Page 29 of How to Love a Duke in Ten Days

“And so I do.” He nudged the man with his boot. “Wasn’t it Alexander the Great who wrote, ‘Every man has a wild beast within him’?”

“It was Frederick the Great,” Lady Alexandra corrected without seeming to notice that she’d done so. “And, as apropos as that quote may be, it still doesn’t—”

“Speak of the devil,” Francesca cut in. “Don’t look now, but ‘the beasts’ are returning, and are about to stumble upon a fresh kill.”

A crowd of inveterate revelers in wool jackets and jodhpurs, with shotguns draped over their arms, tromped through the grass on the ridge not one hundred yards from where Piers had shot the rifleman down.

“What the bloody hell are they doing this far east?” Piers muttered, ducking behind a wall. “They can’t see any of us together.”

“Oh dear,” Cecelia worried. “Perhaps we should headthem off and redirect them to a different path toward the castle?”

Piers nodded, staring down at the mess he’d made of himself. His vest was stained with the man’s blood, and his bleeding knuckles were beginning to swell. “There’s a deer path that will lead you past a swan pond and the gardens. They’ll have to turn left immediately, and double back through the edge of the woods to find it.”

“Any other assassins would be daft to shoot into a hunting party,” Cecelia reasoned. “They’d never escape without leaking like a sieve.”

“Right. Too many witnesses with guns. Do let’s go.” Francesca lifted her skirts and all but sprinted up the hill with gazellelike agility.

Cecelia took an alarmed step toward her friend. “Don’t you want to join Francesca, Alex? I can easily stay herealonewith the duke and help His Grace lift the brigand onto the horse.”

“You’ll do nosuchthing,” he growled.Lift the man onto the horse? What rubbish.

“Oh, it’s no bother. I might never be a dainty woman.” She held shapely arms and broad shoulders out for his review. “But I can carry my share of a body when called upon to do so.”

Lady Alexandra made a distressed sound.

“I’ll ruin the handsome side of my face before I allow a lady to assist in such odious work.” Piers looked from the countess’s determined stomp up the hill to the petrified doctor behind him and back to the Valkyrie offering to help with the heavy lifting. He’d met his share of peculiar women, but this trio simply beat them all.

And he was marrying one of them.

The two women stared at each other for a meaningful moment. “I can’t face those people,” Alexandra said finally.“You go. Send someone to find us should we not returndirectly.”

With one more hesitant glance, Cecelia followed Francesca, who’d already made it more than halfway up the hill.

Piers and Alexandra stayed silently concealed within the ruins until they were certain the party had dropped out of sight below the ridge of Tormund’s Bluff.

“Are you all right?” He reached to smooth away a curl that had escaped her chignon and caught on her mouth.

She jerked her chin to avoid his touch, tucking the bit of hair behind her ear with trembling fingers. “I’m quite well, all things considered. Shall we get on our way?”

Piers dropped his hand. Of course she was upset. He’d made her feel like a fool for not recognizing the groom in her own friend’s wedding.

Oh, and one mustn’t forget the part where she’d nearly escaped a bullet.

The gunman lost consciousness, and Piers belatedly wondered if he hadn’t beaten the man to death.

He hoped not. At least not before he extracted some information first. His hands itched to strike the man again.

And worse.

“Stay hidden until I have him secured,” he ordered.

Setting the gun on what was left of a hip-high wall, he fetched Merc and led the stallion to the unconscious plonker. The man was shorter than he, as most men were, but heavy-handed and rotund. Piers crouched down and verified that the gunman still breathed before he rifled through his pockets. He found nothing but a slip of paper, which he unfolded.

Falt Ruadh

Suspicion twisted in his gut.Thishad been no random act of violence. Not a robbery nor a ravishment.

This had been a hit.