The Seduction of Elliot McBride hp-5

by Jennifer Ashley

  The thought of Juliana in danger, and Priti with her, helped him push away the mocking voice inside him. He’d never let anyone touch them. Never.

  A faint sound came down one of the tunnels. Elliot stopped, reaching back for Fellows in the dark, halting him.

  Elliot heard it again, a footstep. Only one, probably misplaced. Elliot motioned Fellows to stay where he was, and crept forward, crouched almost to the floor.

  He brought his rifle around, sighting down the barrel at the rough-hewn opening to the larger room.

  Elliot saw them, or at least, saw the flicker of their lanterns. They were careful not to let the light fall on them.

  He saw a flash of movement beyond them, which might be Stacy. Elliot had taught Stacy the trick of using just enough movement to entice an enemy out into the open, which was what they had done when they’d rescued the English family up in the Afghan mountains.

  Stacy was drawing them into tight quarters, preparing the ambush. The problem with that plan was that there was only one of Stacy. In theory, a single man could hold off a platoon if he had the right kind of ground advantage, but in practice, many against a platoon was always better odds.

  Elliot peered into the room again. If he and Fellows moved to flank, they could disarm both men, and Stacy would be safe. Elliot could go back home and feast on porridge prepared by Hamish or lentils and spices from Mahindar, whoever managed to get to the kitchen first.

  He turned to creep back to Fellows to tell him his plan, when someone shouted deep in the bowels of the tunnels. The two assassins were moving forward in a flash, lost down the tunnel that led to the boiler room.

  Elliot swore silently as he hurried back to Fellows. “The idiot Stacy is trying to lead them into a trap,” he said in a low voice as he led Fellows forward. “They’ll kill him instead.”

  “Then let us get there,” Fellows said.

  Elliot led Fellows up the tunnel and into the large room, the other man staying close behind.

  Images of his last night in the caves came to Elliot, his desperate run down the tunnels, the churning in his stomach when he dared to crawl through the crack that led into the cave that held his rifle. At any moment, he’d be stopped and shot, or strangled, or beaten again. If they caught him, he’d never have another chance to get away.

  He’d alternately crept on his belly like an animal and run like a rabbit. At every moment, he’d expected to feel shot ripping through his back, stopping his life in a wash of pain.

  Elliot’s breath came faster. If he didn’t slow, if he didn’t calm himself, he’d run in on a burst of panic and get Stacy killed.

  He saw the flash of gunfire. Heard yells. Elliot’s thoughts scattered, and he ran forward.

  Stacy. Was he dead or alive?

  A few more shots were fired, then silence.

  Elliot moved on, Fellows behind him. Both men moved noiselessly on toward where he’d heard the shots.

  Another flash of revolvers. Bangs echoed through the tunnels and made it impossible to hear. Fellows clapped his hands over his ears, but Elliot, trying to hold on to his rifle, didn’t have that chance. His ears rang, and smoke choked him.

  The barrage of bullets died, and Elliot moved quietly forward.

  He finally saw his old friend Stacy at the end of the tunnel behind a crate, a lantern on the floor to give away his position. Two men rose from the shadows, revolvers cocked, and opened fire on Stacy.

  Chapter 27

  The light extinguished to blackness. Elliot sensed rather than saw Stacy rise, aim his gun with uncanny precision at the flash of one revolver, and shoot his assassin through the heart.

  A marvelous shot, with only the tiny light of the gun’s flash to guide him, but the problem was, the bullet that had left the assassin’s gun hit Stacy. Stacy grunted, then went quiet.

  Elliot could neither see nor hear. He crept into the end of the tunnel, shouldering his useless rifle again, trying to stay utterly silent.

  On a sudden, he was shoved against the wall, a body rank with sweat and smelling of blood and smoke pushing past him. The second assassin, who fled down another tunnel.

  Elliot heard the worry in the other man’s running footsteps, the growing terror. The assassin didn’t know where he was, and his friend was dead. He was alone. In the dark. Under the earth.

  Elliot let him go for now. He returned to the crate and the lantern, dug matches out of his pocket, struck one, and lit the lantern.

  Stacy sagged against the wall, blood on his side. Another man lay stretched out beside him, facedown, unmoving.

