When he reached the final series of letters, he felt as if the wind had been knocked from him.
I write you with unexpected news. I am expecting your child. Though you’ve amply demonstrated your lack of sentiment for myself, I cannot help but hope you may be somewhat less reticent in regards to an innocent.
The letter dropped from his fingers, wafting to his desk without even a whisper of sound. A child. A babe. Daisy carried their babe. And she hadn’t told him. No, instead, she had demanded an annulment.
Dear God, had he been too rough with her last night? How could he have failed to realize what the small changes in her frame implied? He had noted the slight curve in her belly, the generosity in her breasts. But he had enjoyed it, never once imagining how life-altering, how beautiful and wonderful and fucking altogether glorious it all was.
A sudden knock sounded at his door, startling him.
He didn’t want to be wrenched from this moment of unadulterated celebration. This moment of realizing that his wife carried their babe within her body. His carelessness, his stupid bloody recklessness, had in the end, turned out to be his saving grace.
His child. Daisy’s child. Would it be a girl with golden ringlets and an infallible sense of bravery? Or a towheaded boy with moss-green eyes and a penchant for daring? His heart beat with a wild, uncontrollable rhythm. He felt complete for the first time. Replete. Not a part of him missing.
A babe. How bloody amazing. The notion awed him.
The knock sounded again, this time more forceful than the last.
No more avoidance. Give the devil his due.
“Enter,” he called.
But it wasn’t his butler Giles who opened the portal as he’d fancied it would be, and stepped over the threshold as he’d anticipated. It was Griffin. And he wasn’t alone. Sebastian stood, mouth going dry, gut tightening. His blood felt as if it leached from his body as he took in the four men flanking his best friend. Home Office brawn, it would appear, though none of their faces were familiar to him.
Surely they hadn’t come for Daisy. Carlisle had told him to see to her himself. He thought he had time, for fuck’s sake. Time to align all the information into a proper picture. Time to go to Carlisle with undeniable proof of Daisy’s innocence so that the Home Office could exonerate her once and for all.
“What the hell is this, Griffin?” he rasped, every last bit of the exultation seeping from his body. He could not lose her, would not lose her now.
“Where is Her Grace?” Griffin asked in lieu of answering. His forbidding expression was one of a man going into battle.
“She is abed in her chamber.” He strode forward. “Goddamn it, Griffin. Why are you here?”
“She’s in danger, Bast. One of our double operatives contacted me. We haven’t a moment to waste.” His friend’s tone was calm, but his eyes told a different story.
If a man as hardened as Griffin was worried, the danger was real. Everything inside him turned to ice. Daisy was in danger. Their babe was in danger. Christ. His hands were shaking. But there was no time to linger. They needed to act, to get to Daisy, protect her.
“We’ll walk upstairs while you tell me what the hell is going on,” he demanded of his friend and brother in arms.
Shoulder to shoulder, they strode from the study, the four grim-faced men following in their wake. “Her lady’s maid is a Fenian,” Griffin said in low tones. “She is connected to Vanreid.”
Damn it. Sebastian scarcely recalled the lady’s maid, who had turned up at his household after Daisy’s departure from her father’s home. “You’re certain?”
Griffin nodded as they ascended the staircase, taking the steps two at a time. “She was the anonymous source feeding false information about Daisy to the Home Office.”
An anonymous source had been supplying information about Daisy. Damning and incorrect information. Why hadn’t that occurred to him? Of course. It all made perfect, bloody sense. And he had allowed the woman to enter his household, to remain close to Daisy. Close enough to strike.
A muffled scream sounded just then, followed by the report of a pistol. The air rushed from him. The scream had been Daisy’s.
No. No. No.
Sebastian broke into a run.
His heart pumping faster than it ever had, he took the stairs three at a time, racing down the hall. Dimly, he was aware of the pounding feet of Griffin and his men following in his wake. But he didn’t care. The earth could have opened upon itself and swallowed everyone but Daisy and himself, and he wouldn’t have given a goddamn.
Griffin appeared at his side, running to keep pace. “Damn it, Bast, let me go in first. I’m armed.”
Fuck. That was how much he loved that woman. For her, he would have run headlong into enemy fire without a weapon and without a second thought. For Daisy’s sake, it would be far better to allow an armed man into the chamber first. No one had a deadlier aim than Griffin.
He pointed to Daisy’s chamber door as they ran. “That one.”
