Till Dawn with the Devil (25 page)

Lady Colette laughed. “You are free to collect the pistol from me, Rainecourt, if you dare.” She brought the pistol up so it was level with Sophia’s temple.

The worn, hollowed shell that had once been his mother was still being tormented by her husband. One way or another, Reign intended to end it.

“You only have one pistol, madam,” Reign said, ignoring the soft whimper coming from Sophia. “You cannot shoot all of us.”

Stephan cleared his throat, dividing the countess’s attention. “Unlike the night you killed my parents.” His grin did not have a trace of humor as he brazenly took a small step forward, practically daring the woman to shoot him.

Shrewdness crept into Lady Colette’s narrow face. “I do not have to shoot you to hurt you, Ravenshaw. All I have to do is shoot
her.
”

Reign’s heart lurched in his chest. Denial clawed up his throat.

Before he could speak, Ravenshaw said, “Pull the trigger and you will forfeit your life, madam.”

“Brave words, sir.” Lady Colette cocked her head and studied him. “But hardly truthful. When I pressed the barrel of my pistol into your wife’s spine and fired, you thought naught of revenge. You gathered your fallen wife and rocked her in your arms.”

Sophia bit her lip and choked on her wordless denial.

As much as he longed to, Reign could not afford to comfort his wife. Not with her life in jeopardy. The key was to keep the countess talking until she made a mistake.

“You had more than one pistol that night, did you not?” Reign mused aloud. “What did you do, use the other to shoot Lord Ravenshaw?”

Lady Colette beamed at her son’s astuteness. “The man was so beset with grief, he did not notice the other pistol in my hand. I simply aimed and fired. Ravenshaw was docile as a lamb before the bullet tore out his throat. He died choking on his own blood.”

Sophia was openly sobbing now. Her soft hiccups made Reign’s stomach cramp with impotent rage.

“And my father,” Reign said tightly. “Rainecourt was not a docile lamb, madam. He would not have sat there quietly while you reloaded.”

His father was intimate with violence. He would not have hesitated to kill a woman everyone thought was already dead.

Lady Colette did not bother confirming his suspicions. Instead she said, “Do you know why Ravenshaw and Rainecourt were fighting?”

“Was there a fight?” Stephan asked, startling the countess. While she was distracted, he had gained a few inches.

“Careful,” Lady Colette chided. “Or you will be slipping in your lady’s blood.”

Sophia shook her head, silently begging her brother to remain where he was. “Y-you told my father that Rainecourt had betrayed him,” she said, attempting to do her part even though she was grieving for her parents.

Reign marveled at his wife’s fortitude. A weaker lady would have been hysterical and begging for her life by now. Sophia was a fighter. Pride and love swelled in his chest.

“Did you send him a note?”

With her unencumbered hand, Lady Colette brushed aside a strand of hair that was tickling her face. “A note could be discarded. Ignored. I did something Ravenshaw could not ignore.” She laughed, amused by her own cleverness. “I came back from the dead. When he was alone, I approached him and told him about Rainecourt’s wickedness. At first he did not believe me. Then the doubt began to creep into his heart. He knew his friend’s weakness for women. His fondness for rough sport. He also knew his lady’s sweet nature, and her desire to protect her husband.”

Sophia cleared her throat. “Was it true about Rainecourt and—and my mother?”

Lady Colette frowned as she pondered Sophia’s question. “The truth hardly matters. Your mother would deny it. So would Rainecourt. With my subtle encouragement, Ravenshaw came up with a brilliant plan. We would confront them together.”

“But something went awry.” Sophia shuddered and sniffed. “My father and Rainecourt were
already arguing. I awoke because I heard them shouting.”

Though Sophia could not see it, Lady Colette nodded. “Foolish man. Ravenshaw could not hold his temper. With his unsuspecting wife and young daughter in tow, he brought a pistol to the house with the intention of gaining a grand confession from Rainecourt.”