  Stacy lifted his gaze to Elliot, his eyes resigned. “I’m sorry, old friend. So sorry.”

  “Shut it,” Elliot said. “Ye trying to die a hero?”

  “Best way.”

  “You’re an idiot. Stay still.”

  Fellows came into the light, shaking his head. “Heard him, tried to follow. Lost him.”

  “Never mind,” Elliot said. “You don’t know your way around down here. Stay with Stacy. I’ll hunt.”

  He turned away and picked up the fallen assassin’s pistol as Fellows nodded, Elliot’s heart hammering, his skin hot.

  “McBride,” Stacy said.

  Elliot looked back. Stacy was grim-faced, blood trickling from the side of his mouth.

  “Get the bastard.”

  Elliot intended to.

  Elliot could move like smoke when he wanted to, or a ghost in the night. He tracked the other assassin in silence and darkness.

  The footsteps of the man ahead of him moved swiftly, then hesitantly, then swiftly again.

  This was Elliot’s territory, and here he was master. He’d learned his way around the tunnels of his prison on his own, sometimes hiding down there for days. Whenever his captors found him again, they beat him, but eluding them had given Elliot a small measure of triumph. He’d made his captors hunt him. He’d turned the tables and enraged them.

  The unknown man in the dark was trying to kill Stacy for defiling an Indian prince’s sister. Never mind that the prince had kept Jaya behind locked doors, never allowing her even to look out a window. Jaya, as headstrong as her brothers had been, had escaped. Jaya had been gifted in conversation and intelligence, wasted, secreted in her luxurious home, waiting for her brothers to marry her to some elderly wealthy man to further their own power.

  He couldn’t help thinking that Juliana would have liked Jaya in other circumstances and been indignant on her behalf.

  The man was slowing now, uncertain. He went one way, then the other. Elliot followed, allowing his footfalls to sound occasionally so that the other man would flee him.

  Up through a tunnel, again with a low ceiling. A faint light glowed at the end, and the man hurried forward.

  The light was not daylight. It came from the cracks around the trapdoor that led to the boiler room. Elliot’s quarry hesitated, then swarmed up the ladder fixed into the wall.

  They or Stacy must have found the entrance before and worked on the door, because the man quickly pushed it open and climbed through. Elliot rushed him, yelling.

  The assassin turned around and shot once, but Elliot had expected that. He threw himself out of the way, the bullet missing him and pinging into the wall. The assassin climbed desperately up into the house, Elliot after him.

  The assassin burst out of the boiler room and through the main cellars, up into the kitchen. Screams sounded, and Elliot’s throat closed up as he pounded after him. Mahindar’s family would be up there—with Priti.

  Elliot was hard on the man’s heels. He had his pistol, but the assassin decided that using Channan then Nandita as shields was a good idea. Komal, on the other hand, picked up a long knife and went at him.

  The man dropped Nandita, who, screaming, somehow found her way to Hamish as the lad barreled into the kitchen.

  But the assassin was still running. He stormed into the main part of the house, where Juliana would be. Alone.

  There she was, standing in the vestibu
le, looking down the hall at the approaching man with wide, frightened eyes. Priti was nowhere in sight, hadn’t been in the kitchens either. Safe?

  The assassin ran into the staircase hall. Elliot stopped, lifted his pistol, and took aim.

  “Mr. McGregor!” Juliana shouted. “Now!”

  A deafening roar filled the hall as McGregor, on the landing above them, aimed his shotgun at the ceiling and fired both barrels. The shots struck the plaster and stone around the great chandelier, which swung, groaned, and tore out of the ceiling with a rush of rock, nails, and rusted metal.

  The assassin screamed. Flinging down his pistol, he leapt, rolling, as the monstrous iron thing plunged to the floor below.

  He couldn’t move quickly enough. The chandelier hit with a roar of broken metal. Juliana fled out the front door, shielding her face. The assassin managed to get his torso out of the way of the chandelier, but his legs were trapped. He struggled, then he fell, his face ashen. Defeated.

  Elliot let out his breath. He kept his pistol trained on the man, made a wide berth around the wreckage, and knelt next to the assassin.

