiled with grim satisfaction when he heard the hard wooden scrape against the floor. Ramsay had gone up then in his softer soled shoes leaving the more practically shod ruffian to search below.
Coward, Aylesbury thought. Ramsay assumed Fiona would have fled upstairs. He’d gone for the lesser threat himself, leaving his stooge to deal with Aylesbury. So be it. At least he wouldn’t have to waste his single shot straight away. There were better ways to deal with scoundrels for hire.
Waiting with his back to the corner, Aylesbury counted the steps as they came. Waiting as they tentatively neared. Waiting until a shadow fell…
Aylesbury threw out his elbow, catching the ruffian in the nose and turned around the corner to follow the blow with a sharp uppercut that snapped the fellow’s jaw shut with an audible clack of his teeth. Spinning him around, Aylesbury wrapped his arm around the man’s neck until he was holding him from behind. The man began to struggle against the hold but stilled immediately when Aylesbury pressed the barrel of his pistol to the thug’s temple and cocked it.
“Not a word,” Aylesbury growled softly. “Drop your gun.”
“Ain’t got one, gov.”
Snorting in disbelief, Aylesbury loosened him and moved slowly around in front of the villain, keeping him in his sights. “Show me.”
The man opened his coat, lifted his shirt and turned for Aylesbury’s benefit. “Ramsay took it. Bloody sod didn’t even bring ’is own.”
“No loyality?” Aylesbury tsked. “Or are you just doing all of this for the blunt?”
The man lifted a brow and shrugged. “Ye didn’t think we actually like the bloke, did ye?”
“Then why carry on? When I had already bested you once before?”
“Said he’d pay us double.”
Aylesbury almost laughed. “Did you see it? No? The man’s to let, chap. He’s got nothing for you. But I,” he dug in his pocket and pulled out his purse, spreading it with one hand to flash the pound notes within. As he expected, the henchman’s eyes widened greedily. “It’s yours, all yours, if you’ll just walk away and leave Ramsay to me. What do you say?”
The thug-for-hire nodded and Aylesbury tossed the purse on the floor between them, waiting until the moment the man bent to retrieve it to bring the butt of the pistol down with a crack on the back of the greedy bastard’s skull.
Down he went, his head meeting Aylesbury’s sharply raised knee for good measure before he slumped to the floor. Checking to make sure the man was unconscious, Aylesbury took off the man’s belt and bound his hands with it.
Listening carefully, he heard only silence. No movement from above. Nothing from outside. Not that he expected any. It would take far longer for aid to come from Oxford than he had yet provided.
He had time. Taking up his pistol once more, he worked his way silently to the foot of the stairs with a grin.
Still one shot.
And only one adversary remaining.
The first stair creaked under his weight and Aylesbury winced but made haste upward, intent on reaching his foe. He was half way up when the plaster on the wall next to him exploded, bursting in a cloud of dust and leaving the larger bits to clatter to the stair by his foot as Aylesbury looked up the staircase.
Ramsay’s person was nowhere to be seen, just a shock of hair and a single eye peeping from around a doorframe over a hand still gripping a smoking gun. It was a six-shooter. Not as fine as the one Aylesbury still held. Indeed it was a rusty old thing, but unlike his worries over his grandfather’s dueling pistols, still in good working order.
“Hold it there,” Ramsay commanded. “Toss your gun away.”
The hell he would, Aylesbury thought. All he needed was one clear shot. As soon as Ramsay cleared the door, he could aim and fire before Ramsay even knew what hit him.
And he would hit the bastard.
But Ramsay was an even greater coward than Aylesbury had credited him. Even with Aylesbury in his sights, he stayed safely behind the door.
“Where is Fiona?”
Aylesbury shook his head, easing up another step but keeping the pistol hanging loosely by his side. “You’re a fool to pursue this, Ramsay. There’s no chance you’d get away with her. No chance you’d get out alive. Her brothers will kill you the moment they have a chance.”
As will I.
“After all the work I put into her, do you think I’m going to walk away from this empty handed?” the other man yelled, the cocking of his pistol sounding like a canon. “Those bloody MacKintoshs have more money than anyone deserves. I was content to get it honorably enough, you know. I would have married her. I could have had her fortune and a hot piece in my bed as well.”
