He had begun to shout louder now as he advanced upon him, the gun still in his hand but shaking, more perilous than it had been even a few seconds before.
‘It’s over, Bowles. Give it up. Take your punishment like a man.’
‘You had everything, don’t you see? You had every single thing that I never did. The friends. The women. The money. The looks. But now I will take it from you because I can.’
‘Get out.’ Nash Bowles shouted this to the carriage behind and when the door opened Eleanor stepped down with her hands held up, Lucy at her side. Nicholas made a point of not looking at them, all the worry and guilt wrapped about his heart.
‘Very well—’ Bowles’s voice had become more flat now ‘—I will grant you one thing, Viscount Bromley. You alone can choose who I save and who I kill.’
The choice of the devil. Nicholas stood stock still and raised his hands high.
‘Kill me. I am the one you want. No one knows anything about the maid from the club. Your secret dies with me.’
The agonising scream from Eleanor distracted them both and it was in this moment that Nick pounced, simply leaping at the man without any fear for himself, the gun Bowles held going off and the bullet whistling within inches from his head to slam into the wide hard bulk of the trunk of an oak.
His leg ached like hell, but he had Nash Bowles, twisting his arm up behind his back. Part of him wanted to finish the job, but he shook his head and reclaimed logic even as Frederick rushed in, grabbing the other arm as Oliver got his feet.
Jacob was with Eleanor and Lucy, his voice coming through the space between them in a soft quiet whisper. They were safe. They were safe. The words beat against Nicholas’s breath in a litany, but then the tunnel of light that he’d fought off began to close around him.
Blood loss, he supposed, for he had felt this before. The rush of sound in his ears, the dizziness, the feeling that his mind was somehow disconnecting from his body and going some place entirely on its own.
Eleanor ran forward, grabbing at his hands from where he lay on the wet cold grass, the rain falling in his face.
‘I...am...sorry.’
He mouthed the words rather than said them. The shaking was getting worse and he was cold, far colder than he had ever been in his life. Colder even than in the Caribou Valley in the north of Maine. It was his fault that Eleanor was here having to deal with this danger and fright, his demons clawing at the ordered and gentle world that she was a part of.
Her tears of fright washed across him, hot against all that was freezing, and he tried to lift his arm, but he could not. Then all he knew was darkness.
