by Gaelen Foley
It sounded like this fight had been a long time coming.
But Seth’s father was having none of it.
“Don’t you dare speak against Francis.” Elias gripped Seth by the lapels, though his son towered over him. “You’re the reason he’s dead, you useless piece of shit. Your incompetence. I charged you with the task of collectin’ the money. It was your job, and like always, you had to shirk your duty. You made him do it, so quit tryin’ to shift the blame!”
Seth thrust his father away from him, loosing his hold on him by force.
“Shift the blame?” he echoed incredulously. “First of all, no one could make Francis do anything. He was far too spoiled for that, your little gentleman! He did as he pleased, as you may recall. I’m the only one you could ever count on, you ungrateful son of a bitch.”
“Oh, why don’t you just admit it?” Elias wrenched out with murder in his eyes. “We both know you purposely set him up.”
“What?”
“You wanted Francis dead.”
“Don’t be absurd!”
“You hated that boy.”
“Why, because you loved him more?” Seth scoffed. “I don’t give a shit, Father. I just want your money.”
While they continued battling over the sins of the past, Maggie looked around discreetly.
The two were so engrossed in their hatred of each other that they seemed to have forgotten temporarily about her.
Flooded with newfound hope at this sliver of a chance to warn Connor somehow while they were distracted, she swept her gaze over the vicar’s writing table, a slender Chippendale piece on long, spindly legs. There had to be something here that she could use to her advantage.
It was then that she looked at the bronze dove statue and suddenly received what could only be divine inspiration.
She drew in her breath and quickly lowered her head so they would not notice the sudden excitement flaring in her eyes.
She sneaked another glance at the desktop statue and felt her pulse quicken.
This might actually work. If she gave the desk a good kick in just the right spot, the hefty bronze dove would slide off and crash right into the window.
The glass should break, then she could scream out to Connor that he was walking into a trap.
She eyed her captors briefly, making sure they were still distracted; their quarrel raged on.
With that, Maggie began inching her chair carefully into position.
She didn’t have far to go—she merely had to turn herself around a bit to get lined up with the desk.
Her captors did not notice her movement, and the rug beneath her muffled the sound of any bumping and scraping of her chair legs as she shifted herself around.
Halfway there, she glanced over again at the criminal duo, making sure they were still engrossed in their argument.
Heavens, it looked like it soon might come to blows.
Elias had whipped off his spectacles, and a vein popped out on his forehead as he gave his son a vicious tongue-lashing. The red hue of his face had crept all the way up toward his bald head.
Seth, for his part, looked like he’d had all the humiliation for one night that he intended to take.
Still, the seconds felt like hours and brought a cold sweat to Maggie’s brow as she finally lined herself up in a good spot across from the vicar’s desk.
She stared at the slim drawer right in the middle where she wished to strike it with her feet. Her wet, muddy, woolen socks would be slippery.
Just give it a good shove.
The two men were paying no attention to her as she slowly lifted her legs and planted both feet against the edge of the writing table. Her heart pounded as she said a brief mental prayer, then gave a sharp, sudden thrust against the side of the desk with both feet.
Her eyes widened as everything on the desk tilted toward the window.
The dove rocked off balance and began sliding toward freedom like it wanted to fly away out the window, escape these horrible men.
Everything else on the desk went sliding in that direction, as well: books, papers, inkpot.
Her chair legs thumped back down to the floor as the bronze dove went crashing into the window.
Through the drapes, she heard the sound of shattering glass, then the dove itself disappeared between the curtains.
Both her captors spun to face her, but then Maggie saw what had actually occurred.
Instead of simply breaking the window, the dove had also shattered the glass surrounds of the two lanterns on the sill.
And that, in turn, had fed the drapes right into the spilled lamp oil: the curtains promptly ignited.
Both her captors let out astonished curses as the drapes burst into flames.
“You bitch!” Seth said.
“What have you done?” uttered Elias.
“Connor!” Maggie screamed through the hole in the glass.
The cold rush of oxygen into the room only teased the flames higher.
Seth backhanded her in the face on his way to put out the fire.
Maggie cried out, tasting blood, but the dragoon wasn’t finished with her yet.
As he swept her chair aside roughly so he’d have more room to fight the flames, his motion was so swift and violent that the chair tipped off balance.
Maggie shrieked as her chair went falling sideways onto the carpet.
She landed on her shoulder with an “oof!” and the side of her head banged hard against the floor. Her eyes watered at the pain. Amid her terror, black dots floated across her field of vision.
Clobbered in the head by her fall while her captors struggled to put out the fire, she felt the hot, sticky wetness of blood oozing from a gash somewhere above her ear.
Amid the wooziness, she wanted to scream for Connor again, but the fall had also knocked the wind out of her. She could not seem to draw a proper breath for a moment.
Meanwhile, gray and black smoke had begun billowing from the curtains, roaring out the Thinkery window and curling up all around the ceiling.
Elias and his son worked frantically to stop it from spreading.
“Use your coat!” Elias bellowed. He had taken off his own rain-sodden jacket and begun beating at the flames on one side.
