The Devilish Duke, page 34
He stilled as a noise from outside disturbed the silence within. Carefully, he crouched down below the boarded-up window at the front of the lodge and peered out through a small crack. He thought he saw some movement to the left. He carefully cocked the hammer back on his pistol and waited.
…
Sophie rounded the corner and hid behind some bushes. She could see the front door of the lodge wide open. Did that mean Hemingsworth had followed her and was now even chasing her shadows in the woods? But there was still no sign of Devlin.
What if he had already walked into the lodge and Hemingsworth had come to and was lying in wait? What if, even now, Devlin was hurt or bleeding or, worse, dead?
Should she go back into that place and check? What was she to do?
She stilled as she felt the blade of a knife at the back of her neck.
“There, there, my darling,” Hemingsworth crooned softly to her. “I have you back. Nothing to worry about now. Do drop the branch.”
“No, I shall not!” Sophie yelled. If Devlin was in the area, mayhap he would hear her.
“Shut up,” he hissed into her ear. “Or I will cut your throat, see if I don’t.”
Reluctantly, she dropped the branch.
“Your fiancé,” he almost spat the word out, “is not here yet.”
“How do you know?” Her eyes darted around, searching for anything she could grab and use as a weapon, anything she could use to get a moment’s advantage. She remembered the rock in her pocket, but by the time she pulled that out, she had no doubt Hemingsworth would have slit her throat.
“He has not had time since receiving my note to get here. I planned it all perfectly of course; well, except the part about you fleeing, but luckily, I was able to track your movements.”
He dropped the knife away from her throat and pushed her with his hand toward the front of the house. “Hurry up and get inside.”
Sophie reluctantly stepped out from the bushes onto the dirt clearing at the front of the building.
He steered her over the threshold and into the front room, using his boot to slam the door shut behind him. Suddenly, she felt him still behind her.
Roughly, he pulled her against him and returned the blade of the knife to her neck. “I think your betrothed might be here, my angel,” he whispered in her ear. “Devlin?” he called aloud. “Come out, wherever you are.”
The house remained silent.
“He is not here,” Sophie said.
“Shut up,” he growled. “If you do not show yourself in five seconds, I will slit her throat. One,” he began counting. “Two.”
“Lower the knife, Hemingsworth,” Devlin’s deep voice commanded from the far corner of the room.
Sophie gasped as Hemingsworth swiveled them both around toward Devlin’s voice, just as her fiancé stepped out from behind a pillar. She’d never been so profoundly happy to see anyone. He raised his gun toward them and repeated his command. “I said let her go.”
She felt Hemingsworth tremble slightly. Whether it was from fear or excitement, she could not guess.
“I am holding the cards here, Huntington, not you,” he bit out, pressing the knife point deeper into her skin. “Drop your weapon.”
“No, Devlin you must not!” Sophie urged him. “He will kill us both if you do!”
“Shut up!” Hemingsworth roared in her ear.
She could not help but gasp as the point of the blade lightly pierced her skin.
“God damn it,” Devlin growled. “Lower your blade.”
“You are killing her, Huntington,” Hemingsworth ground out as he pressed the knife slightly deeper.
“Do not do what he says,” Sophie said as she felt a warm tickle of blood slide down her skin.
“I am not leaving you!” Devlin un-cocked the hammer of his pistol and tossed it to the side. He took a step toward them. “You gripe is with me, Hemingsworth. Let her go.”
“Stay back,” Hemingsworth warned. “Or the knife will go deeper.”
Devlin stopped and held up his hands. “All right,” he said. “Just let her go.”
She heard Hemingsworth snicker in her ear. “That is not going to happen,” he announced. “She is integral to my plans.” He relaxed the pressure of the blade against her throat a small bit. “Now I know you have another weapon on you somewhere Huntington, so do carefully reveal it. And do not do anything stupid. Her very life depends upon it.”
