Page 85 of Along Came a Rogue

“No one will believe that.” Not Thomas, and especially not Grey. Despite the terror rising inside her, she took comfort in that—Grey wouldn’t believe the note, and he wouldn’t stop until he’d hunted down Harold and saw him hanged.

“Oh, you stupid chit!” He sighed with aggravation, rolling his eyes. “They don’t have to believe it. It just has to be good enough that they can’t place blame on me.”

“How?” she demanded, feeling anger stir inside her and slowly replace the fear. He thought she was weak and passive. Someone he could easily control and manipulate. Yet she refused to die without a fight. “How are you going to kill me?”

“You were so distraught that you took a knife from the kitchen at Chatham House, hired a hack to bring you here, and slit your wrists.”

Oh God…

“In the morning, a rag-and-bone man will come inside this building, looking for scraps to sell, where he’ll find your dead body.” He laughed with grisly amusement. “Let’s just hope he’s better at reporting dead bodies than he is at driving phaetons.”

He’d meant to frighten her but only infuriated her. “Slit a lady’s tied wrists,” she echoed, unconsciously clenching her hands even as they remained bound to the chair. “Spineless coward!”

Baring his teeth with a growl, he drew back his hand to strike her—then stopped at the last moment, just before he hit her face.

Enraged, he forced down his hand. “You almost had me. If I’d hit you, there would have been a bruise on your body, evidence that someone forced you into this.” He leaned over her menacingly, his voice chilling. “That’s the only thing stopping me from beating you right now the way I’ve longed to do since I found out you’d been bred and ruined everything. Punching your face, kicking your belly…”

He paused to lick his lips, and she sickeningly realized that he was becoming sexually aroused at the thought of harming her.

“I bet you’d beg for mercy, wouldn’t you? Soft little cries and pleas—”

“Stop it!” Yardley scolded him furiously. “Stop playing games! It’s time now.” She held out her trembling hand. “Give me the money you promised.”

With a murderous glare, Harold took out a small bag from his jacket. The gold sovereigns inside clinked softly together. “If you breathe a word about any of this,” he warned as he slapped the bag into the maid’s hand, “they’ll fish your dead body from the Thames.”

Silently, Yardley slipped the bag into her skirt pocket and handed over the knife. Even in the dim lamplight, Emily saw the monogram etched into the handle identifying it as belonging to the household of the Duke of Chatham. A knife taken from the kitchen, just as he’d told her.

Harold carefully undid the ties at her wrists so as not to leave any suspicious marks on her skin. No bruises to identify that she’d been murdered, she thought with horror.

She swallowed hard, her heart pounding relentlessly. She had one chance to escape, only one chance…

The last of the bindings fell away. Emily kicked her knee between his legs as hard as she could. He howled in pain, doubling over.

She pushed up to her wobbly feet, shoving him aside and running toward the door as fast as she could, her hands holding desperately around her belly. The street! She only had to reach the street, and she’d be safe. She reached the door and flung it open—

A hand grabbed her shoulder and shoved her backward. Her back slammed against the wall with a painful jar that ricocheted through her and left her gasping for breath.

A forearm pressed against her throat, crushing at her windpipe. Her fingernails dug into the muscle beneath the jacket sleeve in an attempt to free herself, in one last desperate attempt to save her life. But Harold’s face loomed over her savagely, his teeth bared like a lion’s in attack. From the corner of her eye she saw him raise the knife over his shoulder to stab her—

The sound of a gunshot tore through the building, and the ball ripped into his arm as the knife plunged downward. With a scream, he staggered back. Cowering away, Emily glanced up to see Thomas standing in the doorway, a trail of smoke rising from his spent pistol, and Grey’s large body hurling furiously toward Harold.

Grey hit him with such force that the two men propelled forward into the wooden chair, smashing it beneath them as they fell to the floor. He punched his fist into Harold’s face and stomach as hard as he could, so hard that she heard him grunt from the exertion of each blow. Blood and spittle flew from Harold’s cut and bruised face with each sickening thud of Grey’s fists.

“Grey!” She started toward him, but strong arms went around her and held her back.

“Not yet,” Edward Westover said calmly behind her, watching over her head as Grey continued to beat Harold.

Long, agonizing seconds passed until the ferocity of his punches weakened, until each jab came with great effort in swinging punches that seemed to take every ounce of energy inside him. When finally he couldn’t lift his arm for another blow, he sank back on his heels and took deep, gasping breaths, the fury in him spent.

Edward released her.

She rushed forward and threw her arms around Grey’s shoulders, burying her face against his neck. He shook from the exertion of beating Harold, who now lay in a moaning, bloody mess on the floor beside him, yet his arms raised heavily up her back to embrace her.

Closing her eyes, she held him tightly. She so fiercely focused on feeling his racing heartbeat and breathing, on reassuring herself that they were both alive and unhurt, that she paid no attention to the way he nodded over her shoulder or how Hedley and another one of Grey’s men gathered up Harold and carried him from the room.

“Brat,” he whispered hoarsely, shifting to sit back and pull her across his lap. “Are you all right?”

She nodded against his shoulder.