Page 53 of Tempted (Heart to Heart Collection #2)
Chapter 53
E lizabeth’s legs were pumping like steam pistons, her feet slapping the pavement and her heart galloping in her ears. She dared not stop and look back, but she did not think Bryson was behind her. Richard had grabbed him first, and if she knew one thing, it was that her husband would fight like a lion.
She could go for the street, try to lose herself in the crowds, but that was just where everyone else was. If Bryson managed to escape Richard, he might expect her to go towards the town. And besides, she was willing to bet that she could outrun his heavier feet on the sand. Elizabeth darted through a cluster of morning beachgoers and sped for the shore. If she could make for the rocks and hide among them, just long enough to know he had not followed her...
“Witch!” thundered a voice behind her. “Murdering whore!”
Why she looked over her shoulder, she could not say, but Silas Bryson was now only yards behind her, his face contorted with hatred. He was faring better in the deep sand than she had hoped, and Richard was nowhere to be seen.
Elizabeth’s feet seemed to grow wings, but it was not enough. She could hear him closing on her, frothing and spewing his poison. Silas Bryson was not a young man, nor was he light of foot but he had been twisted hard and sinewy by a lifetime breaking the wild to his will. And he was enraged. But surely, even he would tire soon... if she could just make it to the rocks! She could scamper over the boulders far more easily than a man of over two hundred pounds and fifty years.
Her neck was suddenly wrenched backwards, and her hair nearly ripped by the roots as Bryson sank his grip into her chignon. Elizabeth yelped and flailed, but she could not stop herself from being flung down on the sand. Bryson’s figure loomed over her, and she started trying to pedal backwards.
“The letter was right,” he sneered as he closed in, “I heard you were back from England, you filthy baggage. I paid good money to find you, to see you got what you deserved, and finally, someone knew how to follow you!”
Elizabeth rolled over and clawed her way to her knees, but Bryson set his foot in the middle of her back and pushed her down. Not satisfied with standing on her and crushing her lungs, he reached down and dragged her up by her shoulders, but she came with two handfuls of sand. She twisted and threw them into his face, and he howled and clawed at his eyes. Without wasting her breath on words, she was off again.
Her freedom was short-lived, for he leapt forward with the power and agility of a wolf and drove her back to the sand. He ground her face in it, shoving viciously at the back of her head as if he meant to smother her right there. Was no one around to see? Would no one help her? She tried to scream, to push herself up, but every breath only drew sand into her nose, into her mouth. Bryson pressed harder, fierce hands digging into her neck and the base of her skull. She started to sob, and for an instant, she wondered if this was to be the end. William! her heart cried out. I am so sorry... so...
And then, from somewhere over her head, in the fading blue above, came a savage cry and a thud—a body colliding with Bryson’s, driving him off her. Blood-curdling ferocity rang out, in the one voice she had been aching to hear—had despaired of never knowing again. Shaking and dazed, she rolled over. William?
Was she hallucinating? He was a blur of fists and fury, too fast, too savage for Bryson to rally against the surprise attack. Bryson tried to drag him down, but William had the upper hand—dodging and pressing every advantage with the passion of a man defending his own.
Bryson was tiring. He had ceased his snarling and insults and was now fighting with the last he had. He broke away and with one final thrust, reached for Elizabeth, only feet away... but close enough to the rocks that she was no longer defenceless.
He would have got his hand around her throat once more—it would not have been long, for William was already reaching for him with murder in his eyes, but Elizabeth struck first. With a palm-sized rock, she smashed his jaw with every ounce of her strength. Bryson, at last, fell limp at her feet.
Elizabeth stumbled forward, and William caught her, pressed his hand to the back of her head, and held her to his quaking chest. “William!” she panted. “Oh, William!”
It mattered not how he came there. It was he , living and real and holding her safe! He was repeating her name, stroking her face, his thumbs light on her cheekbones, and his voice choked with feeling. “My love,” he groaned, over and again. “Oh, my Elizabeth!”
She could not let him go. Her arms locked around his neck, fingers lost in his hair as her tears mingled with his. Helpless kisses peppered his jaw, and her body formed itself to him as she sighed love in his ear. He turned, twirling her gently in his relief and elation, then suddenly he stiffened and set her back on the ground, pushing her away.
Richard was charging down the beach towards them. “Darcy! Elizabeth! Good God, Darcy did you kill him?”
The golden aura faded; reality cooled her thoughts. Richard was alive and well after Bryson’s attack, and she had nearly forgotten about him. Her hand was still reaching for William, but she pulled it behind her back and closed her eyes, just long enough to remember what was real and what was a dream.
