Page 128 of The Captive
“Marcus, you cannot prevail here,” Christian said. “Too many witnesses can testify to your violent schemes.”
“But with you gone, I will be tried in the Lords, and they never convict one of their own. Besides, who will take the word of a reviled Frenchman, a Scottish traitor, or a lawyer over that of a peer of the realm?”
Marcus raised his pistol, the muzzle aimed squarely at Christian.
Rage unlike anything Gilly had felt toward her deceased spouse suffused her. Marcus had known exactly the circumstances Greendale had forced on her. Marcus had destroyed Christian’s family, preyed on Lucy, and he intended now to domurderin cold blood—
Gilly did not think. Her hand closed around Stoneleigh’s buggy whip, an elegant length of black leather with a corded lash several feet long. She darted around the men shielding her, raised her arm, and brought the whip down with all her strength across Marcus’s face.
“For Christian, damn you,” she spat, raising her arm again. “For Helene, for Evan—”
Nothing had ever, ever felt as right as striking Marcus with all her might, as seeing outrage and disbelief twist his handsome features while she raised three angry red welts on his cheeks and nose.
She, Gilly, the least powerful of his present adversaries, would hold him accountable for his crimes. Theblissof striking him, of hurting him when he’d planned harm to so many, gave her endless strength and a towering indifference to her own fate.
He shifted, of course, away from Christian, to defend himself against Gilly’s whip, and his aim shifted as well.
Between landing the third blow and raising her arm again, Gilly perceived that she would in fact die. The ugly snout of the horse pistol took aim at her, the distance was a handful of feet, and she would in the next moment breathe her last.
So be it. Christian and Lucy would live, Marcus’s crimes would be exposed, and Gilly would die protecting those she loved.
Fightingforthem.
A shot rang out, obscenely loud in the cool morning air, and the scent of sulfur wafted on the breeze. Gilly stood clutching the whip, inventorying her body for pain, shock, anything.
Girard blew smoke from the end of a pistol, and surprise bloomed on Marcus’s face amid the lacerations Gilly had given him.
While a bright red stain spread over the center of his chest.
He looked at the wound then at Girard, before crumpling on the ground in a heap.
Gilly dropped the whip and wrapped her arms around Christian, while Stoneleigh turned to quiet the horses, and St. Just approached the body to lay his hand on Marcus’s neck.
“Dead before he hit the ground,” St. Just said, closing Marcus’s eyes with curious gentleness.
Girard passed the gun to his second, much as he might have passed a spent fowling piece over in the middle of a pheasant shoot.
“This does not reconcile our accounts. I understand that, Duke.” Girard ambled over to Marcus’s prone form and extracted something from his watch pocket. “I am, however, rid of a portion of my guilt.”
“Tell him tobesilent,” Gilly said, pressing her nose to Christian’s chest. “I cannot bear to hear his stupid, French-accented voice. I am not myself, and I cannot answer for my actions. Christian, I struck Marcus, I gloried in striking Marcus. I would still be beating him if—” She couldn’t talk and get her breath, and still she held on to Christian.
“Gilly, hush. Please hush. You’re safe.”
The violence reverberated in her, part horror, part surprise, and also—God help her, God help her—part relief.
“Hold me. Don’t ever let me go.”
“I have you.” Christian’s chin came to rest against her temple, and his fingers made slow circles on her nape. He pitched his next words to a whisper. “Unless you need to be sick. Most soldiers are, after their first battle. I certainly was, even though, like you, my first battle was a resounding victory.”
She canvassed her physical state, and if anything, felt as if she’d purged herself of a toxin. “I need you to hold me, and tell Mr. Stoneleigh to retrieve his whip.”
Heat and cold shivered through her, weakness, and wonder.
She could fight back. If she had to, if she ever again found herself endangered,shecouldfightback.
A woman who could fight back could manage to stand unassisted, though Christian only turned loose of her enough to dab at her cheeks with his white handkerchief.
“Apologies for the intrusion,” Girard said. “Mercia, I believe this is yours.” He tossed what looked like a blue-and-gold signet ring to St. Just. “And, my lady, you do not know the lengths I traveled to keep your duke alive when my superiors clamored to have him quietly executed or worse.
