Page 78 of Their Brazen Countess
“Shall we?” Jo urged.
Frankly, her impatience was adorable, no matter how inappropriate the thought was at the moment. Linc turned back and once more led them into the house. The lower floors were well lit, suggesting someone was most certainly in residence at the moment.
Despite that, there were no servants about. The house was eerily quiet.
A noise sounded upstairs, a loud wail which sounded distinctly like a child’s cry.
Jo bolted forward, but Linc caught her before she made it past him. “No. We shall get there in a moment. He’s alive, that’s an excellent thing,” he whispered to her.
His beautiful wife bit her lip and nodded, tears welling in her eyes. Her obvious distress bothered Linc deeply, twanging against the heavy dose of guilt he felt for not having secured Matthew well enough.
It was all his fault.
Pushing the emotion aside for the moment as the hinderance it was, Linc crept forward through the kitchen, spotted the servants' stairs, and pointed as he looked back at Arthur.
His husband nodded in agreement. It seemed the back stairs would be safest at the moment, since there were no servants running about.
They slowly eased up the dimly lit, narrow stairs. It was a good thing they’d rid their bride of her cumbersome skirts. Linc highly doubted she would have fit up these stairs as voluminous as her layers had been.
They reached the first landing and paused to listen. Nothing.
They pressed on. At the second floor, they stopped and listened again. Everything was quiet, but well lit. Someone had been moving around up here recently. The hairs on the back of Linc’s neck stood up, but he went left as he pointed Arthur to the right. Taking Jo with him, the pair of them continued down the hall, stopping to listen at each door. When they heard nothing, Linc eased the door open and peeked inside. Each time, they found nothing.
Soon Arthur joined them, having found nothing down the shorter right side. “Not a sign of—”
Voices—voices two doors down from the room they had just checked. They were muffled, but one was distinctly masculine and the other feminine. They crept closer until they reached the door and Linc could just make out the distinct words of an argument.
“What the hell have you done?” the man’s voice ranted. “It’s just a bloody title. We have enough money to survive on if you’d just stop spending like you were the Queen of England.”
“You fool! That title belonged to you! It belongs to our son, not that misbegotten brat your brother sired on his broodmare,” the woman hissed. “God, you have no spine at all.”
Linc caught Jo and Arthur’s gazes, nodded, then pointed at the door. He counted to three on his fingers then threw the door wide and rushed inside with Jo on his heels. He ran straight for Lord Downs who turned, eyes widening in shock as Linc crashed into him. Jo launched past them, a blur of muslin and green. Downs struggled, his shock clearly giving him a strength Linc was not prepared for. He couldn’t hold him, he was going to fail them again—
Luckily Arthur was there in a flash and together they wrestled the man to the ground.
As Linc had rushed in the room, Jo spotted Bernard’s wife, Agnes, standing beside a crouched and terrified Matthew.
Thought was not necessary. With a screech of rage, Jo launched herself at the woman. “How dare you—get away from my son!”
The woman sneered. “You common whore. You don’t deserve the bloody money and your whelp doesn’t deserve the damned title! It should be Bernard’s!”
Before Jo could slow her hasty progress across the room, Agnes whipped out a small Derringer pistol and raised it toward her—but it was far too late for that to stop her.
With all of her weight and momentum pushing her forward, Jo collided with Agnes, the other woman’s skirts tangled around their legs. They crashed to the ground with a muffled thud on the thick Aubusson carpet. A noise—the gun went off, and Jo felt a burning pain along her side.
Pain. Pain?
“Fuck!” Jo tried to pin the squirming Agnes down, but it was no use. “No—no—”
“Stop!” Arthur had come to her aid and restrained the out-of-control Lady Downs.
Relief flowing through her, along with a sharp agony, Jo crawled off to the side to where Matthew sat curled up in a ball. With tears running freely down her face, she wrapped her arms around her son and tried to bring him into her lap, but the searing pain in her side put that notion to rest almost immediately. Instead, she tucked her legs under her and levered up to her knees so she could cocoon Matthew. Her son wrapped his small arms around her side, and despite the fresh wave of pain that sent shimmering through her body, Jo said nothing. Holding her son was more important than anything else.
“Jo! Are you hurt?” Arthur crouched next to her once he tied up Lady Downs with a torn strip of her own gown. Linc was quickly there as well.
“I’m fine now I have my son back, though I…I do think the bullet hit me.” Jo’s words were muffled, her face buried in her son’s hair.
Arthur reached down and tried to peel her arms away from her son, but she refused to let go, not just yet. “Jo, we need to see to your injury and we should look Matthew over.”
