30
In the lamplit Drummond Parlor, the ticking of the mantel clock competed with the soft patter of rain beyond the lacy curtains and glass panes that shut out the night. The soothing quiet was broken only by the dry rustle of the Edinburgh paper Drummond was reading and the regular click of his sister’s ivory knitting needles. It was late, the child already asleep, the clock’s hands nearly touching half past the hour of eleven.
A sound, heavily muffled but unmistakable, brought Drummond to his feet, the newspaper flying in all directions.
A shot He waited, but only for an instant. The image in his mind sent him headlong out into the small hallway. Brushing past the mirrored hat stand, he flung open the outer door and plunged into the rain, running hard.
His sister, calling his name, reached the door he’d left standing wide and leaned out, demanding to know what he thought he was doing.
Over his shoulder he shouted, “Go back inside, woman!”
But at the door of The Reivers, Drummond stopped, putting out his hand cautiously to touch the latch.
He’d seen her only that morning, she’d surely do nothing so rash-it wouldn’t save Fiona The latch lifted, and his heart began to thud.
She had the other key Kicking off his shoes, he swung the door open, tensed for whatever stood behind it. What if there were the two of them here-what if she had shot him? They’d hang her too!
Nothing happened. There was nothing in the darkness.
He listened intently, begging the silence to talk to him, to tell him if one person-or two-had come here…
No sound except for his own breathing, and the blowing of the rain against his back. The wind was picking up a little; he could feel it across his shoulders.
Making his way into the entry, he moved forward one step at a time, soft-footed in his stocking feet. The hair on the back of his neck standing on end, his eyes wide against the pitch-blackness, concentrating on the stairs just ahead of him.
But it wasn’t dark enough here Another step. On his wet skin he could feel the air from the open door that led from the family’s quarters into the side of the bar.
It had been closed before-he’d closed it when he fed the white cat.
Stretching out his hand, he could feel the frame of the door. Moving cautiously, he leaned forward to stare into the bar.
For an instant he thought he heard a word spoken softly.
A white smudge on the floor at the far end of the bar- The cat, then.
He took another step, unsure where the voice had come from, and in the same instant, his toe nudged something blocking the threshold, immovable, nearly tripping him up.
Startled, Drummond dropped swiftly to his knees, praying hard now.
“Don’t let it be her-please, God-”
His fingers found the rough fabric of a man’s overcoat.
A sudden gust of wind and rain blew into the open doorway behind him, shaking him, crouched and defenseless there. He flinched away.
Even as he realized that it was only the rain, his heart seemed to choke him, rising in his throat like a stone.
He reached for the coat again, found an arm-the warm blood soaking a shoulder-a face. Trying hard to find a pulse, he thought, She has shot him-not herself.
But his fingers touched the blade and then the handle of a knife instead. Protruding grotesquely from the throat.
Someone spoke.
Drummond jerked to his feet, and then saw in the pale square of light from a window that someone sat in a chair twenty feet away.
“Madelyn?” Drummond called softly, unconsciously using her given name as he’d done when she was a child. “What’s been done, then? Are you hurt?”
His voice seemed to roar through the stillness of the room.
The slumped figure in the chair didn’t answer.
Reading the awkward angle of the one shoulder he could see, Drummond hurried forward, right hand outstretched as if to ward off a blow.
The figure didn’t move. Drummond leaned down to touch the shoulder, and the head fell back. In the pale light, Drummond made out Rutledge’s profile.
His eyes were open-dark patches in a bone-white face Drummond, startled, fumbled for Rutledge’s throat, fingers slipping beneath the collar.
A pulse, faint, erratic. His hands moved down the front of Rutledge’s coat, where the white shirt was black with wet blood.
Shot, then, and barely alive. They’d all but killed each other Relief flooded through him, so sudden and wild, he felt light-headed with it. But not her. She was safe.
He bent to snatch up the crumpled white cloth he could just make out beyond Rutledge’s feet, and too late realized that it was gripped in hands that were soft, long-fingered. A woman’s Drummond began to pray again, raggedly and disjointedly, pleas tumbling over each other in his head. His hands ran over the body, the shoulder, the face, the silken hair.
He sprang to his feet, made his way to the lamp that was always kept on the bar, found it, and managed to light it on the second try.
Its gold-and-blue flame leapt up so brightly, he was blinded.
And then his gaze moved beyond the glass chimney and he saw the carnage all too clearly.
Holden, in the doorway. A pistol still clutched in his right hand, a skean dhu piercing his throat, projecting at an odd angle from front and back, cutting the great artery as cleanly as butter. Drummond whistled softly.
Rutledge, in the chair. Shot and barely alive, head forward now, his eyes closed.
And Madelyn Holden, lying almost at the Londoner’s feet, what appeared to be a child’s lacy christening gown still strained to her breast.
The men were soaked in their own blood.
There was none on her Drummond went to her, kneeling beside her, lifting her into his arms, crooning to her as a mother would croon to an ill child.
But the weight of her body, without buoyancy and life, the open eyes that didn’t focus on his face, told him the truth.
A surge of primeval pain ripped through Drummond, and he cried her name again, pulling her against his chest, bending his head over her, rocking her body with his, shaking with tremors that broke into deep, harsh sobs.
And he nearly missed the words.
He’d forgotten the man in the chair. Looking up, he realized that Rutledge must have spoken. But not to him.
Hardly words, more a murmur. “The pipes have stopped-”
Here was the only one left alive to tell him what had been done in this dark room Tears wet on his face, Drummond gently lowered Madelyn Holden’s body to the floor again, stumbled to his feet, and went to Rutledge.
The pulse in his throat was no more than a thread now, the breath so shallow, it seemed not to exist.
“You shall not die!” Drummond thundered in unconscious echo of Hamish’s voice. “Not here! Not till I’ve finished with you-!”
He curled his arms under Rutledge’s shoulders and then his knees, grunting as he lifted the unresisting weight.
Muscles straining, Drummond made his way to the door, stepping uncaring over Holden.
Tommy Braddock stood just outside, a large black umbrella over his head. The rain had subsided, but a cold wind blew, whipping the skirts of the coat he’d thrown on over his nightclothes.
