Page 63 of The Scandalous Love of a Duke (The Marlow Family Secrets #6)

The mattress Katherine lay on was solid and uncomfortable, filled with straw.

Her eyes opened.

The bed was iron-framed and stood in the corner of a small room. The air smelt foul, damp and mouldy. A single square window opposite showed her it was dark outside. How long had she been here? She remembered the tea shop and leaving there…

Pain burned her wrists and ankles as she tried to move. She was bound, and the rope cut into her skin.

She tried to swallow but there was a cloth in her mouth.

The sound of footsteps crossed the room and then a chair scraped against the floor. She twisted her head to see him.

I am going to die. No one knew where she was. No one knew she had left with Mr Wareham.

‘You are awake, then.’

He sat in a chair a little behind her and leaned forward. His eyes were so like John’s. His fingers brushed her cheek then pulled away.

‘You failed to mention when we met, Katherine, what I knew…’

What?

‘You married that arrogant boy, did you not?’

Was this because of John?

Mr Wareham stood, towering over her.

Again, she tried to swallow to ease her dry throat but the foul-tasting cloth only made her gag.

He walked away, crossing the room to a table. When he turned back, there was a short knife in his hand.

Katherine tried to speak, forgetting the gag. Nothing but a muffled urgent sound escaped. He walked towards her, holding out the knife.

Her heartbeat pounded in her ears.

‘It is not your fault, I know, Miss… Katherine. But he has taken things from me and so I must take you from him.’

Her stomach clenched and she retched against the gag.

Mr Wareham sat on the bed, beside her stomach, and she thought of the child. Her child. John’s child. She was suddenly terrified Mr Wareham might know. He could do anything to her…

The blade’s tip slid across her bodice and pressed gently over the position of her heart. Did he intend killing her?

The knife lifted and so did his eyes. They met hers as the knife drew a line across her cheek without cutting.

He had said he was her father. Had she dreamed that?

He laughed and then smiled, a sly, tormenting smile, and ran the knife beneath her chin and across her throat.

God help me!

He stood up again then and walked back across the room to the table. She watched him as she might a wolf who stalked her.

This time when he turned back he held a gun. He smiled. ‘I am undecided what to do. What do you think shall hurt that boy most?’

He is mad. He is utterly mad.

* * *

John pulled his stallion to a halt outside the address they had been given, slid his leg over the saddle and dropped to the ground. Harvey and the other men followed suit as the man beside John pointed to a door.

The place was a slum and the cobbles beneath John’s feet were slippery with human waste as he ran across them, ahead of the others.

John slammed a fist on the door. It jolted. But knocking was only warning Wareham they were here.

John stepped back and instead smashed a heel against the wood, over and over until the damn thing gave, crashing inward. When the wood splintered, John shouldered it aside to get through, then raced upstairs to the upper room Wareham was meant to be renting.

John could hardly breathe and his heart could not beat until he had Katherine back. He did not think. He could not. What if he was too late?

The handle of the upper door twisted in his hand and then opened inward.

What faced him hit him like a fist in the gut.

Katherine was tied and gagged, lying on a bare mattress and Wareham stood over her with a pistol in his hand. It was aimed at her forehead.

‘Stay away.’

John hesitated as behind him the sound of the other men carried into the room. In a moment a pistol was aimed over John’s shoulder. The man beside John said, ‘Put the gun down.’ Wareham did not move.

Katherine was white, her eyes wide, the bright blue looking to him, screaming, help me .

The man behind John came further into the room, and another entered.

Wareham could not shoot them all with one gun. But if it was Katherine who took the bullet?

Another man came past John with a gun trained on Wareham, while the others surrounded him.

John stared at Wareham. This man was his uncle, his mother’s half-brother, and he was about to shoot Katherine, who bore no blame.

‘Katherine is nothing to do with what has occurred between you and I. Leave her be.’

‘And leave you with everything you have taken from me?’

‘His Grace has taken nothing, Mr Wareham.’ Harvey now stood behind John.

The first man into the room was now almost behind Wareham and out of his view. The second was five feet to the side of John and now a fourth man entered, and a fourth gun was trained on Wareham.

His jaw taut, John held Wareham’s gaze. He had always thought Wareham’s eyes were like his grandsire’s, and now he knew why.

