by Sharon Green
And then the sound of a door crashing open ended Haynes's laughter, and brought most of the men in the room to their feet. Rianne twisted in the grip still holding her, and saw what she'd thought was impossible. The entire Roman pantheon poured into the room, and with them came the Greek and Norse gods. How they'd found her she had no idea, but at their head was a raging Mars…
"So it was all a ruse devised by him," Haynes growled, ruthlessness and soullessness mingling in those eyes that glared at the newcomers. "There were only supposed to be a few of them… It was all a lie and now they think they have me, but the game isn't over yet. I may end up losing, but my next move will make sure he isn't around to see it."
The man's voice was so deathly cold that Rianne shuddered again to hear it. That brought her partially back to his attention, but he'd already dismissed her from consideration. An uncaring push sent her staggering away, and that took care of the rest of the dismissal. She was too unimportant to bother with right now, and could be forgotten about completely.
He then began to stalk the new object of his fury. Most of the men in togas had thrown themselves on the invading gods, some with daggers or heavy sticks, some bare-handed, and the resulting melee was chaos. The bedlam had swallowed up almost everyone including Machlin, who had been forcing his way forward toward Haynes. Right now his back was turned as he stood with empty hands against a man with a dagger. He was good at that, Rianne remembered, very good…
But Haynes had pulled a long, jeweled knife out of his Roman robes, and began to move deliberately toward the much larger man. Machlin would never see him coming, or hear him over the screams and shouts of the others. And his golden armor wasn't armor at all, but heavy gilded cloth made to look like metal. That knife would plunge right through it, through it into him…
Rianne didn't have to force herself into motion. As soon as full understanding came she began to run, nothing left of the fear for herself. Machlin, the man she'd been forced to marry, the man who didn't really want her, the man who had already found another woman to take her place - if he died so would she, so it might as well be her alone. What he'd given her even without love - it was worth the price of her life. She'd never be missed, and she'd never have to feel loneliness again…
The scene came to her jerkily as she ran, as though God moved the world at an uneven pace. Machlin moved carefully against his opponent, unaware of the knife being raised behind him in a fist of vengeance. Haynes had also begun to run, and his mouth opened as though he were about to voice a battle cry. His right arm was all the way back above his shoulder, and just as he brought it forward he began to scream -
But Rianne was there to throw herself in the way, and her own scream erupted from her throat even before the point of the blade touched her. For the first time in her life she screamed freely, screamed for victory of life over death, for love even if it wasn't returned, for the end of terror and fear and hate -
And then she screamed at the pain of the knife, plunging into her rather than into the man she loved. She'd never told him that, never could have told him, now never would. Sharpened metal tore open her flesh, and the blessed darkness took her as its own.
The screams behind him made Bryan's blood freeze, but he was too experienced a fighter to simply whirl around. As he jumped to the right he kicked out hard, and the fool who'd been threatening him with a dagger went down crumpled over, leaving Bryan free to pay attention to whatever had gone on behind him…
"No! God, no!" he screamed, seeing Rianne on the floor, covered in blood. His beloved, his life - ! And the man who had done it still stood there, bloody knife in his fist, a took of fury on his face.
"The stupid little fool!" the man growled with annoyance. "She was always getting in the way, but now she never will again. Good riddance to the tart, and now I can get on with finishing you."
And to Bryan's disbelieving shock, the man raised his knife and began to advance toward him. Just that calmly and easily he'd struck down the most important thing in life to Bryan, feeling no more than annoyance over having been bothered. Now he was coming after Bryan, considering him just as much of a victim since Bryan stood with empty hands. Insanity touched Bryan then, fueled by inconsolable grief, and it no longer mattered that there were constables among his men who were there to arrest Haynes.
