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The thatch sliced ribbons through her thin gloves and into Leona’s hands.

Her hands stung in a thousand places. She gripped her lower lip between her teeth and took deep, steadying breaths.

She knew Deveraux was worried for her. After her dismal failure yesterday, she had to maintain her energies.

She could not let him worry about her. Their situation was precarious enough as it was. He needed to concentrate on himself.

As she pulled herself over the apex of the roof, her braid caught sharply on the rough thatch, threatening to pull the top of her head off.

She tried to dig her toes into the thatch and work herself back up a bit to release the pressure on her braid.

Finally, she was able to reach up a hand to work her hair free, pulling out a painful clump in the process.

She sighed thankfully, then suddenly, her toe lost its grip in the thatch.

She started to slip downwards, scraping her cheek.

Frantically she dug her fingers into the dense thatch, her feet scrambling.

The heavy black dress pulled upward, caught for a moment, then released, tumbling her sideways down the slick roof.

Her eyes, wide and frightened, stared up at Deveraux.

He pulled his feet free, allowing his body to slide feet first down the roof.

He didn’t try to grab; he just slid. Quickly he came up by Leona, grabbing for her dress as he slid past. With a slamming jolt, his knees buckled as his feet came in contact with the ground floor wing roof.

Leona continued to slide, and he braced his arms and body against the roof, his fingers wrapped tightly in the material of her dress.

She stopped with a bump, her head pointed downward, nearly off the edge of the roof.

Her breath whistled through her teeth as she sucked in air. She lay still for a moment, almost in shock that she didn’t tumble entirely off the roof.

Deveraux’s heart thumped loudly in his chest. Carefully, he eased himself down until he squatted, pinning himself securely over the ridge of the roof.

Leona reached up, grasping the wrist of his hand that held her dress in a vice-like grip, and pulled herself up.

He reached out to steady her with his other hand.

When she was safely up, she briefly brought his hand to her cheek in silent thanks, then pushed herself forward.

“This way!” she whispered.

Stunned, Deveraux followed.

To their left, the ground sloped up toward the cottage, the dirt mounding almost to the kitchen window.

She pointed it out to Deveraux. He nodded.

Carefully Leona made her way toward that area.

She jumped off the roof where the ground sloped the highest and landed on her hands and knees.

Deveraux landed next to her. She impatiently brushed her muddied gloves against the sides of her black skirts, then waved at Deveraux to follow her.

He pulled the pistol from his waistband and came up beside her, laying a warning hand on her arm.

She shook her head, scoffing at the danger. They were free, weren’t they? She hurried forward, determined to put as much distance between them and Rose Cottage as possible. Rounding the corner and heading toward the shed, she ran straight into Howard North’s gun.

He grabbed for her arm before she could run and held the pistol to her head. “Drop it, Deveraux,” he snarled.

Slowly Deveraux lowered his arm and dropped the pistol. The expression he turned toward Leona was forbidding.

Leona groaned inwardly. She was doing so well.

Why must she always allow her headstrong proclivity to lead her into trouble?

They made a good team, but being a team meant they worked together, not one arrogantly charging ahead!

He was right to try to warn her to be careful.

In her arrogance, she took it as a sign of his wanting to control her and the entire situation.

But if he’d wanted to do that, he wouldn’t have agreed with her plans nor allowed her to take the lead!

Dismally she admitted it was her pride that suffered so foolishly again and again.

But if they were indeed a team, she had to create some distraction to allow Deveraux to take action. Her eyes raked the area. They were near Maria’s herb and flower beds. Stacks of crockery flower planters stood near the building. A hoe, fallen from its place against the wall, lay across the path.

North pulled her backward. She stepped over the hoe with her left foot, straddling it.

Then she pulled her right foot back, using her left foot as a fulcrum.

The hoe swung forward, tripping her and crashing into the crockery.

She pitched forward. North, startled at the loud crash of pottery, swung his pistol that way.

It was the opening Deveraux needed. He lunged for North, carrying them backward to the ground.

Leona scrambled out of the way and to her feet.

The men rolled on the ground, struggling for control of the gun.

Suddenly the gun went off, and the sound released Leona.

She looked around for the pistol Deveraux dropped. She ran for it.

It was kicked out from beneath her fingers.

She looked up. Jewitt stood over her, a long kitchen knife in her hand.

She grabbed Leona by the hair, yanking her upright.

