“These catacombs are secure enough to withstand the noise, you saw to that yourself, didn’t you?” Forsythe reminded him. “It took more finesse with the gunpowder than I expected to even create the first disaster. I can do it again. Except now, by the time they dig you out, I’ll be long gone.”
It was never going to get that far. “What would it take to let the women go?” Piers demanded.
Then it would just be him and Forsythe.
Then he could go to work. Because as devastating and severe as the gun in Forsythe’s hands was, Piers could be spectacularly more lethal.
This crypt was close quarters, and a rifle of any kind had very distinct disadvantages in such a place.
But he couldn’t act, couldn’t think, couldn’t relax enough to perform the dangerous maneuvers he needed to, if his wife was in the least bit at risk.
“I’m sorry.” Forsythe’s finger grazed the trigger. “But the duchess is now a part of the job I was hired to do.”
Patrick Atherton glided into the room dressed in a finely woven gray suit, a six-barreled pistol pointed at them both. “A job you’ve failed at, enormously.”
He turned to Piers, the spite glittering in eyes a pale reflection of his own. “How does the cliché go, cousin? If you want something done right…”
Patrick had always been a little bit less. Less tall. Less handsome, young, or vigorous. Less powerful both in title and in stature.
Which is why he’d hired a mercenary. The nancy fucker had never liked to get his hands dirty.
“You two followed me here,” Piers deduced. Patrick had been the void in the night. The prickle at his back. But Piers had been too intent upon his wife to pay the instinct the heed he should have.
She was his weakness, and now his cousin knew it.
“When I received word the cave-in had failed, I caught the next ferry to Normandy,” Patrick explained with a droll sigh. “Since you seem to have more lives than a cat, I figured it might take more than one of us to finish the job.”
Piers jeered at his cousin, hatred boiling to the surface. “Christ. Is Rose out there, also? She might as well join us.”
Patrick’s gaze sharpened. He’d hit a nerve. “Of course not. Rose wouldn’t let me kill you, not when she’s still madly in love with you. She hasn’t touched me since you’ve returned from the dead.”
“It’s because you’re weak,” Piers snarled. “You haven’t the bollocks to kill me yourself. You had to hire this incompetent to do it.”
“I’ll show you incompetent!” Forsythe bellowed, his trigger finger twitching.
Piers had known Patrick his entire life, had counted on the fact that his jibe would rankle his cousin, who pushed the barrel of Forsythe’s gun to the side. “Lose your composure, and you’ll lose your payment, Forsythe.”
The doctor’s mouth tilted into a mulish frown, but he pressed his lips closed.
Patrick’s pistol glinted in the lantern light, less dangerous than the shotgun, but still lethal. “You’re right, of course, this should have always come down to you and me. It’s rather poetic, is it not? That I prove myself worthy of the savage Redmayne title here in our ancestor’s tomb?”
“You’ll never be worthy of the Redmayne title,” Piers taunted. “You’re too pathetic.”
“Not so pathetic as your father.”
Redmayne stilled, his lips pulling back from his teeth in a silent snarl of warning.
“He granted me access to this project years ago, you know, back when you were a boy and I a young man. It’s been a great venture for the glory of the family. One I resurrected when I thought I was to become duke. When you were supposed to die in that jungle.”
Patrick inspected the tomb. “Your poor father, always seeking solace in his idiotic schemes, forever leaving them unfinished. This was one of the few I encouraged. I stood beside him while you and Ramsay were off getting your education, while your mother fucked her way across Europe. I helped him manage both his funds and his grief. Helped him tie the knot in the rope from which he hung himself.”
Lanced with a lightning bolt of rage, it was everything Piers could do not to vault over his wife and tear the man apart.
“Send the women away and we’ll have it out right here,” he demanded. “Man to man. One of us will be laid to rest in the Redmayne crypt for good.”
“Piers!” Alexandra protested.
“I’m not an idiot,” Patrick remonstrated. “I know I’d not best you in hand-to-hand combat. It’s one of the reasons I know I’d be a better aristocrat. A duke shouldn’t have to go into battle. Other men do it for him.” Patrick shook his head slowly, true sorrow tightening the Redmayne features he didn’t deserve to display.
“There’s no saving the duchess this time, I’m afraid. There’s a chance she carries your progeny.” He leveled his pistol right at Alexandra’s stomach. “And that just won’t do.”
Piers had never known true fear, not before that moment. Time became a construct, slow and disjointed.
He switched the knife Alexandra had taken from his boot to his left hand, reaching across his body to shove her toward the dais. The moment his wife was out of the way, he drew the pistol from beneath his jacket, levered his arm up, and squeezed the trigger three consecutive times.
Patrick’s shot went wide, and he never had the chance to attempt another, as two of Piers’s bullets found their mark in his heart. He crumpled to the ground, landing on his face with a sickening crunch.
Alexandra would have tripped over Julia, had the woman not dived for the pistol on the ground, snatching it and taking aim at Forsythe.
Forsythe, who’d leveled his shotgun at Alexandra, noticed Julia’s intentions in time, and a great, concussive boom deafened them all as he pulled the trigger.
Diamonds glittered as they disseminated in a truly awe-inspiring radius, along with gore that didn’t bear consideration. By the time they fell to the floor, Alexandra had taken cover behind the three-foot-tall mound of earth and stone, her head down, hands covering her ears.
Piers pivoted, squeezing the trigger thrice more, narrowly missing Forsythe as he dove behind the opposite side of the burial platform.
Forsythe immediately began to reload, stalking Alexandra around the other side of the dais. She saw him in time, and dove away from the cover of the dais, scrambling for the pistol still clutched in Patrick’s hand.
Apparently adept at counting bullets, Forsythe stood, pumping the now-loaded shotgun, sliding the shell into place.
Piers abandoned his empty pistol as he took a running leap and vaulted over the earth to land between the gun and his wife.
No one heard Forsythe’s last words as Piers gripped the barrel, wrenched it out of his hands, and shoved his dagger through the man’s throat, gorging on the primal elation of dispatching the villain up close.
Of watching the life drain out of his eyes.
When he turned around, Alexandra had retrieved his pistol, and stood in the middle of the crypt slowly turning in a bewildered circle. Her unfocused eyes shifted restlessly as she pointed the gun at Patrick’s facedown corpse, then to what little was left of Julia, before landing on Forsythe, whose blood still gurgled from his neck.