The man ran his fingers over a rose. “Thorns, your Grace. Wherever there is beauty, there will inevitably be thorns, don’t you think?”
Confused, the Duke simply nodded.
“Just as wherever there are pleasures, there are always pains to bring trouble as well.”
This was rambling talk, realised Colly. The man wasn’t making much sense at all. “And yet the fragrance and beauty of the rose is worth a scratch or two, isn’t it?”
“I wonder.” He strolled around again, ending up facing the Duke, on the other side of the central garden feature. It was a thick planting of greenery, a stand of flowers with a small birdbath topping the whole arrangement. It concealed Barrett from the chest down.
The Duke froze, realising that if Barrett was armed, he could draw his weapon before it became visible. He, the Duke, was a sitting duck.
He tensed, his shoulders straightening. He had to believe that everyone in the house was focused on Barrett and that should he do anything so foolish as to attempt an attack, he’d be immediately brought down.
“Are you a rose or a thorn, Maidenbrooke?” Barrett’s voice was a little louder now as he stared at the Duke.
“I…cannot resolve such a question, sir,” he replied. “It makes little sense…”
“It does to me.” The answer shot back, filled with contempt. “You are definitely a thorn. You bring pain and trouble wherever you go.” It was a hiss now, but a loud one. “Just ask my sister.”
“Your sister cried off our engagement. You know that. It was nothing to do with me.”
“She wouldn’t have if you’d been nicer to her,” came the response. “It was your fault, not hers. You drove her away and into making a terrible mistake.”
The Duke shook his head. “You are in error, sir. That is nowhere near the truth.”
It wasn’t clear if Barrett even heard him. “And I’ve made sure everyone knows what you’re doing with your groats, my fancy lord Duke. It’ll be some time before the mud you’ve brought down on the Maidenbrooke name gets washed away. If ever.” That was a sneer, and Barrett’s face disclosed his hatred.
“Why, Sir Timothy? Why did you put out such calumny? Why spread lies about me? What did I ever do to you?”
“You live, damn you. I lost everything I had because of you and your failure to become a husband to my sister. Don’t you think that’s more than enough…?”
He spat the words, a curse, an exclamation revealing the depths of his hatred. And as he did so, he shook his cane. The cover flew off, exposing a slender gleaming blade.
The Duke stilled, and the seconds stretched into impossibly long moments as Barrett moved his arm and aimed the sharp weapon through the flowers at Colly’s heart.
His focus narrowed down to that shining point and he instinctively moved backward. But before Barrett could thrust it, Ivy screamed, distracting the man enough to throw him off balance.
With flurry of gown and bonnet she tore across the brick walk, throwing herself toward Colly…and then…
A shot.
Definitely a shot. But from where? Inside? There was confusion as people ran all over the place, and suddenly there was a loud thud. The Duke turned toward the sound and saw the workman lying prostrate on the tiles beside the fountain.
Standing over him was Prudence, holding a cricket bat like a club and glaring down at the body at her feet. “It’s Streatford,” she shouted, never taking her eyes off him. “He’s the one with the gun. He shot at you, Uncle Colly.” She kicked him for good measure.
At that point, utter pandemonium descended on the Maidenbrooke back garden.
Everyone left inside the house rushed out, all talking at once. The Duke, his arms full of his wife who persisted in making sure he wasn’t injured, tried to see who was where and what was happening.
Two men in dark jackets were holding Barrett firmly, and looking rather smug since everything had gone pretty much according to their plan. A third was frowning and walking toward the inanimate body of Streatford—which hadn’t been planned, nor even anticipated.
“It’s all right, Prudence,” he called. “They’re from Whitehall.”
His niece stared at him, maintaining her grasp of the cricket bat, blinking as she absorbed his words.
“They’ll be taking Sir Timothy away with them now. They have some questions about his contacts in the north. He’ll not trouble us again.” He tried to reassure her, then tried to suppress an inappropriate laugh at the sight of his niece holding a cricket bat over an unconscious man while various members of the nobility wandered around, armed to the teeth. It was a somewhat strange moment in time. “Prudence my dear, you can let them have Streatford too.”
“Are you sure? Should I hit him again just to be on the safe side?”
“Er…Miss?” One of the Whitehall gentlemen approached her with caution. “You can put that down now, Miss. He’s out cold.”
Prudence pouted, but relaxed her stance.
Colly opened his mouth to say something, but was distracted by his wife’s hands all over his body.
“You were shot…” she kept patting him. “Somebody shot you, Colly.”
He took a second or two to discover if anything hurt. “No, I wasn’t…I’m not shot, Ivy…the bullet must have missed me.” He looked at her, then gulped. He untied her bonnet and held it in front of her face. “You—you—good God, Ivy. What were you thinking? Look…”
Miles came up to them at that moment and he too stared.
In the very centre of the raised and ruffled brim, right between the rows of emerald green
