This was a woman who had planned for this very moment.
“Let’s not confuse your actions with patriotism,” Eva continued. “Power is your guiding principle. Not the public power of pomp and circumstance, but what lies behind the curtain. The true power. You see yourself as the puppet master, and we’re all dangling from your strings, aren’t we? How superior to us lesser creatures you must feel. You don’t blink an eye at turning virgins into whores, children into bastards, good men into prisoners left to rot once they’re no longer useful to you. What a legacy you’ll leave behind, you wretched, evil man. You will never destroy another life for your own twisted ends, not while I draw breath.”
“Eva, you cannot do this,” Isabel cried out, wracking her brain for words, for any words, that would stop her sister. “Think of Ariel.”
Eva’s eyes flashed to meet Isabel’s for an instant. Pain shone through the calm. “Ariel is exactly who I’m thinking of. Neither my son nor anyone else’s son or daughter will find their life at the whim of this man.”
Behind Eva appeared a figure, stalking forward, soft footsteps drowned out by the lively fiddle tune playing on the breeze. It was Hortense, still dressed in servant’s garb.
“Think of your life,” Isabel said, understanding that the longer she kept Eva talking, the longer she delayed Eva pulling the trigger.
“My life is a ruin. I’m nothing more than a used-up whore who thinks about the poppy most of her waking hours and dreams of it at night.”
“But we have him. He won’t risk shattering his reputation and good name.” Isabel held out her hand. “It is settled, querida. Let us go home.”
Oh, how she wanted to believe her own words.
Eva scoffed. “There you go again, Isabel, persisting in your naiveté. He will never stop bribing and blackmailing others to do his bidding. Only a well-earned death will stop Bertrand Montfort.”
As Eva finished speaking, Isabel had the sickening feeling Hortense, who continued creeping up slowly behind Eva, would be too late. Then time condensed into a single second as, pistol shaking, Eva squeezed the trigger just as Hortense grabbed Eva’s arm from behind, jerking the gun down. But not before a shot fired, leaving behind a ringing in Isabel’s ear and the acrid dust of gunpowder in the air.
For an instant, Montfort appeared to have come through unscathed. Then it appeared on his lily white shirt: a small ring of scarlet, blooming wider with every beat of his heart. Shock twisting his features, his hands clutched his gut, and he crumpled, first to his knees, then to the ground as a low, animal groan poured from his parted mouth.
The next instant, time sped into a blur as everyone burst into motion and scattered. Cheswick grabbed Miss Fox and rushed into the woods. Hortense snatched the gun out of a shockingly docile Eva’s hand before spiriting her away. Percy rushed to Montfort and bent over him, first pressing his ear to the injured man’s mouth, then to his chest.
Isabel felt like the only still cog in a well-oiled piece of machinery. It was as if these events were happening in someone else’s dream.
Percy was now pushing his hand onto Montfort’s abdomen. “Isabel.” He jerked his chin for her to come closer.
She willed her leaden feet to move. “Is he—?” She couldn’t finish the question around the bile that had risen in her throat.
“He’s alive,” Percy finished for her.
She registered a wondrous calm within Percy’s eyes. The man was made for this moment.
“You’re in shock, Isabel,” he continued. “So, I’ll tell you what to do. And you must listen. Agreed?”
She nodded.
“You must leave. Now.”
Again, she nodded, but her feet refused to budge. “I’m so sorry.”
“Montfort brought this on his own head. I’m surprised he made it this long without a shot to the gut. Listen to me. Hortense will have taken Eva to Rosebud Cottage. Follow them and collect your belongings. Then go to the stable and tell Stanhope you need the coach and four to transport you to London. Now.”
Still, Isabel’s feet remained rooted to their patch of earth. “Percy, I—”
“Go, Isabel. Before it’s too late.”
She had yet so much to say to him. “But I—”
“Now!”
At last, his command broke through the fog clouding her brain. One foot, then the other, stumbled into motion, leading her through Gardencourt’s expansive grounds, toward Rosebud Cottage. Over her shoulder, she stole one last glimpse of Percy, leaning over Montfort, trying to save the man. Trying to save them all.
For that was who Percy was. Those beneath his care were safe. Had she only trusted it sooner.
His words swirled through her mind. Before it’s too late. But she knew: it was already too late. Their game of pretend was over.
The brief hope that was, evaporated into a hollow void.
Chapter 28
London
Buried on the third page of the Times, tucked below a story about the explorer Alexander Gordon Laing reaching Timbuktu, Isabel located the news item she’d been hunting in the broadsheets these last few months.
Stalwart friend of Crown and Country and younger brother of the Earl of Surrey, Lord Bertrand Montfort, was tragically injured in a shooting accident at a country estate. The grievous event has left him with a shard of shrapnel in his spine. Speculation holds he will never walk again. No further details are forthcoming.
Isabel allowed the newspaper to fall to the table with a papery slap.
A shooting accident.
She reread the words to confirm their existence. There they lay in black and white. A relief both calming and upsetting sang through her.
“It is being handled.”
Those had been Hortense’s exact words that night as they’d rattled toward London inside the Duke of Arundel’s coach and four, packed to the gills with five women and a baby.
Later, after they’d arrived at the shop and it was only the two of them, Hortense had elaborated. “It will be a hunting accident.”
“During a country dance? At dusk?” It stretched credulity.
Hortense gave Isabel a hard stare. “Aristocrats do as they like, when they like.”