“Shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep, Mercy,” he said. “Why in God’s name would you think you could fix what was wrong between Father and me?”
“Because I helped make it wrong!” There. She’d said it. “Forgive me, Will, but I did. I was happy he didn’t … didn’t …”
“Like me?” Will supplied with more interest than shock.
Mutely, she nodded.
He groaned suddenly, slouching against the filthy wall. Desperately she searched for some way to ease his pain. “What can I do?” she asked.
His eyes were squeezed in thin lines. “Money for another pipe.”
“No, Will!”
“No? Then go away.”
“I won’t.”
He opened his eyes. “Yes. You will. Because I’m not going with you. I don’t belong in Texas. You don’t belong here. I do. Now go away, Mercy.”
“But I promised!” she wailed.
“Like I said. You can’t fix what you didn’t break,” he said, his mouth set as he forced the words past his lips, past the pain that was squeezing the sweat from his pores. “You take too much credit. My relationship with Father didn’t have anything to do with you, no matter what you think. The only times he and I got along at all were when we all three were together, riding, shooting … You still a good shot, Mercy?” He turned and she could see the glimmer of tears—pain? sorrow?—shimmer in his eyes.
“Yes, I guess.”
“Good. I was always kinda proud of that.” The unseen demon stretched him tighter on its invisible rack. Every muscle tensed in his body, sweat dribbled from his brow. He leaned away from her, curling into a ball on his side, his hands clamped between his knees. “You sure you don’t have any cash, honey? Few bucks?”
“No.” She dashed the back of her hand across her damp cheeks. She wouldn’t feed the animal. She’d steal Will from it.
“Oh,” he answered vaguely. “I gotta rest.”
“Come back with me, Will. Please.”
“Not yet.” His voice sounded weak, distant. “Maybe someday. You get, now, Mer. Nothin’ there for me.”
“But I miss you. I want you back.” She wept. “I want my brother back.” From behind the curtains other unseen petitioners added their voices to hers. The twining corridors reverberated with their chorus in a cacophony of shattered dreams.
She laid her head against Will’s shoulder and sobbed. It was true. Beyond the guilt and the duty and the promise, that was finally the deepest truth. She missed her brother. She wanted him back.
He didn’t respond. His breath was shallow, his gaze unfocused.
“Miss Coltrane,” Nathan said in a low, urgent voice. “We have to go. It’s not safe in a place like this. There are men here who’d kill you for a pair of boots, let alone the price of a pipe. It’s dangerous. Very dangerous. We have to go.”
She lifted her tear-streaked face. Nathan Hillard was bending over her.
“But Will …”
He shook his head. “He’ll just fight us if we try to take him out now. We can’t do anything. Not yet. We’ll have to return later, with additional aid.”
Beside her, as if to validate Nathan’s words, Will began to thrash and groan. His eyes flew open and he looked around. Horror seeped into his dark gaze. He grabbed her arm, pulling her close, wildly looking beyond her.
“Mercy, did he bring you here?” He panted, his eyes glazed and staring.
“Who, dear?”
“Him,” he whispered, licking at his dry lips. “That devil.”
She shook her head, biting her lip to keep from sobbing. “There are no devils, Will.”
He laughed, bitterness tinged with hysteria. “Oh, yes, there are. Oh, yes.” He kept saying it, even after he had shut his eyes, mumbling as he fell into some semiconscious state.
Nathan took her hand and pulled her up. “Please. I don’t trust that Chinee fellow. He could be rounding up a band of thugs to rob us even as we speak.”
“We can’t just leave him!”
“We must. I promise well come back later.”
“As soon as we can find the authorities? In under an hour?” she demanded.
“Yes, yes,” Nathan said, looking around nervously.
“One second, then,” she said, pulling loose and returning to Will’s side. She reached into her pocket and pulled the little revolver from within. Carefully, she tucked the firearm beneath the single twisted blanket. She pushed a few cartridges into his pocket. “Will,” she whispered, “I’m leaving you my gun so you can protect yourself. I’ll be back, Will. I won’t abandon you. I won’t be gone long.”
