The Rakehell of Roth (Everleigh Sisters #2) - Amalie Howard Page 0,100
you hurt?”
“No,” Isobel said, protesting with a groan as her friend threw her arms around her and dragged her into a suffocating embrace. “Not my blood. Someone else’s.”
Winter blinked, his eyes tracking the spots of scarlet on Isobel’s tattered coat. He hadn’t even checked to see if she’d been hurt. Instead, he’d mauled her like a slavering dog. Self-disgust lanced through him.
“Lord Roth,” the head officer said, “should we restrain the lady as well?”
Winter’s gaze went to Vittorina, who was cursing a blue streak, where she was being detained beside Cain. “Get your damned hands off of me! Don’t you know who I am? I’m a lady, and I’ll see you all whipped for your insolence.”
“Yes, but not with the others. She will be returned to her father in Rome.”
Her eyes grew huge. “No! Do you know what he will do to me? Please, don’t send me back, I beg of you. I’ll do anything.”
He had an inkling of what her father would do, given that the man had threatened it in the past when confronted with the behavior of his unruly, unrepentant daughter. Vittorina’s future had a nunnery in it. “You made your bed, now it’s time for you to enjoy the spoils.”
“You’re a bastard, Roth.”
“My father would disagree.”
His gaze met his brother’s, his sorrow and guilt overwhelming. “I’m so sorry,” Oliver said. “It’s all my fault. Cain pretended to be a friend, a peer who had fallen on hard times. I knew who his fiancée was to you. I wanted…I suppose I wanted to wound you…” He trailed off helplessly. “But I had no idea who Beaumont was or his previous connection to Isobel until Clarissa explained it to me on the way here. She gave me an earful.”
His brother’s damp eyes met his. “Just like that?”
“Yes.” Winter clapped him on the shoulder, wincing at the pain that lanced across his ribs.
“Why?” Oliver whispered.
He pulled him into an embrace. “Because that’s what brothers do.”
A furious shout and ensuing commotion had them both spinning as Edmund Cain burst free from the man securing him and reached for the pistol sheathed in its holster on the Runner’s belt. His eyes were wild as he waved the weapon and backed away. Knowing he was cornered as several of the Runners responded in kind with their own guns, he pointed it in Winter’s direction.
Suddenly, with a manic howl, he shifted his aim, directing the muzzle at Isobel, and Winter’s heart shriveled in his chest. “Shoot me, and she dies, too,” he bellowed.
“Put down the gun, Cain,” the Duke of Westmore said. “Even if you get the shot off, we both know what will happen.”
He blanched, but curled his lips in a sneer. “I’d rather die than rot in prison, and I’ll take her with me.” The gun wavered, Cain’s crazed stare colliding with Winter’s. “She’s mine!”
“Don’t try it!” Westmore warned at the same time that the hammer cocked, but it was too late.
The blast of a discharged weapon filled the air as a wild-eyed Winter lunged in front of Isobel, his single focus her safety, but instead of a lead ball lodging into his chest, the only impact he felt was the muscled force of Oliver’s body crashing into his and shoving him out of danger. Pain hammered Winter’s skull, a spray of something warm splashing into his face.
“Winter!” he heard someone scream. “Oh God, he’s been shot!”
His chest compressed as the breath was crushed from him as his vision went dark. Fuck, was he dying?
“No, no,” someone else cried. “It’s not him. It’s Lord Oliver.”
His senses returned to make out Oliver’s groan from above him. The pounding pain in his skull wasn’t from a gunshot…his head had smashed into the packed gravel when his brother crashed into him, taking the bullet that had been meant for Isobel. The one that Winter had meant to take.
Westmore bent over the two of them. “Bullet went clean through. Roth, that’s a nasty gash. Good news, though, you’ll both survive.”
“That seemed rather more heroic in my mind,” Oliver muttered with a pained wince. “Getting shot bloody hurts.”
A weak chuckle slipped from Winter. “You saved Isobel and me.”
Oliver nodded, his blue eyes filled with emotion. “Brothers.”
“Oh God, Olly,” Clarissa wept, descending in a flurry of skirts to pull Oliver in her lap, mindless of his yelp of pain.
Winter blinked. Olly?
Isobel crouched beside Winter, her face mixed with worry and relief, her lips twitching at the question in his eyes.