When a Duke Loves a Governess (Unlikely Duchesses #3) - Olivia Drake Page 0,112

he had devised some plan of his own. Yet she could not see how it was helping matters to goad a madman. He would get himself shot!

Unless that was his plan. To save her by sacrificing himself. Dear God, he must not do it. For Sophy’s sake if nothing else.

Banfield jerked his head toward the door. “Enough chatter. Get into the coal cellar, Carlin. If you value the wench’s life, don’t try anything foolish.”

“I’ll cooperate. But only so long as you promise not to hurt her.”

The secretary uttered a vicious laugh. “You aren’t in charge here, Duke. I’ve had enough of your orders these past few weeks.”

Tessa felt herself drawn backward a few steps by Banfield to allow space for Guy to reach the door. The cold steel never wavered from the side of her neck. The thought of him walking into a death trap caused her throat to constrict. “Don’t, Guy. Don’t go down there. He intends to kill you.”

“I know.”

As he turned to look at her, his hand on the doorknob, the moonlight revealed a calm passivity on his face, a fatalistic acceptance of his doom. It was an expression she’d once read described in a gothic novel about a nobleman riding in a tumbrel to the guillotine during the French Revolution.

Guy must believe the situation impossible to escape. She had been mistaken to think him confident. Rather, he was resigned to his fate. Their fate because she would not elude death, either. She felt her own courage ebbing, and only with effort did she bolster her spirits. No! If he wouldn’t fight back, then she would have to save them both somehow.

Even as she watched for her chance, a flash of movement jarred her. Guy spun around and seized her, yanking her against him. In the same instant, she felt Banfield’s finger jerk on the trigger.

A scream of pure terror tore from her lips. She braced herself for a pain that never came. Instead, the world tilted crazily. She was falling … falling with Guy’s arms wrapped tightly around her.

As they hit the ground, his body shielded her from the impact. She realized in a daze that she hadn’t been shot. Guy, however, uttered a strangled groan and fell still.

Had the bullet struck him? Was he dead?

She pushed up on one hand to frantically examine him in the shadows. Running her fingers over him, she found no blood. Only then did it occur to her that she’d never heard an explosion of gunpowder.

A snarl of rage yanked her attention to Banfield. He loomed against the night sky like an avenging devil. She stared in frozen horror as he pointed the pistol at them. There was no time to move, nowhere to escape. Yet as he pulled the trigger again, it clicked ineffectually.

His teeth bared in a curse, he hurled the gun aside and dug in his pocket as if seeking another weapon. Then the oddest thing happened.

He clapped his hand to his neck and staggered sideways. He stood for a moment, swaying like a tree buffeted by a gust of wind. Much to Tessa’s astonishment, he crumpled into a motionless heap in a bed of roses. Not even the thorns could rouse him.

A bandy-legged leprechaun stepped out of the gloom by the back gate. As he came scurrying forward, she gave a choked gasp of relief and leaped to her feet. “Jiggs!”

“Is ye hurt, milady?”

“Not at all. But I fear Guy has been shot.”

“Nonsense.”

The deep, disembodied voice came from near her feet. She caught her breath for a second time to see the duke slowly sitting up. Quickly, she bent down to grasp his good arm and assist him when she would have much rather showered him with kisses. “Guy! Are you all right? Did you jar your wound when you fell?”

He got to his feet and dusted off his clothes. “I merely had the air knocked out of me. Neither of us was in danger of being shot.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Banfield was using one of my dueling pistols. When I received the forged note with a lock of your hair, he insisted on accompanying me as protection against Haviland. Though he was standing right beside me in my study when I primed the gun, he never even noticed that I’d palmed the bullet. His arrogant belief in his own cleverness was his undoing.”

“You knew it was him?”

“I realized it only today,” he said grimly, “after coming up empty with every other suspect. It was then that