She stood up and Nathan took her arm and led her out of the opium den and into the milky haze of the back alley.
Chapter 28
“Damn cabbie,” Nathan muttered. “I told him to wait.”
Mercy looked around the deserted brickyard. She had to get Will out of here. “Where are we?” she asked. “I have to get back to the hotel. I have to find Hart.”
“Hart?”
“Hart. Lord Perth,” she said, looking one way and then the other. A stack of half-rotted barrels angled away from where they stood, blocking what appeared to be the egress into a lane. In the opposite direction the small yard ended in a wall where a low archway crouched in the corner. Above it an ancient tattered handbill fluttered wearily against the smoke-stained brickwork. Mercy started toward it.
“Why would you want to find Perth?” Nathan asked. Mercy looked over her shoulder. He was not following her. He was standing in an attitude of unnatural attention.
“He’ll help us,” Mercy explained. “Is this the way out?”
“I can help you. I am, after all, the one who found your brother.” There was a petulant quality to his tone.
“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”
“You know”—he came forward, a perplexed frown on his handsome face—“there was the suggestion when I left Lady Acton’s that something not quite proper had occurred between yourself and Perth. I discounted it as the malicious talk of jealous people, but now I find myself asking … was there?” He looked up. There was nothing casual about his too-bright eyes. “Was there, Mercy?”
She stiffened, offended and subtly threatened by his aggrieved expression. “That’s none of your business, sir.”
“I disagree. When a gentleman plans on marrying a lady, he should be privy to her entire history.”
She gasped.
“Oh!” His mouth puckered into a little circle of annoyance. He clucked his tongue in annoyance as he tugged his suede gloves off, exposing pale white hands, their trim, shiny nails gleaming in the alley’s twilight. “I haven’t gone about this at all well, have I?” He placed a glove on the damp ground and bent one knee atop it. “Miss Coltrane, will you marry me?”
He was watching her, his sweet smile on his face, his brows lifted a little in self-mockery at his formality, his eyes aglow with anticipation. He actually expected her to say yes. Here. Now. He had to be mad.
She fumbled for the words. “I … I am cognizant of the great honor you do me, sir, but I must decline.”
He stared at her as though in great puzzlement. “Is it Perth, then?” he asked.
What did he want to hear? What would stop this horrifyingly inappropriate exhibition? The truth? “Yes,” she answered.
He nodded as though his suspicions had been confirmed and the revelation, while a disappointment, had come as no great surprise. He rose, brusquely swiping his knee with his glove. She sighed with relief and once more started toward the far wall.
“Too bad,” he muttered. “I rather enjoyed the idea of being wedded to you rather than being saddled with that stinking derelict down there.”
She stopped. His mild, disappointed tone sent gooseflesh creeping over her arms and belly.
“It was either you or him, m’dear. Can’t say you didn’t have a fair go.”
“Go?” She turned around. He was pointing a pistol at her, smiling.
“Yes. A go.” He nodded. “At living. One of you is going to have to die. Your father might be rich, but he’s not that rich. At least his estate wouldn’t be if it were to be divided. Not enough to satisfy my … requirements.”
“Your requirements,” she echoed, feeling her way backward with one foot. Her only chance was to run.
“Bills,” Nathan Hillard said mournfully. “Bills and debts and promissories and, oh, Lord, I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice it to say I was very pleased to make your dear brother’s acquaintance. He was so very, very ripe for the plucking. In fact”—he grinned again—“I can honestly say I have never seen anyone embrace vice with quite the enthusiasm of your brother.”
Horror chased realization. He’d brought about Will’s addiction. This gentle, smiling, debonair man … he was Will’s monster.
“My God. You planned this from the first!”
“Oh, no, no, no.” He clucked his tongue. “Not the first.” There was a hideous modesty in his voice. “At first old Will was merely someone to pick up the tab, don’t you know. But his appetites grew, and so did his bills and, consequently, my bills. We encountered problems.
