“Felicity, wait!”
She ignored her father’s voice as well as the gasps as she sprinted toward the altar. None of these people’s opinions mattered. Nothing mattered if something happened to Axel.
He would be waiting in the room behind the altar… from where the bishop normally entered. Still clutching her bouquet of roses, she dashed around the side and pinned her gaze on the only door in sight.
His Father’s Wife
“Ineed to go out.” Mantis rose, beginning to feel uneasy. “I’m sure my bride has arrived by now.”
Louisa’s demeanor, which had initially seemed conciliatory, had turned somewhat brittle.
“You have plenty of time. Brides are always late anyway. Why stand at the front of a church full of strangers when you can be comfortable back here with me? Now, tell me, are you thrilled at the prospect of becoming a father?”
He tugged at his jacket and stepped forward. “Excuse me.” Louisa shot to her feet and was moving toward the door as well.
“But you haven’t finished your tea.”
As Mantis stepped aside to circumvent her, she scurried to the table. Just as he reached to open the door, her voice halted him.
“I’m sorry, Manningham, but your bride is going to have to be disappointed.”
Mantis turned to see Louisa,his father’s wife, holding a pistol pointed at his chest.
The person behind the attempts on his life had not been his father at all—nor any of the servants.
It was his brother’s mother—his stepmother!
You are forbidden to leave me to raise our child alone.As he stared down the gleaming barrel pointed at his heart, Felicity’s words ought to have taunted him.
Instead, they strengthened him.
He wasn’t about to allow a lifetime with the woman he loved to be stolen out from under him.
“Put the gun down, Louisa.” Mantis went to move forward but halted when he noticed her finger tightening on the trigger. “It’s not too late. No one need know. Just put the gun down.”
But she was shaking her head. A brassy curl escaped her updo to hang in front of one of her eyes, succeeding in adding to the irrational look on her face.
Brandishing a weapon at one’s stepson imparted one with a hint of madness, after all.
“Drink the tea.” She jerked the gun back to where he’d been sitting. Her hand shook. She didn’t want to shoot. She simply wanted him dead.
Mantis would take the pistol from her. She was nervous, possibly even frightened to be holding it. He could not think of Conner, or how he would feel when his mother was sent off to an asylum. He couldn’t stop to wonder how his father would react when he learned of his wife’s duplicity.
Louisa’s eyes flicked to the tea a second time, but before he could make a move, the door behind him flew open, and he froze.
Because that gun was now pointed at Felicity.
“You!” Felicity shook her bouquet of roses at Louisa. “It was you all along.” She didn’t seem at all surprised to find him holed up at gunpoint. She looked terrified but also enraged. “Axel, are you alright?” Her eyes flicked to the tea at Louisa’s side. “You didn’t drink it. Tell me you didn’t drink it.”
“Just a sip.”
Louisa exhaled a harsh laugh. “You should have waited at the back of the church, Felicity.” Something about Felicity’s arrival, if anything, had had a calming effect on Louisa. “You, and your child, are safe so long as Manningham expires before your wedding.”
“You poisoned his whiskey.”
“If it had been me, he wouldn’t be alive today. Unfortunately, if I want something done properly, I need to do it myself.” And then she pinned her gaze on Mantis again. “Drink the tea, Manningham, and I will spare your fiancée and unborn child.”
Again the door opened to interrupt them.
