Alexandra’s attention wandered, her mind returning to her dismal preoccupation with the night she met Jordan. Nervously, she glanced around the open field, looking for the man in the black shirt, who seemed to have vanished. A few minutes later, without realizing what she was doing, she began taking inventory of those she loved, watching to make certain they were safely within sight. She looked for Tony and could not see him, then she anxiously sought out Jordan and saw him standing at the perimeter of the woods, his shoulder propped casually against a tree, drinking ale and watching the festivities.
Jordan saw her looking at him, and he nodded slightly. The sweet tentative smile she sent him made him ache with uncertainty and regret. He raised his glass to her in a silent, sardonic toast, then froze at the sound of a vaguely familiar voice in the darkness beside him. “There’s a gun pointing straight at yer head, milord, and another one pointing at yer wife over yonder. Make one sound and my partner will blow her head off. Now, move sideways toward the sound of my voice, right here in the woods.”
Jordan tensed and slowly lowered the mug of ale. Relief, not fear, surged through his bloodstream as he turned toward the voice; he was ready for this long-awaited confrontation with his unknown enemy—eager for it. Not for an instant did he believe Alexandra was in any danger, that had merely been a ploy to make him obey.
Two paces brought him into the enfolding darkness of the dense woods, and another pace ahead he saw the deadly gleam of a pistol. “Where are we going?” he asked the shadow holding the gun.
“To a cozy little cottage down this path. Now get in front of me and start walkin’.”
His body coiled like a tight spring now, Jordan moved another step forward onto the path, his right hand tightening on the heavy mug of ale. “What shall I do with this?” he inquired with feigned meekness, turning slightly and lifting his right hand.
The bandit glanced at the object in his hand for a split second, but that was all Jordan needed. He flung the contents of the mug in the startled bandit’s eyes and simultaneously swung the heavy drinking vessel, bringing it crashing against his assailant’s jaw and temple with a force that sent the surprised villain to his knees. Bending down, Jordan snatched the thug’s gun from the ground, grabbed the stunned man’s shoulders, and yanked him to his feet “Start walking, you son of a bitch! We’re going to take that little stroll you wanted.”
The thug swayed slightly and Jordan gave him an impatient shove that sent him staggering down the path, with Jordan behind him. Reaching into his own pocket, Jordan felt for the small pistol he’d been carrying since he returned to England. Realizing that it must have fallen out of his coat when he bent over his captive, he tightened his grip on its replacement and followed his unfortunate prisoner down the path.
Five minutes later the dark shape of the old woodsman’s cottage loomed up at the end of the path. “How many are inside?” Jordan demanded, even though there was no light showing through the slats of the closed shutters to indicate anyone was there, waiting.
“No one’s there,” the bandit grunted, then he gasped as he felt the cold kiss of the pistol’s muzzle pressing against the back of his skull. “One or two. I don’t know,” he amended quickly.
Jordan’s voice was as cold as death. “When we get to the door, tell them you’ve got me and to light a lamp. Say anything else, and I’ll blow your head off.” For emphasis, he shoved the pistol’s muzzle harder against the frightened man’s skull.
“Right!” he gasped, stumbling slightly as he rushed up the steps in his haste to escape the touch of the gun. “I’ve got him!” he called out in a low, frightened voice as he kicked at the door with his foot. It swung open on rusty, squeaking hinges. “Light a damn lamp, it’s black as pitch in here,” he added obediently, standing in the doorway.
There was the sound of tinder being struck, a shadow bent toward a lantern, light flickered— In one swift motion, Jordan struck his captive’s skull with the butt of his pistol and sent him sprawling to the floor, unconscious, then he straightened his arm, leveling his pistol at the stunned figure bending over the flaring lantern.
The face staring back at him in the lantern’s glow nearly sent him to his knees with shock and pain.
“Jordan!” his aunt said wildly. Her gaze flew toward the far corner and Jordan instinctively spun, crouching, and fired. Blood spurted from the chest of his aunt’s other hired assassin, who clutched frantically at his wound and toppled to the floor, a gun dangling uselessly from his limp hand.
