Scarborough turned, a look of confusion on his face. “Yes?”
Just as Jason was about to respond, a flash of silver caught his eye.
He spun around, shoving Scarborough from harm’s way as he drew his rapier from its scabbard. “I arrest you in the name of the king,” he cried, startled to hear how his voice carried. “You will put down your weapons and wait here for the magistrate.”
The music stopped, and as one, the wedding guests turned to watch. Jason’s grip tightened on the hilt of his sword. “Now, Gothard.”
The disguised man’s gaze held hard and unwavering. “We meet again,” he drawled through the bushy brown beard. “My nearest and dearest enemy.”
Words familiar to Jason. Familiar and enraging. “Once and for all, why should you call me your enemy?”
Gothard’s sunburned features went tight with resentment. His blue eyes narrowed. “You have what should rightfully be mine.”
“Rightfully yours?” Again Jason had the feeling he’d seen those eyes. Befuddled, his head swam. “I have nothing that is yours. And because of this misconception, you’ve been following me, trying to kill me?”
“I never wanted to kill you,” Gothard said with a smile—a cold one. “Only to enjoy some of your riches. They should have been mine. Including your girl.” The familiar eyes turned as cold as the smile. “I’d have taken her long before now if you’d ever left her alone.”
Jason ignored the threat to Cait. She was safe. But he swiped at his missing mustache, infuriated.
All the disguises and hiding, and Gothard had never been out to kill them. Just playing hide-and-seek.
“And Scarborough?” He nodded in the man’s direction.
“Him I want dead.” The wild sheen in Gothard’s eyes said he wasn’t sane. “With him dead, Wat inherits and I get what I deserve.”
What he deserved was questionable at the moment. He was well and truly mad. “What about what I deserve, Gothard? What do I owe you and why?”
“May you roast for all eternity.” Gothard moved forward, then pulled back when Jason brandished his sword. “Both you and the father we share.”
Confusion and anger coursing through him, Jason advanced. “We share nothing!” He circled the tip of his rapier, then sliced it hissing through the air in a swift move that brought a collective gasp from the wedding guests.
The blade’s thin shadow flickered across the candlelit parquet floor. His mind whirled with thoughts of little Mary, her mother Clarice, Cait and her brother Adam…all the blood, the irrational violence.
With a roar, Gothard lunged, and the first clash of steel on steel rang through the ballroom.
“I was born first,” Gothard yelled. “It should be mine, all mine!”
He slashed wildly, catching Jason’s sword across the middle. The vibrations shimmied up Jason’s arm. Muscles tense, he swung and thrust, and again steel bashed against steel. His heart pounded; blood pumped furiously through his veins.
What Gothard was saying couldn’t be true. He couldn’t be this demon’s half brother.
They scrambled onto the dance floor, and the crowd scurried back. Gothard was cornered, but Jason was incensed. He would never believe it, never. He edged Gothard back against the wall. Gothard took sudden advantage, and Jason found himself retreating as their blades tangled, slid, broke free with a metallic twang.
His arm ached to the very bone. Perspiration dripped slick from his forehead, stinging his eyes. But the other man’s breath came hard and ragged.
Measuring his foe, Jason put his all into one determined swipe of his sword, and Gothard’s went clanging to the floor and skittered into the crowd of gaping spectators.
“I came not to kill today, Gothard, but merely to see justice done.” Jason sucked in air, smelled the other man’s desperation. “There are those here who will see to it you won’t escape.”
An affirming murmur came from the crowd, and men jostled forward, hands going to their hilts.
Jason waved them back. “Tell me what you said isn’t true.”
“It is true. And you won’t live to enjoy what should have been mine!” Gothard went into an all-too-familiar crouch, coming up with a pistol in his hand.
In a flash of blue velvet, Scarborough leapt forward and knocked the gun from his older brother’s grasp. It went flying, barely missing a minister’s head as it sailed though a window with a startling crash. “You won’t live to kill again, brother.”
Scarborough nodded at Jason, who moved in.
An inhuman howl of rage escaped Gothard as he rammed past Scarborough and flung himself into a knot of matrons. Screams erupted and rainbow shades of satin and silk swirled in a colorful kaleidoscope as wedding guests darted out of his path. He burst through the doors that led to the garden, broken glass crunching beneath his feet as he disappeared into the trees.
Within a heartbeat Jason was after him, chasing him along a graveled path. Footsteps pounded behind him; he assumed they were Scarborough’s and kept running. This time he wouldn’t fail. Even should he have to do the unthinkable, he wouldn’t let Gothard get away.
But first he needed answers.
His lungs burned with the effort to catch up. Confound it, Gothard was fast. But not fast enough. Gothard might be running for his life, but Jason was fueled by implacable fury and a resolve born of weeks of frustration. His muscles pumped with determination; his jaw gritted with iron will.
His quarry was nearly within reach.
He pulled up short when Gothard staggered to the ground.
He hadn’t registered the sharp report of the bullet. But he turned to see the pistol that had shot it. And the woman on the other end of it.
Emerald MacCallum.
It hadn’t even occurred to him that she was after the reward when he saw her at the inn. He’d thought only of Cait. Now he looked to the ground and Gothard’s still, lifeless form. He dropped to his knees and felt for a pulse.
Dead. Gothard was dead. He frantically searched the limp body, for a letter, a miniature, anything. Anything that would prove or disprove what the man had claimed.
“He was telling the truth,” Scarborough