Seth set his pistol down to follow suit, perhaps fearing the gunpowder might catch a spark and explode in the holster.
Unfortunately, their efforts did them little good, for the curtains were ablaze, and when the flames leapt to the fine oak framing around the window, it burst into a raging inferno, as though the wood had been treated with some highly flammable varnish.
The smoke took on a different smell, sharp and acrid.
Maggie’s eyes watered as she glanced up from the floor as best she could to gauge how far away from her the fire was. Only seven or eight feet. She could already feel the heat of it.
God, this was not what she’d intended!
Worse, she saw that, in moments, the flames would reach the vicar’s bookshelves, and then there would be no stopping them.
Maggie could hear both of her captors coughing while she, too, choked at the smell. That varnish on the wood paneling seemed to be giving off some sort of noxious fumes.
Between the throbbing pain on the side of her skull and the lung-squeezing smoke filling the room, she could feel herself starting to pass out.
Stay awake! she ordered herself while the blood oozed from the gash on her head and the ropes held her fast. She’d never felt so helpless.
What if they run away and leave me here? Tied to the chair, she couldn’t get up—indeed, she could barely keep herself conscious.
The room had gone wavy. The floor seemed to spin slowly while the flames writhed nearby. Maggie struggled to stay alert, but her eyelids grew heavy. She could feel herself fading…
The last thing she saw before she lost consciousness was the room door blasting open with an explosive kick from Connor, and, through the drifting smoke, his face filled with wrath.
; CHAPTER 35
All or Nothing
After his horse had tripped three times on the boggy, pathless moor, Connor had abandoned the animal and finished crossing the longest mile and a half of his life on foot, running through slog and rain in the blackness, up and down the hillocks, through puddles up to his shins, wrenching his old gammy knee on a thorny clump of sedge, finally reaching the Thinkery about twenty minutes after seeing the lantern signal.
He’d heard two males arguing inside as he’d crept silently into the building on the ground floor, closing in for his attack. When one called the other “Father,” he realized that not just Seth awaited him upstairs, but also Elias Flynn.
Good. That meant Connor could remove both threats at one go.
Maggie’s presence in the room complicated matters, of course. With a dagger in one hand, a pistol in the other, he had climbed stealthily up the steps, calculating how best to get her out of there unscathed.
But then he’d heard glass shatter and a startled cry from her, followed by a thump.
With that, he’d sprinted the rest of the way up the stairs.
He could smell the smoke even before he’d seen wisps of it pouring out from the crack at the bottom of his uncle’s study door.
Then he’d kicked the door in.
Now, stepping over the threshold into the smoke-filled room, Connor assessed the situation in a glance.
Both men were using their coats to slap frantically at the fire that now engulfed the front wall of the study. Flames consumed his uncle’s bookshelves.
Where is she?
His heart lurched until he spotted Maggie unconscious on the floor, tied to a chair that had toppled over sideways.
His stare homed in on her head. Is that blood?
But then the old man, turning in response to Connor’s arrival, reached for a weapon.
Connor reacted instinctively, hurling his knife at Elias, striking him in the chest. A garbled expletive escaped the old whoremonger.
His son gasped.
Elias stumbled backward, looking shocked as he reached for the blade sticking out of his chest.
But not even Connor expected what happened next, as Elias pitched back clumsily against the wall, stumbling over his heels into the flames.
His clothes ignited.
“Father!” Seth shouted, as a horrific scream rose from the burning man’s throat.
Connor went to Maggie while the dragoon stood by helplessly, watching his father in shock.
“Go outside! Run out into the rain!” the son cried.
The father thrashed from side to side, howling.
Connor was glad Maggie was not seeing this as he stepped over her inert body, ready to protect her. But it seemed his enemies were preoccupied at the moment.
The room now stank of charring flesh.
“Get the rain on you, Father!”
Elias leaned out the window as if to take his son’s advice, but, writhing in pain, lost his balance and fell.
His inhuman scream was cut short.
“Oh my God,” Seth said. He turned to Connor. “What have you done?”
Connor lifted his pistol, took aim, squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Seth sneered. “Got your powder wet, eh, Major?” Then he reached for his own pistol, which he’d set aside.
Connor charged him, running at the gun even as it was pointed at him. He reached Seth in a heartbeat, grasped his arm and drove the muzzle skyward in the same split second that the bastard pulled the trigger.
The bullet bit into the ceiling somewhere above the door in a burst of plaster dust. Connor wrenched the spent weapon out of his enemy’s hand, but Seth abandoned the fight with a glare that promised vengeance later.
For now, he ran out of the room to go down to his father. Not that much could be done for the man at this point, if he was even still alive.
Connor let him pass at a safe distance, checking his own fury for the moment. He would deal with him later. First, he had to get Maggie out of here.
The place was burning down. He tucked the empty gun into the back of his trouser waist in case he found some dry ammunition to use later. He did not intend to let Seth get hold of it again.
“Sweeting, can you hear me?” he asked, willing his voice to be gentle as he crouched beside Maggie and quickly untied her hands.
