Page 240 of The Enslaved Duet

Mrs. White only shook harder, sweat pouring down her face like tears.

“You see, Mary knows what it takes to succeed in life. She gave me her good years, complete access to her body so I could do simply unspeakable things, and she gave me a son. She worked hard to live a long life, and I’ve no doubt, if given the opportunity awarded by your cowardice, she will work hard again to prolong it further.”

“I won’t kill her for you,” I vowed.

I wouldn’t.

I didn’t care that Mrs. White was a traitor to womankind and that she deserved to die for all the horrible things she had facilitated on Noel’s behalf.

I wouldn’t stain my soul by killing a woman without recourse, even one who was the wife of the devil himself.

“So be it,” Noel accepted easily. “I’d hoped to play with you for years to come, but that new slave is fresh enough to last for a while. You don’t have anyone left who will miss you, so I can bury you in the maze with the rest of the women.”

“Rest of the women?” I breathed as my heart started to race with anticipation.

Was this it?

The moment before my probable death and the drugged tea or his arrogance was finally kicking in. Was Noel finally going to confess his crimes?

“Funny, isn’t it? To think that Alexander spent so many years searching for the answers to his mother’s death, and she was buried in the backyard the entire time.”

Noel’s wicked laughter echoed through the high-ceiling room. It juddered through me like an electric shock, resettling my brain chemistry and lighting up my nerves.

“The slaves, I understand,” I said, surprised by the calm in my voice. “But your wife?”

“She was slumming with the dago and conspiring to run away withmysons straight into his filthy arms.” Noel’s face was twisted up like hot metal, seared with ugly hatred. “It had to end. Just as I had to end the baby Alexander so foolishly planted in your belly.”

The imprint of the two hands that had pushed me down the ballroom steps and killed our baby burned at my back.

My body went hollow with despair, and then all of the sudden, filled to the brim with lava-like fury that densified into stone.

“I’m going to kill you,” I told him through my teeth.

He laughed. “You can try, but if you don’t kill Mary right now, you’re the one who will be dead.”

In a flurry of actions almost too quick to interpret, Noel signaled to Rodger with a tilt of his head and the boy took his staying hand off the gun in Mrs. White’s shaking hand. A moment later, it was raised, the dark, innocuously small chamber pointed unerringly at my chest.

“I’m truly sorry, love,” she whispered with tears falling into the open wound of her distressed mouth.

I wasn’t.

Not any longer and not for anything.

Before I could even consciously decide, the gun in my hands was raised, and the trigger was pressed by the firm clasp on my finger. The gun recoiled in my hand, jerking my shoulder enough to jar me to the side just as Mrs. White’s gun went off.

Her bullet grazed my outer left arm, leaving a trail of fiery agony in its wake.

My bullet found her brain, dead quiet in the wake of its unflinching connection with her skull. A second later, Rodger let her drop to the ground with a wet, punishingthunk.

Over the rushing roar of blood in my ears, I vaguely heard Noel and then Rodger laughing lightly, pleased and shocked at the outcome of our outdated duel. Before I could think about it, before I could even begin to grasp the firestorm of heartbreak and fury raging through me, I whirled toward Noel and brought the butt of the gun down hard across his laughing face.

The crunch reverberated through the dining hall followed by Noel’s grunt of pain as he stumbled back into the table with a crash of plates and cutlery. His arm dislodged one of the candelabras, and the flames spilled to the cloth, lighting the table on fire like a flaming throne below Noel’s prone body.

He screamed.

I turned on my heel andran, Rodger’s following footsteps already ringing out against the wood behind me. The door at the end of the hall opened before I could even wrap my hand around the handle and Douglas appeared, his face pale but set with determination as fierce as a Celtic warrior. In one hand, he held a massive kitchen knife.

“Go,” he urged, shoving me by. “Get out of here, now.”