A Dangerous Damsel (The Countess Scandals) (19 page)

***

Ewan was close to dying. It would be soon now. He’d thought he heard Deidre, and everyone knew you started hearing and seeing things when your time got close. He wouldn’t mind if his imagination conjured up a sight of her before he went. Not yet, though. He still had to figure out how to murder Alastair so she’d be free of him for good.

One benefit to the time they’d spent in this room—Ewan no longer had any reservations about killing the man. Deidre’s former lover was a sadistic bastard, and Ewan would put an end to him by any means necessary with a clean conscience.

Alastair was just about to begin again when there was a knock on the door. He frowned at it as it opened without his permission.

“Alastair, we got a problem.”

“Yes, we do. I don’t recall telling you to enter.”

The man paled.

“What could possibly have robbed you of your manners so completely,” Alastair pondered.

Ewan started to fade out of consciousness. He let his body fall slack against the ropes, causing the chair to creak alarmingly.

“Not quite yet,” Alastair said, pressing into one of the puncture wounds on Ewan’s shoulder.

The pain snapped him awake. Had he died yet? Perhaps next time. There was something he still had to do, though. He had to try to remember what.

“They’re leaving. I mean, they’ve left,” the thug stuttered.

Ice blue eyes narrowed. “Who?”

“The new men.”

Alastair set his knife down with deliberate precision. “Why?”

Oh, right. He needed to kill Alastair. It was a shame he didn’t have a knife. That knife would work wonderfully. Unfortunately, he was still tied to a chair. Ewan started slipping under again.

“Dee’s here.”

No.
Her name pulled him back, better than the knife slicing through his skin. She shouldn’t be anywhere near here. She promised she’d stay behind. Ewan strained against the ropes, hoping one of them had weakened enough. They held fast.

“She’s got a whole heap of men outside, and she’s killed Teller,” the messenger said.

Alastair’s fist slammed down, sending the perfectly ordered blades scattering.

Ewan laughed. It hurt his chest, especially the places where his ribs were broken, but he did it anyway. He laughed until he coughed blood and was wheezing in his chair. Of course she hadn’t come alone. Well done, leannain.

“You think this is humorous?” Alastair asked. “You’ll be dead before she can save you.”

Ewan grinned. “As long as yer dead as well.”

“I have no intention of dying.”

“We’ll see,” Ewan wheezed. “She’s got a temper, our Deidre, and it sounds like ye’ve made her very cross.”

Alastair paced the room. On his third circuit, he stopped. He straightened his shirt cuffs and achieved a state of extreme calm. “Nothing is wrong. This is what we wanted to happen.”

“Sir?”

“Retrieving Deidre has always been the goal and now she is here.”

“What about her men, sir?”

“They’re Deidre’s men. Once I have Deidre, they will become my men.”

Ewan would love to know how he intended to manage that.

“Please deliver a message. Deidre must come alone before the hour chimes or I will slit Lord Broch Murdo’s throat from ear to ear.”

No.

Chapter 22

“You can’t,” Tristan argued.

“I can’t not.”

“But he’s—”

“Not going to hurt me,” Deidre interrupted.

She wasn’t certain it was true, but Tristan didn’t need to know that. It was very likely that she’d destroyed Alastair’s interest in her when she’d lied to him. It would not be unlike him to go to all this trouble to get her back purely to take his revenge on her.

Even if he didn’t intend revenge, he most certainly wasn’t threatening Ewan’s life so that he could apologize and let them both go free. She knew him. Alastair would not let Ewan go, not even if she offered herself in his place. She said as much.

“We outnumber them now,” Darrow said. “We could go in by force.”

“We have the same numbers as them now,” Deidre corrected. “And Ewan would die the moment we tried.”

They were running out of time. Even without Alastair’s threat, once the sun started to come up, they would lose the illusion of superior numbers. They needed to act now.

“Go in alone,” Angus said thoughtfully. “But make him show ye the lad first.”

“He’ll refuse,” Deidre answered.

“Aye, but if ye tell him yer men are storming the place if ye dinnae signal out the window that ye’ve seen him and he’s alive, he might reconsider.”

That could work. “And then what?”

“And then we storm the place.”

Deidre stared at him. “And what does that gain us?”

“Someone in the room with Ewan when the trouble starts,” Angus said, staring back at her. “Yer nae without talents. I expect ye to keep him alive until I get there.”