Jordan spared the man only a brief glance to ensure that he was dead, then he turned his head and looked at the woman he had loved better than his own mother until one minute ago. And he felt . . . nothing. A cold, hard core of empty nothingness was growing inside him, strangling every other emotion he’d ever felt, leaving him incapable of feeling anything—even anger. His voice devoid of all expression, he asked simply, “Why?”
His quiet, polite calm so unnerved his aunt that she stammered, “W-why are we going to k-kill you, you mean?”
The word “we” brought his head up sharply. Going swiftly to the dead man in the corner, he snatched the loaded gun from his hand and discarded the empty one he’d been holding. With the loaded gun ruthlessly trained on the woman he had once adored, Jordan walked to the doorway that opened off the room they were standing in and glanced into what appeared to be a small bedchamber. It was empty and yet his aunt still seemed to think he was going to be killed and, moreover, she had specifically said “we.”
And then it dawned on him who she was probably waiting for, and he felt the first sparks of fury begin to ignite inside him: His cousin and possibly his wife were apparently expected here to see that he was properly finished off this time.
Walking back into the main room, he said in a cold, deadly voice, “Since you’re obviously expecting reinforcements, why don’t we both sit down and await their arrival.”
Doubt and panic flickered in her eyes, and she sank slowly onto the crude wooden chair beside the table. With exaggerated courtesy, Jordan waited until she was seated before he casually perched his hip upon the table and waited, facing the closed door. “Now,” he invited silkily, “suppose you answer some questions—quickly and briefly. The night I was waylaid outside Morsham was no random accident, was it?”
“I—I don’t know what you mean.”
Jordan glanced at the familiar face of the unconscious thug who had waylaid him that night and then at his aunt. Without a word, he lifted the gun he was holding in his crossed arms and pointed it at the terrified woman. “The truth, madam.”
“It wasn’t an accident!” she cried, her eyes riveted on the menacing pistol.
The gun lowered. “Go on.”
“N-neither was your impressment, although you weren’t supposed to be impressed, you were supposed to die, except you’re—you’re so very hard to kill!” she added in a tone of anguished accusation. “You always had the devil’s own luck. You—with your money and your titles, and your strong, healthy legs, while poor Bertie is a cripple and my Tony a virtual pauper!”
Tears began spilling from her eyes and she whimpered furiously, “You had everything, including luck. You can’t even be poisoned!” she cried, her shoulders shaking. “And we couldn’t a-afford to hire more competent people to kill you, because you have all the money.”
“How very thoughtless of me,” Jordan drawled with bitter sarcasm. “Why didn’t you simply ask me for money. I’d have given it to you, you know, had I dreamed you needed it. Not,” he amended caustically, “to have me killed, however.”
* * *
“Grandmama,” Alexandra said a little desperately, “do you see Jordan anywhere? Or—or that man with the black shirt and red kerchief around his neck?”
“Alexandra, for goodness’ sake,” the duchess said in exasperation, “why are you constantly fidgeting and asking me to look about for people? Hawthorne is somewhere nearby, you may be sure of that. He was there by that tree, drinking a m
ug of that dreadful potion, but a moment ago.”
Alexandra apologized, tried to sit still and remain calm, but a few minutes later she could no longer quell the unexplainable, rising panic she felt.
“Where are you going, dear?” the duchess asked when Alexandra abruptly arose and shook out her skirts.
“To look for my husband.” With a rueful little laugh, Alexandra admitted, “I suppose I’m afraid he’ll disappear again, the way he did a year ago. Silly of me, I know.”
“Then you do care for him, don’t you, child?” the duchess said fondly.
Alexandra nodded, too uneasy about Jordan’s whereabouts to try to salvage her pride with a noncommittal answer. Her gaze shifted restlessly over the crowd as she picked up her skirts and began walking toward the place where she had last seen him. Tony was nowhere to be seen, but Melanie and John Camden were walking toward her, arm in arm.
“Wonderful party, Alexandra,” John Camden admitted with an abashed grin. “I’ve never had as good a time at the fanciest affairs in the city.”
“Thank you. H-have you seen my husband anywhere? Or Tony?”
“Not in the last fifteen minutes. Shall I look for them?”
