“Stand back!” The flintlock was at full cock as Quentin’s finger trembled on the trigger. “I warn you! Elise will only be the first, and my men will be upon you in a thrice.”
In the frozen moment that followed, there came a sharp whine of a ricocheting ball from outside, and the dull thud of a distant musket shot. A volley of gunfire followed as a warning to the occupants of Kensington Keep.
“That should be the company of fusiliers,” Maxim posed the conjecture, answering the unspoken question in the faces of the Radborne brothers.
No one moved, though it seemed now that the brigands sweated in fear and apprehension, then fate found her voice at this turn of events and took a hand. The first guard, whom Nicholas had bound so roughly, roused from his stupor and, with a shout of belated warning, lunged to his feet, or at least tried. The truss caught him as he heaved himself halfway up and arched him forward like a bow, just as the bench struck his knees from behind. He gave a whooping cry of dismay as he measured at least part of his length on the stones.
It was Ramsey who seized the moment of distraction. He and his daughter had worked a rusted end of his shackles free from its mount on the floor, then had carefully replaced it. Now he snatched it free and, flipping a loop in the chain, tossed it around the intruding muzzle of Quentin’s weapon as he shoved Elise out of the way. He braced a foot against the bars and jerked hard. His strength was slight, but his surprise complete. The musket snaked through the bars until the lock struck a brace and snapped off with a sharp ping and rattled to rest somewhere in a dark crevasse.
Quentin drew back in dismay, rubbing his smarting hand, and reluctantly faced Maxim. That one raised his rapier in a quick salute and waited. Forsworth nudged his brother’s arm and offered his own sword, and received a glare for his generosity. Neither of them noticed the guards making a careful retreat to ward the stairs.
“I’m no swordsman!” Quentin mewled in fear. “You’d slay me as quickly as a helpless babe.”
“You gave no quarter to the agent in my house,” Maxim remmded him. “You bent no mercy on your mistress at court. I would say you’ve plied your skills quite well against women and helpless men.”
“Mistress?” Arabella slowly shook her head and sank back to the cot, from whence she had risen at the onset of the fray. “Is there no end to his wickedness?”
Maxim passed his sword to Nicholas, took the pistols from his belt and handed them over to Ramsey along with the rearming pouch. He spread his hands as he taunted, “Does this meet your standard better? An unarmed man? Or must I be trussed and laid up like a fowl to await your thrust? What sort of coward are you, Quentin?”
The dark eyes narrowed as Quentin saw his chance, and in sudden glee he seized Forsworth’s sword, but his haste made him clumsy. The blade spilled from his anxious grasp and rattled to the floor. He scrambled after it, and Maxim met him chest to chest over the fallen sword. Unrelentingly Maxim forced his adversary erect before his fingers could grasp the hilt. In frustrated rage Quentin lashed out, and the large signet ring he wore laid open a furrow across Maxim’s cheek.
It was with immense satisfaction that Maxim levied a personal vengeance upon the man. A blow from his left drove Quentin back, and another fist to the full lips sent him stumbling further. Quentin shook the cobwebs from his head and, collecting himself, charged like a bull, closing and clutching at Maxim while his knee sought to thrust upward against his adversary’s groin. Maxim flung him away, and Quentin stumbled over the bound guard and sprawled against the bars. He rubbed a bruised shoulder and glared up at his enemy, but made no move to rise.
“I thought I had gotten rid of you one time,” Quentin growled.
Maxim smiled wryly. “I came back to take what had once been mine, and now I’ve come again to claim what is truly mine.”
“You never had the treasure.” It was a statement of slowly dawning realization. Quentin wiped a trickle of blood from his mouth with the back of his hand as he watched the Marquess with dark, brooding eyes. “You never intended to barter it as ransom.”
“There is no treasure, Quentin,” Ramsey declared from the cell. “At least none that you could spend. What I secured for my daughter was no more than documents assuring her the right of inheritance of my properties.”
“But the chests you took from the Stilliards?” Quentin searched his mind for a reasonable explanation and could find none. “What did you trade at the Stilliards that you had to carry away in chests?”
Ramsey shook his shaggy head. “Those were only a few empty chests that I purchased for my daughter. That was all.”
“All!” Quentin scrambled to his feet and demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Why did you let me go on believing there was a treasure?”
“If I had told you the truth, you’d have killed me,” Ramsey answered simply. “Once you made the mistake of capturing me, you’d not have let me go free as long as I knew who you were.”
“All this time! My attempts have been for naught.”
“I’ll take the key now,” Maxim interrupted, and beckoned with his fingers. “Give it to me.”
Quentin smirked as he slipped a hand within his doublet and removed the key. He waggled it tauntingly before Maxim’s gaze, then he drew his arm back and swept it forward, sending the key sailing toward the drain. Elise gasped as Maxim dove forward to catch it. In the next moment her scream warned him and he rolled away just as Quentin’s sword came plummeting down a bare inch from his head. Maxim tossed the key into the cell and whirled, catching his own rapier from Nicholas.
“Let us have this out with some trace of honor,” Maxim cajoled, but Quentin only crouched and glared his hatred. “Come now. We shall see which of us is better. You may even best me.”
Quentin lowered his face and stared at the sword in his hand. Of a sudden he leapt over the bound man and stumbled up the slippery steps, slashing wildly at Nicholas, who sprinted forward to intercept his escape. As Maxim raced after the man, he glanced aside, assuring himself that his friend had missed the murderous blow. Kenneth ran to give the prisoners aid in their bid for freedom and was soon hot on Nicholas’s trail as that one followed Maxim.
