Simon stiffened as she rushed air into her lungs. Every footfall jarred her panic. The need to run, to hide, was so overpowering she flattened her back against the beam and drew her knees to her chest.
“Georgina, look at me.”
She met his eyes with so many tears she could not even see him.
“I will do whatever it takes.”
The lock rattled, then two sets of boots clomped down the stairs.
Mr. Wilkins hung a lantern from an overhead beam, even though the room was still light enough to see. Rupert shrugged off his wet tailcoat and slung it to the floor.
Then he towered over her, hoisting her to her feet.
“Let her alone.” Simon’s words shrilled. “I’ll give you what you want if you let her go.”
“You tried that before,” growled Rupert. “Didn’t work.”
“I told you the truth.”
Mr. Wilkins nodded in her direction. Rupert’s knuckles plunged into her stomach, pain exploding. She doubled over with a cry, but his knee smashed between her eyes.
Blackness dimmed her vision.
Vomit hurled to her mouth, as her body was slung back against the beam and hands circled her throat. Ringing reverberated in her ears, but then it faded, and she comprehended the noise.
Simon writhing like madness at the ropes.
Roaring so loud the veins protruded from his neck, and fury reddened his face, and his chair teetered on two legs with his last raging lunge.
Both men turned on him, one with a gun.
Georgina screamed.
CHAPTER 19
If they touched her again, he would die.
All his muscles cramped, all his organs burned, as he stared into the round, black point of the pistol.Shoot.The plea plunged through him, because with Simon dead, they would have no gain in beating her.
“He does not have it.” The gun wobbled in Mr. Wilkins’ hand, the only evidence of his discomfiture. “I told you one day this would happen. That we would be unable to go back.”
Rupert cursed. “He’ll talk.”
“It is too late.”
“Enough of your devil and brimstone—”
“This is no sermon, Roo.” Mr. Wilkins stepped closer to the chair, his voice as fond and scolding as if he was ordering children to cease running in the hall. “I know him.”
That gutted Simon.
The acknowledgment that they had lived side by side, in the same house, smiling at one another and sorting through Mother’s things and cherishing the same memories—
“If he had known the whereabouts of the letter, he would have caved. For his children and again for Miss Whitmore.” A knot bobbed in his thin neck. “He would not have disposed of such a thing. Not with the revelations it contained. Which means he did exactly what I feared all along.”
“I’ll ruin her face until he cracks.”
“A wasted effort if he has already mailed the letter to someone else.” Mr. Wilkins dragged a sleeve across his rain-dampened face. “You could not admit such a thing, I know, Master Fancourt. Because if you did, it would leave us no choice.”
