Scandal Becomes Her

by Shirlee Busbee

  “And if he does,” said Mrs. Weston, stepping beside her son, “then he shall die—which will be just as well. My son will make an exceptional Earl of Wyndham.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting Charles?” Nell asked, not even surprised by their mad plan. “Even if you kill me, my husband and my child, Charles will still be in your way.”

  Raoul laughed. “Believe me, I have not forgotten Charles.” He appeared to think about it. “Charles, I fear, will have a tragic accident. A fatal one this time.”

  Something niggled at the back of Nell’s brain. Something about Charles having the Devil’s own luck…She gasped. “The yacht. You did that!”

  Turning away, Raoul hung the lantern from a peg on the wall. “Oh, yes. That was indeed my work. He’s proven to be a tricky bastard to kill, but I’ll get that chore done soon enough.” He paused. “Not too soon, though—we don’t want to arouse any suspicions.”

  “He’s your brother! How can you?”

  “Half brother,” snapped Mrs. Weston. “And I would worry about your own fate if I were you and not waste any time over the demise of my stepson.”

  Nell glanced at her and couldn’t help being pleased to see that Mrs. Weston sported a beautiful purple and black bruise on one side of her face.

  Mrs. Weston caught her expression and her lips thinned. “You think you are so clever catching me by surprise like that, but you were not clever enough to escape from my son, were you?”

  Nell shrugged. “At least I didn’t act like a coward and sneak around and hit you from behind.”

  “My son is no coward!” spat Mrs. Weston, her face darkening with fury.

  Wondering if she could use Mrs. Weston’s blind devotion to her son in some way, Nell pushed harder. “I beg to differ with you. Anyone who attacks those weaker than himself can be nothing but a coward.” Her gaze slid to Raoul. “A skulking, repulsive coward who hides in the dark and is only brave when his victim is helpless and held powerless.”

  For a moment, Nell thought she’d gone too far. Mrs. Weston was gripping the bars of the cell as if she’d tear them apart with her bare hands. Panting with rage, Mrs. Weston said, “Brave words. Wait until he has you under the knife, then you won’t have such a saucy mouth on you.”

  Quelling the spurt of fear that went through her, Nell asked carelessly, “Would you like to place a wager on that? Or aren’t you going to stay for the finale? Too messy for you?”

  Raoul walked up to the bars. “Yes, I’m afraid that’s the case,” he said easily. He looked fondly at Mrs. Weston. “Poor mother—she has a queasy stomach.”

  “You’ve known all along what he does here?” Nell asked, horrified.

  Mrs. Weston shrugged. “Of course. I do not approve of his, ah, amusements, but it gives him pleasure. Those women were nothing, only stupid creatures of the canaille. Piffle. They are better off dead.” She stared at Nell. “As you will be very soon.”

  “But she has to answer a question for me first,” Raoul said. His expression puzzled, he asked, “What happened between us the other night? You saw me and I saw you. How is that possible? I could feel someone watching me and when I looked around, I saw your face. Is it some sort of magic? Witchcraft?”

  Nell considered not telling him, but in the end she said simply, “I don’t know—I only know that since that day you threw me over the cliffs that I have had some sort of…link with you…with the violence you do here.”

  He looked uneasy and angry at the same time. “Whatever it is,” he said, “it ends tonight.”

  Inserting the key into the lock on the cell, Raoul unlocked the door and pushed it open. So frightened she could hardly breathe, Nell backed away from him as he stepped inside. Don’t make it easy for him, she told herself. Don’t let him walk away unscathed. Kick him! Bite him! Scratch him! Mark him! Fight for your life!

  As the moments passed and he and Charles discovered nothing to help them, Julian’s rage and fear and frustration built until he thought he would explode with it all. Sledgehammer in hand, he struck again and again at the seemingly solid wall before him, fighting to hold his emotions in check. He was working in a promising spot at the back of the old kitchen pantry, something about the way the wall was constructed having aroused his attention. Besides, he thought viciously, attacking mortar and brick is the only thing keeping me sane. Nell was in there somewhere. Held captive, perhaps even being tortured by the Shadow Man at this very moment. Only rigid control kept him from howling aloud in fear and misery. I have to find her! I promised her. I swore I would keep her safe!

