Then he froze.
Half in moonlight and half in shadows, a body lay sprawled on the ground. Face up. Arms spread. Head lolled to the side, with blood flooding from the crushed forehead.
Shelton.William dove to his knees next to him. Panic struck him, piercing and jagged, like shards of glass splintering into his soul. “Shelton, can you hear me?”
Deep red matted the white hair, leaked down the left side of his face, dripped to his neck and the ground like a torrent of rain.
God, help.William ripped off his greatcoat, staunched the flow with the fabric. “Do not move. I am here. You are well.”
But he wasn’t. Another wound had ripped open his chest. More blood. Too much to soak into William’s coat and too much to stop and too much to live without.No, no.
“Leave … get out …”
“Do not speak.” William gathered Shelton into his arms and tried to stand, but Shelton’s hissing groan made William lower him back. Nausea punched his gut. His mind reeled. Should he move him? Keep him still? Run for help or stay or—
“Forgive me … for the lies.” Choked. Deep. “William?”
“Here.”
“Leave.”
“Shelton—”
“Leave Rosenleigh. Promise.” The wrinkled eyelids blinked through the blood. “Tonight. Before … before you … too …”
“Shelton!” William grasped the man’s face with his hands. He rasped in air, moved his thumbs, tried to hold contact with a gaze growing dimmer. “Stay with me. Please. Hear?”
“Your father …”
“No longer matters. You must not speak.”
“Not dead.”
“Please. Tell me what to do. Tell me how to help you—”
“Gresham. Your father.”
“Shelton!”
“Edward … Gresham …” The lips stretched open, gasping. Then a noise, gurgling and frantic, as the old man latched on to William’s cravat with his fist. “Run … Promise.”
“I will not leave you—”
“Promise!” With desperate strength, Shelton yanked William closer. Inches from his face. Close enough that the brutal, metallic-sweet scent of his blood took William’s breath.
“I promise.” The words gutted out of him.
But Shelton never heard them. His grip loosened, his hand thudded back to the ground, and his eyes rolled vacant and sightless into the back of his head.
He was dead.
CHAPTER 2
Mulcaster Square, London April 1809
There he is.”
Isabella Gresham motioned her lady’s maid away from the window, slipped behind the draperies herself, and chanced a glance down to the street.