Devlin’s mouth compressed into a tight line. He lifted his left foot up onto the lounge nearby, and slowly, he bent down and pulled back the material of his pants leg, revealing a small derringer strapped to a holster above his boot.
“Devlin, don’t,” Sophie said. “He will kill us. You must stop him, regardless of me.”
“I told you to shut up!” Hemingsworth roared, pressing the blade tighter to her neck.
She hadn’t thought she could be more afraid, but seeing Devlin giving up his weapons, his only advantage, increased her terror a thousand-fold. Icy shards of fear prickled painfully down her spine.
“Damn it, don’t hurt her!” Devlin implored him. “Look, I am getting rid of the thing.” He slowly pulled the small gun from the holster with two fingers and then threw it to the side.
“You remember when we first met, don’t you? And how I freed your dress from the shrubs?” Devlin asked Sophie.
“When I said shut up, that included you, too!” Hemingsworth snarled. He pointed the blade at Devlin, while still holding Sophie tightly to him with his other hand.
Sophie thought back to that night when she had fallen at his feet out of a tree and then got caught in the shrubs… Of course! She just had to distract Hemingsworth’s attention for a second. Slowly, she pushed her hand into her pocket and gripped the rock tightly.
“I think I am feeling faint,” she moaned before slumping in Hemingsworth’s arm.
“What the devil?” Hemingsworth grappled with one arm to hold her up.
He was unable to do so, and she quickly slid to the floor. She lay there motionless, hoping her imitation of a faint was enough to distract him.
Hemingsworth pointed his knife at Devil. “Don’t you move. I can still slit her throat before you even get close.”
Hemingsworth’s attention was firmly fixed on Devlin. Without stopping to think about it, she rolled onto her side and with all her might smashed the rock into his right kneecap.
Hemingsworth howled in pain and arched the knife up high over his head in a stabbing motion. “You bitch,” he screamed.
Quickly, she turned her body to the side. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Devlin reach into his right boot and draw out his dagger, just where it had been the night they first met. The light from the lantern caught the edge of the silver blade, and before Sophie could blink, she heard a sickening thud as the blade lodged in Hemingsworth’s chest.
The man stared down in surprise at the knife buried deep in his torso. The blade that Hemingsworth himself had been holding fell out of his hand and clattered to the floor.
“This is not what was meant to happen…” he managed to utter before coughing up some blood.
She grimaced as he staggered back further.
Hemingsworth’s face was now beaded with sweat. “Everything he had should have been mine,” he wheezed out. “Including you.”
Devlin began to walk toward him. “It is all over, Hemingsworth, or whatever your damn name is.”
Hemingsworth tried to laugh, but it came out as a rattle. In a blur of movement, he reached into his jacket and pulled out his own gun, pointing it at Sophie. “I will have my revenge.”
“No!” Devlin shouted as he dove in front of Sophie.
The sound of a gunshot reverberated through the room.
Sophie blinked as she saw Devlin crash into Hemingsworth, his weight forcing them to the ground and knocking the steaming gun from the man’s hand.
Scrambling up from the floor, she rushed over to them. She barely paid any attention to Hemingsworth, whose eyes now stared vacantly at the ceiling, as she ran over to Devlin. He rolled off Hemingsworth and onto the floor.
She stumbled when she saw the growing patch of red staining Devlin’s shirt. A sense of panic began to grip her. No…this couldn’t be. He couldn’t be taken from her, not after she’d only just realized how much he meant to her. “What were you thinking?” A sudden sense of anger gripped her as she crouched by his side and ripped off the cloak from her shoulders. She would not let him leave her. She balled the material tightly and pressed it against the wound on the side of his stomach.
“Is he dead?” Devlin grunted.
“Yes.” Some errant tears dashed down her cheeks. “But why did you jump in front of me? You just had to be the hero, didn’t you?”
He managed a weak grin, his face growing paler by the second. “Couldn’t let you get hurt.”