The man behind Wareham lifted a finger in warning, then he moved. The room erupted. Wareham instinctively swung his head to look back, but as he did, John saw his finger tighten on the trigger.

John threw himself across the room, his only thought to save Katherine. His shoulder struck Wareham’s arm just as the gun went off. John fell onto her, as the room filled with men who captured Wareham and pinned him down.

Lifting himself off Katherine, John touched her face. Behind him there were cries and shouts as Wareham struggled with the men.

Someone offered John a knife.

He looked down to free her wrists. God… Oh God… There was a hole in her spencer, at her shoulder. The bullet. It had entered beneath her collarbone and… Suddenly ice cold, he rolled her forward. Her arms were tied behind her and she winced with pain.

There was blood on the mattress, and the red stain on her back was spreading as he watched. The shot had passed through her.

His hands shaking, he used the knife to cut through the ropes. Once her arms were free he dropped the knife, then stripped off his coat. The scarlet stain had spread across her shoulder in the front too, and into her blonde hair.

Her gaze held a plea.

‘Your Grace.’ Harvey was at John’s shoulder.

‘She is wounded,’ John replied as he set his coat beneath her shoulder, hoping to keep the wound clean. Then he began untying his cravat. Harvey bent to pull the gag from her mouth.

A sob left her throat and then she was crying as one arm lifted while the other tried to but could not. She flinched.

‘Lie still, Katherine,’ he said as his stomach turned over.

The blood continued to spread, drenching her clothes, his coat and the mattress beneath.

Lord, help me. He worked his neckcloth free, unwinding it hurriedly, and used it as best he could to stem the blood.

He looked up at Harvey. ‘Your neckcloth, too, hurry.’

Someone cut Katherine’s ankles free as Harvey handed John his neckcloth.

John swapped it with his own, looking into Katherine’s eyes. ‘Katherine, stay with me. I will get you home.’ Her eyes rolled upwards as he spoke, until he could only see the white, but her blood still pulsed beneath his hand. She had fainted. At least she would be free of pain.

John looked over his shoulder. ‘For God’s sake, Harvey, get me a hackney! I need to get her help!’

‘John!’ Relief swept in as Edward entered the room. Only now did he remember how every time he had needed help as a child, Edward had always been there. Always.

‘Katherine?’ he asked.

‘A bullet has gone through her shoulder. The wound will be dirty and there is nothing here to clean it…’

‘I have the carriage. You take her home. I will bring a surgeon. She will live, John,’ Edward whispered.

God, I pray so! Her body was limp and heavy when he lifted her. She cannot die!

In the carriage John held her close, cradling her head and shoulder and trying to stop the ruts in the streets from jarring her as he felt her blood seeping through his shirt.

He willed his driver to hurry. Her breathing fractured and grew shallow as they took a corner too sharply and his heart pounded. He should have been the one who was struck.

When the carriage drew to a halt, he could not move without hurting her, and his anger and frustration built as he waited probably barely moments for the groom to come.

As he carried her inside, his mother and Mary came into the hall.

Mary cried out when she saw the amount of blood over him as well as Katherine.

‘A bullet, Mama,’ John said, looking to her for help.

‘Take her up. I shall have boiled water, liquor and linen brought up and I will send for a surgeon.’

‘Papa has already gone to find one.’

She nodded, then disappeared through a servants’ door. Mary rushed ahead of John, opening the door to Katherine’s chamber when he reached it.

His feet felt too heavy to move, and his heart like marble in his chest. If she died, he would die too. He couldn’t live without her. He would not.

‘John.’ His mother was at the door behind them. ‘Leave her with me, and you can get out of those bloody things.’ But it was Katherine’s precious blood on his clothes, he did not want to change.

His mother’s hand brushed his arm. ‘Go, John, change, otherwise you will frighten her when she wakes.’

His eyes turned to Katherine. She lay limp and unconscious.

He had failed her completely. He had left her this morning and let her get hurt.

‘I will look after her, John,’ his mother urged.

‘Where is the patient?’ A man’s voice stretched along the landing.

The surgeon.

Mary rushed from the room. ‘Here!’

His mother held John’s arm. ‘Go. Let the doctor clean her wound. I will stay with her. If she wakes I will send for you.’