“Yes please,” Alexandra said, raking her hand through her hair. “I’m really in a sorry state tonight,” she admitted, by way of an embarrassed apology. “I keep imagining things—earlier today I actually thought I saw a man up in one of the trees over there. And now Jordan seems to have vanished.”
John Camden smiled and spoke in the soothing voice one might use with an overwrought child. “We were all together but a few minutes ago. I’ll find them and send them to you.”
Alexandra thanked him and hurried off toward the table where heavy pewter mugs of ale were being served. Passing it, she nodded at one of the scullery maids, and then walked over to the tree where Jordan had been standing. With a last glance at the milling partygoers in the clearing, she turned toward the woods and hesitantly began walking down the narrow path. Telling herself she was being fanciful and silly, she stopped after a few paces and looked about her, listening intently, but the sounds of laughter and fiddles from the clearing behind her drowned out the forest noises, and the thick branches overhead blotted out all the light, making her feel as if she were standing in an eerie void that contained only noise but no life.
“Jordan?” she called. When there was no answer, she bit her lip, her forehead furrowed into a worried frown. Intending to go back to the clearing, she started to turn, and it was then she saw the tankard lying in the path at her feet.
“Oh my God!” she whispered, snatching up the tankard and turning it over. A few drops of ale poured out of it. Wildly, she looked about her, expecting—hoping—to see Jordan lying in the path, perhaps passed out from too much drink, as Uncle Monty had occasionally done. Instead, she saw a small gleaming pistol on the side of the path.
Snatching it up, Alexandra whirled around and let out a stifled scream as she collided with a hard masculine body. “Tony! Thank God it’s you,” she cried.
“What the devil’s wrong?” Tony said, gripping her shoulders hard in his anxiety as he steadied her. “Camden said Jordan’s vanished and you saw a man hiding in the trees.”
“I found Jordan’s tankard of ale right here and a gun on the ground near it,” Alexandra said, her voice and body trembling with terror. “And I saw a man I think was the same one who was trying to kill Jordan the night we met.”
“Go back to the clearing and stay in the light!” Anthony said sharply. Snatching the gun from her hand, he turned and ran down the path, vanishing into the deep woods.
Stumbling over a thick root growing across the path, Alexandra raced back to the clearing, intending to get help rather than find safety. Wildly, she looked around for Roddy or John Camden, and seeing neither she ran straight toward one of the cottagers who had taken a brief respite from the shooting contest and was staggering toward the ale table in the same state of cheerful inebriation as the rest of his fellows. “Yer grace!” the man gasped, snatching off his cap and starting to execute a bow.
“Give me your gun!” Alexandra demanded breathlessly, and without waiting for him to hand it over, she snatched it out of the stunned man’s hand. “Is it loaded?” she called over her shoulder, already racing toward the path.
“Shore is.”
His breath labored from a long sprint down the path to the forester’s cottage, Tony put his ear to the door, listening for sounds. Hearing none, he cautiously tried the latch, and when it stuck he reared back two paces and rammed his shoulder against the door with enough extra force to send it flying wide open. Off balance because the door had opened so easily, he staggered into the cabin, stumbled, and stopped short, his mouth falling open in shock. His mother was seated stiffly upon a chair in front of him. And beside her, sitting on the table, was Jordan. In his hand, Jordan was holding a gun.
It was pointing straight at Tony’s heart.
“W-what the hell is going on?” Tony burst out, panting.
Tony’s arrival demolished the last slender hope Jordan had clung to that Alexandra and his cousin had not conspired to end his life at this party. In a soft voice of deadly menace, he said to Tony, “Welcome to my party, cousin. I believe we’re still expecting another guest this evening to make the party complete, aren’t we, Tony? My wife?” Before Tony could answer, Jordan added, “Don’t be impatient—she’s bound to come looking for you, thinking I’ve been safely disposed of, won’t she? I’m sure of it.” His silken drawl suddenly became clipped. “There’s a bulge in your pocket which is undoubtedly a gun. Take off your coat and throw it on the floor.”
“Jordan—”
“Do it!” Jordan bit out savagely, and Tony slowly obeyed.
When Tony had dropped his coat on the floor, the point of Jordan’s gun shifted slightly to the left, indicating the chair lying on its side by the shuttered window. “Sit down. And if you move an inch,” he warned with frightening calm, “I’ll kill you.”
