Then from behind me.
Tramel leaned on his cane. “I sent them back to Demerara to find the location of her gravestone, but they found her instead. I arranged for them to bring Helena Gladstone to you.”
I put my hand to Tramel’s cheek. “There’s more good in you than not.”
His blue-black gaze, tired, loving, and perhaps unrepentant, stared through me. If he looked at my heart, he would see it was as it always should’ve been—his son’s.
“You’ve always thought so, Lady Gantry. Now it is time for me to prove it. The men go shooting miles from here. Let’s take the carriage.”
Holding my sister, we followed behind. In the carriage I’d explain how my husband was about to kill hers.
CHAPTER59
FELTON—MISSION OFLOVE
Like he’d done on every assignment, Felton made an assessment of the surroundings. His uncles and a few of Tramel’s friends had gone ahead, farther into the emerald woods.
He and Jeremiah Gladstone stayed behind. Like always, they’d let the older men get farther ahead.
“So, Gantry, Lady Jane says the errant wife has returned.”
“Not errant, more errand-finishing. She had a few things to accomplish before she could spare a moment. Now she’s done.”
“A few things? She was gone almost a year. Sounds like she has you convinced.”
Felton stopped and took his favorite flintlock and pointed up in the trees. “You know how long travel to the colonies can take. She had urgent business to tend to in Demerara.”
“Is that what she said? The blockades, sir. How could the little lady get through? She’s lying. But if the wench is half as good as the curves and the plump backside suggests, I’d take her back for a while.”
Felton’s finger was on the trigger of his longer flintlock. A shot through the man’s heart would alert the party ahead. Just another minute and there’d be more than enough distance to blow the man’s mouth off his head and they’d think someone shot a covey.
“Gantry, you look angry. You believe she went to Demerara, on the other side of the world?”
“She got there the same way as anyone who is determined to go and doesn’t mind breaking a few embargoes. She went via the smuggling routes.”
Gladstone stopped laughing. “It’s very costly to secure those networks if you can’t ask favors. You know who her contact is?”
The man thought him a fool. He’d not admit to Tramel’s involvement. Yet, Gladstone had to know of the smuggling routes. That would have been the only way for him to have traveled there to seduce and ruin Helena.
“So, you’re just going to take her back, just like that? Haven’t you been searching? Liverpool told me you had.”
Gladstone talked with Liverpool? Felton looked through the sight of the gun. Falling over the nearby cliffs would mangle the body, even one filled with lead pellets.
“I’ve had to disappear time and time again. Should I truly be picky when she chooses to go on business, especially when we both know why she had to go?”
He pointed his gun at his cousin. Time was up.
“Gantry, what are you doing?”
“Taking care of a little business. Move.”
Gladstone put his hands up. “You’re joking. You’d kill me? Your own cousin.”
“Maybe you should confess and beg for mercy. Maybe I will grant it. But how can I, when I know how you injured me—”
“I didn’t know Liverpool would send you on that assignment. I told my contact on the Demeraran council that spies would be sent that night to the government building. I didn’t know it would be you. Didn’t think he’d set up an ambush. Sorry about your man Johnson.”
“What?”
