“You needn’t worry about it at all,” Eliza assured her. “Darius was merely scaring us. We won’t be shooting anyone. Nathanial is going to give me the pistol and I will lock it away in Father’s desk so it can’t hurt anyone.”
“No,” Nathanial said quietly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“He was right about one thing. You should not have been out there with those men. I should be protecting you. Not the other way around.”
“I was perfectly safe. What would they have done? I had the rifle.”
“And it had no bullets!” Nathanial cried, his usual boyish calm cracking to make way for a temper Eliza had barely ever witnessed. “We could have a cannon out on the drive but with no balls, it is just a cannon and wouldn’t scare a weasel. What if the earl and his son do return and we still have no funds and no sick father upstairs? We don’t even have an upstairs anymore!”
Ethan began to sob on the settee. Grace did her best to comfort him while Gabriella stood between her shouting siblings. “Arguing will not do any difference here. Eliza was right. We could not go with him today.”
Eliza just didn’t know what else to say. She’d thought they were all in it together. Partners with a secret so huge it might destroy them all if not handled carefully. She knew they should have gone with Darius, of course she knew. They needed help, but she had to discern how much information he had in hand before she delivered their fate to a stranger. She was saved an answer when there came a loud knock from the front door.
The very last thing they needed were more surprises or visitors.
“I’ll get—”
Nathanial cut her off. “No. I will answer the door. You take the children and get out of sight.” He raised the pistol before his body, drew a deep breath and then walked out into the corridor.
Eliza ushered the three children back into the hidden tunnel behind the hearth and closed the timbers quietly, Ethan too frightened to argue about demons or darkness.
She peeked out into the corridor next to the great stairs, leading only to a ruined landing, and gasped. Darius’s men had returned but not empty-handed. They lugged in three huge pine trees and set them on the black and white tiled floor, snow still clinging to the branches and leaving dirty puddles as it melted.
The heavily bearded one spoke as he pulled his woollen coat closer around his ears. “Lock this door and don’t be opening it again, you hear? And hold that pistol at the ready, no good to you pointed at the ground. I’ll be back later with supper but I’ll use the window in your sleeping quarters.” He looked past Nathanial to make eye contact with Eliza. “Any time you change your mind and want to sleep without the fear, you just let us know. Send the boy through the forest to the house and we’ll come back for you.”
Her eyes burned and the lump in her throat was welcome. Eliza nodded but didn’t trust herself to speak. She was too afraid she would crumble and fold and beg them to take her siblings to safety.
Perhaps Darius’s scare tactics were working after all.
*
Two days later, Darius and Marcus found themselves all fancied up and perched uncomfortably on little bench seats outside of a solicitor’s office in London on a dank and dark afternoon. Thank God the Duke of Penfold’s previous valet still lived in the village bordering both his new home and the Penfold estate. It had taken only a few coins to get the disgruntled former employee to give Darius the direction he needed.
He had asked himself a thousand times on the hard ride to the capital why he pursued this line of inquiry but the duke’s letter changed everything. Now that Eliza and her family were to play such an integral part in his plans, he had to know exactly what and with whom he dealt.
When Deklin Montrose, his employer and friend, asked him to return to England and retrieve funds owed him by three gentlemen of great worth and importance, Darius had been keen for the challenge. When he’d discovered one of the ‘gentlemen’ was his father, he’d jumped at the chance for a little revenge on the side, a chance to make his sire miserable if only for a short time. He hadn’t expected to be given the house of his childhood in return for one man’s debt. He certainly hadn’t expected the third man to be dead and offering so much more than mere money for his.
The letter the young Ethan had saved for him held more complications than he could have imagined and he was glad the boy hadn’t revealed it to his siblings earlier. The Duke of Penfold had certainly laid a great deal of groundwork down before putting that bullet in his head.
Inside the still-sealed envelope was a special licence to marry and a letter stating that in return for his portion of the debt owed Montrose Shipping, Deklin was to take the duke’s daughter’s hand in marriage and the dowry that would come with her would settle almost everything between them. What had started out as a sound investment for three men with serious penchants for gambling had turned into a nightmare too hard to handle for all parties involved. The envelope also held the suicide note that would absolve Eliza and her brothers and sisters, all held together with the ducal seal pressed into wax next to Penfold’s shaky signature.
Darius had sworn long and loud when he’d read Penfold’s last words. He was in so far over his head and felt as though he was drowning in the messy complications. When he’d shared the information with his three closest confidants, they’d sworn alongside him.
Marcus had come up with the most logical of their first steps, always the serious