  The assassin was an ordinary-looking man, with dark hair and brown eyes, a suit of such plainness that no one would have looked at him twice. He opened his mouth and spewed a string of invectives at Elliot, his accent pure Cockney.

  Elliot unwrapped his hand from around the pistol—it hurt to open his fingers—and shoved it at Mahindar, who’d rushed into the hall followed by his family and Hamish. Elliot turned his back on them all and walked out of the dim wreckage of the house to the light, and to Juliana.

  Juliana shook all over as Elliot came to her and took her into his arms. She held him close, smelling the acrid smoke of pistols and the dank air of the cellars on him. The tightening of his hold on her for a long moment was the only indication of what it had cost him to hunt for Mr. Stacy and his killers in the dark.

  Elliot drew in a shuddering breath and let it out again. “I have to go back down,” he said. “Stacy’s hurt. Shot. Fellows is with him, but he won’t know how to get out.”

  “Yes, of course. Go.”

  Elliot touched his forehead to hers and drew another breath. Then he kissed her, released her, and strode away, calling for Mahindar and Hamish to help him.

  Juliana watched him walk away with them, her knees weak with relief but her heart still beating hard. He was all right. He’d fought, and he’d won, against more than just the assassins.

  But there was much to be done. Juliana hurried into the house. She had to prepare a bedchamber to receive the wounded Mr. Stacy, and they needed to send for a doctor or surgeon. And then there was the matter of an assassin lying in her hallway.

  She entered the main staircase hall to the chandelier strewn across the floor, its giant wheel having gouged a small trench into the flagstone. Cameron and Daniel Mackenzie and some of the workers were trying to lift it off the poor man.

  As soon as the ring of chandelier moved enough, Cameron grabbed the man under the arms and hauled him out. He was groaning, his legs bloody, his face wan.

  “You’ll have to put him in the morning room,” Juliana directed, “to wait for Mr. Fellows. Stay in there, and don’t let Mrs. Dalrymple leave.”

  “Right ye are, ma’am,” Daniel answered cheerfully.

  Juliana skirted past the chandelier and the dangerous criminal and went on to the kitchen to enlist Channan and family to help fix a room for Mr. Stacy. Priti had been taken off to McPherson’s after Hamish’s bellowed announcement that Elliot was hunting assassins, to be watched by Gemma, and the ladies of the Mackenzie family.

  Mr. McGregor was already in the kitchen. He was proudly showing the empty shotgun to Komal. “It was a hell of a shot, lass,” he said loudly. “Boom! Then that great eyesore comes crashing down. Smash!”

  Komal listened, actually smiling. She took the gun from McGregor’s hands, checked that it was unloaded, then slapped him across the shoulder with her open hand. “Stupid old man,” she said clearly in English.

  McGregor chuckled. “She likes me.”

  Juliana recruited Channan and Nandita to go up the back stairs with her and make one of the rooms habitable. Not long after, Elliot came striding back, followed by Hamish and Mahindar carrying a large, flat board with Mr. Stacy on it, his torso stained with blood. Fellows, his face marked with dirt, broke off from the rescue party to enter the morning room and confront the assassin and Mrs. Dalrymple.

  “Billy Wesley,” Fellows said, sounding the most jovial Juliana had heard him since he’d arrived. “I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

  Juliana left him to it and spent the next intense hours in Mr. Stacy’s sickroom. The village doctor, used to dealing with gunshot wounds in a country upon which people descended every autumn to shoot things, knew what to do. Elliot helped him, the two of them performing the grim business of digging the bullet from Mr. Stacy’s side and bandaging him up.

  As a lady, Juliana supposed she should not look upon an undressed man’s flesh, but Mr. Stacy was so pathetic, and someone was needed to mop up the blood as it gushed out.

  Elliot held the wound closed while the doctor sewed it up. Stacy had been given a bit of laudanum for the pain, though he’d not wanted to take very much.

  “Almost done,” Elliot said to Stacy. “Bear up, man. I’ve seen you with worse.”

  “When I’m digging a needle through your flesh, ye can say the same of yourself.” Stacy flinched as the doctor tugged the stitches through his skin. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. McBride, for bloodying up the sheets.”

