Page 148 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

Because even if the bastard doctor put a hole the size of Blighty in Piers’s middle, he’d take Forsythe to hell with him before he gave up the ghost.

“Piers?” Alexandra whimpered, her pistol still trained forward.

“Drop it, Doctor.” Forsythe took a threatening step forward, stopping five paces away. “Or I drop you. You knowI don’t want to do that, Alexandra. But I think you know that I will.”

Leaning down, Redmayne whispered into Alexandra’s ear, as Julia’s shrill voice fractured against the dome of the crypt, shouting, “How could you say such awful things after what I did for you last night? You weren’t moaning words like ‘passable’ as I was swallowing your disgusting—”

“Shut up for once in your life, you ignorant slut!” Forsythe inched the barrel of his weapon in her direction, only an arm’s reach to Alexandra’s left.

Alexandra bent her knees, lowering to the ground as she placed her small pistol in the dirt. “You don’t want to shoot that in here,” she warned. “We’re not certain it wouldn’t cause another cave-in. We’d all be crushed into the dust.”

“Push it toward me,” Forsythe ordered, ignoring her.

Alexandra did, and in her panic, she fell. Scrambling backward on the ground, she didn’t stop retreating until she ran into Piers’s legs.

Julia made a desperate, humiliated sound. “How dare you insult me like this! Was it her you wanted all along? Tell me, you craven bastard! Did you use me to get to her?”

Piers bent down, helping his wife to her feet, accepting the hilt of what she’d surreptitiously pulled from his boot.

“There’s no need for jealousy.” Forsythe sneered at Julia. “My tastes never tended toward boring little bluestockings always prattling on. Correcting me, condescending to me.” Forsythe’s lip curled into a sneer of disdain. “What man wants to fuck a woman who thinks she’s smarter than he is? Though, now that I know you have blood on your hands… I have to admit you’re much more interesting.”

“What do you want, Forsythe?” Piers demanded, his hands itching to close around the man’s throat. To watchthe life drain from his eyes as he strangled an apology from the smarmy bastard for disrespecting his wife.

“My passion for history pays little, I’m afraid,” Forsythe admitted blithely, eyeing Alexandra’s purse. “And so one does what one must…”

“Here,” she said, tossing it at his feet. “Take it and begone.”

He didn’t even glance down. “I’ve been promised so much more than that…” He lifted the shotgun higher, drawing a bead and closing one eye. “To kill the Duke of Redmayne and make it look like an accident.”

Piers didn’t have to ask by whom. He already knew.

The only people who would profit from his death. Patrick and Rose Atherton.

“A gunshot wound is impossible to pose as an accident,” Piers said drolly.

“These catacombs are secure enough to withstand the noise, you saw to that yourself, didn’t you?” Forsythe reminded him. “It took more finesse with the gunpowder than I expected to even create the first disaster. I can do it again. Except now, by the time they dig you out, I’ll be long gone.”

It was never going to get that far. “What would it take to let the women go?” Piers demanded.

Then it would just be him and Forsythe.

Thenhe could go to work. Because as devastating and severe as the gun in Forsythe’s hands was, Piers could be spectacularly more lethal.

This crypt was close quarters, and a rifle of any kind had very distinct disadvantages in such a place.

But he couldn’t act, couldn’t think, couldn’t relax enough to perform the dangerous maneuvers he needed to, if his wife was in the least bit at risk.

“I’m sorry.” Forsythe’s finger grazed the trigger. “But the duchess is now a part of the job I was hired to do.”

Patrick Atherton glided into the room dressed in a finely woven gray suit, a six-barreled pistol pointed at them both. “A job you’ve failed at, enormously.”

He turned to Piers, the spite glittering in eyes a pale reflection of his own. “How does the clichégo, cousin? If you want something done right…”

Patrick had always been a little bit less. Less tall. Less handsome, young, or vigorous. Less powerful both in title and in stature.

Which is why he’d hired a mercenary. The nancy fucker had never liked to get his hands dirty.

“You two followed me here,” Piers deduced. Patrick had been the void in the night. The prickle at his back. But Piers had been too intent upon his wife to pay the instinct the heed he should have.