To Diana, dazed and gasping for breath on the soft turf, there was a nightmare silence as Gervase and Veseul circled, probing each other’s defenses before risking an all-out attack. A swift punch smashed Veseul’s face, opening up his cheek and rocking him off balance. Before Gervase could follow up his advantage, the Frenchman responded with a kick that clipped Gervase’s knee and sent him staggering.
In the advancing darkness they began to close with each other, their blows beginning to do damage. Diana saw how equally matched they were, Gervase lighter and quicker, Veseul with a bearlike power that would be disastrous if he got a firm grip on his opponent.
Doubling over after a pulverizing blow in the ribs, Gervase faltered in his defense, his arms dropping. Veseul moved in for the kill, aiming a granite fist at his opponent’s jaw. But Gervase’s weakness was a feint. Seizing Veseul’s forearm in a wrestling hold, he used all his strength to force the larger man from his feet and send him spinning to crash heavily onto the ground.
As the Frenchman lay in stunned silence, Diana managed to regain her feet, her ribs aching with pain. Gervase turned toward her, taut and muscular. Even across the width of the clearing she could see the desperate love and concern in his gray eyes.
As their gazes locked and held, Diana could actually feel the breach between them close. Like a rainbow of love, the emotional bond that connected them sprang to full shimmering life once again, joining them heart to heart.
“You’re all right?” he asked urgently, his dark hair in disarray, his chest heaving from exertion.
Unable to speak, she nodded. Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw that Veseul had fallen by his cane. In the instant that Gervase’s attention was on her, the count unscrewed the serpent’s head, revealing a wicked blade, bright and deadly in the fading light.
“Gervase!”Diana shouted out a warning as Veseul leapt to his feet and lunged, his sword aimed directly at her husband’s heart.
Gervase spun about and saw his danger. He tried to dodge, but he was too close to the thick hedge and it blocked his retreat. Off-balance, he flung himself sideways, Veseul’s blade pursuing with lethal speed.
There was no time for thought, only instinct. With the skill born of hundreds of hours of practice, Diana lifted her hem and yanked her knife from the sheath. Then she hurled it across the clearing with all her trained strength.
The knife spun in the air, hilt over blade, too swift for the eye to follow but implacable in its murderous accuracy. With paralyzed horror, Diana saw the blade slash into Veseul’s throat, saw gouts of blood gushing from severed arteries. The count’s body, dead but not quite aware of it, crashed into Gervase, carrying them both to the ground.
As they fell, Veseul’s weight knocked all the breath from Gervase, and the edge of the swordstick grazed his ribs as the Frenchman’s blood sprayed over him. The mad black eyes glared as life flickered out, but no words could escape that ruined throat.
Gervase lay stunned for a moment, not quite believing that he was still alive. Then he shoved the Frenchman’s body aside. Veseul was no longer important. What mattered was Diana.
He staggered to his feet and lurched to where his wife crouched in a tight little ball, shock and horror indelibly clear in her frantic blue eyes. Dropping beside her, he embraced her with desperate intensity. She was trembling violently as she burrowed into his shoulder, whispering his name over and over.
“It’s over, love, it’s over!” he said raggedly. “You’re safe now.”
Gervase was also shaking with the reaction that follows battle, his mind a broken jumble of thankful prayers. Even with Diana in his arms, he had trouble believing that she was truly there, alive, not seriously injured, and as grateful for his presence as he was for hers.
The dark, deprecating part of his nature jeered that she would have clung to any rescuer the same way, but he fiercely rejected the thought. No longer would he allow his life to be ruled by doubt and self-hatred.
He had read once that grace was being loved despite one’s sins and weaknesses. Gervase had not truly understood then, but he did now. Diana offered him that kind of love, and he would accept it as the miracle of grace that it was.
A kaleidoscope of images flickered through his mind. That first heart-stopping sight of Diana at Harriette Wilson’s. The first time they had made love, when she had helped him rediscover innocence. The soul-deep need that grew stronger every time they were together.
Even the bitter estrangement of the last days had value, tearing away the lies and secrets so that now they were fully revealed to one another. She was his and he was hers and he’d never let her go again.
That was how Francis found them when he ran into the clearing, followed by two of the larger footmen. “Gervase! Dear God, are you both all right? What happened?”
Not loosening his embrace, Gervase said tightly, “Veseul tried to kill her. Have someone . . . take care of the body. May I have your coat?”
Wordlessly Francis took off his finely tailored wool coat and handed it over. Gervase wrapped the garment around his wife for warmth and for modesty, then stood. As he lifted her, she was light and fragile in his arms, her eyes closed as her head rested against his shoulder, her loosened hair veiling her face.
“I’ll take her inside,” he said to Francis. “Please look after the guests, give them my apologies or whatever. Anything but the truth. Keep them eating and drinking. I’ll worry about the legal aspects of this later.”
“Of course.” As Gervase left with Diana, Francis was issuing crisp orders to the footmen.
Gervase used a side entrance where there would be no one to see or ask questions. He’d reached the upstairs corridor when he was intercepted by Madeline, her eyes wide with fright as a dazed Geoffrey tugged her down the hall.
Gervase knelt, bringing Diana within Geoffrey’s reach. The boy touched her hair, his blue eyes questioning. “Mama?”
His voice penetrated the mists of Diana’s mind and she gave a crooked smile and caught her son’s hand briefly. “I’m . . . fine. You did well.”
Geoffrey’s small hands brushed her face before he glanced up at his father. “She’s not hurt, just shocked,” Gervase assured him. “She’ll be all right. The blood is Veseul’s, not hers or mine.”
Shifting Diana’s weight, he stood again, adding with grave commendation, “If not for you, she would have been killed.”
