Never a Gentleman (43 page)

So Diccan butted into his shoulder, hard. Carver grunted, but he wasn’t about to go down. He rammed his head at Diccan’s nose.
Diccan avoided it by an inch, so that their two foreheads cracked. Diccan felt his ears ring. He wrapped his free hand around
Carver’s throat. Carver did the same. Diccan could feel the breath wheeze in his chest. He backed up and slammed Carver into
the wall again, trying to dislodge him. He pushed at the gun, still caught between them. He tightened his own hand around
Carver’s throat, until he swore Carver was turning purple.

“Push him away!” Grace yelled. “I can get off another shot.”

He wasn’t about to give Carver even that chance. He held on even more tightly, slamming his body against Carver’s
in a futile attempt to get free. He heard steps thunder up the stairs and for just that brief moment he let his concentration
lapse. Carver took advantage and kneed him in the groin. Agony lanced him. His guts turned to jelly. But he didn’t let go.
He held on as Carver tried to wriggle free. He turned to get better leverage, spinning them around, each turn throwing them
back against the wall.

Letting go of Carver’s throat, Diccan slammed the heel of his hand against the man’s nose. Carver grunted; blood spurted down
his face. He gave Diccan a short jab to the ribs, taking Diccan’s wind. They wrestled together, stumbling away from the wall.

“Push him away!” Grace cried again, just at Diccan’s periphery.

Diccan tried to do just that. He jabbed at Carver’s jaw. Carver stuck his foot beneath Diccan’s in an attempt to sweep him
off balance. Instead, he sent them both reeling straight into the wall.

But Carver miscalculated. They slammed into the window instead. Glass shattered against Diccan’s shoulder. Wood splintered,
and he felt the sudden shock of open air. He felt his feet leave the ground. He thought he heard Grace scream. Suddenly his
vision was full of Carver and sky and pinwheeling trees.

Oh, hell,
was all he could think as he tumbled through the air. He lost his grip on Carver and saw the gun spin by as he slammed into
a tree. He heard Carver curse and branches crack as he followed. And then, with jarring abruptness, they both hit the ground,
two stories down.

Bones snapped and the ground thudded with the double impact. Diccan couldn’t breathe. His head felt like a burst gourd. He
thought he heard people yelling in the house. He
felt the jagged embrace of boxwoods, and heard a breathy chuckle from next to him.

“You’re… not getting… away… this time,” Diccan promised, once he could drag in air. It hurt to breathe, but not mortally.
He wasn’t as sure about his arm, which lay bent at an odd angle beneath him.

From next to him, Carver gave another gurgling laugh. “No,” he agreed. “I don’t think… I am. But I’ll leave you… with… this.
I should have… killed you. But who… didn’t want you… dead? Who do you know… would… protect you? Even over… England?”

Diccan managed to drag himself up on an arm to see Carver splayed against the bushes next to him. A tree branch stuck straight
up through the assassin’s chest. Blood frothed at the corner of his mouth, and his legs were already twitching. And, damn
him, he was smiling.

“Who?” Diccan asked.

“Is it a… woman?” Carver asked, his eyes beginning to fade. “Or a man? Your… cousin… or…”

Diccan leaned closer, grabbing him by the lapel. “My what?”

But his enemy just smiled. “ ‘The whore… has… the verse.’ Who else… would he… speak of… that… way…”

That was all. Bloody froth spilled from Carver’s mouth, and his eyes rolled and froze. A desultory breeze lifted his hair
off his forehead, and Diccan could smell death. He smelled triumph, too. The Surgeon had taken his secrets to the grave.

The whore has the verse.
But not Minette.

Carver had mentioned Diccan’s cousin. What would Kate have to do with anything? Diccan kept staring at the slack features
beneath him. Carver had made a lot of
accusations, some general and one specific. Who could he have been speaking of?

And then, from one heartbeat to the next, he knew. He closed his eyes. His brain whirled faster than the trees had. He wondered
whether he’d suffered a fatal injury after all, because suddenly he couldn’t get air past the searing pain in his chest.

He wanted to beat Carver, pound on the bastard’s chest ’til he woke so he could take back his accusation. Because what he’d
intimated simply couldn’t be true.

It couldn’t be.

“Diccan? Diccan!”

