Page 107 of The Wedding-Crashing Duchess

Ronan’s hand had found the head of his cane again, gripping it as though it were the only solid thing left in a world that had, in the space of a quarter of an hour, come entirely unmoored. “You will not speak of my wife.”

“As you like.” Jonathan inclined his head, unbothered. “It changes nothing of why we are here. I have spent years, Ronan, gathering what I need to take back what was always more mine than yours by right of birth, if not by the law’s cruel accounting. I have the documents, and all that remains is you.”

“Say what you mean to say.” Ronan’s voice had gone very quiet.

“I mean for you to abdicate,” Jonathan said it simply, as though he were asking Ronan to pass the salt. “Sign the dukedom over to me, quietly, with whatever face-saving story you like attached to it, ill health, a desire to retire from public life, whatever suits your pride best. I will see that you and your family are provided for. Generously, even. I am not without sentiment, whatever you may think of me by now. I do not wish you dead, Ronan.”

“You are asking for something I have no power to give you, even if I wished to. The title does not simply pass at my whim to a man with no legal claim to it, whatever papers you carry. You are mad if you believe otherwise.”

“Mad?” Jonathan repeated the word. “Grief does that to a man, I find.” He straightened from the wall, and Ronan saw, for the first time, the outline of a blade beneath his coat, and understood precisely how far this man was prepared to go. “Very well. If you will not sign, I expect I shall simply have to kill you instead, and let the title fall to your daughter’s guardians until some more convenient arrangement can be made.”

“You will not touch her.” The words tore out of Ronan before he had entirely decided to speak them.

“I would rather not have to,” Jonathan said, and there was, God, help him, something that sounded almost like sincerity in it. “I am not a monster, Ronan, whatever tonight may suggest to you. But I have come too far to walk away with nothing, and I find I am no longer entirely certain what I am capable of, when it comes to it.” He tilted his head, and the last vestige of warmth left his face entirely, leaving only a terrible, patient calm behind. “So, you may choose to sign and end this quietly, as brothers. Or you may refuse, and I will kill you where you stand, and I promise you I will not hesitate half so long over the girl.”

Somewhere beyond the ruined walls Ronan thought he heard, or perhaps only imagined, the faint, muffled sound of a child crying. Every instinct in him strained toward that sound.

He looked at his brother and searched that familiar-unfamiliar face for some sign of the boy his father must once have loved but found no comfort in the search. Only a terrible, mirrored certainty that under different circumstances, raised in a different house, he might have become something very like this himself.

“You do not want to kill me,” Ronan said quietly. “Whatever else is true. You said yourself you did not wish me dead.”

“I said a great many things,” Jonathan replied, and for just a moment something almost like regret passed over his features. “Wanting has very little to do with what I am prepared to do, brother. I have spent five and thirty years wanting things I was never permitted to have. I find, in the end, it changes nothing at all.”

“It is your choice, little brother,” he said softly, and held out his hand, palm up, waiting, the silver raven on the cane at his side catching the thin morning light like a blade. “I have not got all morning to spend on sentiment. Choose.”

CHAPTER 19

Ronan opened his mouth to answer.

He did not know, even as he drew breath, what he meant to say, only that some answer had to be given before Jonathan’s patience ran out entirely.

The sound reached them both at once.

Several sets of hooves, coming hard along the old carriage road, and beneath that, the shout of men calling to one another as they came.

Jonathan’s head snapped toward the sound, and for the first time since Ronan had laid eyes on him, something like genuine alarm crossed his face.

“You said you came alone.” His voice had gone dangerously soft, but his eyes narrowed.

“I came alone,” Ronan said, and it was even true, in the strictest sense of the word. “But not unprepared.”

For a moment he thought Jonathan might simply run, and take Sarah with him where no one would ever find her again. The thought of it turned Ronan’s blood to ice. But Jonathan straightened instead, some cold and terrible calculation working behind his eyes, and when he spoke again his voice had lost every trace of warmth.

“Then you have made a very grave mistake, brother.” He raised two fingers to his lips and gave a short, sharp whistle.

A moment later, a second man Ronan had not known was there emerged from behind the broken far wall of the lodge, and between his hands was Sarah.

The sight of her struck Ronan harder than any blow he had taken in his life. She was still in her nightclothes, a blanket someone had thrown over her shoulders now slipping loose, her small face white and streaked with tears, her eyes searching wildly until they found him.

“Father!”

“I am here,” he called. “I am here, Sarah, do not be afraid.”

“Do not move.” Jonathan’s voice cracked like a whip, and the man holding Sarah produced, from somewhere at his belt a blade and laid it against her forearm, not yet drawing blood, but close enough that Ronan felt the threat of it. “I am not a fool, Ronan. I know precisely how many men your constables have brought, and just how quickly a knife can move in comparison. Nothing has changed. You have two options, exactly as you had a moment ago. The only difference is that now your friends in red coats are about to make this very much more difficult for everyone, and I have lost all patience.”

The hoofbeats were closer now.

Ronan could hear men dismounting somewhere beyond the trees, could hear Gregory’s voice calling his name.