Page 98 of An Extraordinary Lord

“Now!” Merritt shouted and hurled himself toward them.

She simultaneously jabbed an elbow into the man’s gut and shoved his arm away, deflecting the blade as he sliced it toward her throat. Her hand dove into her sleeve and slid free her own knife. She stabbed, and the blade sank deep into the bastard’s shoulder. A howl tore from him, and instinctively, he stepped back and put himself off-balance.

Merritt plowed into him with his shoulder and shoved him backward. The man cartwheeled head over heels down the stairs. Each bounce of his body came with a sickening thud, and he landed in a crumpled ball on the floor below. But he wasn’t dead. An agonizing groan came from him as he found the strength to crawl across the boards as he still attempted to escape.

That bastard wasn’t getting away this time. Merritt snatched up the dropped knife and froze—blood stained the blade. He stared at it, knowing…

Veronica.

He spun around and saw her slumped in pain against the doorframe. Her face paled to ghostly white as her trembling hand reached toward her shoulder. When she pulled it away, bright blood covered her fingers.

His worst fears seized him in a block of ice. He couldn’t tear his attention away from the wet spot darkening her leather waistcoat.

“Go after him,” she urged in a breathless rasp. “Stop him, arrest him…”

He started down the stairs, then halted. The man had pulled himself to his feet and was attempting to hobble the rest of the way to the ground. His left leg was badly twisted, as was his left wrist, and blood trickled from the cut on his brow. But he was still alive and capable of escaping.

The bastard deserved to die. He deserved to be arrested, tried, and strung up by his neck, dangling and kicking until all the life drained from his body. Until Joanna finally had justice and could rest in peace.

But Veronica needed him. As the darkness inside him warred with the light, he knew he couldn’t have both. He couldn’t save Veronica and still have vengeance on this man. He had to choose—the future or the past.

Throwing the knife away, he turned back to Veronica and caught her just as her trembling legs gave out. He gently lowered her onto the roof and into his arms.

Bonelessly, Veronica sank against him as fatigue and loss of blood overcame her. Pain pounded in her shoulder in such rapid hammer blows that she could only breathe by sucking in sharp gasps through clenched teeth.

“Go,” she ordered, unable to summon more than a hoarse whisper. “Go after him—you have to…”

“What I have to do is care for you,” he countered as he laid her on her back and tore open her waistcoat. He swiftly untied the stays and pushed them open to reveal the blood-soaked linen shirt beneath.

“It’s not serious,” she insisted.

In silent argument, he stuck his finger through the knife hole in her shirt and wiggled it at her somberly. Then he grabbed the shirt in both hands and ripped it open to bare her chest.

She gasped. “Not that I mind you…ripping off my clothes.” She attempted to pant down the pain. “But this isn’t the time nor place.”

Her joke fell flat when he flicked a glance at her and she glimpsed the absolute worry etched onto his face.

She squeezed his arm to reassure him. “I’ve had worse.” Although she would have been hard pressed at that moment to say when. “I’ll be fine.”

Ignoring that statement, which sounded wholly ridiculous even to her own ears, he stripped his own tunic over his head, then ripped off the sleeves. He balled up the rest of the fabric and pressed it against her shoulder to stanch the bleeding.

A bolt of pain shot out through the top of her head, along with a cry from her lips.

Guilt gripped his face as he leaned over to lightly kiss her in what she knew was an attempt to ease the torment.

“When I saw that knife at your throat,” he said quietly, his voice raw, “I thought…”

When his confession died away, she finished, “That you would lose me…just as you lost Joanna.”

He gave a jerking nod.

“But you didn’t.” She touched his cheek, heedless of the blood she smeared there. “You saved me.”

He looked down at her chest, focusing his attention there, but not before she saw his eyes glisten in the morning sunlight. “I can’t bear to lose you.”

Anguish rose in her throat. If he uttered the wordagain, she would have died right there. “I’m not Joanna,” she said as firmly as possible despite the choking hitch of breath. “I can never be the woman she was.”Respectable, acceptable…

He snatched up the sleeves and tied them around her shoulder to hold the makeshift bandage in place. “I know exactly who you are, Veronica Chase.”