His strength vanishing, he finally let go of Carver and collapsed onto the ground. His arm had begun to hurt. His ribs. His
head. He thought by the next morning he would be a symphony of aches and pains, caused by broken bones and bruised flesh—treatable
pain. The same couldn’t be said of the pain brought about by betrayal.

It couldn’t be true.

Harry was the first one to reach him. Dropping by his side, the bluff blond rifleman quickly assessed him. “You going to live,
old man?”

Diccan offered a wry smile. “ ’Fraid so. Surgeon’s come a cropper.”

Harry looked over to where the Surgeon lay sprawled over the bush. “Too bad.”

Diccan could hear more people following Harry out of the house. Diccan grabbed his sleeve. “Harry. Before anyone else gets
here, you have to listen to me.”

Harry went still in the way soldiers did. “Of course.”

“I think Kate has the verse.”

His eyes grew wide. “What?”

“
The whore has the verse
,” Diccan quoted. “Minette isn’t the only one called a whore. At least by some people I know.”

He thought Harry had stopped breathing. “She’s involved in all this?”

“I think so. I think that’s what the Surgeon just tried to tell me.”

Harry shook his head. “Why am I not surprised?”

“She’s in danger, Harry.”

“She’s surrounded by protection, Diccan. How about we take care of you first?”

Diccan didn’t get the chance to answer. Suddenly Grace was there, gasping and weeping. “Damn you, Diccan Hilliard. What were
you thinking?”

She didn’t kneel as much as collapse on his chest, making him wince.

“I was thinking we were still by the wall,” he said, wrapping his good arm around her. “Are you all right, Gracie? I didn’t
hurt you?”

She was still wrapped in high dudgeon. “I reloaded. I could have taken him if you’d just moved!”

He gave her a small grin. “What do you think sent us out the window?”

Her face slackened in dismay. “Oh.”

He couldn’t help it. “I thought you were the one who could pip an ace at four hundred yards. What happened?”

Ah, there it was. That marvelously unique blush that he knew for a fact spread right up from her toes. She dropped her head,
and shuddered. “Harps will never forgive me.”

“I don’t know,” Harry mused. “Looks to me like this dead man has a big gunshot wound to the shoulder here.”

Grace glared at him. “I wasn’t aiming for his shoulder.”

Diccan felt bad when he realized how ashamed she was. “Grace,” he said, pulling her against him, “we’re fine and the Surgeon
is dead. That’s all that matters.”

Although it wasn’t. But he wasn’t going to be able to deal with the rest right now. Fortunately, hot on the heels of that
thought, the rest of the wedding party arrived, and he didn’t have the time anyway.

Diccan knew he should have faced his adversary alone. But he couldn’t seem to leave Grace behind. He hadn’t realized until
now, but she gave him calm. She gave him strength. And God knew he was going to need it by the time this interview was over.
He brought Marcus and asked him to wait in the salon, because he knew the interview was not going to end well.

It didn’t.

“You tried to have my wife murdered,” he said baldly.

They were fifteen miles from Oak Grove in the library of Moorhaven Castle, the perfect place for a family confrontation. Thankfully,
his cousin Edwin, the Duke of Livingston, had never questioned Diccan’s need for an interview or his request for privacy.
Even more fortuitously, as part of their purported visit to the family, Diccan’s mother and sisters were off with the duchess,
making calls.

The library itself seemed to reinforce the reason for the visit. A testament to male dominance, it was a symphony of rich
oak wainscoting, thick Persian carpets, green wall coverings, and overstuffed chairs, all complementing a priceless collection
of books that Diccan couldn’t remember
anyone actually reading. A statement of power and wealth and heritage. The most fitting place to meet his father.

Stolidly seated in one of the brown leather chairs, Diccan’s father responded to the accusation just as he would have if a
subordinate had questioned his word, with no more than a lifted eyebrow. He was wearing his collar and ecclesiastic cross
and chain, as if on his way to some important ritual. Beyond him, Grace sat on a matching leather couch, so still you could
almost imagine she wasn’t there, even in her pretty salmon day dress. It was a knack she had, Diccan thought, the ability
to seem as if she wouldn’t even leave an imprint on the couch; to be there yet not be there. Right now, he was grateful for
it. He was grateful for
her.

He was standing in the center of the room, his broken left arm in a sling, his head still ringing and every inch of his body
protesting movement. He hadn’t been able to wait until he felt better to have this meeting, though. He had to confront his
father here, where they could be alone.