  “I have others.” Juliana wiped his brow. “What will stave off infection is rest and keeping your bandage clean. Mahindar is very good at changing bandages, I’m told.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Stacy said. “McBride, you’re right. She would do well in the army.”

  Elliot didn’t look up. “Aye, that she would.”

  Before Juliana could answer in indignation, Stacy lost his amused look. “I never should have brought this upon you.”

  “Save your breath for healing,” Elliot said.

  “I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. Satisfy the brothers’ honor without you or your family getting hurt.”

  “Juliana, find a bandage for this man’s mouth. Inspector Fellows will have Jaya’s brothers dealt with when he returns to London.”

  Stacy subsided then, but mostly because the laudanum was having deeper effect, and the worst of the surgery was over.

  The chaos lasted most of the day, but one by one, the guests left, taking the train back to Aberdeen, where they’d go their separate ways. Ainsley and her family and Gemma were the last to leave.

  Ainsley hugged Juliana on the doorstep, while her husband, child, and Daniel waited to hand her into the dogcart. “Whatever you have done, thank you,” Ainsley said, kissing Juliana’s cheek. “The change in Elliot is remarkable.”

  “Do you think so?” Ainsley hadn’t seen Elliot on one of his bad days, or bad hours, since her arrival. He’d come through the rescue of Mr. Stacy and the flurried activity this afternoon without breaking stride.

  “I do. Trust me.” Ainsley gave her another kiss, patted her on the cheek, and was gone.

  Juliana waved them away, and went to say her last good-bye, to her stepmother.

  Gemma made her sit down for a moment in the morning room, now empty of assassins and blackmailers. “Well, Juliana? You’ve made your bed, as they say. Do you still want to lie in it?”

  Juliana’s face warmed as she thought of what she and Elliot often did in the bed upstairs. “I believe I do.”

  Gemma’s businesslike look softened. “Don’t stay away forever, love. Your father and I miss you—goodness, how he misses you. Every day he talks about how you used to walk about, so proud to wear your ring of keys as mistress of the house. How you’d make sure his tea was served at exactly six, that his study had the books he needed most within his reach, his ink bottle always filled. The housekeeper and I make
sure of it now, of course, but it was special to him that you did it. That you took care of him.”

  Juliana’s eyes grew moist. Her father was not a talkative man, and she’d not known he even noticed what she’d done. Juliana had told herself that the best sign of an organized household was that the hand that guided it was invisible, but she’d always felt a tiny bit of hurt that her father had never said a word.

  “I didn’t know that.”

  Gemma’s hand was warm on hers. “I know, dear. Your father has never known much how to show his heart. Your poor mother was terrible at reading him, and so the match was doomed from the outset. I am a bit more shrewd than she was, and I know that your father is a man of deep feeling. His failure with your mother upsets him. He knows it was difficult for you. And he truly does miss you.”

  “Thank you.” Juliana’s chest felt tight. Her father had never gushed affection, but she’d known it was there, underneath, though she’d never been quite certain how much. “I’m sure that Elliot and I will be back in Edinburgh soon. We have been invited to stay there with Ainsley, and also to attend Lord Cameron’s horse training in March.”

  Gemma gave her a knowing look. “Are you certain about that, my dear? Your husband does not look as though he’s ready to share you with anyone yet. Ainsley and Rona told me of their visit here, how he tossed them out most unceremoniously. They couched it in terms that said they found it amusing—the newlywed husband wanting to be alone with his wife. I imagine there was a bit more to it than that, but of course, they had to explain their too-quick visit. Mr. McBride now looks happy to see the backs of us all.”

  “Because he is worried about Mr. Stacy.”

  “Humph. Your Indian manservant has already told me that Mr. Stacy is removing to Mr. McPherson’s for his convalescence. I’d say that was best. McPherson’s house is a bit more comfortable than this one.”

  “Only because I have not had the time to make the place more habitable. The rooms that are finished have turned out splendidly.”

  “How quick you are to defend.” Gemma smiled. “I meant no offense. From what Ainsley told me about the condition of the castle when she visited before, what you have done to this house in the meantime is quite astonishing. I have often said that no one could be a better general than you—or perhaps a sergeant major. I’m sure you bullied everyone in your power to make this house shipshape.”