Chapter 14
“My father?” Stunned even more when Russell nodded, a twisted smile curving his thin lips, Walker considered shooting his cousin dead right then and there.
Who would fault him? Clearly Russell had arranged something nefarious for the duke, too, and why not? Until Walker had showed up so unexpectedly at his door, his cousin must have believed his plot intact and Walker and Marguerite murdered.
“You bastard,” Walker growled as he heard the carriage come to a stop on the street. “Was that why your man was here? You thought me dead, Marguerite dead, so you were going to have him hasten along my father’s death and find yourself suddenly become a duke?”
Russell stared at him with that same perverse smile, and he laughed dryly no matter the pistols pointed at his face. “I sent Charles word that I suspected you’d run off to Gretna Green with a common parson’s daughter—and look! He accepted my invitation and left his sickbed so he could be here to await your return. A messenger came earlier today saying he would arrive this evening. Not to congratulate you, I’m sure, but to berate you for the bloody American fool that you are!”
Sickened, Walker ground the heel of his boot into Russell’s chest, making his cousin grimace though he didn’t cry out. “So you did lure my father here to murder him—”
“I’ve got him, Walker!” Jared shouted from the hall, a kick from behind sending the man he’d chased after pitching headlong into the foyer. “Seems his name is Jack. I’d wager he’ll have a fine story to tell the magistrate, won’t you, Jack?”
“Damn you…” Russell muttered, not taking his eyes off Walker even when another violent kick from Jared sent his surly-looking prisoner sprawling to the floor beside him. “You stole everything from me!Everything!”
“Alexander?”
It took only a split second, Walker glancing behind him to see his father in the doorway leaning heavily upon his longtime valet when Russell’s fist caught him squarely in the groin. He doubled over, gasping, too much in agony to fend off a vicious blow to the side of his head.
White light blinding him, Walker fell to his knees, one of his pistols spinning across the floor behind him while the other was snatched up by Russell. He heard Jared shouting for his prisoner to get back down on the floor even as Walker felt the barrel of the pistol thrust against the middle of his forehead—oh, God,Marguerite…
The explosive report of a pistol firing at close range rang in his ears. His eyes squeezed shut, his lower body still throbbing fiercely, Walker knew then he wasn’t dead. He sank back on his haunches, trying to catch his breath even as he opened his eyes to see a pool of blood forming beneath the twitching body upon the floor.
Russell’s body.
“Dammit, Walker, you know better than to take your eyes off your enemy!” came Jared’s raised voice, Walker looking up to find his friend shaking his head though his face looked deadly pale. “Serves you right if you’ll have to abstain from your conjugal duties for a week or better!”
Walker gave a short laugh, which made him gasp in pain.
Yet there was nothing humorous about what might have happened if Jared hadn’t managed to shoot Russell. He glanced at the corpse lying sprawled upon the floor next to him…at the gaping hole in his cousin’s chest—
“It wasn’t me,” Jared murmured, bending down to help Walker struggle to his feet. Wincing with discomfort, he met Jared’s eyes, yet he’d already discerned who must have saved his life.
Slowly, Walker turned around to find his father staring at him from the doorway with a face even paler than Jared’s and a pistol in his lowered hand. His valet, Hodges, too, looked as white as death.
“Are you all right, my son?”
Walker nodded, gritting his teeth from the throbbing ache in his loins as he went to his father, the duke’s eyes welled with tears, his too thin frame visibly shaking.
“Well enough, Father, thanks to you.”
As if Walker’s words had been all the duke needed to hear, his knees suddenly gave way beneath him. If not for the ashen-faced valet still supporting him, and Walker rushing forward to take the pistol and grab his other arm, he would have crumpled to the floor.
“Here, let me take him,” Walker insisted, quickly sliding the weapon still hot from recent firing into his belt. Then he lifted his father into his arms—God help him, his illness wasting him away even more than when last Walker had seen him!—so he might carry him toward the stairs.
He thought no more of the pain gripping him or Russell’s blood-soaked body lying in the foyer.
He scarcely heard Jared ordering the footmen to take their horses and summon a constable, to summon a physician, while keeping his pistol leveled at Jack’s head.