Tristan looked between her and Angus. “That’s a shit plan. You have no idea what might happen.”

“It requires a great deal of trust,” Darrow said in a low voice.

It had been hard enough to trust Ewan. Now she would be putting both their lives into someone else’s hands. “I don’t know if I can.”

Darrow put a hand on her shoulder. “Your man trusts him.”

“He’s frequently an idiot.”

Darrow smiled. “Your rules are to keep you safe, but there’s no safe way here. It’s all or nothing, love.”

Could she trust herself? Could she trust Angus? She had to. There was no other option.

“How long do you need to be ready?” Deidre asked Angus.

“Not long. Ten minutes, maybe a bit less.”

She nodded. “Sooner is better.”

Angus and the others left Deidre and Tristan alone while they went to prepare.

Tristan sat in the chair, scowling. “You’re both going to die. Some of the rest of us might make it, but you and Ewan—”

“Will be fine as long as you come and save me quick, little brother,” she said, switching to Romani with a grin.

Tristan stared at her. She thought of all the times they’d been like this in some rundown hovel, disagreeing, and he’d leaned back like her father used to and made some asinine quip. He didn’t this time.

Instead, he stood. He looked her in the eyes and said, “I’ll be there.”

“I know you will,” she said. The tears stayed in place this time. “Now how many blades do you think I can hide, and how many do you think they’ll find?”

***

The man Alistair left preferred fists to knives. It was a nice change. Ewan had been punched on a number of occasions, and as of yet, it had never killed him. He was trying to recount every time he’d ever been punched when he heard her again.

Ewan should have been wishing Deidre were hundreds of miles away, but he couldn’t deny that a selfish part of him ached to see her. The blows that landed while he listened to her footsteps coming down the hall didn’t even register. All he felt was the thumping of his heart in time with her shoes as she neared.

When the door opened, he forced his eyes open around the swelling. Heaven above, she was beautiful. How had he ever managed to convince her to give her heart to him?

A stream of foreign curses poured out of her lovely mouth. If they made it out of this, Ewan would have to learn the Romani language. The cursing, at the very least. He would need to know how much trouble he was in. Tristan could probably teach him. Tristan. Had he made it back?

Suddenly she was there in front of him. “Ewan? Ewan, can you hear me?”

“Tristan? I told him to—” There was a purpling bruise on her face. “What happened to ye?”

She was crying. “Tris’s fine. I’m fine. Much better shape than you are.”

He hadn’t lied to her. That was good. That would have been difficult to fix.

Alastair’s voice intruded. “There, you’ve seen him. Wave your flag or whatever you mean to do.”

“The point of me seeing him,” Deidre said, not taking her eyes or her hands from Ewan. “Was to confirm that he was alive. Which he won’t be if he keeps bleeding like this.”

“Medical treatment was not a stipulation of our deal.”

“Then we can all die together when my men pour through here like wildfire.”

There was a long moment of silent standoff before Alastair sighed. “Fine. I assume you want him cut loose?”

“I can’t look at his ribs as he is.”

They removed the ropes. The process of getting him moved, stretched out on the bed, and retied at his hands and feet almost caused him to black out. The healing was going to prove worse than the torture. He must have said it out loud, because Deidre laughed. God, he loved her laugh.

“Bring me a clean cloth and hot water,” she demanded.

“You’re actually going to tend to him yourself,” Alastair marveled. “Do you even know how?”

Deidre ignored Alastair in favor of continuing her ministrations. Ewan wouldn’t have listed nurturing under her most predominate qualities either, but he was happy to spend his last moments with her running her hands over him and murmuring romantic sentiments.

“You’re an idiot, you know that?”

Ah yes, the honey sweet words of his lady love.

“I ought to stab you myself for being so foolish.”

Like angel song to his ears.

“I don’t think you could have lost more blood if you’d been deliberately siphoning it from your body.” She continued to berate him while she cleaned and wrapped his wounds.

He was beginning to resemble something found in an Egyptian tomb as she covered him in layer after layer of bandages. Ewan thought about dying then but Alastair’s voice kept intruding on his peace.

“That’s quite enough, I think. I’d hate for your troops to think something had happened to you.” Alastair gestured to the window.

