Page 104 of What's an Earl Gotta Do?
All it would take was a mere flick of Scudamore’s wrist, and Michael would die. There would be nothing she could do, nothing except cradle his beautiful face in her arms as he bled to death on the floor. Her knees started to buckle, and she caught herself with her shoulder against the doorframe. She managed to straighten, able to hear nothing but the roar of her own heartbeat thundering in her ears.
The thought of Michael dying was agonizing. It was unbearable. It was a thousand times worse than dying herself. She didn’t want to live without him, she—she couldn’t live without him, she—
Oh, God.
An image sprang to mind, as clear as if it had happened yesterday, of that fateful picnic from all those years ago, and of fifteen-year-old Michael smiling as he rolled on top of her. In an instant of clarity, she finally understood, finally admitted to herself that when she had closed her eyes, she hadn’t just been thinking he was going to kiss her, but hoping that he would.
... my favorite person in the whole entire world...
... I can’t survive without you…
... the very finest man I know...
And all these years, she had told herself he was her best friend.
How could she have been so unbearably stupid?
And now she was the only one who could save him. Oh, God, why could it not be anyone but her? This was exactly like one of Harrington’s horrible shooting exercises, the ones she always failed, except it was a thousand times worse, because it was real, and it was Michael. Her hands were shaking with terror, and her palms were so slick she almost dropped her pistol as she pulled back the hammer.
“Let. Him. Go,” she said, with as much conviction as she could muster as she strode through the door.
“Well, well, well,” Scudamore said. “Lady Wynters. Isn’t this touching? It’s a shame, because I was planning on marrying you. And now I’ll have to kill you instead.”
“I would rather be dead than married to the likes of you,” Anne said, her voice quavering.
“That can be arranged, just as soon as I’ve dispatched Morsley here.”
Anne tried to line up her shot, but it was hard, given that Scudamore was cowering behind Michael, using him as a shield. She started as she realized—that was why he hadn’t done it, why he hadn’t cut Michael’s throat. Because as soon as he did, she would have a clear shot.
He wouldn’t kill Michael so long as she had her gun trained on him. He couldn’t.
She had a chance.
All she had to do was make this shot.
She peered at Scudamore, searching for a target. Michael was tall enough that he blocked him completely. The only parts of Scudamore’s body that were exposed were the hand that held the knife and his forearm, which was wrapped around Michael’s shoulder. Even if she made the shot to the arm, the bullet might very well pass through Scudamore and go straight into Michael’s chest.
She could target his hand, which hovered just above Michael’s shoulder. But if her aim was the tiniest fraction off, she might very well shoot Michael in the throat.
Her shoulders slumped. Oh, God, she couldn’t do this. No matter how hard she tried, she never came through when it really mattered. She was going to fail, and the price of her failure would be Michael’s life.
She looked at his beautiful face through her tears, wanting to memorize it.
What she saw brought her up short. Because Michael’s face didn’t hold any of the things she had been expecting—regret, farewell, and sorrow for the lifetime they wouldn’t get to spend together after all.
Instead, she saw joy. Relief. Confidence.
He—he trusted her to take the shot. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind.
He believed in her.
And in that moment, she decided she wasn’t going to be that person anymore, the one who failed, the one everyone dismissed, the one who always missed the shot. More precisely, she realized she had never been that person in the first place. Who she had always been was the heroine Michael trusted to save the day, the lady Archibald Nettlethorpe-Ogilvy respected, the woman the people of London called a virago, their virago, the one they summoned in their darkest moments, because they knew she would always fight for them. She was not the one who stumbled; she was the one who got back up, the one who tried again, the one who never gave up.
The one who won in the end.
That was who Michael saw when he looked at her, and she realized that he was right. That was who she was, who she had really been all along.
A calmness descended over her. The hands that had shaken just seconds ago were steady. She could not fail Michael. She would not fail Michael. She refused to live without him, and how dare Scudamore hold that knife to his throat! She focused everything on her target, squeezed the trigger...
