A Portrait of Love (The Academy of Love #3) - Minerva Spencer Page 0,126

closed around the bloody neckcloth.

“Good, keep it there.”

Wyndham blinked his hazy eyes. “What—”

“Shhh, you’ll see.” Simon crawled across the floor, biting his lip bloody at the pain in his knees. Once he reached the door, he dug his fingers beneath the door frame.

“You have three minutes!” Raymond shouted

Simon got a good grip and then yelled while he pulled, hoping to muffle any noise.

“Why don’t you come in here and we can discuss the matter like gentlemen?” Simon shouted, wrenching with all his strength. The frame didn’t even budge.

“Goddammit,” he hissed.

“Why would I risk my neck? You must think I’m a fool,” Raymond called back.

“Kick it,” Wyndham wheezed.

Simon nodded and stood.

“At least come to the window and quit hiding like a coward,” he yelled, kicking at the same time.

The wood splintered with a loud crack and pulled away from the wall.

“Two minutes!” Raymond sounded almost hysterical and Simon saw something burning outside the window.

“That wasn’t a minute, Raymond. Do you need to borrow my watch?” Again he kicked and this time a two-foot piece broke away.

“This is the last time you’ll mock me, Simon!” Raymond yelled in an ominous tone, black smoke billowing past the shattered glass.

Simon grabbed the wood and yanked it off the wall.

“Take my boot—throw it first to distract him,” Wyndham gasped.

Simon saw that his brother had toed off his boot while he’d been kicking the doorframe.

He grabbed the boot and took one last look at his brother.

Wyndham was breathing in rough gasps through his mouth and his face was taut with pain. “Go.”

Simon nodded, grabbed the boot, and threw it at the window with all his might.

Chapter Forty-One

How far past the mile marker did the farmer say it was?” Honey asked.

Mr. Heyworth squinted at the road ahead. “He said it was just past a big chestn—oh—” he pointed, “I think that must be it, on the right.”

The unmistakable sound of gunfire came from the direction where Heyworth had just pointed.

Honey urged her horse into a gallop.

“My lady! Wait, you don’t know what you’re riding into. You could get shot—you might get your husband shot—”

His last words made her abruptly rein in and slow to a canter.

When Mr. Heyworth rode up beside her, she turned to him. “My husband might be the one getting shot right now,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Let’s get off the driveway and go in through there.” He pointed toward the thicket that ran beside the driveway. “It will give us a bit of cover.”

Honey nodded and headed in that direction. Once she was concealed from the drive, she swung off her horse without waiting for help.

“I’m going on foot,” she said in a low voice, quickly fastening the skirt of her habit, which made it far easier to walk. She held out a hand. “Give me a gun.”

He hesitated. “But—”

Another shot rang out and he swiftly handed her a pistol, butt first. “Let’s stay in the trees and—”

But Honey was already moving. She kept walking until she could see the roof of the house ahead.

“The pistol is loaded and ready to fire,” he whispered as they both made their way toward the left, to get around the hedge that cut off most of their view of the house.

Honey nodded; she knew the rest: aim and pull the trigger.

A third shot came from the direction of the house, which they could now see.

It was a moderately sized three-story structure. More trees and shrubs grew along the front and the side that faced them. It looked like a park bordered the back of the building.

Heyworth grabbed her arm and pulled her down into a crouch just as a man emerged from behind a tree near the house: it was Raymond.

His back was to where they were hiding and he was staring at something that was blocked from their view by a tree.

Whatever Raymond was looking at, it was agitating him and he paced back and forth, clutching something in his hands. He was gesticulating, as if he were talking to himself.

“If we could get to that tree, we could get a better look,” Heyworth whispered, pointing to a big oak about twenty feet beyond the hedge. “But we’d need to expose ourselves to get there. We can’t squeeze through this hedge because it’s just too thick. That means going out in the open.”

Honey was only listening with part of her brain. The other part was watching Raymond and trying to see how much time she might have to reach the tree that Heyworth had just