“I knew he came from a wealthy family. It only seemed fair that he should have what was due him, but you know how Will is.” He shook his head with something like fondness. “Stubborn to a fault. He would not ask for money. He wouldn’t and when he discovered you were in England, the silly boy indulged in a disgusting bout of self-recrimination. He was going to throw me over. After all I’d done for him. Me!” He lifted his hands, appealing to her for justice. She shivered.
“Couldn’t let that happen. So we just introduced him to a more potent form of opium. That put an end to that nonsense, I’ll have you know. Yes, Willy boy likes his vice.”
Her breath caught in her throat.
“Oh, I’m sorry. You don’t like vices, I take it? Well, probably just as well we won’t be getting leg-shackled then, isn’t it?”
“How is killing me going to get you Father’s money?” Mercy asked, playing for time. Inch by inch her feet, concealed beneath her skirts, edged her back toward the alley. He didn’t appear to notice.
“You’ve seen him,” Nathan said, waving the gun barrel at the stairs. “He’s utterly and completely my creature. He has been from the moment I placed the pipe in his mouth and he suckled like a babe at his mother’s breast.”
“God, you’re disgusting.”
“Tch tch. You sound like your brother in his more lucid moments, not that there are many of those.” He spread his fingers in a gesture of comic defeat. “I have always been fascinated by the odd points of principle Will clings to. Do you know he wouldn’t even ask your father for money? No. I had to write those notes. Fine forgeries, if I do say so myself.
“And when you arrived … that was nice. You were so forthcoming with the money. I had only to scribble a note, and it was like money in the bank. At least for a while.” And then, well, I decided that I might as well take the whole of the fortune for myself, what with having two options open to me.”
“How is that?” she asked breathlessly.
“Will or you,” he said in surprise. “And I don’t mind admitting that I’d just as soon you’d agreed to marry me. You are so dashed pretty.” His smile was terrifyingly sane and sweet. His bright eyes dulled. “Then you decided to investigate. I wasn’t ready for you to find Will quite yet. He wasn’t completely malleable.”
“You were responsible for my accidents.”
Gravely, Nathan nodded his head. “I never meant to kill you, you understand. Why would I? I was courting you, for God’s sake! Only an imbecile would try and murder the bride before the wedding. No. I was just trying to incapacitate you. Didn’t want you to find your brother before the proper time.”
It had all been planned, orchestrated from the moment she’d arrived.
“I’m afraid I’m not nearly the shot you are, m’dear,” Nathan apologized. “If I were, I would have winged you right neatly and you would have sat in bed for weeks sending old Willy boy money.”
“The pheasant hunt. How did you manage that?”
“Plug of dirt in the barrel. Nothing could have been simpler.”
She was almost to the entrance. She could feel the cold, dank air ruffling her hair. If she spun and ran … Another few feet.
“I don’t understand. If I had agreed to marry you—”
“I would have killed old Will boy. He would have conveniently died this very afternoon. I told you how poorly he was looking.” He sighed. “Now I’ll have to clean him up for the passage home. We’ll take your lovely corpse back to wherever the hell it is you come from. Poor Daddy Coltrane shall doubtless succumb shortly—”
She wheeled and plunged forward. A tall black figure appeared in the alleyway, one hand brandishing a revolver, the other reaching for her.
“Hart!”
Bang!
Agony exploded in her head. She spun toward the burning impact and staggered. Her eyes widened with astonishment and.…
He caught her as she collapsed.
“No!” The single word erupted from him. It rose deep and hoarse, a howl of anguish and denial fashioned from his soul. The sound echoed off the slick walls and down the wind-pricked alleys.
“No!” He clamped her sagging body against him and his free hand snapped up. He fired. Hillard fell.
Not enough.