She held the knife blade against her throat, and together the women watched the men fight.

They were evenly matched, though there was an underhanded viciousness in North’s attack.

Leona watched helplessly as North threw mud in Deveraux’s face.

Deveraux twisted his head aside at the last moment.

He grabbed at one of the crockery pots lying on its side nearby, then with a fluid movement, he brought the pot up and crashing into the back of North’s head. The man slumped to the ground.

Deveraux staggered to his feet, wiping with the back of his hand at a trickle of blood from a cut lip. “Give it up, Jewitt,” he said, breathing hard. He leaned forward, his hands on his knees, as he gulped air.

"No! She’s ruined everything!”

“No, your stupid desire for revenge has ruined everything. If you’d been content with money, you would have had that the first week you kidnapped Chrissy.”

“But I need my revenge! I have to have it! The money is nothing, I tell you! Nothing! I waited and planned so long?—”

“Too long. My brother has consumption. Damn it! He’s a dying man! Isn’t that revenge enough?”

“It’s not enough! All the Deverauxs must suffer as I have suffered. And I’ve discovered just how I’d make you and Miss Leonard pay.” She pressed the knife closer to Leona’s throat.

Leona felt a slight stinging and a trickle of warmth down her neck.

“I’m going to kill her, and you’re going to watch.”

A fear Deveraux had never experienced in his life twisted his stomach into knots.

He was near to casting up his accounts. It was only the knowledge that he had to save Leona that kept his nausea at bay.

Jewitt was dangerously unstable. If he goaded her, prodded her further into anger at him, would she take immediate action against Leona?

Or could he divert her attention, turn her wrath solely against him?

With the knife creasing Leona’s neck and Jewitt lost to any human decency—to any feelings of guilt or remorse—it was his only hope.

He began to laugh. He put his hands on his hips and threw his head back, laughing as if he’d just heard the richest joke of his life.

“What’s so funny?” Jewitt snarled.

“You are!” Deveraux exclaimed, shaking his head as he laughed.

“Miss Leonard may be a winsome handful, but what makes you think she matters to me? After all, I am a Deveraux! And while my family honor may demand I make Miss Leonard an offer after the situation you placed us in last night, I would be gratified at any possibility that would relieve me of that tiresome duty. Miss Leonard is to me as you were to my brother. A pleasant diversion. Go on, kill her! Then I will kill you and claim—in deepest remorse—how I could not save Miss Leonard. I shall be universally pitied.”

“No! That’s not true! I saw you and her yesterday!” She wavered, her knife hand easing away a few inches.

He drew himself up to his most arrogant stance. “And do you think that is any behavior for the wife of a Deveraux?” he sneered, his upper lip curling derisively.

Jewitt looked confused. She froze bodily, though her eyes darted about as she tried to make some sense of the situation.

Leona stomped down hard on her instep while she bent her head to bite her hand. She bit savagely until she tasted blood. Jewitt shrieked with pain and rage, the knife falling from her hand.

Deveraux lunged for the woman, knocking her down.

Jewitt was like a wild animal, thrashing and kicking at him, the mud making her slippery and hard to hold.

Her fingers clawed at his eyes, and a low guttural snarl came from deep in her throat, her face contorted into a horrid rictus of hate.

She spotted the gun where she kicked it.

Blood trailed down her fingers as she stretched her hand out to reach it.

When her fingers closed around the pistol butt, a triumphant gleam lit her face.

She brought her hand up, aiming the pistol at Deveraux as he tried to hold her down. She pulled back the hammer.

“Nigel!” Leona screamed, starting forward.

Jewitt pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Enraged, she pulled it several times more. Still, nothing happened. The safety pin was still in place!

Weak with relief, Leona fell to her knees beside the two wrestling bodies. With an ease that amazed her, she wrested the pistol from Jewitt’s hand.

Suddenly, Jewitt stopped struggling and began sobbing instead, her body soon wracked with the intensity of her feeling. Carefully Deveraux rose off her. She curled up into a ball and started rocking. He turned toward Leona.

“Do you have any rope about?”

“I think in the shed. I’ll get it. —Nigel! Stop her!”

In the brief moment Deveraux looked away from Jewitt to Leona, the woman with the agility of a cat had found her lost knife. Deveraux turned in time to see her plunge it deep into her own stomach, a look of stunned surprise on her face as she crumpled forward and fell to the ground.