“Eliza would be witness!” Harold cried in a voice pitched higher than a schoolgirl’s.
“Miss Penfold, to you,” Darius warned him. God, how he yearned to put a bullet in the dandy. From what he’d heard, Harold’s only power lay in his father’s wealth and title. Neither of which impressed Darius at all.
“I saw nothing,” the brave lady confirmed. “I would also hear nothing. In fact, I wasn’t even here.”
“You really are a bitch,” Harold said, his eyes narrowed, his fists clenched.
“I’ve heard enough,” Darius said, and with a wave of his hands, his men escorted a bleeding earl and his furious heir back to their horses. He added as they marched off, “Come back here, and I’ll happily kill you both.”
“You will pay for this,” Wickham said once he was mounted, blood still trickling from his nose.
Darius wondered if he’d indeed broken the bone. He hoped so. The man who had sired him was damned lucky Darius had hit him and not shot him. Fleeting surprise lurked that Wickham bled red just like the rest. He’d almost expected blue. “Perhaps. But it has been rather fun. If ever you feel the need for a proper trouncing, come by the house. I’m sure you recall the direction.”
Before the earl could counter, Wes gave the horse’s rump an almighty slap. The animal reared, with Wickham holding on for dear life, and then the beast took off, gravel and snow spraying behind as he went. Harold kicked his heels to his own mount before his horse received the same send-off. The fact that they rode and didn’t bring a carriage seemed strange to Darius. Perhaps the two were staying close by. Damn.
No one moved until the sound of hooves on frozen pebbles faded but then all at once, his men were laughing and slapping each other on the back.
Marcus turned and addressed Eliza. “You should have let me kill the little one. I’d not like to hear that voice of his again.”
Darius turned with a smile but then it fell from his lips. Eliza had no colour at all, her face a sharp contrast to the gun she still held at her shoulder.
“You can put it down now,” he told her gently, his hand going to the top of the barrel with a slight amount of pressure.
She flicked him off and then swung the gun to his own face. Darius gulped but didn’t back down. He’d been there in that position several times before. He was no stranger to threats on his life.
“What are you doing, Eliza?”
“You aren’t who you say you are.”
He sighed. “I didn’t ever say who I was.”
“Are you a pirate?”
He bristled. Not because she had found him out so much as because she had believed his sire’s words. “I am not. I was, many years ago, but now I am a captain of a legitimate ship. I sail for an American company, for Deklin Montrose.”
“Why are you here?”
“I brought you the trees you wanted yesterday because I thought your ankle might still worry you.”
“No. What are you doing here, in this part of the country? In England? What do you want?”
“Nothing from you,” he was quick to assure her. That was only a lie if her father could not pay in coin.
“Something from my father? If he owes you money, you’ll have to wait like all the others.”
“Others?” His blood chilled and he almost shivered. “Eliza, what is going on here? How many times have you had to warn men away from your door? And don’t tell me this is the first—I’ll not believe it.”
Finally her weapon lowered and aimed for the ground rather than his heart. He didn’t feel any measure of relief. “How many times, Eliza?”
She shook her head. The rifle fell from her fingertips and she swayed. “I…”
For the second time in two days, her warm body fell into his arms, light as a baby chick’s, only this time it was dead weight. The bloody chit had fainted. Her head fell back as he lifted her.
“Duncan, get the door. We have to get her inside.”
“Shouldn’t we wait?” he asked.
“For what?” Darius hissed.
“I don’t bloody know. A butler or a footman or something?”
“There is no one here.” He was absolutely sure of that. “If there is a man on the other side, I’ll kill him for letting her defend her house and her honour on her own like that.”
The men scurried to do his bidding. Marcus went first, followed by Duncan and then Wes took up the rear, his pistol still held high.
The door opened easily enough, not having been locked behind Eliza while she stood with a rifle aimed upon her intruders. Darius’s blood boiled in his veins when he thought about what could have happened to her out there. Just because his father and hers were titled gentleman, it didn’t mean she would receive special treatment when the men in his so-called family were desperate and there was not a soul around to witness their treatment of her. He wouldn’t trust either man as far as he could spit.
“In here,” Wes called from down the shadowed hall.
The house was comparable to a mausoleum. Only it wasn’t even fit for the dead. He glimpsed snow. Inside. On the bloody tiled floor. He thought it might actually be colder inside than out.
Wes had discovered the library where a small fire burned and blankets and bedding were strewn all over the floor. He laid Eliza down on a faded yellow settee with small moth-eaten holes in the fabric. “What the hell is going on here?” he muttered as he looked down on her. In sleep she almost looked at peace, her pale frown lines smoothed out, her full lips relaxed rather than pinched, but the deep, dark shadows under her eyes were even more pronounced.
Why would a young lady of sound breeding, her father a duke, be so tired, no, exhausted? Was she sick? And where the hell were