He cursed to himself when he saw how red and raw the delicate skin at her wrists had become.
He pressed two fingers to her neck, checking her pulse. She was alive, still, but his rage turned flinty when he got a closer look at the blood trickling down the side of her face from the gash above her ear.
It erased whatever trace of pity he might’ve felt for the man he had just set on fire, to say nothing of his son. To be sure, the dragoon had merely postponed his death, not escaped it.
“Maggie, can you hear me?” Connor asked again. He was frightened to move her until he was sure she had not sustained worse injuries that he could not see.
To his unutterable relief, her lashes fluttered when he caressed her cheek with one knuckle. “Connor,” she mumbled. “I knew you’d come.”
Then she coughed in the thickening smoke. His own lungs were straining, and the smoke stung his eyes. He glanced around to find that the fire had now spread to the opposite wall.
Time was of the essence.
“I need to get you out of here, love. I’m going to pick you up now. Are you able to move?”
“I think so…” She tested it, stretching her fingers, flexing her feet in her mud-caked socks.
Thank God. More than once on the battlefield, he’d seen blows to the head kill or paralyze men instantly.
“Put your arms around me,” he forced out. “Here. Try for me, love.”
Maggie lifted her hands to his shoulders while Connor slid his arms under her back and the bend of her knees. Moving smoothly and carefully, he rose to his feet, carrying her toward the door.
Coughing again, Maggie laid the uninjured side of her head on his shoulder.
To his relief, they left the roaring blaze behind them.
Connor cradled her gently in his arms as he sped down the dark, narrow staircase. Slowing his pace when he reached the bottom, he scanned the darkness on the ground floor of the Thinkery.
It was possible that Seth was lying in wait there, but a wary glance around confirmed the lower room was empty. The dragoon must’ve run out to his father, as Connor had initially assumed.
Still, not knowing what sort of trouble might await him at the front of the building, he had to keep Maggie out of the line of fire. Put her somewhere close enough where he could still protect her, but as far as possible from the burning front section of the neo-gothic folly.
With that, Connor carried her out the back door of the Thinkery, into the wet, chilly night.
The steady rain poured off the deep, medieval-style eaves overhanging the back wall of the Thinkery, but at least these provided the two of them with a narrow strip of shelter.
Connor set her down there, on the stone foundation at the corner of the building farthest away from the fire.
Miserable as it was outside, the wind-driven mist of the shower blowing just past their noses felt like heaven after the ovenlike heat and smoke of that blasted inferno.
Maggie leaned back wearily against the exterior wall, looking somewhat revived by the cold sprinkle they both were getting in the face, while Connor kept scanning the blackness around them for movement.
To his relief, there was no sign of Seth.
As he’d anticipated, the dragoon must have remained with his dying father at the front of the burning building, facing the distant manor house.
By now, for that matter, Connor trusted that his men had seen the flames towering out of the Thinkery window.
They would not understand what the hell was happening, but being well trained, they’d hesitate about leaving their posts, sensing some trick of the enemy. Aunt Caroline’s staff would su
rely respond within a few minutes, however. They could deal with the blaze.
Until then, Connor’s chief concern was for Maggie. The moment she was secure, he would go and hunt Seth. Finish this thing.
And this time, that bastard would not get away.
“Sorry about the fire.” Maggie coughed again, wincing. “It was my fault,” she confessed.
Connor arched a brow and looked at her again, leaving off scanning the darkness. “You started the fire?”
She nodded wearily. “I had to try and warn you it was a trap. I didn’t mean to burn the whole place down.”
“Oh, I knew you were trouble from the first moment I laid eyes on you, Lady Maggie Winthrop,” he whispered tenderly, and leaned close to kiss her brow for a long, shaky moment, his heart clenching.
God, I thought I’d lost you.
The fact that his enemies had gone after her redoubled his hunger to end this. He pulled back again, then lifted her hand and gave it a quick kiss. “I must go. Time to see matters sorted. You stay here.”
She clutched his arm. “There are two of them.”
“Not anymore,” he said.
“Oh.” She grimaced. “I must’ve missed that part.”
He nodded grimly. “Be glad.”
She stared at him, still clinging to his arm. “I don’t want you to leave me, Connor. I’m scared.”
“I know, sweeting. I have to. Don’t worry,” he promised, finding a smile for her—a mask for his rage. “I’ll be right back. Be brave for me just a little while longer.”
She closed her eyes. “Very well.”
“Hey.” He squeezed her shoulder gently, and her eyes swept back open. “Stay awake,” he ordered softly. “You need to keep alert after a nasty blow to the head like that, you understand? Don’t drift off. We’ll have Nestor take a look at that as soon as I’m done here.”
She nodded. “Connor, I love you.”
“I love you too, Maggie. With all my heart.” He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her lips.
“Be careful.”
“What fun is that? I’m jesting,” he whispered at her look of alarm. “Here.” She looked so damned vulnerable sitting there that he gave her the second knife he always kept in his boot, sliding it out of its hidden sheath and offering it to her by the hilt.