Page 91 of How to Tempt a Duke

“You can have it.”

Charles reached into his jacket to claim the key without thought. Damn the journal, damn the key, and damn his promise to his father. Eleanor. She was all that mattered. His wife. The woman he loved.

“No!” Eleanor said sharply. She kicked her foot out at Ledsey, catching him in the shin. The blow sufficed to knock him back half a step.

Ledsey grunted in pain and again pointed the gun down at Eleanor. “It would appear I need to ensure I’m taken more seriously.”

His arm tensed and the gun went off.

An extreme pressure slammed into Eleanor’s arm and she was vaguely aware of a salty taste in her mouth. An acrid odor hung in the air, stinging her eyes. Her ears rang with the explosion and Charles’s voice bellowed in the distance—outraged, horrified, undecipherable.

She pushed up and nearly fell to her right. Her arm seemed somehow inoperable. The room swirled around her. She looked down to where an ache blazed with insistent pain. Blood bloomed like a violent flower over the pale pink of her sleeve and spattered the rest of her gown.

Blood?

Her mind reeled with confusion at the dark, bloody hole in her upper arm.

When did that happen?

Her heartbeat throbbed too fast. Her breath was too shallow. Her lips tingled.

Charles lunged forward, moving as if very slowly, but before he could reach her, a heavy object landed by her feet. A pistol, with a stream of smoke still curling up from its barrel.

And yet hard metal jabbed into Eleanor’s temple, shoving her head savagely to the right.

“If you come any closer I’ll shoot her in the head this time.”

Hugh’s voice.

Suddenly it all rushed back to her and dislodged the addled freeze of her brain. Hugh was holding her hostage, demanding the journals and key, claiming them to be his father’s. And he’d shot her.

He’d shot her.

Her mouth was dry. She tried to swallow and found her throat stuck against itself rather than finding relief.

Blood soaked through her dress, intensely opaque and red against the gentle pink. The agony of it rushed through her arm, blazing.

Charles stared at her, his eyes wide, his face completely white as if he’d been shot as well.

“Good thing I loaded a second gun,” Hugh said in a mocking tone.

Pain mingled with the metallic taste of fear and left her stomach whirling with nausea. The barrel of the pistol dug into her scalp, forcing her to crane her neck. Emotion clogged her throat, but she kept herself from crying out.

“Give me the journals and the key,” Hugh demanded.

“Don’t hurt her.” There was pleading in the strength of Charles’s voice. “I swear to God if you hurt her, I will kill you.”

“The journals and the key,” Hugh repeated.

Charles set the key on the ground and withdrew the journals from the trunk he’d had in Scotland.

A ball of frustration welled in the back of Eleanor’s throat. She knew what those journals meant to Charles. He was sacrificing them, sacrificing the fulfillment of his father’s wish—everything—for her.

The dam in her heart holding back her emotion broke then, and overwhelmed her with the very truth she’d been trying to ignore for far too long.

No matter how desperately she tried to deny it, or to shield herself from the truth, she loved Charles. She loved him with every nook and cranny of her heart.

Charles shoved the stack of books toward Hugh. “Let her go.”