Chapter 28
Mary picked up her sheer skirts and ran through the empty halls of Kerr House. It was muffled, but she had heard it. Gunfire.
Her lungs burned and her muscles ached with the force of her effort. She ran past several startled servants, but she did not care what they thought. Gabe was in trouble.
Please don’t let him be dead, please don’t let him be dead!
She ran through one doorway and then another, finally coming upon the door leading to the back garden. She had to slow her momentum to pull the door open. Not bothering to close it behind her, she burst through the doorway and out into the bright sunlit back gardens.
Instinct told her where to find him: the ruins. Her feet carried her between the hedgerows, between the beds of flowers, and onward. The birds chirped, the butterflies flittered, but Mary paid them no heed; she just ran.
Rounding the hedge of a maze of some sort, Mary ran directly into a large tree—oh dear.Not a tree.A man!
Her head buzzed briefly as she blinked at the solid form.
“I beg your pardon,” she said breathlessly, staring into the man’s impeccable cravat.
“Mary!”
Her startled gaze flew upward and directly into the stunning golden eyes of her friend Sir Bramwell Stevens.
“Bram! Oh heavens, did you hear it, too?”
“Yes. I was on my way to see who it was.”
Fear still gnawed its way through Mary, but an odd sense of calm stole over her at the sight of her friend. “I believe it was Gabe. I do not have the time to explain, however. I must go to the castle ruins. They’re just beyond the garden walls, on top of the hill.
Bramwell nodded.
“Do me a kindness, Bram, and have a curricle prepared for a quick departure?”
“Of course. But what of Gabe?”
“Leave that to me. Just get the curricle. Please.”
Without waiting for his response, Mary picked up her skirts and tore through the garden.
* * *
Mary was right. Gabe was wrong, and damn it, Mary was right.
Gabe let out a harsh growl, barring his teeth, as the shot grazed his leg. He exaggerated his pain, staggering on the spot before dropping to his knees, roaring at the jarring impact. “What thedevil, woman?”
A bit of a performance would not only give Lady Kerr a false sense of accomplishment, but it would have the added effect of discouraging her from feeling the need to shoot him again to increase her accuracy.
Malicious delight flashed in her eyes. “Oh, I believe you understand my reasoning perfectly,Tony.”
She turned to motion to someone outside the dungeon’s door and a large footman dressed in canary yellow livery entered to place a chair in the centre of the dark, damp room.
“Have a seat, darling,” Lady Kerr said in her deceptively silken voice.
Damn. Gabe should have listened to Mary when she had expressed her suspicions about Lady Kerr. He should have been more aware of what was going on around him, more alert, more… He shook himself internally. There was no use in berating himself for not realizing the lady’s guilt. Right now, he must think of a way out of this.
Lady Kerr’s giant brute of a footman—where the devil had he come from?—lifted Gabe bodily off the ground and sat him on the thoroughly worn chair before wrenching his arms behind the backrest to trap his wrists together with chained iron manacles. The man was strong, Gabe gave him that.
The manacles were tight and effective. The brute then moved on to tie Gabe’s feet to the chair’s legs with a length of rope.
With a commanding flick of Lady Kerr’s wrist, the footman obeyed the silent command, retrieving the spent pistol from her hand and exiting, closing the dungeon door behind him. The scraping of wood against stone echoed around them, until with a finalclunk, the door was shut, leaving the room entirely black.
