“I think you will find Lady Elizabeth is not the helpless little creature you perceive her to be. Why do you think she sleeps alone at her great age?”
Even in their situation, she would huff up. He could envision the indignant pucker on her brow, and it brought a twitch to the corner of his mouth.
He had piqued Merót’s curiosity. Valen crossed his arms casually to put the Frenchman off guard. “No. She’s no rabbit. More of a marmot.”
“Ha!” Merót waved his hand to Elizabeth. “You see, the insensitive Englishman—he insults you, my lady. This marmot, it is a ground squirrel, no?”
“Hedgehog,” she muttered plaintively. Valen felt her lean her forehead against his back.
He grinned. “A unique creature—the marmot. Deceptive. She has hidden fangs and claws.” He demonstrated the claws coming out. “And her tongue...” He shook his head gravely. “It is pure poison.”
“C’est la vie, it is thus with all women.” Merót shrugged, unimpressed. “This is foolishness—”
“Ah. But the marmot is deadly. A man doesn’t stand a chance. At night, she climbs up into the trees, waiting for her unsuspecting quarry, and then—”
Elizabeth guessed what he planned to do. Rather than a marmot leaping, it would be Valen. Surely Merót would see it coming. How could he not?
A shot blasted through the darkness. Roaring with death. And then another blast. And another. Blazing orange flashes. Elizabeth lurched forward to catch him. Valen would fall against her. Dead.
Three shots. Her ears still rang.
Three.
It made no sense. Elizabeth’s mind skipped around in time. What had happened? A flash of light from the door. She turned. Lord Ransley teetered in the entrance, a pistol in his hand, smoke curling around the double barrels.
He coughed, grabbing the top of a chair to balance himself, and fought back a spasm, faltering as he stumbled forward to stand over the fallen body of the French spy.
“Good evening, son. Does this finish up your small administrative affair?” he asked cynically and nudged the dead man with his toe. “One to the head. Thought I missed that first shot.” He glanced up at his son. “You were too long-winded by half, Valen. Thought you were never going to make your play.”
“If you’d waited...” Valen’s arm went around Elizabeth, hugging her to his side. He murmured in her ear. “Are you unharmed?”
She nodded and saw it then, a red stain spreading on his white shirt. Her throat seized.
His face bent to hers, his mouth moved in soft sounds that twisted her stomach in answering pain.
“The marmot wins,” he whispered and chuckled faintly before he collapsed.
“Dear God, no,” she cried out. “No. Valen! No.”
Elizabeth caught him as he collapsed against her.
Funny, Valen had thought, how everything slows to a crawl in moments like these. He’d seen it before, on the continent in the heat of battle.
He had spotted his father in the doorway, bracing himself for a shot. Time began to crawl. Valen heard the hammer fall, glimpsed the tiny spark, and saw the fire flare out from the barrel of the gun. The pistol sang out and the ball struck its mark.
What Valen didn’t expect was the blaze that spouted from the end of Merót’s gun as the Frenchman fell back. A bolt of light streaked in his direction. A second shot bellowed from his father’s gun and brought The Fox down.
Izzie’s scream resonated off the walls, stabbing his eardrums, making him want to shout to silence her. Just when he figured he would be deaf for a fortnight, a voice penetrated his numbness.
“Thought you would never make your play.” It was his father, scolding him for waiting too long, his voice slow, protracted, his motions distant, removed, as if Valen watched it all from the end of a murky spyglass. His ears hummed, buzzed.
Fire burned in his upper chest. He glanced down and saw the ring of blood. He’d been hit. Instantly he turned, fearing the ball might have passed through him and struck Izzie as well.
He put his arm around her. She seemed steady but ghostly white in the milky illumination from the window.
He could no longer stand straight. The effort cost too much. So he leaned against her, hoping to smell her sweet scent instead of the acrid gunpowder. Allowing his head to droop toward her neck, he breathed in one more time. Vanilla and roses. He would take the memory of it with him to the place consigned for him in the next life.
“The marmot wins,” he whispered, thinking it somehow funny. But she didn’t laugh. Her stricken expression whipped him. His strength whistled away.
The last thing Valen felt before blackness overtook him was the incredible softness of her breast against his cheek as he slid down toward a whirling abyss. She called to him, but he had no power to answer.
Some defiant part of him fought to hold on—tightening his grip on the thin cotton of her nightdress. If only he might stay a moment longer, he would die and be satisfied. She cried out his name. It sounded so very far away.
Vanilla and roses.
Raven black hair.
The face of their son that did not yet exist.
Her breast against his cheek.
All these images swirled together, spinning faster and faster until the whirling gray swallowed him up.
21
Darning
Elizabeth managed to heave Valen onto her bed. The room filled with servants, lighting lamps, exclaiming over the shocking scene, and Lord Ransley fell into a coughing fit.
Elizabeth ripped open Valen’s shirt. A bloody hole above his left breast marred his broad chest. She whimpered, unable to hold back the small cries that kept coming from her throat. Charred skin and the smell of blood curdled her nostrils. The familiar bilge in her stomach began to rise, but she shoved fear aside and gritted her teeth. No!
No time for that nonsense.
Anger that this should happen to him and an overwhelming determination to set it right
