Lowering his voice and leaning even farther forward, Harold whispered, “I saw you burn his body.”
Darius launched himself at his brother, his arm squeezing tight around Harold’s neck as he dragged him down to the floor. He held his own wrist with his other hand and applied pressure until he heard the breath wheeze from his half-brother’s lungs and felt the drag of manicured fingernails down his coat sleeve. “I hope I heard you wrong, brother.”
Footsteps thundered into the room but not a soul intervened. Darius didn’t look up. He didn’t ask for help nor want it. Harold feebly thumped his arm but Darius did not let go. “Never will you touch Eliza. Never will you be allowed in that woman’s company or that of her siblings. When the Duke of Penfold emerges from his sick bed, I hope he calls you out for this crude attempt at blackmail. If you breathe a word of this to anyone, I will kill you myself. Do you understand?”
The thumping continued but Darius only squeezed tighter. “Nod if you understand.”
He felt it against the crook of his arm, against muscles that did not want to relent. This pitiful excuse for a man had already tried to ruin at least one life and Darius would drive his dagger into his brother’s heart before he let it happen again.
It could end right here, right now. His brother’s wouldn’t be the first life Darius had squeezed from a man. They could gather up another funeral pyre. Have themselves another bonfire.
All at once, Darius let Harold go and shoved him away before jumping to his feet while the other man lay on his back trying to draw oxygen into his lungs. A dozen of his men stood in a semi-circle but there was only one face he saw as the red-hot haze of fury cleared from his vision. The pale countenance of his wife stared back at him, terrified and silently asking questions he couldn’t answer.
Darius addressed his men. “Make sure this piece of horse shit is removed from my carpets and sent on his way. If he returns, shoot him before his foot touches the drive.” To a seasoned sailor named Victor, he murmured softly, “Have him followed. I want to know where he runs off to lick his wounds.”
Taking Eliza by the elbow, he propelled her from the room before Harold could lay his greedy, depraved eyes on her vulnerability. He transferred his grip to her hand as he overtook her and pulled her up the stairs to their bedroom. If she was going to fall apart, he wouldn’t have anyone witness the break.
“He knows,” she mumbled all the while. With each step her words became quieter, more desperate, more scared until the two words were but a whisper of breath wrenched from her shaking body.
*
Visions of Ethan growing up under the vicious hand of the Earl of Wickham almost made Eliza retch. She knew she couldn’t blame Gabriella for their predicament but if their father was still alive—and he very well could have been since his self-importance probably would have stopped him from pulling his own trigger—they would only be knee-deep in filth rather than drowning in it.
“What are we going to do?”
Darius leaned against the back of the door and watched her pace. “We are going to do nothing for the moment.”
“But Harold knows, which means Wickham must also know.”
“I don’t think he would have shared the information just yet. He came here to try to get at your dowry on his own, without the earl finding out first. Marcus is on his way to London with your father’s previous man of business as witness that your father did indeed sign our documents.”
She was taken aback. She knew Marcus had left but the rest? “How did you achieve that?”
“Penfold hadn’t paid him or been kind. It took but a small bribe and the promise of a position as groundskeeper for this house for the rest of his life or as long as he does what he is told, which are actually one and the same.”
“You make it sound so simple but it isn’t. I feel as though we are only a hairsbreadth away from complete ruin.”
“You are that close, Eliza, but if you show men like Harold how you dangle from the precipice, he will assume some form of cunning and push us over. The fight is not over until the situation becomes so hopeless we must give in or die.”
“We can’t give in.”
He took her cold hands and gave them a gentle squeeze. “We never will. I never will. Men like Harold and Wickham believe people can be traded, sold and hidden away so that their problems disappear with the bodies but that isn’t so. We know that isn’t so. This time they will not win.”
“We have to do something,” she insisted, the fear in her belly so great she thought she might be sick.
“We have to stay strong. Show my men and the children that we have everything under control. But then we have to leave.”
Eliza stopped pacing and met his gaze. “Leave?”
“We must. I know you want to stay, see Nathanial to the title, but you won’t make it. None of you will.”
She only nodded. He was right. Why did he have to be so right?
For weeks she had known it was the only sensible course of action. It was the main factor for marrying a foreign stranger in the first place, his means of fleeing to a new country where England couldn’t reach them. It wasn’t admitting defeat, it was surviving, and it was something Eliza was growing to be quite adept at. “When should I tell the children?”
“Not yet. Not until the ship is repaired and ready to take the tide. Nothing changes and no one panics. No one acts rashly or irreparably. Including you.”
“I don’t know if I can keep lying to them.”
“For years you have been their mother and not
