Damnation, he wanted this thing done and come to a conclusion, no matter that he prayed it wasn’t him that would not live to see another morning!
***
“Easy, Walker, easy…” Jared hissed as they dismounted from their horses and approached the door to the leased town house that appeared ablaze with light.
It wasn’t late, perhaps no more than nine o’clock, but the street with its fashionable houses was dark except for an occasional lantern, most of the windows dark as well. Everyone else had retired for the night, clearly, but not Russell. Was the bastard already celebrating his imagined inheritance even though his two hired cutthroats hadn’t returned yet to London?
That thought made Walker grit his teeth, hatred filling him—yes,hatred!—for the man who had engineered a plot that had nearly cost him his bride. In spite of Jared’s warning, he wanted to beat down the door and call out Russell to a duel with pistols right there on the street, the authorities be damned!
And it might come to that, too, the lanterns here and there offering more light than Hyde Park at this time of night in spite of the waning full moon.
Or any other out-of-doors location Russell might name in London, for Walker at least would grant him the choice of where they would face each other. But it would be tonight or by God, he would call upon the nearest constable in spite of having no proof to back up his charge.
Word against word, who would the authorities believe? Alexander Scott, the future Duke of Summerlin, or a baronet with enough motive to see himself hang?
A constable… Walker almost hesitated as the image of Marguerite’s face flashed in his mind’s eye, but no, the intensity of his enmity for what Russell had done compelled him to stay the course. He had all he could do not to pound upon the door. Instead he knocked firmly as Jared came up close behind him.
Almost at once the door was thrown open by a pair of bewigged and liveried footmen of matched height that Walker didn’t recognize from before, or perhaps it was because they were dressed so formally.
Silk stockings? Powdered wigs? Fancy red velvet coats? Was the bloody Prince Regent coming to call? He thought of Sims and the other footman at Jared’s town house in plainer livery, which made Walker believe then that Russell was indeed entertaining. Well, this was one assembly he couldn’t wait to disrupt.
“Walker Burke and Lord Dovercourt to see Sir Russell Scott at once!” Walker demanded, which made Jared utter a low curse.
A sideways glance told Walker that Jared held a pistol at the ready beneath his coat, just in case. It was all he could do not to draw his own pistols as Russell, dressed in formal evening attire, walked from the library into the foyer. If the baronet had been surprised at first to hear Walker’s voice, his expression nonetheless appeared carefully composed though Walker noted the stark displeasure in his gaze.
“Cousin, I’ve been wondering when you might return. Did you accomplish the business you set out to do?”
Walker opened his mouth to spew some of the animosity churning inside him when a burly, dark-haired man suddenly careened out of the library and fled down the hall.
“Jared, go after him! That’s the same man I told you was watching us on the street!”
Walker’s pistols drawn now as Jared lunged after his quarry, Walker wasn’t surprised to see that his cousin’s face had blanched white. Russell spun half around and jutted out an arm to try and stop Jared, but Jared tore right past him, knocking him down.
At once Russell tried to scramble to his feet, but Walker thrust a boot onto his chest and shoved him back to the marble floor.
“Strange how your man looks so similar to the one that tried to knife me in Gretna Green,” he grated, pointing his pistols at Russell’s chest. “Brothers, perhaps?”
Russell said nothing, but hatred shone in his eyes.
Yet he stiffened beneath the pressure of Walker’s boot holding him down when the clip-clop of horses’ hooves and the rumble of an approaching carriage sounded from the street. Out of the corner of his eye, Walker saw that the front door was still wide open, the liveried footmen staring from him to Russell and looking as if they wanted to flee, too.
“Ah, your father has arrived from Devonshire,” Russell said tightly, still glaring at Walker. “Will you have him see us like this or will you allow me at least to rise to my feet?”
