Page 70 of Her Runaway Duke
Ignoring the throbbing in her hip, she tried to inch herself backward to continue her work, hopeful when it seemed that her hands were a little looser.
Perhaps she could do this after all.
That’s when she smelled the first hint of smoke.
And panic burned within her.
Levi could hardly believehis eyes at the building that stretched up in front of him.
He had known that many of the buildings along the Thames were rather derelict, but this one looked as though it was ready to fall over at any moment.
Anger spurred him forward as he rode up to the door, giving Lucky a pat and a promise to reward him for all of his hard work before tying him on the rail away from the building.
“Siena!” he called, his heart pounding as he knew there was no way that she was here alone, that someone had to have forced her here. He could only pray that she had been left unharmed.
His boots had just hit the bottom stair when the door swung open, the barrel of a gun the first thing he saw.
Relief flooded through him when he saw the identity of its holder.
“McGregor!” he said, wondering how his valet could possibly have arrived before him but grateful, nonetheless. “Thank goodness. You found Siena. How is she? Is she all right? Is she injured?”
“She is fine,” McGregor said, a strange expression twisting his face. “For now.”
“What do you mean?” Levi asked as a surprising sense of unease crept over him. “What is happening, McGregor? Where is Siena?”
He began to push past his annoyingly confusing valet to find his wife, but McGregor shocked the hell out of him when he dug the pistol into his ribs.
“Stop.”
“Stop? You are aware that you answer to me,” Levi said, hating to pull such rank, but he did pay the man’s salary after all. The least McGregor could do was provide him the explanation for why he couldn’t enter the building.
“Not anymore,” McGregor said, his expression twisting his face to the point that Levi hardly recognized him.
“Move. Aside.” Levi would determine what had so changed McGregor later, but for right now, he had to find Siena.
“I don’t think you understand,” McGregor said, lifting the shotgun now and pointing it at Levi’s head. “You are not going inside. You are here for an altogether different reason.”
“McGregor, have you gone mad?” Levi growled, his impatience and disbelief mounting. “Did someone pay you to turn against me? Lord Sterling?”
“Yes, as it happens, but it didn’t take much convincing,” McGregor said, butting him with the shotgun and forcing him backwards, walking him all the way to the bank of the river. The waves lapped behind him, and Levi disjointedly wondered if he was going to shoot him here. It would make for an easy clean up.
“Nor am I going to follow through on my end of the deal. You see, I’ve been waiting a long time for this opportunity. I never thought the day would come. You were miserable – the way it should have been. But then I see you walking around with a smile on your face, a spring in your step.” He let out an inhuman bellow. “I couldn’t take it anymore!”
Levi was stunned into silence, wondering where this man had come from, how McGregor had lived with him, helped to take care of him, been one of his closer friends, and yet harbored so much hatred against him.
“McGregor, what did I ever do to you?” he asked disconnectedly. “We served together. When you had no one to return to, I gave you a job, a home.”
“It was all fine until you killed him,” he answered, his voice filled with vehemence.
“Killed who?”
“Your brother.”
Pain washed over Levi in a wave, as well as all of those feelings of guilt that had consumed him over the past year. It seemed Siena’s words had somehow gotten through, however, for it was not quite as dark as it had been in the past – more grief than guilt this time.
“I didn’t kill him,” Levi said quietly, having an inkling of what had caused such pain in McGregor. He had guessed his brother preferred his own sex, not that it was something they had ever spoken about. It did explain a lot. “I did everything I could to save him. I am sorry that you have felt such loss. I understand it more than you know.”
“You understand nothing,” McGregor growled out. “But you will.”
