Ten Things I Hate About the Duke - Loretta Chase Page 0,112
tied, she said, and she didn’t know how to kill the lady quick and easy on her own. And so she sent me and wants to know, would you come along?”
“Not sure I can help murder a lady,” Ashmont said. “Want to, yes.” Desperately.
“Not in that waistcoat, Your Grace,” said Sommers.
“My miss is that cut up,” Keeffe said. “Never seen her thrown like this before.”
“Yes. My fault. Should’ve been more careful. How the devil could anybody—” He shook his head. “No matter. Sommers.”
The valet had already moved into his sacred domain. He emerged with a red waistcoat and black cravat.
“Ah, good,” Ashmont said. “Won’t show the blood.”
“His Grace likes his little joke,” Sommers said.
“Well, it don’t do to moan and groan and rant and rave, does it?” Keeffe said. “It’s bad, but you’ll pull her through. Or she’ll pull you through.”
“Both,” Ashmont said. “We’re a pair now. The lady said so.”
“Matched well enough,” Keeffe said. “Both of you headstrong and reckless and ready for a fight, like I tole her. Not that it’s up to me.”
“It won’t be up to Morris’s annoying mother, I promise you. Sommers, let them know I want the cabriolet.”
Keeffe beside him, Ashmont drove to the jockey’s quarters, where they found Cassandra still pacing and stewing. At sight of him, she stopped and drew a deep breath. Then she walked to him and laid her head on his chest.
“I cannot think clearly,” she said.
“I’m not so gifted in the thinking department myself,” he said.
“I have looked at the matter in every way.”
“Including telling me to go to the devil?”
She tipped her head back. “I have waited and hoped for years. I made a life for myself without you, but I believe it will be a great deal more interesting with you. You haven’t a prayer of escaping now.”
“Relieved to hear it.”
He’d make any sacrifice for her. He knew he’d give his life for her. It would be easier, in fact, to give his life than to live it without her.
“We might have to go into exile in Siberia,” she said, “but I will not let that woman dictate to me. It’s vindictiveness, pure and simple. A weapon dropped into her hands, and she has no scruples about using it. She hates me. But I’ve had time to think about what she said. It’s more than likely she made everything out to be worse than it is. In any case, I doubt it’s simply me. She has a grudge against my parents.”
She told Ashmont what Lady Bartham had said, as much as she could remember. “I tried to make myself calm, but I made a bad job of it.”
“She did everything she could to throw you off balance,” Ashmont said. “Couldn’t chance your being clearheaded and getting the better of her.”
“It’s the guilt,” Cassandra said. “I knew it was wrong to go to you. I knew it was dangerous. But it was necessary—rules be damned.”
“No arguments from me,” Ashmont said. “As to wrong and dangerous—practically an invitation. Hard to resist. And then there was me. How could you resist me?”
“I reckon I’ll step out of the place now,” Keeffe said. “Getting too thick in here for me. Need some air.”
They looked at him.
“Sorry,” Ashmont said. “Forgot you were there.”
“That’s dangerous,” she said. “When people forget he’s there, very bad things can happen.”
“Ah, but he has the knack, doesn’t he?” Ashmont smiled at the jockey. “I never acquired that one, the making-yourself-invisible trick.”
Keeffe looked up at him and laughed. “You. Invisible.” He laughed again, tickled.
His cackling laughter somehow made everything a degree less dark. This was a man whose body had been left in pieces. He’d survived. Here he was, laughing.
Ashmont turned to Cassandra. “We got ourselves into this fix. We’ll get ourselves out of it. But I have a feeling it’s not going to be pretty.”
“No.” She shook her head. “To begin with, we have to tell my parents the truth.”
She’d paced Keeffe’s compact parlor, back and forth from the chimneypiece, with its portrait of the beloved horse and his rider, to the door. She’d paced in the other direction, too, from window to wall.
No matter what schemes Cassandra devised, no matter what desperate measures she considered, the one thing she dreaded most kept appearing, like a great, angry bull blocking her path. She had to tell her parents what she’d done. If matters went awry, if Lady Bartham wasn’t true to her word—so many ifs—Cassandra couldn’t let them find out from anybody else.