Richard skidded to a halt on the sand, then thrust his chin out and inspected the prone man. “Is he dead?”
Elizabeth hitched up her chin. “He will wish he was.”
William stepped slightly forward. “She hit him hard enough, it will be a wonder if he is in his right mind when he wakes.”
Richard’s figure seemed to sag in relief. “Thank Heaven. I will see the brute taken in. Are you well, Elizabeth?”
She sensed William’s tension, the way he took a half step back and looked away at Richard’s question. “Yes,” she replied simply.
“We’ll have to get Bryson up,” he grumbled. “Watch him, will you, Darcy? I will go to the office and call for a board.”
William cleared his throat at this. “Perhaps I ought to do that. You...” He harrumphed again. “You should see your wife safely back.”
A slow quirk turned the right side of Richard’s mouth. “Yes, uhm... strange thing, that. She is not actually my wife. Never was.”
Elizabeth swayed. Was the beach tipping? The tide rolling in faster than usual?
“What?” William demanded.
Richard ran a finger under his collar. “Elizabeth, you remember what I was about to tell you before? I... well, call it a moment of weakness, I suppose, but I... ah... I filed for an annulment this morning.”
An annulment? So, he truly had lost all faith in her! She counted her breaths and tried to keep her voice steady. “Were you planning to tell me about this?”
He bared his teeth in a pained grimace. “Ah... no. You would have never gone with it—I knew that, but I also knew you wanted it even more than I did. Anyway, they were most obliging, even offered to telephone the Platte County Recording office while I waited—for an expedited fee, of course. It... uh... it seems that your cousin, in his haste to be helpful... forgot to register our marriage with the county. In fact, if he ever goes back there, they would very much like to charge him a hefty fee for negligence. The only record of our supposed union is not even worth the paper it is written on.”
D arcy’s head felt like it was exploding with light. She… she was free!
And Richard had relinquished her willingly—why, his cousin was already jogging back to the hotel, bellowing out orders to a bellboy standing at the edge of the walk. His final words before turning back were strangely anticlimactic to his stunning announcement. “See that Elizabeth is well, will you, Darcy?”
That was something he could comprehend. Elizabeth was already shivering under his arm, wrapping herself to his chest as she trembled in alternating waves of subsiding terror and swelling jubilation. She was laughing, choking, crying, and trying to talk all at once as she swept disbelieving hands over his face. “Is it true? Are you really here—oh, William, say we needn’t be parted ever again!”
“Never!” he vowed between kisses. “Not so long as I have breath.” Her answering tremor, the fear still quaking in both of them, made him tighten both arms around her until her face was buried in his chest and his in her tousled crown. “Did he hurt you? If he harmed a hair on your head—”
She shook her face against his jacket.
He clung to her more tightly and sent a swift prayer of gratitude to the heavens. The horror of seeing her fighting for her life, with all the terrors of her past fully realised before his eyes, had unleashed in him an instinct so livid and potent that it still took all his control not to go break the brute himself. But so long as he held Elizabeth, so long as she was whole and well in his arms, he could master the rage. With every shared heartbeat, another ounce of his wrath drained. He was still reeling and unsteady, tears of panic and relief flooding his eyes, and he gently cradled the back of her head. “I thought I might lose you all over again.”
She drew a deep shuddering breath, then turned—her cheek still pressed into him—to look at the groaning man on the ground.
“He will never harm you,” Darcy promised, and felt her muscles release somewhat. “Never again will you need to fear him!”
“He might still turn me in to the Marshals. He would like nothing better than—”
“Not when I take you back home.”
She drew back just enough to see his face. “How did you know? Is that why you came?”
“I wish it were so simple. I was in Boston with Georgiana, but I had gone to New York after I heard from your uncle that your mother and sisters were going there.”
For the first time since Bingley’s wedding, her cheeks brightened, and her eyes sparkled. “Mama?” she asked hesitantly. “Kitty and Lydia? Are they going to see Jane?”
He shook his head and gingerly touched her cheek. “I wish I knew.”
Her expression clouded, the question forming upon her lips, but he pulled her close again and stilled her with a long sweep of his hand down her shoulders and into the small of her back. Richard was already returning from the hotel, and Bryson was starting to stir not far away. He pressed a kiss to her brow.
“We will talk of it later, my Elizabeth.”
H is cousin had not turned loose Elizabeth’s hand in well over an hour. Richard glanced at them occasionally; their fingers twining together, their heads more often bent towards each other than not, the voluminous looks they shared. Even he, who had every cause for jealousy, could only look on in awe. Fancy it—Fitzwilliam Darcy, the darling son of the ton , heart-enslaved by a nobody from nowhere! Yet, none could deny it. The man was entirely flogged.
