Never Kiss a Rake (41 page)

Bryony didn’t move. She could see that Adrian held a gun, and it was pointed in her direction. Or was he pointing it at the man who stayed at the top of the stairs, still in the shadow, her body shielding him?

“I’m not going to shoot her,” Adrian said flatly.

“You don’t need to pretend anymore, Kilmartyn. I’ve told this little fool the truth.”

“What truth?” Adrian snarled.

“That you were using her. That you lied to her, seduced her, while all the time you were covering up your involvement in her father’s murder.”

“And why would I do that?” Adrian sounded very calm, and through the miasma of doubt and pain Bryony felt the faint flowering of hope.

“For entertainment, of course. But this grows tedious, old man. Enough is enough.”

She heard an ominous clicking sound, and she froze, knowing she was going to die, when another gust of wind hit the side of the house, shaking the entire building. There was a sudden great rending noise, as if the world were being split in two, and then his scream, high-pitched and panicked. She whirled around, looking for the monster who’d brought her to this death trap, but the stairs were empty. In fact, the stairs were gone, taking Brown with them, and she stared in horror, feeling the floor shift beneath her feet.

“What was that?” Adrian snapped, moving closer.

He was still holding the gun, she realized. Would he be able to hit her from across that open stretch of flooring? Would it matter? There was no way out for her.

“The stairs have collapsed,” she said in a dull voice. “I’m afraid your friend is gone.”

“He’s not my goddamned friend. I have no idea who that man is, and I don’t care. If he’s gone then there’s nothing to stop you from coming over here.”

She gave him a look of stark disbelief. “Are you mad? There’s a gaping hole between us that goes all the way down to the basement and the bodies of your wife and her maid. You’ll just throw me down there anyway—why not save you the trouble and wait for the floor to finish collapsing?” Her voice was bitter.

“If you keep talking we won’t have long to wait,” he snarled. “You have to trust me. In truth, I don’t care whether you do or not, I’m not going to stand here and watch you plummet to your death. Get on your feet and jump, damn it, or I’ll come over there and get you.”

“Even if I wanted to I don’t think I could,” she said, and the numbness that plagued her feet seemed to have traveled to her heart. She no longer cared what happened to her, what happened to him. She’d given up fighting. She sat back, sticking her bloody feet out in front of her. “You were supposed to follow my bloody footprints. If I knew you were going to be here anyway I wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to slice up my feet.”

“Get up,” he said, his voice so cold and lethal that she found herself reaching for a handhold automatically, starting to pull herself up, only to feel the fragment of floor tip forward, a few remaining pieces of charred furniture sliding down the angle and plummeting into the darkness. “Now move as far back as you can go. Carefully.”

For a moment she didn’t move, staring at him. “You must be mad.”

“You have no choice, Bryony. You can trust me, or you can take your chances on the house not falling down.” There was no gentleness in his voice, no persuasion. Simply a statement of fact. “Which do you think is more likely?”

“Give me one good reason to trust you,” she said, gimlet-eyed.

“I can’t think of one,” he said. “Except that I love you. Now run, damn it, and jump to me.”

She stared at him, shocked. “Now’s a fine time to tell me,” she finally managed to snap back.

“I’ve been busy,” he growled.

“I suppose you expect me to tell you I love you too.”

“You could,” he agreed. “I’d much rather have you move your bloody arse and get over here and we can argue about the details later.”

“Let me think about it.”

He cursed, the words so foul she was impressed. “If you don’t move now you won’t have a chance to ever have a thought in your clever little brain again.”

“You’re right,” she said judiciously. “Besides, it’s really very simple.”

“It is?” He sounded no more than slightly harassed.

“Of course. If you want to kill me then I’d just as soon be dead. So either catch me or you’re lying and you’ll let me fall, but make up your mind.”

“There was never any question on my part,” he said. “Trust me, Bryony.”

It was the third time he said it, and that third time gave her wings. She took a running start and leapt across the cavernous hole, closing her eyes and praying as she went sailing through the air.

She crashed into him, and he went down beneath her. Catching her in his arms, he rolled them both away to the far wall, keeping her still beneath him as the building creaked and shifted ominously. The remains of the house across the divide began to crumble, and a moment later it collapsed into the basement with a thunderous noise and a huge cloud of dust and soot, burying her would-be murderer. Slowly, slowly he loosened his death grip on her. She opened her eyes to look up into his blazingly furious ones.

“I don’t know whether to kiss you or strangle you,” he muttered.

“I thought you told me I could trust you?”

“That doesn’t mean I’m not tempted to beat you within an inch of your life. ‘Let me think about it,’” he mimicked. “I’ll give you something to think about, my girl.”

“Let’s wait until we get out of here, shall we?” she said. “Or aren’t there any stairs left?”

