He grabbed for her arm before she could run and held the pistol to her head. “Drop it, Deveraux,” he snarled.
Slowly Deveraux lowered his arm and dropped the pistol. The expression he turned toward Leona was forbidding.
Leona groaned inwardly. She was doing so well. Why must she always allow her headstrong proclivity to lead her into trouble? They made a good team, but being a team meant they worked together, not one arrogantly charging ahead! He was right to try to warn her to be careful. In her arrogance, she took it as a sign of his wanting to control her and the entire situation. But if he’d wanted to do that, he wouldn’t have agreed with her plans nor allowed her to take the lead! Dismally she admitted it was her pride that suffered so foolishly again and again.
But if they were indeed a team, she had to create some distraction to allow Deveraux to take action. Her eyes raked the area. They were near Maria’s herb and flower beds. Stacks of crockery flower planters stood near the building. A hoe, fallen from its place against the wall, lay across the path.
North pulled her backward. She stepped over the hoe with her left foot, straddling it. Then she pulled her right foot back, using her left foot as a fulcrum. The hoe swung forward, tripping her and crashing into the crockery. She pitched forward. North, startled at the loud crash of pottery, swung his pistol that way.
It was the opening Deveraux needed. He lunged for North, carrying them backward to the ground. Leona scrambled out of the way and to her feet. The men rolled on the ground, struggling for control of the gun. Suddenly the gun went off, and the sound released Leona. She looked around for the pistol Deveraux dropped. She ran for it.
It was kicked out from beneath her fingers. She looked up. Jewitt stood over her, a long kitchen knife in her hand. She grabbed Leona by the hair, yanking her upright. She held the knife blade against her throat, and together the women watched the men fight. They were evenly matched, though there was an underhanded viciousness in North’s attack. Leona watched helplessly as North threw mud in Deveraux’s face. Deveraux twisted his head aside at the last moment. He grabbed at one of the crockery pots lying on its side nearby, then with a fluid movement, he brought the pot up and crashing into the back of North’s head. The man slumped to the ground.
Deveraux staggered to his feet, wiping with the back of his hand at a trickle of blood from a cut lip. “Give it up, Jewitt,” he said, breathing hard. He leaned forward, his hands on his knees, as he gulped air.
"No! She’s ruined everything!”
“No, your stupid desire for revenge has ruined everything. If you’d been content with money, you would have had that the first week you kidnapped Chrissy.”
“But I need my revenge! I have to have it! The money is nothing, I tell you! Nothing! I waited and planned so long?—”
“Too long. My brother has consumption. Damn it! He’s a dying man! Isn’t that revenge enough?”
“It’s not enough! All the Deverauxs must suffer as I have suffered. And I’ve discovered just how I’d make you and Miss Leonard pay.” She pressed the knife closer to Leona’s throat.
Leona felt a slight stinging and a trickle of warmth down her neck.
“I’m going to kill her, and you’re going to watch.”
A fear Deveraux had never experienced in his life twisted his stomach into knots. He was near to casting up his accounts. It was only the knowledge that he had to save Leona that kept his nausea at bay. Jewitt was dangerously unstable. If he goaded her, prodded her further into anger at him, would she take immediate action against Leona? Or could he divert her attention, turn her wrath solely against him? With the knife creasing Leona’s neck and Jewitt lost to any human decency—to any feelings of guilt or remorse—it was his only hope.
He began to laugh. He put his hands on his hips and threw his head back, laughing as if he’d just heard the richest joke of his life.
“What’s so funny?” Jewitt snarled.
“You are!” Deveraux exclaimed, shaking his head as he laughed. “Miss Leonard may be a winsome handful, but what makes you think she matters to me? After all, I am a Deveraux! And while my family honor may demand I make Miss Leonard an offer after the situation you placed us in last night, I would be gratified at any possibility that would relieve me of that tiresome duty. Miss Leonard is to me as you were to my brother. A pleasant diversion. Go on, kill her! Then I will kill you and claim—in deepest remorse—how I could not save Miss Leonard. I shall be universally pitied.”
“No! That’s not true! I saw you and her yesterday!” She wavered, her knife hand easing away a few inches.
He drew himself up to his most arrogant stance. “And do you think that is any behavior for the wife of a Deveraux?” he sneered, his upper lip curling derisively.
Jewitt looked confused. She froze bodily, though her eyes darted about as she tried to make some sense of the situation.
Leona stomped down hard on her instep while she bent her head to bite her hand. She bit savagely until she tasted blood. Jewitt shrieked with pain and rage, the knife falling from her hand.
Deveraux lunged for the woman, knocking her down.
Jewitt was like a wild animal, thrashing and kicking at him, the mud making her slippery and hard to hold. Her fingers clawed at his eyes, and a low guttural snarl came from deep in her throat, her face contorted into a horrid rictus of hate. She spotted the gun where she kicked it. Blood trailed down her fingers as she stretched her hand out to reach it. When her fingers closed around the pistol butt, a triumphant gleam lit her face. She brought her hand up, aiming the pistol at Deveraux as he tried to hold her down. She pulled back the hammer.
“Nigel!” Leona screamed, starting forward.
Jewitt pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Enraged, she pulled it several times more. Still, nothing happened. The safety pin was still in place!
Weak with relief, Leona fell to her knees beside the two wrestling bodies. With an ease that amazed her, she wrested the pistol from Jewitt’s hand.
Suddenly, Jewitt stopped struggling and began sobbing instead, her body soon wracked with the intensity of her feeling. Carefully Deveraux rose off her. She curled up into a ball and started rocking. He turned toward Leona.
“Do you have any rope about?”
