Devilish Page 0,58

- Bey's back - she regretted days of doubt and restraint. What if they died here? What a waste it would be.

Then she heard it. Hooves.

Wheels.

From the way they'd come.

She was facing the wrong way and shifted to look, flexing her fingers around the pistol.

It could just be the servants.

"It is, isn't it?" she whispered, relaxing a little as the coach appeared around the bend, coming at a normal brisk trot.

"It would appear so. Delayed, but not suffering our problem." He kept his pistol in hand, however, but down, against his body. Tensing again, she put hers in the concealment of her wide skirts.

"Miller," the marquess said to the outrider, "who comes?"

Heart pounding, dry mouthed, Diana watched the slowing vehicle. She couldn't see who sat inside, and had no way of recognizing the two men on the coach. The outrider would.

"The second coach, milord." Then he raised his pistol. "But - "

Two flames, then explosions of sound.

The outrider cried out, fell back, tumbled off -

Diana tumbled to the earth beneath the marquess's hand as she heard something smash into the coach behind them. Another crack and a third pistol ball ricocheted off the ground in front of them spraying dirt so they both flinched.

She had her pistol pointing forward by then and cocked. She sighted without elegance, firing at the open window of the coach. Almost simultaneously, the marquess did the same.

Someone cried out.

A moment to take breath, to haul out the other pistol, to glance around. Their coachman and groom hiding behind horses. Outrider on the ground. Dead?

The marquess fired into the coach and another cry said someone had been hit. How many were there? And how many guns? He'd fired his two. She had one shot left.

She stared at the coach window, ready to kill.

Then a movement to the side swung her attention away.

The coach's horses were panicked, and the coachman there was having to work full out to hold them in, to try to keep the coach in place. The groom, however, half hidden by his bulk, was carefully aiming a long musket at the marquess.

At Bey.

The coachman pretty well blocked all sight of the man with the musket. Elbows on the ground, Diana sighted anyway, making herself take a precious second to steady, to find that place that Carr always directed her to. She had only one shot between now and a terrible loss.

It was a moment of eerie silence except for the thrashing harness of the frantic horses. The assailants in the coach were either dead or wary and she couldn't afford to think of them. She aimed for the mouth of that musket because it was the center of her target. Surely she'd have to hit some part of the gunman.

No more time. She squeezed the trigger, felt the kick -

The explosion deafened her. Her pistol had never made that much noise before. Then she heard screams.

She stared up at the writhing, bloody men on the coachman's box, the coachman swaying sideways, head a mass of blood...

Then the driverless horses took off, coach racketing down the road, leaving a trail of gore in its wake.

Her ears still rang.

In the sudden, resettling silence, the marquess rolled onto his side, head propped on hand. "You are a most delightfully bloodthirsty wench," he said. But then his expression changed, and he gathered her into his arms, there in the dirt of the road. "Ah, Diana, weep. It hurts to kill."

She shuddered, but tears would not come. "I didn't expect... I just wanted to stop him. I didn't mean - "

He rocked her. "You must have put your ball down the muzzle. Then he pulled the trigger only a fraction after you."

"It exploded."

"Indeed."

Though her ears had stopped ringing, Diana thought she'd hear that explosion for the rest of her life.

Were they dead by now, those two shattered men? Darkness gathered...

Oh no. She'd fainted last time she'd killed. Not again.

She pulled free, scrambled to her feet, and despite swimming head, started brushing at her ruined dress. "Clara. And your manservant. We must find them."

"We can't do that just yet." He leaned in the coach and produced a flask of brandy and a small glass. He filled it and passed it to her. "Drink."

The quick fire of the spirit made her shudder again, but seemed to clear her head. "I don't regret," she said fiercely.

"Nor do I." He passed the brandy to his coachman with permission for him and the groom to drink, then he knelt by the