“You should have,” she said, tempted to look at the wound but not wanting to stop applying pressure. She had no medical training and no time to leave him and get a doctor. “You should have shot him when you had the chance, regardless of the circumstances.”
“He could have hurt you then.”
She choked back a sob. “Better me than you.”
“You’re wrong. I could not live without you, you see,” he managed to say as he slowly raised his hand up to her face. “I’m so sorry about earlier. I was trying to push you away. I was scared of what I was feeling.”
The thought sent her reeling. Sophie pressed her cloak more firmly against his wound. Panic gripped her as she felt his blood seep through the material. “Shush now,” she said. “You must save your strength. Help will be on the way soon.”
“I have to tell you how I feel, before it is too late.” Devlin tried to sit. “I owe you that much honesty, at least.”
“Don’t you dare talk like that!” She gently pushed him back down, scared by how little strength he seemed to have. “Do not move. And you had better not leave me either,” she ordered. “Otherwise, I will have fallen in love with a rake for nothing!”
He smiled weakly. “You love me? Even after what I said to you earlier?”
Sophie brushed away the errant tear on her cheek. “I could not help it.”
“That makes two of us,” he confessed, his breathing becoming slightly labored. “I thought I could steel my heart against you. But I had no chance. When you fell at my feet all of those months ago, I was captivated. You were so earnest and honest and pure. You were the light to my darkness. Think I fell in love with you that day, though I could never admit it until now. Even kept that scrap of your gown that I cut off.”
“You did?”
He nodded, his face looking horribly ashen. “Earlier today, when I got to the factory and realized it was a trap to get me away from you, I’d never felt such fear.” He stopped and licked his lips, his voice growing weaker. “It nearly paralyzed me. It was then I realized I’d been lying to myself, pretending I was still the Devil Duke who didn’t need love. Who didn’t need you. But I do need you, Sophie, desperately. And I need your love, too.”
“Oh, Devlin,” she whispered. “You have my love.”
“I love you, Sophie. I will love you for eternity. Even in death,” he said before his eyes fell closed.
“Devlin!” she screamed. “You had better not die on me. Do you hear me? Wake up!” She shook him, but his eyes remained shut and his formerly labored breathing became terrifyingly silent.
“No, no, no. Wake up!” She shook him again, more vigorously. “Devlin, wake up! I’ll never forgive you if you die. Do you hear me?”
She could barely see his face through her tears. “Devlin, wake up! Wake up,” she cried, her voice growing hoarse. She collapsed on top of him and started sobbing. “Oh God, don’t take him away from me,” she pleaded. “Please, Devlin, I love you, too. Please wake up…”
Chapter Forty-Three
Devlin slowly became aware of the sound of voices mumbling in the distance as the darkness slowly lifted from his vision. He blinked several times before feeling a burning sensation down his side.
“God damn it, where am I?” he rasped, seeing muted tones of what appeared to be a bedroom but had shadows and light dancing on the walls around him. Was he in hell?
“Devlin!” he heard Sophie gasp.
He twisted his head around toward her and saw her run over from the doorway where she’d been conversing with a man. Well, he certainly wasn’t in hell if Sophie was with him. He realized the dancing lights were from the hearth in the corner of the familiar room, which crackled away merrily and kept the chill at bay.
He blinked away the fog from his eyes as she came to a halt at the edge of the bed he lay in. She leaned over and began to pepper his face with kisses.
“Thank God, I thought you’d left me,” she said. But then she pulled back, and a weariness came over her features. “How do you feel?”
His throat was as dry as sandpaper, and his stomach felt like a poker had lanced it. “Just dandy,” he replied.
“Do not ever scare me like that again!”
He managed a weak smile. “I only closed my eyes for a bit.”
“A bit! You’ve been unconscious for two days!” She lightly hit him on his shoulder. “You scared me half to death.”
Devlin grunted. “No need to strike me.”
“If you ever scare me like that again, I shall shoot you myself!” She wiped away some moisture from the corner of her eye.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Thankfully, your men arrived just after you had passed out,” Sophie began. “And luckily, Stokes also thought Alec’s services might be needed.”
