“You will regret this,” he snarled. “You will regret?—”
He got no further, for the sound of a heavy vase shattering over his head filled the small room.
Julian’s eyes had been fixed on the knife. He looked up.
Clara stood in the corner of the room, her hands shaking, her hair loose from its pins, and looking more beautiful than he had ever seen her.
CHAPTER 40
Her hands trembled. She had done it. She had actually done it.
She had been standing out in the hall for several minutes, listening to the conversation through the partly open door. She had known what she had to do from the moment she had seen Heath dragging Arabella into the room. She had only needed the right opening. Julian had had a firm hold on Sebastian. The man who had earlier bundled her into the carriage now lay on the floor at her feet, and Arabella was leaning against the desk, gasping from shock.
She stared at her friend. She was here. She had actually come. Devereau had been right after all. Arabella had come for her son and for the people she loved.
“Arabella,” she whispered.
“Clara. Oh, my goodness.”
They flew across the room and fell into one another’s arms.
“I thought I would never see you again,” Clara said, tears springing to her eyes.
“Nonsense. You cannot rid yourself of me so easily as that. Oh, the way you brought that vase down on his head. I cannot believe it.”
“I had to. I had been waiting for the right moment, and if you had not tripped him?—”
“Clara.” Julian’s voice came from across the room, and it carried a tremble she had never heard from him before. She turned to him and was unsure what to say.
This was the man whom she had overheard, only that morning, telling his friend he would say he did not love her. That all of this had been a mistake and meant nothing. And he was also the man she had just heard say he would hound Devereau to the very end of the earth if he took her to Italy. The way he looked at her now, shaken and unsteady and somehow strong and valiant all at the same time as he held a hold on their tormentor, made it impossible to know how to read him.
They stood staring at one another until David’s wail broke the silence.
“Horatio.” Arabella looked round at once. “Where is he?”
“I put him in a drawer in the hall. I could not very well run with the baby in my arms. But he has been perfectly all right. He has been a perfect angel.”
Arabella darted from the room and returned a moment later with the baby. He did not cry. Clara had been afraid he might not recognize Arabella after so long, but he gurgled at once and reached up and grabbed her face with one little fist.
“My sweet love,” she said. “Oh, my sweet love. I have missed you so very much. I cried every night thinking of you, and yet every morning I rose because thinking of you gave me strength.” She kissed his small face and then hugged Clara again. “Thank you. Thank you for looking after him.”
What followed was absolute chaos as footsteps sounded in the hall and Lucian stumbled in, followed by Charles, the valet, and a couple of the other men.
“What in the world—” Lucian began.
“There you are at long last,” Julian said, shaking his head. “Clara and Arabella and I had to handle these two ourselves.”
“We were below stairs fighting off two of his men,” Lucian reported. “They were lookouts. Not very good ones, mind. They were sitting in one of the downstairs rooms drinking and playing cards. They put up some fight when they heard us, but they are properly bundled away now. They will not be going anywhere.”
“Good,” Julian said. “Take these two off, then.”
“This will not stand,” Devereau spluttered through the hand at his nose. “In my own home, invaded by a confederacy of black-hearted brutes?—”
“Invaded by a confederacy of gentlemen of the highest order, come to free those you abducted,” Julian said, pushing the man towards Rhys. “Do not try to spin tales. We all know exactly what you are.”
“I cannot believe you,” Arabella said, looking at Sebastian with an expression closer to wonder than to anger. “What a pig you are. I cannot believe I ever thought you handsome or valiant or charming. You are nothing but a pathetic creature, desperate for his uncle’s approval, willing to steal my child and force me to admit to things I never did. You will pay for your crimes.”
“You were stupid enough to fall for me, Bella.”