“You’re mad!” Anthony whispered. “You must be. Jordan, for God’s sake, tell me what the hell is going on.”
“Shut up!” Jordan snapped, his head tipped toward the sound of footsteps on the cabin step. More than anyone, his rage was directed at the girl he had been obsessed with for over a year—the scheming liar who had made him believe she loved him, the little bitch who had lain in his arms and surrendered her eager body to him; the beautiful, laughing, unforgettable barefoot girl who had made him believe that heaven was a stream with a picnic blanket beside it. And now, he thought, with a wrath he could barely contain, she was about to fall into his clutches.
The door creaked open, slowly, a few inches; a familiar lock of mahogany hair peeked through the opening, then a pair of blue eyes that widened like saucers as her gaze riveted on the gun in his hand.
“Don’t be shy, darling,” Jordan said in a voice so low it was a deadly whisper. “Come inside. We’ve been waiting for you.”
Expelling her breath on a rush of relief, Alexandra pushed the door wide open, stared at the fallen thug, then rushed forward as Jordan stood up. Tears of fright streaming down her face, she wrapped her arms around him, the gun in her hand forgotten. “I knew it was him—I knew it! I—”
She cried out in surprised pain as Jordan wrapped his hand in her hair and viciously yanked her head back. His face only inches from hers, he bit out, “Of course you knew it was him, you murderous little bitch!” and with a cruel jerk of his wrist, he flung her sprawling onto the floor, her hip landing painfully on the gun in her hand.
For a moment, Alexandra simply sat there, staring at him through fear-widened eyes, unable to assimilate what was happening.
“Are you afraid, sweetheart?” he jeered smoothly. “You should be. Where you’re going, there are no windows, no lovely gowns, no men—other than a few jailers who’ll avail themselves of your delectable little body until it becomes too gaunt to interest them. Hopefully, it will hold their interest lo
nger than it held mine,” he added with deliberate cruelty.
“Don’t look so surprised,” he said, misinterpreting the reason for her shock. “I’ve bedded you because it was necessary to keep up the sham of the unsuspecting husband —not because I wanted you,” he lied, feeling an almost uncontrollable urge to murder her for her treachery.
“Jordan, why are you doing this?” Alexandra cried, then recoiled in terror from the blaze in his eyes when she called him by his given name.
“I want answers, not questions,” Jordan snapped. Estimating that it might be another ten minutes before Fawkes realized he was missing and last seen heading in this direction, Jordan relaxed against the table again, his weight braced on one foot, the other swinging idly as he turned toward Tony. “While we’re waiting,” he invited smoothly, pointing the gun at him, “suppose you fill in some details for me. What else has been poisoned in my house?”
Tony’s eyes lifted from the gun in Jordan’s hand to his relentless features. “You’re mad, Jordan.”
“I wouldn’t mind killing you,” Jordan said thoughtfully, raising the gun higher as if he was about to do it.
“Wait!” his aunt screamed, casting desperate glances at the empty doorway and beginning to babble. “Don’t hurt Tony! H-he can’t answer because he d-doesn’t know about the poison.”
“And I suppose my wife knows nothing about it either,” Jordan inserted sarcastically. “Do you, my dear?” he asked, the barrel of the gun shifting toward Alexandra.
Disbelief and fury drove Alexandra slowly to her feet, clutching her gun in the folds of her skirts. “You think we’ve been trying to poison you?” she breathed, staring at him as if he had kicked her in the stomach.
“I know you have,” he countered, enjoying the anguish he saw in her eyes.
“Actually—” Bertie Townsende drawled from the doorway, his gun pointing straight at Jordan’s head, “you’re wrong. As my hysterical mother is undoubtedly about to confess, I’m the one who conceived these effective— admittedly, not successful—plots to rid us of you. Tony hasn’t the stomach for murder, and since I have the brains of the family, if not the legs, I’ve handled the planning and the details. You look surprised, cousin. Like everyone else, you assume a cripple can’t pose a significant threat to anyone, don’t you? Drop your gun, Jordan. I have to kill you anyway, but if you don’t drop it, I’ll kill your charming wife first, while you watch.”