Bloody damsels in distress.
They did it to him every time. It was as if his conscience and his morals were a magnet to women in need of protection but at the same time not wanting of it.
No one needed him. They never had.
Or perhaps it had nothing to do with the women so much as it was his fate to end up like this. Back in the place where it all started with no more money in his hand than he’d had when he was fourteen and lured away to be beaten and thrown on a ship going nowhere. Perhaps the life meant to be his as a bastard son was the only life he could ever have and the taste of freedom and the chance to be someone in America was nothing more than a cruel joke of the gods?
Time would tell but exactly as Eliza had said, while there was breath in his body and a choice to be had, his would be to stand and fight. He would never lie down and die like the dog his father treated him as. If he had to battle to the very last beat of his heart he would. Whether it was for the hand of Eliza Penfold and the money in her bank or the war to regain the shores of the land he now called home, he would fight and he would emerge the victor.
Chapter Eight
The one thought in the mind of Eliza Penfold the next morning, after a fitful sleep comprising mostly sharp words and soulful hazel eyes, was that she had survived. They had survived. Yet another night had passed and the five of them had lived to see another day. No one had been murdered in their sleep. No one had frozen solid or starved to death. They were another day closer to Nathanial’s birthday, another day closer to the relative safety of a title and a measure of freedom for her siblings. Not for her though.
Even though she had denied Darius the day before, she knew her future lay in his hands, possibly even at his side. With the scandal of her past, and the inevitable one to be revealed in the coming weeks, her days in England were numbered. She longed for the sun on her face rather than on the back of her head as she constantly looked over her shoulder. Despite the fact that she hadn’t actually fired the bullet that had killed their father, if it came to it, if it came down to blaming someone who was still alive, she would say she did.
Darius could take her far away from England. If needed, Nathanial could tell one and all that his sister had cracked, killed their father and then fled the country. She would change her name and start again. She and Darius could obtain a divorce and they could go their separate ways. In her mind, the matter was simple. Two whole months of long days and dangerous nights was not.
Smothering a yawn behind her hand, Eliza called to Grace, “What about a game of chess?”
The children were bored and had begun to bicker. They wanted to go outside but she had forbidden it. Between Darius’s men hiding in the garden and Wickham’s threats hovering, they were best served to stay in the house.
“I don’t see why I can’t take the children out for a walk,” Nathanial complained with a yawn only slightly larger than Eliza’s had been. “I have the pistol; we’d be safe.”
“Against one foe, but not many, and I won’t have the girls running about with all of those men out there. You need to sleep, brother. You cannot go on like this.”
“I am quite—”
His words were cut short when the window next to where Nathanial stood exploded in a shower of glass, the loud and unexpected noise shattering the quiet of the afternoon. Not even a second passed before another window gave way and showered the room with yet more sharpened debris. Grace screamed as Gabriella, Nathanial and Eliza all hit the floor, dragging Ethan down with them.
Before anyone could move, another window smashed but this time there was an accompanying thud against the opposite wall. “Away from the windows,” Nathanial shouted.
Someone was shooting at them. When it stopped raining glass, Eliza heard the gunfire, shots in the distance from one side of the estate to the other. “Into the tunnels,” she ordered them. “Stay low!”
“I’ll stay back and hold them off,” Nathanial declared, the pistol still in his hand.
“No,” Eliza told him, one eye on her brother and sisters and the other on a boy not old enough or strong enough to protect them all. “Let Darius’s men take care of them. We have no idea how many are out there.”
“We can’t run away from this.”
“Yes, we can. We must. Think about what will happen to us if you were to die, Nathanial.”
Another bullet, another window, another argument in his eyes but then the fear took over and he gave in with a nod. Shuffling over broken glass, her hands cut and bleeding, Eliza managed to get them all into the tunnels and the secret door closed. She leaned back against the timbers and let out her breath in a whoosh.
Tears burned her eyes and the lump returned to her throat. They were doomed and she had done it to them. She should have accepted Darius’s words and gone on with her scheme, weathered the ensuing consequences with as much grace as she could instead of making him dance to her tune. She already knew the sharp bite of scandal; she could handle more of it. She was the daughter of a duke and had learned to hold her head high no matter what.
But if they all