Stephan slid his foot to the side and shifted his stance. “Your plan was already unraveling. Rainecourt was on guard, and Sophia wandered downstairs in search of our mother. You had not counted on having a witness, even if she was just a six-year-old child.”

“Sophia . . . I remember her. Such a lovely little girl, and well mannered for one so young,” Lady Colette said, forgetting that she was pointing a pistol at the adult Sophia. “I never understood why Lady Ravenshaw brought the girl.”

The countess scowled.

Reign had been away at school when the murders had occurred. Over the years, he had often wondered whether his father would have killed him if he had been in the house that evening. He stared at the woman who had given birth to him and felt nothing. No kinship. No loyalty. Did she feel the same? If he lunged for the pistol, would she aim the barrel at his heart or would some lost part of her shy away from the notion of murdering her only son?

“Damn you, halt!” Panicked, Lady Colette
pointed the pistol at Ravenshaw. “I told you that—that I would shoot her!” Ravenshaw froze when the countess pressed the end of the barrel into Sophia’s skull.

Keeping his gaze fixed on his mother, Reign shortened the distance between them.

Focused on the past, Sophia nodded. “There was no time to reload. Gabriel is correct, Rainecourt would have stopped you. You used my father’s pistol to shoot your husband, did you not?”

“Rainecourt’s arrogance was far more dangerous than any bullet, my dear,” the countess confided to Sophia. “When I picked up Ravenshaw’s pistol from the floor, can you believe that my husband laughed? It did not bother him that his best friend and the man’s wife lay dying at his feet. He did not even seem particularly amazed that I had escaped my captors, and had been doing so for years.”

“My father was confident that he could overpower you,” Reign murmured.

“Rainecourt did not believe that I could pull the trigger,” Lady Colette corrected. “He was still laughing when the pistol discharged and the impact from the bullet took off half his face.”

“My-my apologies, but I think I am going to be sick,” Sophia said faintly, a convulsive sound erupting from her throat.

Lady Colette glanced down at Sophia.

Both Reign and Ravenshaw charged the countess at the same time. Reign reached his mother
first, seizing her by the wrist and wrenching her arm upward in a bone-cracking motion. Lady Colette still refused to relinquish the pistol.

“Curse you, Rainecourt.” The countess seethed and strained.
“No!”

Locked together in a fierce struggle, Ravenshaw tipped the odds in Reign’s favor by tripping over one of the legs of Sophia’s chair and slamming into them.

The pistol discharged at the impact.

Reign stiffened as a sharp, burning pain stole the air from his lungs. In the distance, he could hear Sophia screaming hysterically, but there was no time to reassure her as he, Ravenshaw, and the countess staggered backward in a tangle of limbs listing toward the floor.

Something hard grazed his cheek as Reign fell, and the world went black.

“Gabriel! Stephan!” Sophia had screamed their names so many times, her voice was becoming hoarse. She strained against her rope bindings, moving the chair in small uncontrolled increments that took great amounts of energy but did not bring her closer to the fallen men.

After the pistol had discharged, Sophia had seen her husband’s body jerk before her brother had collided into Reign and Lady Colette as the trio fell to the floor.

No one stirred for several minutes.

Stephan was the first to recover. Sophia cried out his name, relieved to see his fingers flex against the leg of his trouser. Dazed, her brother sat up and touched his head. There was a trickle of blood coming from a small cut above his left eyebrow.

“Sophia,” Stephan croaked as he shook off Lady Colette’s arm. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, grateful that her brother had merely been stunned by the fall. “Stephan, is
Gabriel—? I cannot tell . . . is he wounded? The pistol . . .”

Sophia bit her lower lip as she squinted through the dark haze of shadows and tears, fearing for her husband. Every part of her body ached, and in particular, her arms. She felt pulled and stretched beyond the limits of her body, as if Lady Colette had tied her to a medieval torture rack.

Stephan crawled over to Reign’s still form and gently turned him over. Sophia tilted her head from side to side, but her brother’s broad back blocked her view.

“Is he . . . ?”

“Sophia, I am fine,” Reign said, brushing aside her brother’s attempt to help him stand.