Elizabeth was no better, and it was she at whom Richard marvelled the most. The untamed rose he had first known had grown to a wilted lily in his own dubious keeping, but at Darcy’s touch, she was something altogether new. Elegant and fully ripened, yet still not quite broken, not perfectly conformed to the accustomed ways. And he understood just a little better why she carried that dried-out sprig of English Lavender wherever she went. He sighed at last and silently blessed her. She would make a smashing Mrs Darcy.
As for himself… well, he had a plan for that.
They had settled it that he would be the one to confront the matter of justice, though they each had their claims upon the affair. Darcy and Elizabeth, however, had what they wanted. Richard had only an idea—one that had burned in his breast, unspoken and untended, but now seemed the only natural resolution to so many questions. He entered his office with Darcy and Elizabeth flanking him and addressed the man sitting there, holding a cold steak to his left eye.
“I’ve a contract drawn up for you, Bryson. Take your time, sir, but I firmly suggest that you accept its terms.” He set the page before the scowling man, who cast a sullen glare at Elizabeth. “Oh, and not a word to the lady. She has put up with quite enough from you and yours.”
Bryson’s meaty fist banged down on the table, sliding the contract close enough for his inspection. Within seconds, he was sputtering. “Sell you my land!” he howled. “Go to the devil!”
“I’ll be calling in the police after we have done here. I can say we do not mean to press attempted murder charges,” he replied casually. “You will still face justice for assaulting a lady, but if you like, I could inform the officers that you were also suspect in the murder of Mr Bennet. Shall I? Odd fire, evidence left behind by someone who clearly despised the lady here? I doubt these Massachusetts officers are friends or beneficiaries of yours. They will treat you with justice. Dozens of witnesses today, I hear.”
The man’s lip curled, and he looked as if he would spit at Elizabeth, sitting across the room from him. “Wench. You did all this to ruin me, just because your father was a worthless fleabag! And you—Darcy, your name is? I heard you were the one who cancelled my Army contract! I ought to have known the cheap whore was behind it all. How many of you have shared her?”
Elizabeth stood still and serene as an ivory statue, refusing to acknowledge his venom, but Darcy was curling his arm around her waist and sending Bryson a glare that would vaporise the vast oceans. “How many murder charges shall we bring against you, Bryson?” he growled. “How many women could testify against your family, I wonder? How many men have you buried in your lust and greed, and how much did you pay the U.S. Marshal to put out a warrant for a woman who did nothing but defend herself from your corrupt spawn? I was against this foolishly generous scheme of my cousin’s, because you deserve a hangman’s noose for what you did to Mr Bennet.”
Bryson’s cheek twitched. “You’d never prove anything. He died a coward in his smithy.”
“I do not need to prove it, for we all know the truth. Do not tempt me to reach for the pistol my cousin always keeps at hand. I doubt he would stop me.”
“Freshly loaded, too,” Richard offered cheerfully. “What is it to be, Bryson?”
The man did spit this time, but he managed to finish reading Richard’s terms. “One hundred fifty dollars! The water rights are worth more than that! Damn you—”
“Is that not what you paid Mr Bennet when you acquired the ranch? By-the-by, I hear that curious cattle plague has never revisited your lands. A pity no one ever discovered the reason for it, but I am most relieved to know that the land and water source of Longbourn Ranch are not the cause.”
Bryson shot to his feet, dropping the steak, and drawing back his fist, but Richard only gestured to the door as a reminder of the officer waiting outside. “You mean to ruin me!” Bryson raged.
“Precisely. It is more than you deserve, I assure you. One way or another, you will lose the ranch and surrender to the authorities when you leave this office. I suggest you keep your life when you go.”
The man stuck out his finger, the blood beetling in his brow and the whites of his eyes. “You won’t be safe anywhere, Fitzwilliam! You or that tramp! I’ll hunt you down—”
Richard snorted. “Do you have any idea whom you are choosing to threaten? You would be no more than a smear on Darcy’s boot. Oh, and that lady you see there?”
Richard meant to say something terribly clever about how the girl Bryson reviled would soon be the queen of Derbyshire, dripping with diamonds and escorted by a veritable army of footmen, but instead, he snorted in disgust and belted Bryson in the mouth. “Hold your filthy tongue! Darcy, want a turn?”
Darcy’s eyes were hard, but they crinkled wryly. “No, for I would take more than one.”
“Very well.” Richard shook out his fist and replaced the pen that had rolled off the desk. “Before I ask Elizabeth if she would like to take a shot at you, I suggest you sign the agreement.”
Bryson swiped his split lip with a snarl, glared roundly at them all, and finally, hatefully, took up the pen.