He nodded, then bent and kissed Katherine’s brow before pressing his cheek to hers. Her skin was cold and clammy. Whispering to her ear, he said, ‘I love you. I will not leave you for long.’

The doctor entered.

‘You must do everything necessary to save her,’ John said, before leaving the room.

His father stood on the landing.

‘How is she?’

‘Alive but unconscious.’ The words sounded cold, as though he did not care. He did care. ‘I am going to change.’ But he needed a drink first.

Edward briefly wrapped a hand about John’s arm. ‘She will survive.’

John felt pain leak into his eyes. The numbness had passed and now he was in agony. This was all his fault.

Not really knowing where he walked, just walking, John went downstairs to the library.

He poured a brandy, and as he sipped it he saw a mental image of Katherine, in the chair, looking through his sketches. ‘ I wish to be your friend and your helpmate as much as your wife .’

He had not wholly trusted her… He had not told her about Wareham. He had shut her out when she had asked. He did not even have a reason why. It was just his habit not to share things.

Clutching the edge of his desk, he let it take his weight, the thin husk of his control cracking and emotion surging in. He wished he could weep, he longed to weep, to cry and have this out, but the ability to cry had been beaten out of him.

Instead anger filled the void of despair. He blamed himself, true, but there was someone else…

His head lifted and his fingers gripped tighter about the glass. He stared at the portrait of the old man and sipped the brandy. Its heat slid into his veins as did hatred.

That devil had disowned and left his mother for dead, because she had eloped with a man he did not like. That devil had sired a son out of wedlock, a far worse sin, and harboured him at Pembroke Place. Living life as though he were pure of sin, when his heart was dark as jet beneath.

Disgust, revulsion and anger swelled and pulsed. The last vestige of John’s sanity slipped and drawing back his hand, John threw the glass at the picture.

The brandy smeared his grandfather’s face.

It did not ease John’s rage. With a growl he swiped the contents off the desk.

Then he turned to the mantel and saw the hunting statues his grandfather had loved.

Striding across the room, he grasped one, and threw that at his grandfather too.

It tore the canvas. He threw another, growling as he hurled it.

Then he picked up a vase the old man had had shipped from Florence and hurled it to the floor. It shattered.

‘John! What the hell is going on?’ His father was at the open door.

John’s chest heaved with heavy breaths when he turned. ‘If he was alive I would kill him.’

Edward shut the door. ‘When he was alive I often wished to. But destroying his things is not going to help Katherine.’ Edward crossed the room.

John felt ten years old again, helpless. ‘I cannot do this.’ The desire to weep washed over him.

‘You can, and you will. She needs you.’

‘I let her down. We argued last night and I walked away. She asked me three times to tell her why I had dismissed Wareham. I did not tell her. I considered it nothing to do with her. We argued because she hates me shutting her out. She wants me to rely on her. She cannot rely on me…’ John looked up at the ornate ceiling. ‘I cannot live without her.’

His father came closer. ‘This is not your doing. It is Wareham’s, and if Katherine is to recover she needs you, and she is not the sort to lay blame, John.

’ Edward braced John’s shoulder. ‘You will get through this, and your marriage will become what it ought. People take time to get to know each other, and Katherine is right. It is not just Kate you close yourself off from. I know it is from a need to be strong?—’

‘Because I am not strong… If people saw this, and knew me…’

‘They would see a man who loved his wife. There is no harm in that. Look at your Uncle Richard or Robert. Do they hide their affections? Do they hold people distant? Are they seen as weak? It was too late for your grandfather to change when he discovered how much he had hurt your mother. It is not too late for you. Listen to Katherine. She is good for you…’

Edward’s hold firmed on John’s shoulder. ‘Now, go and change your clothes. The servants will clear this up. You will want to be ready when Katherine wakes.’

‘I wish to be your friend and your helpmate as much as your wife…’

John embraced Edward briefly.

‘No one doubts you, John. Look how you have managed. You are respected. Focus on being happy now and making Kate so.’

‘I will try.’

‘As I once told your mother, I do not accept trying. Trying is not good enough. Change. You can.’

John nodded agreement before turning away. His birth father could have loved him no more than Edward did.