  He and Charles had given up on probing carefully for a secret entrance and had opted for brute-force demolition. He’d already wasted days looking for the bloody catch, latch, whatever it might be that revealed the entrance he knew existed and hadn’t found anything and now they’d run out of time. Utter destruction was the only way.

  And yet no one was more astonished than he was when his heavy sledgehammer suddenly smashed though the wall and instead of finding himself in another room or staring outside, he was looking into yawning blackness. His heart nearly leaped out of his chest, and throwing aside the hammer he yelled for Charles.

  Charles, busy elsewhere in the kitchen, ran to his side. Together the two men stared at the opening.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Charles. “There really is a secret entrance.”

  “You didn’t believe it?” Julian asked as he began to tear bricks out of the way to widen the hold.

  “Not really,” Charles admitted. “But you seemed so convinced and Cesar’s story made sense so I believed in the possibility of it.”

  “Well, help me clear this possibility so we may go down it.”

  With the entrance breached, it took them only a moment to find the mechanism that worked the door. The damaged door swung slowly open revealing the narrow stairs that Nell had seen in her nightmare.

  When Charles would have taken a candle, Julian shook his head. “No. He must have no warning that we are coming.”

  Charles stared at him. “You are certain that he’s down there.”

  “Yes. And that he means to murder my wife.” Foot on the first step he pulled free his pistol from his clothes and looking back at Charles said, “Have your weapon ready—we are going after a monster. This man is a killer, a vicious murderer. Do not hesitate when dealing with him because he will kill us if he can.”

  Charles studied him a moment. “There is more to this than you have told me.”

  “Yes. And I apologize—it is not my tale to tell—just believe me when I tell you that this man murdered your brother and countless innocent women. He is a monster.”

  Charles’s eyes turned icy. “You know that he killed John?”

  When Julian nodded, Charles’s hand tightened on his pistol. “Then lead on—I’ve waited a long time to meet this bastard.”

  Nell fought valiantly but she was no match for Raoul and Mrs. Weston. She was determined not to make it easy for them, and her teeth, fingernails and feet had left both Westons bloodied by the time Raoul managed to wrestle her from the cell and throw her across the room into the main part of the dungeon. She landed heavily on the floor, groaning in pain as her body met the unyielding stone, but she could take satisfaction from the damage she’d inflicted. Among other sundry wounds, Raoul’s handsome face was now marred by a long, bloody gash where she’d clawed his cheek; his right ear bled freely courtesy of her teeth and his lower lip was split where she’d butted him with her head. Mrs. Weston had added a cut eyebrow and a blackening eye to the ever-widening bruise on her jaw. They will have trouble explaining those marks away, Nell thought grimly, attempting to get to her feet.

  “Infernal bitch!” Raoul shouted, his fingers feeling along the gash. “You’ll pay for that, and pay dearly before I am through with you.”

  He glanced at his mother. “Mother. Are you hurt?”

  Mrs. Weston staggered out of the cell, gasping for breath. “She kicked me. Knocked the air out of me.
”

  Having struggled upright, Nell kept a wary eye on the pair of them. She had not escaped unscathed; her wrists were bloody and bruised from the ropes, her ribs hurt, her gown was ripped from one shoulder and her damn bad leg was aching. A scrape across her chin stung and she knew that eventually her right eye would be as black as Mrs. Weston’s—if I live that long, she thought.

  Her back against the stone wall she faced the pair of them, considering her next move. Her gaze fell to the floor, resting for a second on the sluice hole off to one side, that same sluice hole where she’d seen Raoul toss so many bodies. From there her eyes traveled to the bloodstained stone slab in the middle of the room and she swallowed painfully. Her nightmares had been accurate, too accurate, she admitted almost hysterically. Images of other women flashed through her mind and she swore that she’d die before she’d allow Raoul to fasten her down on that slab as he had all the others.