Bryan reached across his body to the broadsword he wore as part of his costume, a sword that was in no way a toy. Unsheathing and bringing it up lightning-fast, he gripped it two-handed, the way a broadsword is meant to be held. The heartless monster of a murderer stopped short, no longer the only one who had a weapon and therefore suddenly cautious. He might even have been thinking about surrendering and taking his chances with the law, but Bryan was not about to let that happen. He swung with all the strength in his arms -
And sent the head of George Haynes flying away from its body. Screams of shock and fear came from all around the room, but Bryan didn't even watch the man's body fall. He dropped his red-streaked weapon and went to his knees, gathered up the crumpled silver form all covered with blood, and cried for a loss that could never be repaired. He knelt like that for an endless time, and then Jeff Banyon's voice insisted on intruding.
"Bryan, listen to me!" the man prodded, as though he'd said the same thing many times before. "Bryan, let go of her! We have a physician here, but he can't do his job if you don't let her go! Do you want her to die?"
Bryan was about to tell Jeff what a fool he was when the body in his arms stirred and moaned. And it was warm, the body was warm! In a haze of shock he let Jeff take her, then sat on the floor with his eyes closed and his head in his hands. She was alive, still alive, even though she'd tried to fight Haynes herself bare-handed when he was only a step away. He meant less than nothing in her life, but at least she still had that life. Thank you, God, he whispered silently, thank you for her life … Even if she does want to live it without me…
Chapter Eighteen
"Bryan, you're a fool!" Sarah raged. "Why don't you talk to her?"
"Because she wants no part of me," he answered, returning calm for anger. "Are you going to claim it's all my imagination?"
They sat in his study, him behind the desk, she and Jamie in front of it. It had been good to see his partner again, and to be able to congratulate him on his upcoming fatherhood. That had been the only bright spot for Bryan in the last fortnight, and it had already passed.
"I can't believe things have deteriorated between you two rather than improved," Sarah fretted, then turned to her dark-haired, dark-eyed husband. "Jamie, you talk to him. Tell him it has to take time, and if he sends her away they won't have that time."
"Sarah, my love, there are occasions when a man runs out of time," Jamie told her gently with a compassionate glance at Bryan. "I've never known Bryan to give up on a fight that wasn't already more than lost. If he feels there's nothing left to be done, then there probably isn't."
"You two are enough to make a woman want to take up weapons," Sarah huffed, then looked at Bryan again. "Where's Jeff Banyon? He usually shows more good sense than the average man, and I'd like to hear what he thinks."
"Jeff has been helping to clean up the rest of that horrible mess," Bryan answered, shaking his head. "They wanted me to give them a hand, but I'd had enough of it so I loaned them Jeff. He's also in charge of that half company I brought in, and the experience will do him good."
"Weren't most of the men Haynes used in his robberies there in the room at Ranelagh?" Jamie asked. When Bryan nodded, he said, "Then what has Jeff been cleaning up? And why would he need a half company to do it?"
"What's left is gathering up the people Haynes bribed or blackmailed over the years," Bryan explained. "He carefully chose people as amoral as himself when he could, and it's hard to believe how many of them he found. If he judged wrong and one of them began to develop a conscience, he simply had them killed. The ones still living were the worst of the lot, and Fielding appreciated having the half company there t
o support his people and the constables."
"How did the people Haynes bribed keep from being suspected?" Jamie asked curiously. "I can't believe they all looked and acted like such angels that no one ever considered them."
"That wasn't the way they did it," Bryan said with a faint smile. "He and his paid informants always had someone to blame right there on the spot, someone they'd previously chosen. If there was a worker with a sick wife, say, and that worker suddenly had enough money for a good physician right after the gold was stolen, wouldn't you investigate him first? And if you questioned the worker and found he'd been given the money anonymously…"
"I'd stop looking altogether," Jamie agreed sourly. "I hate to think how many different ways it would be possible to do something like that. How did the bunch of you find out about it?"