He flung his head back and roared with wounded fury and shot again. Even as Hillard’s body crumbled behind the barrels, disappearing from his sight, Hart fired. Again and again and again, he jerked the trigger, emptying the chamber into the barrels, splintering and shattering the rotted wood, ricocheting bullets off the filthy brick wall, striking sparks of fire, noise thundering down the twining dark corridors. And still he fired. Even after there were no more cartridges, just the mechanical click of a hammer repeatedly striking an empty chamber, he fired.
Finally he stopped, the gun drooping in his nerveless grasp. He sank to his knees, his precious burden limp in his arms. Blood sheeted the left side of her face, covering her one eye and streaming down her cheeks like crimson tears.
“Mercy.”
He prayed. Without words, without volition, he prayed. Every shudder of his fingers passing over her blood-cauled face was a petition. Every quiver in his body as he strained to perceive some—any—evidence of life was a supplication.
And his prayers were answered.
She flinched, suddenly and abruptly. He stopped breathing. She shifted in his arms, squinting up at him through her unclotted eye.
“Ow.”
He laughed, a hoarse, broken sound. She peered at him. Tears ran down his face.
“I’m glad … you find this amusing.”
“Oh, God, Mercy,” he said, dabbing the blood from her eye with his shirt cuff. A deep furrow cut across her temple and disappeared beneath her hair. “I thought that you …” He couldn’t get the words past the constriction in his throat.
She took pity on him. He looked so lost and tragic staring at her, his expression bleak and helpless. His eyes told her everything. They held the cursed knowledge of a man who’d tasted damnation.
“You’re probably angry … that I was shot … by someone else,” she whispered hoarsely. “Especially after you’d said … I couldn’t be.”
Dumbly, he nodded.
“I see.” She smiled. The movement caused her to wince, but still she could not refrain from touching the stark, tormented face hovering above hers. He jerked his head around, pressing his lips into her palm and kissing it reverently. “I promise, it won’t happen again,” she said.
“Sorry, but I’m afraid I’ll have to make a liar of you.”
Convulsively, Hart’s grip tightened closer around Mercy. Nathan Hillard stood beside the shattered barrels, his revolver pointed at them, smiling. Hart jerked the Colt up before he remembered. It was empty.
“You missed.” Hillard laughed, a horrible sound, so hu
man and warm and genuinely amused. “Unless you have a Gatling gun, there, Lord Perth, I’m afraid you are out of bullets.” Nonchalantly, he aimed at Mercy.
Hart flung her beneath him, shielding her with his back as the shot rang out. He braced for the impact. Nothing. He turned his head.
Hillard was staring down at where a small red disk had appeared on his white shirtfront. He collapsed watching it spread.
A cough drew Hart’s attention. There, on the staircase leading to the opium den, Will Coltrane stood leaning against the doorjamb, the .38 still smoking in his hand.
“But I’m not,” he whispered.
Chapter 29
A week later Hart stood in a shaft of late morning light in his suite at Browne’s Hotel. Once more he scanned the letter he’d received from the South African bank. It was a short note, clear and toneless.
The gentleman known as Francis Jonathan Miller had not made a withdrawal from his account in over twenty-six months. Hart folded the sheet and tucked it back inside its envelope. There was only one assumption he could possibly make from such information. His father was dead. Hart was, indeed, the Earl of Perth.
He and his sisters could continue on as before, the threat of scandal averted. But still, there was a sense of loss, of emotions unresolved. He straightened. He’d learn to live with it. He’d learned to live with many things. There was only one thing he could not bring himself to consider living without.
Abruptly, the door to his room swung open. She stood for an instant, warm and vivacious, the sunlit motes her entrance had stirred dancing like tiny fairy attendants about their queen. Her tallow-colored gown shimmered in the slanting light, her hair glistened in dark contrast to the white gauze banding her brow.
“Is it only my rooms over which you have this unaccountable sense of proprietorship?” he asked. He wouldn’t voice other words. He was afraid, desperately afraid, that she would leave him if she knew how much he needed her.
“Oh, dear no,” she said, stepping forward and shutting the door behind her. “I feel proprietary about all of you.”
A Dangerous Man Page 24