  Frantically she looked around for a weapon, for anything that could be used as a weapon, but there was nothing. Except…Her gaze stopped at the lantern hanging on the wall only a few feet from her hand and at the old debris and rushes upon the floor. Her eyes flickered across the room to the doorway that she knew must lead up the stairs to freedom. If I could…

  Raoul noticed the direction of her gaze and laughed. “You’ll never make it.” An ugly smile crossed his face. “But go ahead—the chase will add a certain piquancy to the outcome.”

  “Just kill her and be done with it,” said Mrs. Weston. “You cannot be gone long or you will be missed and your absence commented on.”

  Raoul touched his face. “This will have to be explained. I cannot return looking like this.”

  “This is all your fault,” Mrs. Weston hissed, glaring at Nell. “If you’d never married my nephew none of this would have happened. You’ve nearly ruined everything. Everything.”

  Nell stared. This was her fault?

  “I fail to see how this can be my fault—after all, you brought me here,” she pointed out.

  “You’re in our way,” Mrs. Weston said flatly. “It was going to be so simple before you appeared. I had always hoped that fate would allow Raoul to obtain Wyndham’s title one day, but in the beginning there were too many people ahead of him for it to become reality. But Julian’s wife died leaving him no heir, then John…and my husband and Julian’s father died. Daniel’s death was providential, a stroke of luck, and made us realize that the dream was within our grasp—with Daniel dead, and Julian without an heir, only Charles was between Raoul and the title.”

  “And no one,” added Raoul, “would have been surprised if Charles had died when his yacht sank or if he’d broken his neck in a hunting accident—or even if a jealous husband had killed him. We’d planned for Julian to die a year or two later—when we felt it was safe to kill him without arousing suspicion.”

  “An accident, of course, and then my son would have been the earl,” said Mrs. Weston, the complacent note in her voice making Nell wish she could get her hands around the other woman’s neck. “Wyndham would have been his.” She shot Nell a vicious look. “But then you came along. You and that brat you carry, and nearly ruined everything.”

  “I’m surprised,” Nell muttered, “that you didn’t kill me before this.”

  “Well, I would have,” admitted Raoul carelessly, “but it had to look like an accident and you were never alone. You were always safely within Wyndham Manor or with one of my cousins or Lady Diana and Miss Forest. There was never a good opportunity to arrange things to my satisfaction.” He shrugged and added, “If it weren’t for that…that thing that happened the other night—your ability to watch me—if not for that I would have waited for a better time, but my hand has been forced.” A dreamy expression entered his eyes. “But it makes little difference—I did not intend for you to live to give birth, so your time was already short.”

  It appeared that conversation was at an end and warily Nell tracked Raoul’s movements and that of his mother. They were splitting up, coming at her from two different directions. She risked a glance at the lantern hanging so tantalizingly near. Time had run out and Nell knew that if they got their hands on her again, then it was over—she’d die.

  Her pregnancy and her bad leg made her clumsy, but with surprising speed and agility she lunged for the lantern, the opposite direction they thought she’d take. Her move caught them off guard and they froze for a split second but it was all the time that Nell needed.

  Wrenching the lantern from the wall, Nell pitched it with all the strength she possessed at Mrs. Weston, who was closest to her. It hit Raoul’s mother full in the chest, knocking her backward. Fire erupted across the front of Mrs. Weston’s dress and shrieking and beating wildly at the flames she tripped and fell to the floor.

  Nell forgotten, Raoul cried out and rushed to his mother’s side as she rolled on the floor, spreading the fire along the dry rushes and debris. Smoke drifted upward from a dozen smoldering pieces of debris, and taking advantage of the distraction Nell flung herself forward, stumbling and running toward the unprotected doorway.

  Seeing what she was about, Raoul leaped for her, catching her hair in one hand. “No!” he screamed. “You’ll not escape.”

  Nell twisted and fought his grasp, heedless of the pain. “Let me go! Let me go!” she shouted, aiming a solid kick at his leg.

  Coming down the stairs, Julian heard Nell’s voice and with a roar, Charles at his heels, he plunged down the few remaining steps and charged into the room.