Aylesbury’s grip tightened on the pistol, fury boiling his blood. He lifted his foot to the next step.
“I said stop right there!” Ramsay screamed.
Another bullet hit the bannister at Aylesbury’s side sending a large splinter into his thigh. He winced in pain as the pistol was cocked again. Come on then, he mentally urged. At most Ramsay had four bullets remaining. If he spent them all as futilely, the only bullet remaining would be his own. Aylesbury stifled the urge to fire just as uncontrollably. He needed to lure Ramsay out where he could get a clean shot.
“Come out and fight like a man, Ramsay,” he taunted, tensing in expectation of another wild shot, but Ramsay didn’t give him the satisfaction.
“Why are you doing this anyway?” Ramsay asked. “I know who you are. You don’t need her or her money. Not like I do.”
Aylesbury scoffed silently. “But I do, you bloody bastard,” he confessed softly. “And quite possibly more than you do. Having lost her, you will know only poverty and most probably enormous levels of pain. If I lost her– ” Aylesbury’s chest tightened sharply at the thought. Yes, it would be far more devastating. “– I have far more to lose.”
Ramsay laughed then, his scornful chuckles echoing through the hall. “Because you’re in love with her? You think this is some fairytale? Do you think that you have some happy ending in all of this?”
Answering with a contemptuous laugh of his own, Aylesbury tensed to move and asked, “Why don’t you stop hiding in that doorway like a girl and come and find out?”
He feinted to the side as the pistol sounded again, this time nicking him across the shoulder as it passed. Aylesbury knew that if he hadn’t moved, the bullet might have gone straight through the heart. Three possible bullets left. More chances than he could take.
“Come on you craven bastard!” he yelled. “Show yourself.”
“Give me Fiona first!”
Aylesbury laughed at that. “You bloody fool. You think I brought her here?”
He had read about the American Indians as a young boy at Eton and always wondered how a true war cry might sound. That was it, Aylesbury decided. A howl filled with rage and frenzied madness. Just like the one Ramsay emitted as he finally charged into the hall with his pistol raised. He fired and Aylesbury felt a sting against his scalp as he raised his own gun. A trickle of blood.
Aiming, he fired his one shot at the madman charging toward him. He caught Ramsay at the head of the stairs, blood blossoming across the white of his shirt but he kept coming, bringing that rusted pistol up again as he launched himself down the stairs toward Aylesbury.
The bullet sounded as Ramsay hit him, throwing off his balance. They hit the bannister as one and it splintered under their combined weight. With nothing to stop them, they fell to the hard wood floors bel
ow.
Aylesbury gasped at the pain that engulfed him. Rolling Ramsay off of him, he struggled for a breath. Nothing. His chest and hands were covered with blood, his mind clouded, dulled. He struggled for consciousness but darkness closed in.
Another breath.
No.
Bugger it.
Aylesbury pictured Fiona as she had looked that day. Bright as summer time and a merry smile all wrapped up in prim ivory linen with some jaw-dropping garments, no doubt, hidden beneath, waiting to be unwrapped.
The image faded to black. He would not have the chance to find out.
He had lost her.
Chapter Forty-Five
From the journal of the Marquis of Aylesbury – Apr 1893
The sunshine is gone from my life … in more ways than one.
Fiona cried out as she heard the shots sounding. They seemed to sing a sickening refrain through the canopied oaks, pealing like a death toll. The thunder of hoof beats faded away and even the wind stilled as if to hear the ghastly melody.
Again and again they rang out until the leaves hanging over them were atremble, but they might have been steady as a rock compared to Fiona’s heart. Horror-struck with dread, she clung to Connor’s arm as she yelled to her brother. “Hurry, Colin! For God’s sake, hurry!”
Colin’s jaw was set determinedly as he whipped up the horses, then he was pulling the bellowing animals to a halt behind the phaeton she and Harry had stolen from the streets of Aylesbury a lifetime before.
One last shot rang out. Echoing.
Connor was out of the carriage and running toward the gatehouse even before the reverberation faded away and Fiona rushed to follow. “No!” Connor yelled back. “Stay back!” But he must have known such a command would be useless. “Colin, hold her!”
Then he was gone into the gatehouse as Colin caught Fiona around the waist and lifted her off her feet.
They watched the door, but no one came out.
A Question for Harry Page 31