Page 126 of The Captive Duke
Gilly’s whole being suffused with revulsion at the sight of Marcus, the embodiment of the same casual violence her husband had harbored, in a yet more malignant form.
“So you’ll kill me in cold blood, before witnesses,” Christian mused, “when I have no comparable weapon?” He took a fistful of Gilly’s cape, pulling her behind him and into St. Just’s arms, Stoneleigh’s curricle beside her.
“Hewas supposed to kill you in France,” Marcus said, jerking the barrel of an ugly horse pistol toward Girard. “Anduvoir promised me he’d arrange for that.Then I learned the generals always sent their best prizes off to Girard for special handling. I was a fool to trust a bloody Frog with something so important. Then you had to go and outlast the entire war and take up with her.” The gun barrel waved toward Gilly, and Christianand Girardboth shifted to step in front of her.
“So you tried to engineer Gilly’s death,” Christian said, “and you failed at that too.”
“Of course I tried to kill her. If she dropped a brat within a year of Greendale’s death, I would have been disinherited of the personal fortune. A male child would have seen me lose the title as well. The alternative was to live as a pauper at Greendale and hope you hadn’t taken an intimate fancy to her.”
“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.
Fighting for them.
A shot rang out, obscenely loud in the cool morning air, and the scent of sulfur wafted on the breeze. Gillystood 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 tobe silent,” 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.”