Quentin dashed across the now-empty room littered with the bodies of his men. He bolted through the door and raced out into the courtyard, but immediately paused, seeing the ridge marked with a double column of mounted dragoons. Near them a line of fusiliers stood at the ready to block any attempt to escape. He glanced wildly about the courtyard, and the once-ancient Justin, the now-seeing Sherb, and the hefty cook slowly approached him. Maxim plunged from the doorway and was promptly followed by Nicholas, Kenneth, and the three prisoners.
Quentin backed along a tumbled wall near the edge of the cliff, his eyes wild as he searched for any avenue of escape. Maxim paced slowly forward, his sword ready, but not threatening.
“You’ve lost, Quentin. Your day has flown. Put an end to it. Fight me or surrender!”
“Then I choose to have my day!” Quentin shrieked, and flung the sword with meant intent. Maxim stepped aside, and when he looked again, he found Quentin reaching within his doublet. Drawing forth a pistol, the man waved it high and screamed a curse. “Damn you Seymour! You’ve hounded me for the last time!”
The dark-haired man lowered the pistol’s sights upon his tormentor, and Maxim flinched as a loud report sounded in his ear. He felt no searing pain, and Quentin gaped down at them as if confused. A small black hole had suddenly appeared in the middle of his forehead and, like a puppet dangling on strings, he began to turn. The rock upon which he stood loosened and pivoted with him. His sightless eyes ranged upward as he began to topple, then his arm jerked with a spasm, and the lead ball from his pistol whined high into the clouds overhead. The rock gave, and Quentin disappeared over the brink. The crash of falling rock faded, then ended somewhere far below.
The wind slashed a spattering of raindrops across the silent keep as if to wash away the memory of his passing. Maxim slid his swor
d into the sheath and turned to find Arabella standing in a frozen daze close behind him. Though her tears blended with the rain falling on her cheeks, she lifted her gaze to Maxim’s and whimpered.
“I’m so sorry, Maxim. I’m so sorry for everything.”
Elise stepped close to her side and removed the pistol from her hand, giving it over to Maxim. She led her cousin back into the tower as Kenneth stepped to the wall to motion the soldiers to advance speedily. What followed shortly were the arrests of Cassandra and her sons and all that remained of Quentin’s men.
Maxim stared in amazement when the Countess Anne’s conveyance came rolling toward the erstwhile gates. Behind it came a cart laden with perhaps a dozen of Bradbury’s men armed with long knives, aging swords, quarterstaffs, and here and there a scythe. The Lady Anne Hall alighted from her coach and when Maxim silently pointed toward the tower, she rushed past him to assure herself of the welfare of her great-granddaughter. Within the chamber the elder rushed to Elise and her father, smothering both of them with thankful sobs and warm hugs.
“I hardly expected such an army to be raised to our support,” Maxim commented aside to Sir Kenneth.
“I dare say the Lady Elise has that effect on people,” the knight told him with a grin.
Maxim smiled and lifted his face to the cleansing rain, letting it wash away all the emotions of fear and anger that had so recently bound him up. Doffing his sword and belt, he handed them to Kenneth and then strode toward the tower. He clapped Nicholas’s back in close camaraderie as he passed him. When he entered the tower, he stood for a long moment near the door as he watched Elise with her family, then she raised her gaze to him, and he saw all the love he had ever desired within those translucent orbs. She came to him and took his hand to lead him to her father.
“Papa, I would like you to meet my husband.”
Ramsey rose and the two men clasped each other in an embrace of close kinship. Tears filled the eyes of the elder as he drew back to smile at his son-in-law. “God answered my prayers from the beginning and sent a protector for my daughter, a far more worthy one than I even dared ask for.”
Elise stepped beside her husband and slipped her arm about him as she smiled into his warmly glowing eyes. “Never in the life of a maid has one found a more worthy protector. Once more you have fought gallantly in my defense and won the day, and again I stand in much awe of you. You are truly my champion, Maxim Seymour, and the love of my life.”
About the Author
Kathleen E. Woodiwiss wrote the very first historical romance novel in 1972 —The Flame and the Flower created a genre and made Ms. Woodiwiss one of the world’s most popular writers, with 36 million books in print. In celebration of Ms. Woodiwiss’s new novel, The Reluctant Suitor (2003), PerfectBound is publishing Ms. Woodiwiss’s classic backlist, including the complete Birmingham Family Saga: The Flame and the Flower; The Elusive Flame; A Season Beyond a Kiss. Also available are Ms. Woodiwiss’s Ashes in the Wind; Come Love a Stranger; Forever in Your Embrace; Petals on the River; A Rose in Winter; Shanna; So Worthy My Love; The Wolf and the Dove.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
KATHLEEN E. WOODIWISS
“A LEGEND!”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“A PHENOMENON”
The New York Times
“THE FIRST LADY OF THE GENRE.”
Publishers Weekly
“EXCELLENT!”
Ottawa Citizen
“A SENSATION!”
Washington Post Book World
“WOODIWISS REIGNS!”
Life
Works by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss
The Birmingham Family Saga:
The Flame and the Flower
The Elusive Flame
A Season Beyond a Kiss
And also:
Ashes in the Wind
Come Love a Stranger
Forever in Your Embrace
Petals on the River
A Rose in Winter
Shanna
So Worthy My Love
The Wolf and the Dove
The Reluctant Suitor
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SO WORTHY MY LOVE. Copyright © 1989 by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of PerfectBound™.
PerfectBound™ and the PerfectBound™ logo are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Mobipocket Reader edition v 1. March 2003 ISBN: 0-0607-6972-6
First Avon Books mass market printing: October 1990
First Avon Books trade printing: October 1989
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So Worthy My Love Page 59