Page 103 of The Duke and Lady Scandal
The only reply was snide laughter. “Hate is too simple. It is a complicated loathing.”
Allie heard the faint echo of other men’s voices beyond the walls of the room.
“Loathing doesn’t seem very rewarding if you never achieve your ends.”
From the grate, she heard rustling and then a long, irritated sigh. “But I have achieved every end I wished for. I thought you clever, but it seems I was mistaken. And I might say the same for your detective.”
“Then why not leave us alone and find someone clever to torment?”
Laughter came again, booming around the room. So loud Allie reached up to cover her ears.
All she could think about was Ben. She knew he’d try to get into the house, that he wouldn’t stop until he got to her, but she feared what he might face. Beyond the behemoth at the door,she suspected there were more men guarding this madman.
She lifted her hands from her ears. The laughter had stopped, but she could hear the spine-chilling sound of breathing through the grate.
What did he have planned for them that would evoke such maniacal laughter?
Walking toward the wall furthest from the grate, she slid down to the floor, her legs splayed in front of her. She should have taken Ben’s revolver. Or kept a knife in her boot. Eve probably kept a knife in her boot. Dom surely did.
Tipping her head back against the wall, she closed her eyes.
Shouting beyond the wall caused her to flick her eyes open again. She turned, pressing her ear to the wall, and her heartbeat rioted.
Ben’s voice. He was shouting, and then she heard the thud of footsteps and the crash of furniture.
She closed her eyes again, feigning fatigue, and listened intently.
A sound came that she hadn’t heard in years, and tears welled in her eyes. Someone had fired a gun, and soon after a chorus of shouting ensued. Maddeningly, she could not make out anything clearly. It was as if the walls were stuffed with cotton wool.
She glared at the grate in the wall, unsure whether the madman could see her or only speak to her through some mechanism, the way some servants’quarters in the wealthiest households had speaking tubes connected to their masters’ suites.
If any harm came to Ben, she’d claw through the wall to get the cowardly phantom of a man.
Not only was the pain sharp, but it was hot too. As if all the blood in his body had rushed to the spot.
The bullet caught his arm near his bicep. But he still had use of it, and his fingers worked fine too. As soon as he’d gotten out of his overcoat and suit jacket, it became clear that the bullet had grazed him.
His own bullet had done much worse.
They’d fired almost simultaneously, and M’s man went down with a resounding thud. Once Ben had kicked the man’s pistol away, he’d been unable to rouse him.
Though he had no time for it now, guilt sat waiting on his shoulders for him. He hadn’t meant to take a life, only to capture one man.
His constables had three other men in shackles, but they insisted the man Ben shot was the one who’d taken Alexandra to one of the rooms. He’d been questioning and threatening them for the last ten minutes while trying to staunch his blood with a bit of torn shirt from his other arm.
“Try the blue room,” one finally mumbled.
“Where’s that?”
“Hidden inside that room.” He stared across from Ben at what looked to be a ballroom.
Ben strode inside and realized that the roomwas an illusion. Mirrors lined the walls to make it seem larger, but it was truncated, and there was a door between two mirrors. So flat and unadorned that it blended into the rest of the wall. But a gold latch glinted and caught his eye.
Twisting it, he pushed in and thanked Christ he’d found her.
She shot to her feet, looking scared and confused, and she ran into his arms.
Ben caught her with his uninjured arm and pulled her out of the room.
