“Not dead, but here with you. Thank God, here with you.”
Walker kissed her then, her forehead, her cheek, her mouth as she clung to him, Marguerite no longer crying though her attacker’s words rang in her head.
The baronet paid me to see you dead!
Only when he drew back from her did she see it, the wedge of rose-scented soap on the sodden floor near the dead man’s boot.
“He…he must have slipped on the soap,” she murmured, once more meeting Walker’s gaze. “He said a baronet paid him to see me dead…and you. Abaronet, Walker.”
She felt him stiffen. His darkening expression was truly ominous to behold, his eyes grown as black as she’d ever seen them.
As three maidservants and the proprietor and his wife came spilling into the room, gasping and staring wide-eyed at the carnage, Walker swept up Marguerite into his arms and carried her to the bed. He gently set her down and covered her nakedness with a quilt, his countenance only grown more thunderous.
“Summon the constable,” he ordered the ashen-faced proprietor, who bobbed his head and hastened from the room, his wife wringing her hands and running after him. The maidservants had already righted the tub and grabbed towels to mop up the water.
Walker turned back to Marguerite to stroke her damp hair from her forehead. “If I had lost you…” He didn’t finish as if the words had choked him, while Marguerite felt her throat tighten, too.
“If I had lost you…” She couldn’t finish, either, but took his hands to lace her fingers with his. For a long moment they simply stared at each other until at last she voiced a query to which she already sensed his answer. “The man with the knife?”
“Dead. I didn’t miss this time.”
She’d never heard him sound so grim. Again she glanced at the corpse, the maidservants sopping up water around him, yet she quickly looked back at Walker.
“He said the man that attacked you had been shot in the shoulder last night. Those two riders on the road weren’t highwaymen at all, but paid to murder us.”
Walker didn’t answer, his jaw tight, his fingers laced with hers grown tense. She knew he shared her thoughts that only one baronet had motive to order a deed so foul.
Sir Russell Scott.
“Would your cousin do such a thing?” she voiced for both of them, a chill running through her when Walker nodded.
“He was to inherit from my father, but now there’s me and you,”—Walker pulled her up from the bed into his arms—“and perhaps a babe already on the way.”
Marguerite drew in her breath, never having considered that she might have conceived a child this morning. Walker only held her more closely, protectively, his voice lowering to a harsh whisper.
“By God, he will pay! He must have followed me to Jared and Lindsay’s town house the other day when I thought him abed—or paid someone to follow me. Whoever it was saw us leave together, you unchaperoned, a trunk loaded onto the carriage. Lindsay bidding us goodbye. Russell must have guessed where we were bound—”
“Oh, Walker, do you think he would have gone to question Lindsay? Or his paid man? She’s all alone but for the servants.”
Walker’s vehement curse resounded in the room, the trio of maidservants gasping and stopping their labor. He waved for them to leave and the women obliged him, scurrying out of the room. Then he turned back to Marguerite.
“You must dress quickly. As soon as I speak to the constable, we’re leaving for London.”
He released her and she dropped the quilt to hurry toward where her clothing was laid out upon the trunk, giving no thought to her nakedness or to the dead man lying on the floor.
She could only think of Lindsay and little Justin alone in that huge house. Please God, may they be all right!
If anything terrible had happened to her sister Corie’s best friend—her friend as well!—she would never forgive herself.
