Lord Dudley waved Gray over next to Jenna with his pistol. “You shouldn’t have come, Douglas.”
“You know who he is?”
“Of course. Did you think your little affair was secret?” He laughed uproariously. “You were about as discreet as a common whore.”
“But Stuart had no idea who my affair was with,” she persisted.
“I followed you,” he said smugly.
“Let her go,” Gray growled.
“You two amuse me,” he said as if Gray hadn’t spoken.
“Why?” Jenna asked in an effort to distract him. Perhaps if she could get him talking, Gray would have the opportunity to wrest the gun from his hand. “Why did you kill her? Why did you betray your country?”
“I’ve already answered that,” he said mockingly. “I was abysmally short of funds and Napoleon needed agents. It was as simple as that. My seat in the House of Lords afforded me the opportunity to pass along pertinent information to Napoleon’s troops. It’s too bad he was defeated, really. It was a lucrative enterprise while it lasted.”
“But why kill the viscountess? She was a wonderful person. She didn’t deserve what happened to her. She was yourwife.”
“She got in the way,” he said simply. “Now be silent. Your constant chatter won’t prevent your fate.”
Gray had inched over while the viscount was talking and now shoved Jenna behind him. “Put the gun away,” he ordered.
Jenna clung to his back, and his arm came around to pull her closer to him. She took comfort in his strength, felt bolstered by his touch.
“Your sacrifice is admirable,” the viscount sneered. “It matters not which of you I get rid of first.”
“Put the gun down, Father.”
The viscount whirled around, a look of shock on his face. His hand wavered, the gun shaking. His mouth fell open when he saw the pistol Stuart wielded. “What are you doing? How did you get here?”
“I followed you.”
Jenna stepped from behind Gray ignoring his attempts to keep her behind him. She stared at the scene unfolding before her in stunned disbelief. Stuart, looking as he hadn’t looked in years, stood in the doorway pointing a gun directly at his father. Gone was the flowery attire, the nasal whine, the foppish hairstyle. Here was a large, intimidating man. And he looked angrier than she’d ever seen him in her life.
He moved forward, the gun never wavering in his grasp. “I didn’t want to believe you were a traitor no matter how much the evidence pointed in that direction. I didn’t want to believe that you killed my mother, though I got to her just after she fell down the stairs, saw the pain of betrayal in her eyes.”
“Silence!” the viscount ordered. “You fool. Stupid bloody fool! I did it all for you. So you’d have something to inherit.”
“You are the fool,” Stuart spat. “Do you even know how much I hate you? Despise you? I want nothing from you. How could you think I would ever agree to something so evil?”
“Agree? Of course you would agree.” The viscount aimed the gun momentarily at Stuart but apparently decided his greatest threat wasn’t Stuart at all, but Jenna and Gray, and jerked the gun back to them. “Why wouldn’t you agree?” he railed at Stuart. “It was to your benefit. Do you honestly want to inherit a meaningless title? One that is bankrupt? Money is what matters, my boy. Not power, not prestige.Money.”
“The game is up,” Stuart said in a deadly cold voice. “We’ve shadowed your movements for several years now, but Jenna has found what we’ve been unable to.”
“We? Who the deuce iswe?” The viscount purpled with rage as the realization seemed to settle over him that his son was not as he seemed.
Jenna was reeling with shock of her own. Despite the immediate danger of her situation, she couldn’t stop the flow of questions from her lips. “Stuart.” Her soft voice drifted across the tension-laden air.
He turned his head, his eyes filled with a multitude of emotion. Regret. Shame. Anger. Betrayal. She nearly flinched away from the raw pain that raged across his face.
“Stay out of this, Jenna. It doesn’t concern you.” He looked back at his father.
“Were you a part of this? Did you have anything to do with your mother’s death? With the attacks on me?” She had to know. Perhaps this wasn’t the best time, but with a gun trained on her chest, she might not get another.
Stuart’s voice softened. “No, Sprite. All I’ve done has been for the soul purpose of exposing my father. I prayed there wouldn’t be a need for me to marry you, to embroil you in this whole thing, but if it was necessary to prove my father a traitor and murderer I was prepared to do it. But I never did anything to hurt you.”
“I don’t understand. The act, the clothes. Why?”