  Pistols ready, Julian and Charles stopped just inside the dungeon, staring stunned at Raoul holding Nell prisoner by her hair.

  Pushing aside his shock and horror at the identity of the Shadow Man, Julian focussed on the only thing that mattered: Nell. “Let her go,” he said in a deadly voice. “Let her go now.”

  His face white, a muscle clenched in his jaw, Charles exclaimed in horror and disbelief, “Raoul? You killed John?”

  “I had to,” said Raoul. “He was going to force me to marry some bloody farmer’s daughter and would not listen to reason. He left me no choice.”

  “Let her go,” Julian repeated, his gaze fixed on Raoul.

  Raoul smiled and dragged Nell’s head back. “Or what? You’ll shoot me? I don’t think you dare—what if your bullet misses? Are you willing to risk her life?”

  Nell winced as he pulled her hair tighter. As long as Raoul had her, they were at a stalemate. Julian or Charles could not risk a shot. She had to do something to tip the balance. Locking her hands together Nell drove her elbow as hard as possible into Raoul’s abdomen. The move caught him off guard and he gasped as the breath left his body. His hold on her hair slackened ever so slightly, but it was enough, Nell shot free, running to her husband.

  Julian’s pistol never wavered as he clamped Nell to his side with his other arm. A dangerous smile on his face, Julian drawled, “I think the situation has changed, don’t you?”

  “You won’t shoot me,” Raoul said with a sneer, his hand edging inside his jacket. “I’m your cousin. The great Earl of Wyndham wouldn’t want a scandal, now would he?”

  Near the stone slab, Mrs. Weston staggered to her feet. She had beaten out the flames and though she had some painful burns, they were not severe—her clothing had protected her from the worst. At her feet a few of the rushes still smoldered, sending wisps of smoke into the air.

  “He’s right,” Mrs. Weston gasped. “How will you explain shooting him? Will you want everyone to know what he does here?”

  “And what,” asked Charles in a quiet tone, “does my brother do here?”

  “Ask her,” retorted Raoul, pointing at Nell. “She seems to know everything.”

  “I have nightmares,” said Nell, “and in them I have seen Raoul, although I did not know it was him, murder your brother John near my home and later, kill and torture young women here…on that slab.”

  “Prove it!” taunted Raoul. “I am sure that the earl will enjoy having it known that h
is wife has dreams, visions like some witch of old. Won’t that be wonderful fodder for all your fine friends.”

  A muscle twitched in Julian’s cheek. “You think that I will allow you to escape to protect my name and reputation?” he asked, his pistol never wavering from its target.

  “Not your name—but to protect her you would.”

  He has me there, Julian conceded bitterly. Without revealing Nell’s nightmares, there is no proof of what he does—and I cannot shoot the bastard down in cold blood. To protect Nell, I would do anything, even let a vile creature like Raoul live. But not free, he thought, not free to kill at will. Never that. The solution escaped him at the moment and unbearably aware of Nell’s trembling body next to his, all he wanted was to get her from this foul place and away from Raoul’s poisonous presence…and that of his dear Aunt Sofia. What part she played had yet to be revealed, but it was clear that she was as guilty as her son—at least as far as the abduction of Nell was concerned. As for the other…Bile rose in his throat at the knowledge that Mrs. Weston had known and condoned Raoul’s actions.

  “So what is it to be?” demanded Raoul. “Either kill me or let me go.”

  “Let us go,” urged Mrs. Weston. “We will go away—far away. You will never hear from us again.”

  The hand Raoul had slipped inside his jacket suddenly came free. Julian glimpsed the pistol in his hand and pushed Nell behind him and fired. The sounds of three shots rang out in the small room, Julian and Charles firing simultaneously.

  Raoul’s shot went wild, smashing into the wall behind Julian’s head, but both Julian and Charles’s found their mark. Shot twice in the upper body, Raoul flew backward, falling to the floor near the sluice hole. His expression incredulous he looked at the blood flooding across his waistcoat and then at Charles.

  Staring at Charles he muttered, “You’ve killed me! Me! Your own brother.”

  His face grim, Charles said levelly, “Yes…as you killed our brother.”