Page 112 of Beneath the Devil's Mask
“Don’t come any closer,” Nick snarled. “Get back to hell where you belong. I am taking Lady Fairhaven with me.”
“No, boy. I have endured enough of your defiance. You have already dishonored me past all bearing.”
“I dishonor you?” Nick gave a wild laugh.
As the duke came closer, something in his movements again gave Anne a ripple of unease. Then she realized what it was. It was the cane, the silver-handled walking cane. He was carrying it. He had no need of its aid, his step steady and sure.
“Lady Fairhaven’s well-being concerns you not,” the duke said. ”Leave while you still may.”
He tugged at the cane’s handle and a swordstick unsheathed in a lethal hiss of steel. Anne’s blood turned to ice as she realized the mistake she had made, a foolish fatal mistake. She realized it even as Nick thrust her behind him and shouted, “For the love of God, Anne. Run!”
He charged at the old man, but the duke was too swift for him. Like an arc of lightning, the sword flashed. Anne cried out as he drove the sword through Nick’s shoulder.
She heard Nick give a guttural cry, watched his face go white with shock. The sword yet buried in his flesh, he leaned upon the duke’s shoulder for support. For one moment, horror at what he had done flickered over the old man’s features. Then he wrenched his sword free. Nick screamed. As he sagged onto the steps, Anne pressed her fist to her mouth so hard she tasted her own blood, but she felt too numb to notice the pain, or to be aware of anything save the crimson stain spreading over Nick’s waistcoat.
Whatever remorse the duke might have known, Anne saw that he had already shuttered it away beneath his heavy eyelids. He watched his grandson’s lifeblood flow out with a curious kind of detachment.
The sight pushed Anne beyond the realm of horror, beyond any fear for her own safety. Galvanized into movement, she rushed down the steps to Nick’s side. Ignoring the old man who hovered over her, the bloodstained sword still gripped in his hand, she stripped off the frock coat she wore.
Bundling it up, she pressed it to Nick’s shoulder to stop the bleeding. Nick groaned, his mouth clenching with pain.
“I tried to warn you, boy,” the duke said. “But you have always had a habit of rushing into things headlong, never taking heed of sage advice.”
Anne glanced up at him, unable to believe he could stand there and observe Nick’s agony so calmly.
“Can you not see how badly you have injured him?” she cried. “You must go and fetch someone to help.”
For all the response she received, the old man might have been made of stone.
“He is your grandson,” she said fiercely. “I don’t care what else you may have done. You cannot allow him to die.”
The duke produced a laced-edge handkerchief and proceeded to wipe Nick’s blood from his sword. It was most strange, Anne thought. It had been hard for her to imagine Nick Drummond as a murderer, but she had no difficulty casting His Grace of Windermere in that role.
“There is an old saying, my dear,” he said in his low cultured accents. “It goes something like, ‘If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out.’ I have just done so. Drummond is no longer any kin of mine.”
“He is mad, Anne,” Nick panted. “Get out of here. Save yourself.”
Anne shook her head, trying to apply more pressure to Nick’s wound.
“Is it madness then?” the duke asked. “To attempt to defend what is yours, to try to preserve the world you have always known?”
“That’s your justification for murder?” Nick rolled his head to one side, whether to escape the pain or simply because he could no longer abide the sight of his grandfather Anne could not tell.
She was a little heartened to realize that she had managed to stop the flow of blood. Glancing toward the front door, she prayed for Mandell’s imminent return and calculated her chances of being able to escape and rouse some help from one of the houses on the Strand. Could she possibly make it down the stairs before the duke attempted to cut her down? Even if she were able to do so, how could she abandon Nick to the mercy of a man who was clearly dead to any human compassion?
As though guessing at her thoughts, the duke shifted his position behind her so that he now completely blocked the stairs, toying with his sword.
“At least let Anne go,” Nick murmured. “She is no threat to you.”
“On the contrary, Lady Fairhaven poses the greatest threat of all.” The old man’s icy facade cracked a little, some of his bitterness seeping through. “I bred Mandell to be as hard and polished as a diamond, to accept the rights and privileges that are his due. But she has changed him, softened him and inflicted him with some sickly notion of love.”
“I am glad that I have,” Anne cried.
“It is the same curse that destroyed his mother, lured my Celine away from me to die.”
“Lured! She probably fled from you. If you raised her with as much heart as you’ve shown Mandell, how I would have pitied that poor lady.”
The duke’s eyes flashed dangerously. “My proud Celine would have had no need of your pity. Any more than does Mandell.”