“He took a nasty blow to the face,” Stephan said grimly.

Sophia tensed, reacting to her brother’s tone.

“Probably from your damn fist when you came charging to my rescue and tripped over your clumsy feet,” Reign said, his voice laced his disgust as he gingerly fingered the swelling on his cheek. “My friends will never let me live down the fact that Ravenshaw knocked me out.”

“Stephan can keep a secret,” Sophia said quickly.

“The hell I can,” her brother countered gruffly. “Every gent will want to pat me on the back for trouncing the Devil of Rainecourt.”

“Bloody hell.”

Sophia leaned forward as far as her bound arms would permit her. “Gabriel, is something amiss?
Is it Lady Colette?” She had been so concerned about Reign and her brother that she had been thoughtless not to ask about the countess’s welfare. The woman was so still and quiet. Had she been knocked unconscious from the fall as Reign had been?

“Ravenshaw, untie your sister.”

The fact that Reign was not rushing to her side, insisting that
he
see to the task, concerned her. “What is wrong?” When her husband did not respond, she pounced on the most logical conclusion. “Oh, no,
you
were shot! Do not bother denying it. You gasped in pain seconds after the pistol discharged. Tell me the truth, Gabriel. How badly are you hurt?”

Reign grunted. “Are you planning to nag me like this for the rest of our lives?”

“It depends on how much time we have, my lord,” Sophia replied, her eyes filling with tears again.

Her husband cursed softly when he realized that his teasing had made her cry. “Aw, Sophia . . . no tears,” he said helplessly. “I do not want you to fuss. The wound is not serious. The bullet sliced through the meat of my upper arm. It is messy, but hardly serious.”

Sophia’s brow furrowed in puzzlement. “If the bullet sliced through your arm, then where did it go?”

Reign started to shrug out of his coat. “Mayhap the floor.” He did not sound as if he cared about the bullet’s final resting place.

Stephan stood and staggered toward Sophia. He stiffened as he reached her. “Rainecourt, I believe I have found the bullet.”

Something in her brother’s cool inflection caused her to glance down at her bodice. Inches above her left breast, Sophia saw the bright red blotch of blood blooming and expanding as she stared in numb horror. “Dear heavens, I have been shot!” she exclaimed, and then she did the most sensible thing a lady in her situation could do.

Sophia fainted.

Sophia’s eyes flew open the second Reign pressed the brandy-soaked cloth over the wound. Sucking in her breath, she tried to sit up, but he pushed her back down onto the cushions of the chaise longue.

“A vinaigrette under my nose would have sufficed,” she snapped waspishly, which only made him smile. “Leave it to a man to rouse a lady from a faint by sticking her with hot pokers and needles.”

“She’s delirious,” Stephan declared, earning him a glare.

“No, just furious!” Sophia replied. Her lashes fluttered open as she recalled what had happened. “Good grief, I have been shot.”

Sophia clutched Reign’s wounded arm, causing him to wince. She immediately released his arm and murmured a hasty apology. Ravenshaw had done a decent effort bandaging his arm while
Reign had torn open his wife’s bodice and inspected the damage done by the bullet.

His wife’s lower lip quivered. “I hurt. Am I dying?”

Reign had asked himself the same question as he had gathered Sophia into his arms and carried her across the room to the chaise longue. He had left the task of rousing the servants from their beds to Ravenshaw. No one was going to tend to his wife but him.

“More than a scrape to a knee,” he said, brushing an errant tear on Sophia’s cheek away with the pad of his thumb. “Less than the hole I wanted to put in your brother’s head when I realized he had left you bound to that damn chair while he checked my wounds.”

“It really was not his fault, Gabriel. I ordered him to check you first,” Sophia said, recalling those frightful minutes when no one had responded to her shouts. “I could not bear to think that—that—”

Reign leaned forward and kissed her roughly on the mouth. “Do not dwell on it. I will heal. So will you, wife. You were damn fortunate the bullet tore through my flesh first.”