Page 56 of To Dare the Devil

“No!” Max shouted.

Both men moved, and it seemed to Max as if he were wading through a thick swamp. Though his chest heaved, and his heart felt it would explode with effort, he would be too slow, too late. He forced his body harder, faster, muscles straining. He had hurt Grace enough already, and he would not allow Beatrice to lose her mother. He caught Grace around the waist, turning her away from Franklin and taking her to the ground, covering her body with his own. He glanced back, seeing the man with the knife raised, coming for him, and braced for the sensation of that deadly, steel sinking into his exposed back. The sting of the blade was sharp, piercing through the silk of his waistcoat and the fine linen of his shirt to his flesh, and then Franklin jerked back, and another man was there, pulling him away. Franklin staggered, and the knife flashed, the man cursed, and Grace screamed.

“Sterling!”

Christ! Her husband.

Then everything happened in a blur, people everywhere, Grace struggling to get up, but where was Franklin?

“After him!”

Men’s cries, the sharp sound of feet running over gravel as his staff chased Franklin as he tried to make his escape.

“Grace! Grace, are you hurt?” Her husband reached for her, blood trickling from a thin wound on his forearm.

Max winced, removing himself from Grace to allow her to get up. His back was throbbing, a trail of sticky warmth moving down to his waist.

“Max!”

He wasn’t certain who called his name and tried to stand, but slipped on the gravel. A strong hand appeared before his face. The calloused hand of a working man. Max looked up, astonished to see the hard face of Grace’s husband staring at him, his dark eyes intent. He grasped the man’s hand and stood as pain speared his back, and then nearly fell on his arse again as Kathy barrelled into him, throwing her arms about him.

“Max, Max! Are you hurt? Oh, God. When I saw that man with the knife, he….” She paled and let go of him abruptly, stepping away and staring at her hand with horror. It was covered in blood.

She looked up at him, her beautiful eyes wide with terror.

“Just a scratch,” Max said faintly, and decided he’d sit down again after all as his knees gave out. Grace and Sterling were staring at him still, Grace clinging to her husband’s arm. Max swallowed uncomfortably and then realised why Grace had come. “Oh, you came for the doll. I left it in the garden. I was going to send someone back with it but my, er… guest detained me.”

He laughed at that and all three of them stared. Well, it had been an eventful day, and he was feeling a little odd.

“Fetch a doctor!” Kathy screamed, falling to her knees beside him.

“Grace came to get Kathy earlier,” Max said to her husband, not wanting him to have any doubts, though he realised that was stupid. This man trusted his wife, and with good reason. She’d not go near Max again if he were the last man on earth, and Sterling Oak knew it. “Rescued her,” he added with a wry smile.

“Max, hush,” Kathy said, sounding a bit exasperated with him.

So Max sat still as Kathy undid his waistcoat buttons, tugging it out of the way, and bit back a curse as she pulled at his shirt to inspect the wound.

“It’s not deep, but you’re bleeding like a stuck pig. We need to get you inside. Mr Oak…?”

She looked beseechingly at Grace’s husband, who nodded and moved forward, bending down and hooking a muscular arm beneath Max’s before he could protest.

It suffused him with mortification that this man, of all men, should stoop to help him when he ought to have been the one wielding the bloody knife. It was too much. “Really, Mr Oak, I can manage. I am most grateful, but—”

“You saved her life. That madman was going to kill her, and you put yourself in his way,” Oak said gruffly.

“Yes, but… but it was my fault. He wanted to hurt me.”

“Shut up,” Oak snapped.

“Right. Will do,” Max said, chastened. He glanced at Kathy, still bewildered why she was there. Grace had come for the doll, Mr Oak… he didn’t know, perhaps he’d found out and come after her, but Kathy? Kathy hated him. Except she was crying and watching him with such worry. He did not know what to make of it. “Where’s Franklin?” he demanded, craning his head around to look for him.

“He got away,” Oak muttered. “Your people went after him.”

“Warn Kilbane,” Max said. His head was thudding dully now, and he was shaking, though he couldn’t fathom why.

“The marquess?” Oak asked, frowning at him.

Max nodded. “Mr Franklin—that was Mr Franklin with the knife, by the way—had come to finish his handiwork, as he was the one who tried to kill me a few years ago. He thinks I—” He glanced at Kathy and sighed. Well, she could hardly think worse of him. “He thinks I had, er, relations with his wife. I didn’t,” he added hastily.