never let this hold. You don’t understand the dynamics of this family. We’re very close. They’ll know any sort of marriage is a sham. They’ll fight you in court. They’ll find you out and see you hanged for murder.”
“You’re not going to live long enough to hang.” Gabriel’s threat was so feral, she almost believed him.
“Come again?” With a snap of Reginald’s fingers, the garrote tightened once more, cutting off Gabriel’s ability to speak.
To add insult to injury, the man on his right moved to block the doorway. Hauling a hammer-sized fist back, he punched Gabriel hard enough to crack his head to the side.
He barely blinked, merely turned his head back to stare at the man with lips pressed tightly closed.
Reginald resumed his threats. “I will dismantle this undeserving dynasty built by a man who broke his word to us. Starting with you and your twin, and working my way up to the top of Scotland Yard. Then all of this will go to the rightful family…” He swept his arms to encompass the entirety of Cresthaven Place. “Or…” He looked at her out of the sides of his eyes, revealing whites tinged a disgusting shade of yellow.
“Or what?” Felicity couldn’t stop herself from asking, though she was certain she would detest his response.
“Or… You marry me in earnest. And what’s yours becomes mine.”
“It won’t work,” she informed him. “The will stipulates I have to marry above a viscount.”
“There are ways around such stipulations.” Reaching out, he drew a finger across Felicity’s jaw, then traced the edge of her collar down the line of her throat.
In that moment, Gabriel Sauvageau spit a mouthful of blood into the eyes of the man who’d struck him, then snapped his head back to break the nose of the man with the death grip on the garrote.
Reginald swiveled around, but before he leveled his pistol at Gabriel, Felicity seized his cane from his left hand and struck out at the wrist with which he held the weapon.
A few well-placed elbows saw Gabriel freed, and when he dipped to gather the knife from the floor, he turned to her, swiping a drop of red from the corner of his mouth.
“Turn away, mon coeur,” he said, his eyes dark with a strange amalgamation of regret and anticipation as he advanced on Reginald, kicking away the pistol.
Felicity obeyed. She dashed around the desk to Emmaline, who collapsed against her. They clung to each other, staring into the fireplace, not once looking back even as terrible sounds reached them.
Felicity didn’t have to ask why he’d directed her not to look.
He didn’t want her to see all the blood he spilt.
Chapter 16
In a matter of hours, it was as if no one had died in the house.
Felicity realized that when one had a gangster, a surgeon, and a chief inspector in one’s family, one never had to worry about divesting oneself of bodies.
On pure chance, Raphael and Mercy had returned moments after the violence, having forgotten Mercy’s case notebook.
Gabriel had barely helped Felicity and Emmaline navigate the carnage and collapse into the parlor, when her brother-in-law strode onto the scene looking like the devil’s own butler, one hand gripping his lapel like a chuffed politician. “I say, mon frere, do you have any idea why I was forced to kill two men at the courtyard door?”
Mercy was much less collected as she shoved past the Sauvageau brothers and dashed to her side. “Dear God! Felicity, Mrs. Winterton, are you all right?”
Astonished that she’d held together this long, Felicity began to quake with bone-deep shudders. And still, she was able to turn and take the freezing fingers of the woman sitting beside her. “Mercy, meet Emmaline, our sister.”
After a flurry of action in the middle of which Emmaline and Felicity sat leaning on each other, siblings and spouses were called upon, and arrangements, both legal and otherwise, cleared their house of all evidence of violence.
Now Felicity sat surrounded by her family, squirming beneath their expectant regard.
Everyone had a strong drink in their hands, including herself. Morley and Prudence stood by the fireplace, helping themselves to whisky brought by a subdued Mr. Bartholomew.
Titus, who’d once shoveled the coal used to light said fireplace, pulled a comfortable chair in front of it, and settled his very pregnant wife, Honoria, into it. Propping her swollen feet on a stool and covering her lap with a blanket, he hovered protectively, attentive to any need that might arise.