"From Haynes's journals," Bryan supplied. "He kept careful track of everyone he'd paid and how much - or what he had on them to make them obey him - along with what they'd done to frame someone innocent. He wouldn't have wanted to repeat the method unless he had to, and it was another way to keep the ones he'd paid from trying to blackmail him. No one could turn him in without doing the same to themselves."
"So what will happen to the informants who are members of the nobility?" Jamie asked, unashamedly curious. "There are some I wouldn't mind helping to arrest, even if the court just sends them back to their families."
"That's not as easy a fate as it sounds," Bryan said with a smile for the glint in Jamie's dark eyes. "Don't forget every one of them betrayed those families, and that fact won't be forgiven or forgotten. Lydia Worden, Robert Creighton tells me, will spend her time under close chaperonage at home until a suitably restrictive marriage can be arranged for her. She was the one responsible for handing out invitations to Alicia's party to eager outsiders that night, and was probably looking forward to Tremar's being killed."
"And Tremar was killed for being too likely to get drunk and talk too much," Jamie said. He and Sarah had already been told about Tremar and the party. "Did you ever find out for certain why Harding was put out of the way?"
"Haynes's journal section on Harding was thick," Bryan answered with a nod. "I haven't yet had the heart to tell Rianne, but Haynes's involvement with Harding started a long time ago. She thinks her father died in a hunting accident, but the truth is Haynes had him killed for Harding. Harding had found out how large a private estate the man had, and wanted control of it.
"Married to the man's widow he had a lot of control, but then his wife died. The trustees who had approved him for the marriage then had more to say about the estate than he did, because it then became Rianne's inheritance. Harding, already being blackmailed by Haynes for that first murder, was ordered to get back control of the estate and share it with his major benefactor as he'd promised to do. When Harding failed again and again, Haynes grew disgusted. Signing that useless agreement with me was the last straw, and since Harding had been stupid enough to make out a will at Haynes's direction, Haynes decided he'd be worth more dead than alive."
"I'll bet Haynes had plans for blackmailing you," Sarah said, her voice thoughtful. "I don't know what he would have used, but he probably couldn't bear the thought of letting you walk away with all of your new wife's inheritance. And since we're back to that, I'll ask you again: can't you speak to her?"
"No," Bryan answered shortly. "Sarah, I'd decided to force her to stay with me, but even if it wasn't done on purpose she did save my life. I didn't know Haynes was behind me, and her attack on him kept him from putting that knife in my back. That means she has a right to be free of me, but I have to know she'll be safe. Will you tell her for me what I've arranged? She should be able to travel soon so it needs to be said, but it should come from someone she knows rather than from a servant."
"If at all, it should come from you," Sarah muttered, not in the least happy. "If only I'd been able to travel to London with you, I might have been able to do something… Bryan, are you very sure?"
When he nodded calmly into the intensity of her stare, she surrendered with a sigh and answered with her own nod. She would do as he asked, he knew, saving him from doing what he couldn't. He didn't even plan to be there on the day the girl left. He hadn't seen her for two weeks, and if God was kind he would never have to look at her again. If he did see her, he would probably dishonor himself by refusing to let her go. He was doing the right thing… He knew that… He knew that…
"…and what he did was set the serving men to watching you," Cam enthused, delighting in telling Rianne all about it. "He knew they always see everything, but those veddy, veddy important people never see them. Everyone else had missed where you'd gone - or had been made to miss it - but two of the serving men hadn't. He got all his people together and then broke in, and the rest you know."
Rianne nodded to show she did indeed know, and didn't mention that she'd prefer to forget. Cam had been in London for two days, having gotten himself the job as driver for Machlin's partner and his wife, Jamie and Sarah Raymond. The Raymonds were downstairs with Machlin, while Cam was visiting with her.
"Are you sure you shouldn't still be in bed?" Cam asked, a repeat of the first thing he'd said to her. He hadn't known she'd been hurt until that morning, or he would have been banging down the door the instant he arrived. "You look … pale, and not even as healthy as Angus did when I left."