Deidre looked down at Ewan and squeezed his hand. When she pulled away, she left a small blade behind. While it was encouraging to know she hadn’t come without a plan, he hoped that plan didn’t rely heavily on him being of much use. Especially not now that she’d immobilized him in linens.

At the window, Deidre leaned out and waved a strip of white bandaging. When she turned back, she had an expression Ewan had never seen before. It was as hard as Alastair’s own.

“Done. Now what do you want me to do?”

Alastair’s smile was cold. “The better question, my dear, is what are you willing to do to save his life?”

Everything. Anything. But more specifically, she’d like to drive one of these knives straight into Alastair’s heart. Ewan was barely recognizable. She’d seen him weather knife wounds and broken bones since they’d met, and she knew he could take a great deal of pain, but this was beyond comprehension. Every part of him was bruised or bleeding.

The plan was for Deidre to stall while she waited for Angus to come and rescue them. She wasn’t certain she could stick to the plan. She wanted to fly at Alastair and claw out his vicious, cold eyes.

“Come, Deidre. Make a suggestion. You know what I like.”

She did know. The thought of doing any of them for him now repulsed her, but she could use his jealousy to gain the upper hand.

“You like to watch,” she said, adding a touch of sultry to her tone. “Is that what you want?”

Alistair sneered. “While it would be amusing to watch him try—and he has proven himself irritatingly resilient—I don’t think your beau is up for the challenge.”

“What about that one?” Deidre asked. She forced her eyes to roam suggestively over the burly thug who’d been beating Ewan when she came in.

“Really, Deidre. Have your tastes changed so much? You never used to like them big.”

Ignoring Alastair, she moved close to the lackey, running her hands where her eyes had been. She tried not to think about Ewan on the bed behind her. “What do you think, love? Can you help me put on a show? I bet you’re not shy.”

Desire flared the thug’s nostrils. He grabbed her hips in his meaty palms.

“That’s enough.” Alastair said. “Take your hands off her.”

The henchman waited a little too long. Alastair pulled the pistol from his pocket and fired it into the man’s leg. The man screamed.

“Out,” Alastair commanded while he loaded a second shot. He didn’t need to ask again.

“Temper, temper, Alastair. That’s a bit wasteful when you need all the men you can muster.”

Alastair glared at her. “It was wasteful. You and your games.”

“You’ve always liked my games.”

“I find myself growing suddenly tired of them.” He pointed the pistol at Ewan. “Convince me I still want to play.”

If he pulled the trigger, Deidre wouldn’t be able to stop it. If she panicked, though, he would only grow bolder in his threats to Ewan. Deidre closed the distance between them.

“If you don’t want to watch,” she said, “I suppose that means you want to participate.”

She kissed his neck, sliding her hand inside the front of his breeches. The evidence beneath her palm and his quick inhale told her she’d guessed correctly. If the pistol weren’t still centered firmly on Ewan, she could have ended it right then.

“Is that all you want—a little attention?” she asked as she rubbed him.

“It’s not unreasonable,” he said, shifting under her attentions. “Is it, Lord Broch Murdo?”

So that was his game. He wanted to make Ewan watch them.

He wouldn’t get his wish. Deidre could delay with the best of them, and she didn’t need to stall much longer. She just hoped Ewan would forgive her for whatever happened before their rescue arrived.

“Not unreasonable at all.” Deidre unbuttoned the fall on his trousers with painstaking leisure. It worked in her favor that building anticipation and wasting time looked much the same.

She’d wrapped her hand around him again when he stopped her.

“Not your hand. Your mouth.”

Ewan made a strangled sound and struggled against the ropes that held him down.

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t wait any longer. “Here, or is there a better vantage point?”

When Alastair turned to consider the other possibilities afforded by the room, the pistol barrel dropped away from Ewan. In an instant, Deidre’s blade slid free of its hiding place against her wrist and home again between his ribs. She heard the bubbling gurgle of a fatal strike and pulled the knife back out. She shoved away from him, rushing to Ewan’s side.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry they did this to you and I’m sorry—”

A gunshot swallowed all other sounds.

Deidre turned to see Alastair, lying motionless on the floor, with the smoking pistol hanging from his fingers. She looked down to see a red stain blooming across her stomach.

It hurt. She didn’t remember it hurting quite so much the last time she’d been shot. Deidre sat next to Ewan on the bed—a posture that quickly turned into a slumped collapse across his torso—and prayed that Angus and Tristan would make it to them in time.