He stared at her in disbelief. “You mean you jumped across that gaping hole and you didn’t even know whether or not there was a way to get down?”

She smiled up at him, and finally her eyes began to fill with tears. “I love you too.”

T
HREE DAYS LATER
Bryony Arielle Josephine Russell Bruton, Countess of Kilmartyn, stretched out in the bunk, warm and catlike. “Thank God I don’t get seasick,” she said. “It’s bad enough that I can’t walk and can’t use my left arm—if I’d been casting up my accounts all over the place I really couldn’t bear it.”

Her husband gave her an indulgent smile from across the wide cabin. “I rather like it that you’re currently forced to stay in bed. It’s the best way to enjoy a honeymoon, such as it is.”

“It’s lovely!” she protested.

“Well, running from the law and leaving everything behind and not knowing if or when we can ever return isn’t quite my idea of lovely,” he said. “And you’re worried about your sisters.”

“I know, but I needn’t be. I sent them a letter telling them that we know father wasn’t responsible, but the man who was is dead and we can’t prove anything. Not good news, and I expect they’ll be horrified that I’m married.”

“Horrified?” he echoed, affronted. “Why?”

“Because I told them I was never going to marry. I was going to live in happy seclusion in a little cottage for the rest of my life once everything was settled.”

“You can live anywhere you want as long as the seclusion includes me.” He crossed the room in a few strides and caught her face in his hands. “Foolish girl,” he whispered, and deliberately turned her face to one side to kiss the scars. “You are such an idiot for such a smart woman.” He kissed her eyelids, and then her mouth, a deep, possessive kiss that had her rising up to meet him. He climbed onto the bunk with her, tucking her against him, and she felt that strange, wonderful calm envelop her once more.

“It’s actually the staff at Berkeley Square that I’m worried about,” she said after a few quiet moments. “I hate it that we just abandoned them without a word.”

“They have word, darling. My lawyer has seen to it that Mrs. Harkins… or for all I know she’s Mrs. Collins by now… has charge of the household money, and they’re taking good care of Jem. I imagine they’ll have a lovely time having the house to themselves and not having to look after anyone.”

“I hope they all get a chance to use the bathtub,” she said. “You really should put one up in the attics as well.”

“We will. When we get back.”

She was silent for a long while. “Will we get back?”

He slid his arms around her waist, leaning over and giving her ear a tiny bite, sending shards of warmth through her. “You know we will. We have the Pinkerton Agency’s best man in England working on it. If the man survived they’ll find him. If he crawled off to die they’ll find him. Either way, they’ll find out who he is and get the proof they need so we can return home.”

“What if he is still alive? What if he goes after my sisters?”

He kissed the side of her face tenderly. “Why would he? And how would he even find them? They’re buried in the countryside somewhere, aren’t they?”

She nodded, still uneasy. “Nanny Gruen won’t let anything happen to them.”

“They’re with your old nanny? Then I tremble to think of anyone interfering.”

She turned her face to smile at him. “You know nannies very well.”

“Fiercest creatures on the face of this earth,” he said promptly. “So they’re safe, the staff at Berkeley Square is safe, and we’re going to travel to Venice and France and Vienna until Scotland Yard gets the proof that I never killed anyone…” He hesitated. “Well, that at least I never killed my wife and her maid.”

She turned completely, ignoring her healing arm, and held him. “You weren’t responsible for the bombing,” she said fiercely. “You didn’t know.”

His laugh was without humor. “Ignorance is a poor excuse.”

She gave him a tiny shake, the best she could manage given how much bigger he was. “Being a martyr is annoying. You told me that when the captain married us and I wanted to keep my face covered. So if I’m not allowed to be a martyr then neither are you.”

This time his laugh was real. “All right. We’ll be two completely unmartyred vagabonds for the time being. Until we get home.”

She kissed him, sweet and full. “Until we get home,” she echoed.

A
NNE
S
TUART
is a grand master of the genre, winner of the Romance Writers of America’s prestigious Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award and survivor of close to forty years in the romance business—and she still just keeps getting better.

Her first novel was
Barrett’s Hill
, a gothic romance published by Ballantine in 1974 when Anne had just turned twenty-five. Since then she’s written more gothics, as well as Regencies, romantic suspense, romantic adventure, series romance, suspense, historical romance, paranormal, and mainstream contemporary romance.

She’s won numerous awards, appeared on most best-seller lists, and speaks all over the country. Her general outrageousness has gotten her on
Entertainment Tonight
, as well as in
Vogue, People, USA Today, Woman’s Day
, and countless other national newspapers and magazines.

When she’s not traveling, she’s at home in northern Vermont with her luscious husband of thirty-eight years, an empty nest, three cats, and four sewing machines, and when she’s not working, she’s watching movies, listening to rock and roll (preferably Japanese), and spending far too much time quilting.