"Cam, I'm fine," she assured him, shifting on the lounge she preferred to the bed. "There may have been a lot of blood, but the wound wasn't all that serious. Haynes hit me in the arm, and I must have fainted from the tension of everything that had happened. It certainly wasn't painful enough to make someone faint."
"Oh, of course not," he agreed dryly, sounding exactly like Angus. "People get stabbed every day, and most of the time don't even notice. It's a good thing you have someone to look after you now, Ree. If Mr. Machlin can't keep you out of trouble, no one can."
After two weeks of slowly getting used to the truth, Rianne had no trouble keeping her face expressionless. Cam didn't know that she hadn't even seen Machlin since that night she was stabbed, and she had no intentions of telling him. He and Angus thought her life was as happily settled as theirs; if she told them it wasn't so, they would insist on leaving with her when she went. Since she wasn't about to let them sacrifice their dreams, she'd simply keep quiet.
Or be noncommittal, as she was just about to do, when someone knocked at the door. Her maid, Meg, went to answer it, and when she'd opened the door Rianne was surprised to hear a familiar voice say, "I'd like to speak with Mrs. Machlin. Please tell her it's Sarah Raymond."
When Meg turned to look at her, Rianne gave a reluctant nod. She really didn't want to see the woman, but there was no sense in being rude for no reason. Sarah Raymond came in, and her clothes were of better quality than when she'd been pretending to be Machlin's housekeeper. She smiled at Rianne, a rather strained smile, then glanced around.
"Would you mind if we talked in private?" she asked. "If you need anything I can get it for you, and Cameron can come back to continue his visit later. As if anyone would be able to stop him."
Her smile at Cam was warm with friendliness, and he returned a roguish grin. No one would be able to stop him from coming back, and as long as everyone understood that, things were just fine. He patted Rianne's hand before getting up, and a moment later he and Meg were gone with the door closed behind them.
"All right, now we're alone," Rianne pointed out when the other woman remained silent. "What do you have to talk about that's so very important?"
"We never got the chance to really know one another, did we?" Mrs. Raymond responded with a faint smile as she walked to the chair Cam had vacated and sat down. "It's one of the things I regret, probably more than you'll ever know. Bryan - asked me to talk to you."
And there it was, the invitation to leave Rianne had been expecting ever since she woke up back in his house. She'd obviously embarrassed him so badly wearing that costume, he couldn't s
tand the thought of seeing her again for any reason. He must have been spending most of his time with his new woman, and had come back only to tie up the remaining loose ends.
"You can tell Machlin I'm fine, and that I'll be leaving in the next couple of days," she said, forcing herself to ignore the sick feeling inside her. "Was there anything else?"
"As a matter of fact, I'm here to discuss that very subject," Mrs. Raymond answered, looking even more upset. "Your leaving, I mean. Bryan has a really lovely house that he was going to sell, but now he wants you to have it. He'll take care of all the expenses, of course, and you'll be able to live there quite comfortably."
"It sounds charming, but I'm afraid I have other plans," Rianne said, reaching for her teacup to hide the bleakness she felt. He was so eager to be rid of her, he was even willing to support her for life. Life. Existence…
"Mrs. Machlin - Rianne, I'm afraid you don't understand," Mrs. Raymond protested, her fingers folding the silk of her day gown. "Bryan doesn't want you to have other plans, and I'm certain he's prepared to insist. He doesn't want to worry about whether or not you're safe, so-"
"So he's decided to lock me up again," Rianne interrupted, beginning to fume. "Can't he learn to ignore his guilt like everyone else in the world? All I want him to do is leave me alone!"
"But that's the one thing he can't do," the woman blurted, her eyes pleading. "Don't you understand? He said you even saved his life, and now - "
"And now he wants to thank me," Rianne interrupted again, this time very flatly. "Well, he can keep his thanks, along with everything else he owns. The only thing I need is to be out of here, and that I'll have in two days' time. And now, if you don't mind, I'd like to be alone."