Josiah stared at the pistol in his hand, shook it and pressed the trigger again. But still nothing. Ewan lunged forward to take advantage of his distraction and hit his brother with his full weight. They slid across the floor together, the gun rattling out of the way.
“What is going on?” Josiah bellowed as he struggled with Ewan, caught in a death grapple as they each tried to overcome the other.
“He unloaded it,” Charlotte sobbed as she began to struggle against the ropes. “When you went to get the carriage, I convinced Mr. Griffin to unload the pistol.”
“You shoot her!” Josiah screamed at Roger as he pushed hard against Ewan. “You shoot her and you shoot him!”
Roger had been standing at the door, and now Ewan watched in horror as he swung his gun at Charlotte. Her eyes went wide, real fear in them now. She’d prepared for one contingency, but not the other, it seemed.
At that moment, one of the doors that led from the main room flung open. Baldwin rushed through, gun drawn, and skidded to a halt, his weapon pointed at Roger, but he didn’t fire. Of course he couldn’t. One wrong move and Charlotte would die.
“Please don’t,” he panted. “Please don’t kill my sister.”
Roger flinched and his gaze slid to Ewan. Then Josiah. His hands shook as he lowered the gun. Everything in the room slowed and then stopped.
“No,” he said. “No, Josiah, I won’t.”
“What?” Josiah roared. “What are you bloody talking about?”
“I told you I’d help you get what you were owed,” Roger said, swallowing hard. “But I never said I’d shoot an innocent woman. Or my own…my own brother.”
“You coward!” Josiah screeched, and threw an elbow that took Ewan off guard. It connected with his temple, and his vision blurred and his grip relaxed a fraction. Josiah threw him off, lunging toward Roger in an obvious bid to take the gun.
Roger lifted the weapon again. “Don’t make me!” he shouted.
But Josiah ignored him, still sweeping forward in flat-footed rage. Ewan rushed for Charlotte as Baldwin lifted his weapon. There was the sharp, heavy blast of a pistol being fired, and Josiah froze. He looked down at the spreading circle of blood staining his dandified shirt.
“You,” Josiah coughed as he fell to his knees, and then flat on his face, dead before he hit the wooden planks below.
For a long moment, no one moved. Roger continued to train the gun straight forward as he stared at Josiah’s body. Sobbing breaths wracked his body. Slowly, Baldwin edged over to him.
“Put the gun down,” he said softly, gently.
Roger stared at it in his hand, then down again at his dead brother. With a shake of his head, he set the weapon on the floor, sat down beside it and began to weep.
As Baldwin rushed to move the weapon out of his reach, Ewan reached Charlotte. He knelt before her, cupped her cheeks and kissed her. She lifted her chin, making tiny sounds, little sobs as she returned every kiss.
“Here, my hands,” she said, and he managed to stop kissing her long enough to begin working on the knots that bound her poor fingers so tightly together.
“Is she well?” Baldwin asked as he stepped away from Roger and stuffed both guns in his waist.
“I’m fine,” she said, looking at her brother. “Thanks to your heroism and Ewan’s.”
Baldwin sagged a moment, relief all over his face. From the floor, Roger began to gag and Baldwin stooped to help him to his feet. “Outside, boy, it’s all right. You can cast up your accounts in the bushes.”
Ewan watched as one of the men he had considered his brother all his life helped the one of his blood from the room with a gentleness Roger likely didn’t deserve. There would be much to handle with the family of his birth, but right now all he cared about was Charlotte.
He got her fingers free and she flexed them, pushing blood back to them as he struggled with the ropes that bound her to the chair. In seconds she was free, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. Her entire body shook as she clung to him, smoothing her hands over his hair and his shoulders, as if to check that he was unharmed.
She was murmuring endless, soft words of love, sweet nothings that were everything as he gathered her into his arms and carried her out of the lodge, away from the dead body of the brother who had been raised to hate him so deeply. Out into the fresh air where Roger lay on the grass, an arm over his eyes.
Baldwin rushed to them as Ewan set Charlotte’s feet back on the ground. The siblings embraced just as Matthew thundered up the hill with a cadre of people at his back, including the constable and a few men who seemed to have been conscripted into service.
Ewan sighed. What he wanted more than anything was to gather Charlotte up and take her home to his bed, where he could prove to himself that she wasn’t hurt. And prove to her, without the words that evaded him, how much he adored her. But there was work to be done. Work only the duke could do.
He dug into his pocket to find his notebook, but Charlotte detached herself from her brother and moved up beside him. “I’ll help,” she whispered.
“You’ve had too trying a day,” he signed in protest.