Devlin’s eyes narrowed as the man in question walked into the room. Bloody Alec McGuiness, the cad in love with his fiancée!
“God damn it, Sophie!” he managed to snarl, weak though it was. “What the hell is he doing here?”
She pointed at him sternly. “Don’t you dare complain, Devlin Markham! Alec is the one who saved your life.”
Devlin tried to sit up but winced and abandoned the effort as the pain in his side intensified. “What the devil did he do to me?”
Alec’s jovial face appeared in his peripheral vision. “You were shot, Your Grace,” he advised. “The bullet was lodged in your side, so I had to operate on you and retrieve it. Thankfully, it didn’t hit any organs, and I got all of the fragments out.”
“Then why does it bloody hurt so much?” Devlin gritted out, the pain sharpening.
“It needs time to heal,” Alec said. The man sounded too jovial by far, for a medical professional. “I’ve left instructions with Sophie on how to change the dressing and what symptoms to notify me about right away. I shall leave you both now.”
The man sauntered out of the room, closing the door firmly behind him. Devlin glanced over at Sophie, who had her hands crossed over her chest, a rather mutinous expression in the green depths of her gaze. “Why are you upset with me? I should be furious with you for even having that man in here—actually, where are we?”
“Huntington Court,” Sophie replied. “We couldn’t risk moving you to London, and Alec needed somewhere clean and close to operate on you.”
Devlin slowly nodded. He’d thought so, though he hadn’t been certain. He’d rarely been back to his family’s ancestral estate. Though it held horrid memories of his grandfather, he’d always actually rather liked the place, so perhaps it was time to change that. Particularly as his father had told him so many stories of it from when he was a boy.
He licked his lips, feeling suddenly parched.
Sophie reached over to the side table and poured him a glass of water. “Be careful not to drink too much.” She helped him lift his head up and take a sip.
“Thank you,” he acknowledged as she returned the glass to the table.
It was odd, but there was an air of awkwardness between them.
“Do you remember much of what you said before you passed out?” Sophie asked him, suddenly fixated on the flames in the hearth.
Devlin felt his heart start to thud faster. “I do.”
Her chest rose as she swiveled her gaze onto him. “And did you mean what you said? Or did you simply say such things because you thought you were dying?”
His throat felt tight as his old fears began to resurface. But then as he stared into her emerald eyes, which were bravely staring him down, even though he could see the flicker of uncertainty in them, he felt the fear disappear. This was Sophie. His Sophie. And if one thing his near-death experience had taught him, it was that life was indeed too short to allow fear of losing those you loved stop you from loving at all.
“Sophie Louise Wolcott,” he began. “I love you. And I said those things because I love you. I was a fool for ever trying to push you away. You are everything to me. My world. My life. I will love you from here to eternity and back. There is not a second I will not love you.”
“Really?” Her voice was raw.
His heart was so full at that moment, he could barely speak. “Yes, really.”
A tremendous smile lit her face. “Oh, I love you, too, Devlin!” She bent down and gently kissed him. And he felt complete. At last, the Devil Duke no more.
When she finally pulled back, he grinned feebly at her. “And you said you’d never fall in love with a rake.”
“I didn’t,” Sophie replied rather pertly. “You were never truly a rake. Just a slight devil, who I was brave enough to make a deal with.”
“Yes, and swindled me good in the bargain, too.”
“Do not worry, my darling.” Sophie looked down at him in sympathy, then leaned over and kissed him on the lips once again. “Just think of the happiness you will get from donating to Grey Street. Surely that will make the ache in your side disappear.”
“Trust me, it does not,” he managed to utter between the shooting pains in his side.
“Hmm,” she murmured. “Well, perhaps you should think of all of the other wonderful charitable organizations I wish for us to donate to. Just think, my love, a great deal of your money is going to be spent on such worthy causes. Has that brought a respite?”
