Page 5 of The Duke’s Christmas Bride (Drop Dead Dukes #3)

C HAPTER 4

S he’d shot at Maxwell Burke. Fired upon a peer of the realm. Not a baron, or a viscount, or even an earl. An earl would have been bad enough, but no , nothing would do for her but to fire upon a duke.

Indeed, he’d made it impossible not to shoot at him, and it wasn’t as if she’d hit him. Surely, that counted for something?

But then he wasn’t just any duke, either, but the Duke of Grantham. The Duke of Grantham, a man who’d ruined more aristocrats than Hammond Court had spiders, and goodness knew one couldn’t stir a step in this house without one of the crawly, eight-legged creatures scampering over one’s toes.

Even the Prince Regent himself was said to be terrified of the Duke of Grantham.

If one must shoot at a duke, Grantham was the very last one in England one should choose. But it was too late now. She’d nearly blasted a hole through the toe of that glossy boot of his, to say nothing of the foot underneath.

She’d made an enemy of him. A tidy morning’s work, that.

She gripped the edge of the table and heaved herself to her feet, but what had once been her perfectly sturdy skeletal system had abandoned her, and her entire body was now wobbling like a blancmange. Her knees were the first to give up the ghost, deserting her with such suddenness she toppled into one of the chairs with an undignified squeak.

Her heart was battering like a wild thing against her ribs, her stomach was turning somersaults, and her head was dizzy with delayed shock, but there was no time to waste. Abby would have heard the pistol shot, and she’d be in a panic by now.

Rose’s breath wheezed in and out of her lungs as she scrambled up the back staircase to the third floor, either from the exertion, or the shock of nearly shooting a duke—she couldn’t have said which.

She couldn’t have said much of anything at that moment, but she regained her tongue quickly enough when she burst onto the third-floor landing and nearly ran straight into Abby, who was creeping toward the stairs with a hairbrush in one hand, and a pillow clutched to her chest with the other. “A shot. I h-heard a pistol shot.”

“I know, I know.” Rose held out her hands in a calming gesture. “But it’s all right, Abby, I promise you.”

“All right? How can it be all right?” Abby brandished the hairbrush in her fist. “Is he still downstairs? I’ll teach him not to darken our doorstep again, I will!”

“With a hairbrush? What do you intend to do, groom him to death?” Rose glanced at the pillow, and a hysterical laugh leaped unbidden from her throat. “Then tuck him into bed?”

“Knock him about the head, then smother him, more like.”

“I wouldn’t advise it. He’s quite large, and quicker than he looks.” It was rather unfair that a man of that size should have such distressingly speedy reflexes.

“God above, Rose.” Abby sagged against the wall, the pillow sliding from her slack fingers. “I thought you’d been shot .”

“No. I, ah, I was the one doing the shooting.” Was that better, or worse?

Worse, because Abby went such a strange gray color Rose rushed toward her and caught her before she fell into a swoon. “Here, perhaps you’d better sit down.” She steered Abby from the corridor into the bedchamber, and across the room to the bed.

“Who did you shoot?” Abby grabbed her hand. “Please tell me there’s not a dead body downstairs that needs burying.”

“Not a single one.” Though it had admittedly been a near thing. If the duke had shifted even a scant half foot to the right . . . well, it had been a remarkably foolish thing for him to do, attempting to seize the pistol as he had, and it would have served him right if he had ended up dead. Still, it was a blessing she hadn’t shot him, as no one wanted to start their day with a dead duke in their kitchen. “I didn’t shoot at him, just, er, near him.”

“Him? Who?” Abby was still clutching at Rose’s hand, her knuckles white. “Don’t tell me you’ve shot at Mr. Turnbull?”

Mr. Turnbull was one of the shopkeepers in town. They’d run up quite a debt with him over the past year, and the man hadn’t been patient about collecting it. Not that patience would have done him any good. One couldn’t squeeze blood from a stone.

“It wasn’t Mr. Turnbull.” Which was rather a pity, as it would have been a great deal simpler if it had been.

“Who, then?”

“Er, well . . .” Rose bit her lip. She didn’t want Abby involved in this mess, but how did one hide having nearly shot a duke? The entire village would know of it soon enough, and the duke would no doubt have the magistrate upon them before they’d even had their morning tea. “Well, as I said, I didn’t actually shoot—”

“ Who , Rose? Who was it?”

“I gave him a dozen chances to leave before I fired, but he—”

“Rosamund Elizabeth St. Claire, you will tell me the truth at once! Who did you nearly murder in our kitchen?”

Rose squeezed her eyes closed. “The Duke of Grantham.”

Silence. She opened one eye, then wished she hadn’t.

Abby was staring at her in horror. “The Duke of Grantham! Oh, dear God, Rose.”