“Tell me you aren’t that much of a coward, Bishop,” he said, his own voice colder than death. “Tell me you haven’t waged a
campaign to ruin my good name and terrorize my wife.”

The Bishop sneered. “Your good name? You have no good name. You forfeited that years ago with your first duel. And now you’ve
had what, four? And how many mistresses? It isn’t a surprise you’re accused of such crimes. The surprise is that it hasn’t
happened before.”

Not a word of denial. Not an outraged protest that Diccan could even think such a thing.

“We couldn’t figure it out, you know,” Diccan said, taking a quick look at Grace for reassurance. “After all, when Jack Gracechurch
unearthed the conspiracy against the
Crown, he was hunted down like a fox. When I brought evidence to support his claim, though, I was… married. Then I was told
to reunite with my old mistress, and my wife was forced into a despicable situation in an effort to turn her against me. And
then, Bishop, she was fed arsenic. Slowly. Deliberately. She was used as a pawn in a game she hadn’t asked to play.” He shook
his head, as if still bemused. “It all involved so much effort. So many players. We just couldn’t understand why the Surgeon
didn’t just come after me some dark night and slit my throat.”

He saw Grace flinch, but he couldn’t react. His focus was on his father, whose expression had hardened even further.

“You mean you ruined an innocent girl, shamed her, and then poisoned her to be free to return to your whore,” the old man
accused.

“And then,” Diccan continued, as if his father hadn’t spoken, “you and Mother arrived out of the blue at a home you’ve never
visited, to spirit me out of the country. Any sane person would wonder why you’d pick this moment in my life to suddenly show
concern.”

That brought his father to his feet. “You’re the only son I have left! Do you think I would just let you be destroyed? Do
you think I’d let that monster carve you up for the sport of it? I’m your
father
.”

Diccan froze, stunned to immobility. He saw such emotion in his father’s eyes, and for once, it wasn’t disdain. It wasn’t
disappointment. It was desperation.

Diccan couldn’t comprehend it. It was too foreign a phenomenon to digest. His father worried about
him
?

“And Grace means nothing?” he asked.

His father waved off his objection. “She’s a soldier’s
daughter. She knows some sacrifices are made for the good of all. And you would have been safe. Your reputation might have
suffered for a bit, you would have spent a few years in the Indies, but you would have been
alive
. Don’t you see?”

He did, and the enormity of it was unbearable. His father meant what he’d said. He had waged his campaign against Grace to
save his son from his own allies.

He was a Lion.

“Why?” Diccan finally asked. “What could make you betray your country?”

“Betray it?” his father retorted, rigid with fury. “I’m helping save it! Don’t you see what’s happening around you? Financial
ruin! Riots in the streets! A call for revolution! And who do we have to protect us? A mad king. An incompetent, profligate
heir. Whigs, who are trying to pull us into chaos, and Tories who don’t really see the danger around them. If we don’t do
something now, there will be no England to defend!”

Grief pierced Diccan, sharp and sudden. “And to protect England,” he said, “You would assassinate one of its greatest leaders?”

His father snorted. “The last thing anyone could call the Prince of Wales is great.”

Diccan battled a growing sense of unreality.
They were going to assassinate Prinny, too? Yes
, he thought, after a moment’s consideration.
Of course they’d have to kill him. It was the only way to put Princess Charlotte on the throne.

“He’s speaking of Wellington,” Grace said, from her place on the couch.

Diccan’s father spun around as if she’d sprung out of
the wall. Diccan wasn’t surprised. But one look into her eyes revealed the implacable steel at the core of this quiet woman.

“Wellington?” his father retorted with a sharp laugh. “Don’t be daft, girl.”

“The attempt is going to be made sometime before November,” Diccan said. “I heard it myself.”

For the first time, his father looked uncertain. He looked around, as if he could find reassurance somewhere. Finally, in
an instinctive gesture Diccan recognized, he took hold of his cross. Not as a symbol of his faith, but as a symbol of his
power. “That’s absurd. Why would they?”

It was Diccan’s turn to lift an eyebrow. “Could you see the Duke of Wellington standing patiently by as his country was attacked?
Can you not imagine how easy it would be for him to raise the army to battle you? No, Father. He has to be taken care of before
the plans are set into motion. The only thing lacking is a verse.”