Betrayed yet again. Grey locked gazes with Edward as Madelaine flew across the room. Edward leaned his chair far to the right. As it started to topple, Grey pulled the trigger of his pistol, blood roaring in his ears. Something sharp skimmed across his shoulder and caused his pistol to jerk to the right. Pain, like the quick slice of a knife, yet different, flared across the path of the wound and coursed down his arms. His finger numbed instantly. He dropped his pistol by his feet.
He stared in horror as the stranger aimed one of his pistols at the floor where Edward lay. Grey’s legs propelled him forward to charge the man. Madelaine’s scream tore through the hum in his head, but a deafening explosion drowned the sound of her fear and all else out.
Madelaine and the man crumpled like puppets whose strings had been abruptly cut. Grey reached them as her head hit the ground with a sickening thud, lolling back, her eyes fluttering shut. He focused on the man. He lay perfectly still, face up and eyes open wide with death. A dagger, jeweled at the hilt, protruded from the man’s neck. Good. The bastard.
Grey swayed on his feet, disbelief making the room swim. Madelaine hadn’t betrayed him. She’d saved him. He scrambled to his brother and jerked off the gag.
“Forget me,” Edward barked. “Help her. Help Lady Madelaine.”
Rushing back to Madelaine, Grey ripped off his cravat and pressed it to her side where he thought the blood was coming from. From outside the door, noise reached him—a tap followed by a drag. Someone approached. He laid Madelaine against the ground, lunged toward the dead man and yanked the dagger out of his neck.
Grey was on his feet when Gravenhurst appeared at the door, pistol aimed forward and dragging his right leg behind him. Gravenhurst stopped in the doorway, his pistol falling to his thigh and his mouth dropping open. “What happened?”
“Madelaine saved us. Do you know of a physician around here?” Grey demanded, releasing the dagger by his brother’s head and scooping Madelaine into his arms. Her head lulled back like one of his sister’s childhood dolls. A chill swept over him. She couldn’t die. He’d been wrong. So wrong.
He pressed her close as he strode toward the door. Her coldness made his chill feel like a fever. He stopped in front of Gravenhurst. “Is there a physician near?” he asked again.
“Milsford Street. One block over and turn right. He’s in the white house. Tell him Gravenhurst sent you. We’ll be there shortly.”
Grey wrapped his arms tighter around her body as he ran down the stairs and out into the night. “Don’t die on me, Madelaine.” But with each step, the coldness of her skin increased, making his throat tighten with fear of losing her.
He could see the white house at the end of the street, yet the harder he ran, the greater the distance to the house seemed. Driving himself forward like a man possessed, he reached the house, and kicked open the door instead of slowing down to knock.
A man, dressed in his retiring robe, barreled into the entranceway with a brass candleholder gripped in his hand. “Who the bloody hell are you?” the man demanded, his gaze sweeping over Grey but settling on Madelaine.
“Gravenhurst sent me.”
“Not again!” the man growled and set the candleholder on a side table. Grey didn’t have time to sort out what the man meant. He hoisted Madelaine up so the physician could see her blood-soaked side. “Will you help her? She’s been shot.”
“I can see that.” The man pushed Grey down the hall toward an open door. “My office,” he murmured to Grey’s raised eyebrows.
“Put her there.” The physician nodded toward a table. “And then move out of the way if you want me to work.”
Grey laid her gently down, his stomach clenching at her pasty skin and her blood covering his hands as he brought them away from her. He stared at her, unable to make his legs carry him away. He loved her. And he’d almost handed her over to death. She must have seen it. Known it. And had sacrificed herself to save him. Shame and disgust rolled in his belly.
“Get out of the way!” The physician shoved him aside.
He stumbled backward as the man frantically ripped her dress from her body. Grey trembled so violently he had to lean against the wall for support.
Soft fingers curling around his arm startled him. He looked down into the concerned face of a pretty brunette. Her blue eyes blinked at him. “The best way to help her is by allowing my husband to work,” the physician’s wife said.
Grey tried to comprehend where the woman might have come from, but his mind felt fuzzy as if he’d drank too much. God! He wished he were sloshed and this were a bad dream. Seeming to understand his shock, the woman took him by the arm and guided him out of the room, talking to him in low tones as she led him down the hall and into a study.
He fell, more so than sat, into the chair she offered, and when she poured a full glass of whiskey and pushed the glass toward him, he didn’t hesitate to drink. The woman hurried from the room, and he dropped his head into his hands. He loved Madelaine, probably since the day he’d met her in Golden Square. He was an idiot. He should have listened to her. She wasn’t conspiring to murder them. She’d saved them.
He rubbed his stinging eyes and sat back in the chair. He’d failed her. He should have married her the minute he’d found out her father was in trouble. He should have protected her. Was he to forever be wrong about those he loved, losing them one by one as punishment for being an idiot?
Without her, he was nothing. He turned the ring on his finger, duty warring against love, desire against honor. Without hesitation, he yanked the ring off his finger and threw it against the window. It smacked the glass then clattered to the ground. His father had probably just flipped over in his grave. Grey loathed himself for his betrayal, but he’d live with the guilt. What he could not live without was Madelaine. And now, he’d do everything in his power to protect her.
He sat that way, unable to move, unwilling to think about anything but willing her to stay alive, until the creak of the door alerted him to someone entering the room. Edward dragged into the room and slumped into the chair opposite Grey. With his lip cut and swollen, his eye blackened and a nasty gash on his forehead, it appeared he had put up a fight before being captured by the man in the warehouse. Edward’s eyebrows puckered together, a deep crease appearing between his eyes. He glanced around the room, got up and came back toward Grey holding a towel.
“Your shoulder is bleeding.”
Grey looked in surprise at his shoulder. He’d forgotten a bullet had skimmed him there. He slipped off his shirt and surveyed the wound. Not bad. Not nearly as dangerous as Madelaine’s wound. Pouring some of the whiskey from the crystal decanter onto the towel, he blotted the towel against his shoulder and clenched his teeth against the pain. Once he felt the wound numb, and decided it was clean enough, he shrugged his shirt back on and regarded Edward. “Did you know that man?”
“I used to.” Edward reached for the decanter with a trembling hand and sloshed whiskey into Grey’s glass. Edward pulled the glass toward him, picked it up and downed the liquid. “How is Lady Madelaine?”
Grey struggled to control his emotions. “The physician is working on her.”