“What else was I to do? He broke into the house! I ordered him to leave ever so many times, but he refused! And he attacked our door!”

“Do calm down, Rose—”

“It’s not as if I intended to shoot at him, Abby! He tried to snatch my pistol out of my hand, and it went off, completely of its own accord! I assure you, he left in full possession of all of his bits and pieces, and with the same arrogant swagger with which he entered.”

Oddly, the shot hadn’t appeared to frighten or humble him in the least. It was as if he thought a pistol ball wouldn’t dare to strike the Duke of Grantham.

Perhaps he was right. It was astonishing that ball hadn’t hit him.

Or her , come to that.

Dash it, there went her knees, wobbling again. “He’s going to come back, Abby. He said as much before he left.” He wouldn’t come alone, either. No doubt he had dozens of burly footmen awaiting his orders at Grantham Lodge, all of them prepared to knock down doors and shatter windows on the duke’s command.

“He’ll be sorry if he does!” Abby brandished the hairbrush and waved it about threateningly as if daring the Duke of Grantham to come anywhere near her horsehair bristles. “But why should be come back? What does the Duke of Grantham want with us?”

With them? Not a thing. The duke hadn’t come to Fairford for them .

He’d come for Hammond Court. She and Abby were no more important to him than the spiderwebs dangling from the cornices in the drawing room. Something to be dealt with, to be swept aside, and never again given a second thought. “He wants Hammond Court, Abby.”

Which was rather a problem, considering they had no place else to go.

Indeed, their problems were piling up faster than she could solve them. It wasn’t enough that Hammond Court was tumbling down around their ears. Every day dawned with another new crack in a window, a new leak in the roof, or a new rut in the front drive, and that was to say nothing of the battered front door and the sizable hole in the kitchen floor.

If that hadn’t been enough to drive her to despair, now they also had an angry, vindictive duke who appeared to have come all the way from London for the pleasure of seeing them tossed out into the snow.

Banished, from the only home she’d ever known.

Worse, he might just have the means to do it.

That note he’d shown her was no counterfeit. She’d know Ambrose’s hand anywhere. If he’d sent that note—and it appeared as if he had—the twisted game Ambrose and the Duke of Grantham had been playing for the past two decades might not yet be over.

If it had only been the note, she might have been able to convince herself nothing would come of the duke’s threats, but there was something else, as well.

In the hours before he died, Ambrose had made a desperate effort to tell her something—something about Hammond Court, and the Duke of Grantham. He’d been so weak by then, all she’d been able to gather from his frantic mutterings was that the duke would come here once Ambrose was dead and that he’d try to . . .

Well, she hadn’t any idea what he’d try to do. Ambrose had tried to tell her, but he’d been too incoherent for her to make sense of his ramblings. She’d understood only that the duke would try to do something, or take something, and that she must do everything in her power to stop him.

Then, before she could say a word, Ambrose had lapsed into unconsciousness, and he’d never woken again. There’d been no time to ask him anything—no time even to squeeze his hand.

He’d taken one last gasping breath, and then he was gone.

Now here was the Duke of Grantham not even a week later, note in hand, strolling about the house as if it already belonged to him.

“Hammond Court? But that’s absurd, Rose! I’m sure the Duke of Grantham fancies himself an important personage indeed, but even he can’t simply appear on the doorstep and order people from their homes.”

No, not under ordinary circumstances, but when had Ambrose ever done anything in the ordinary way? He’d always been a gamester, a magician, a man who delighted in sleight of hand. He might yet have one final card up his sleeve. Was it so difficult to imagine he intended to play it from beyond the grave?

“Rose?”

“Of course, he can’t, Abby.” Rose patted Abby’s hand, but a thousand misgivings were crowding into her head at once. There was something amiss here. She could feel it. “Still, I think it might be wise of us to send for Sir Richard and see if he can provide some illumination on the subject.”

Sir Richard Mildmay was Ambrose’s oldest and dearest friend and the executor of his will. He’d urged her more than once this past week to sit down with him to go over Ambrose’s papers—but the weather had turned foul, and between the leaking roof and damp floorboards, she hadn’t had a spare moment.

So, she’d put it off. Now it was beginning to look as if that had been a mistake.

A grave one.

“Yes, that makes sense.” Abby straightened her shoulders. “Very well, then, we’ll summon Sir Richard, and see if he can make sense of it, but you must promise me something first, Rose.”

“Of course, Abby. Anything.”

“If the Duke of Grantham does come back here, promise me you won’t shoot him.”

Rose snorted and squeezed Abby’s hand. “Not a single shot. I swear it.”

Goodness knew they were in enough trouble already without her firing upon the Duke of Grantham.

Again.

No matter how tempting it might be.