Andreas gripped the handle of the door and lifted his pistol. A man separated from the shadows at the side of the street and aimed directly at the other carriage. A lieutenant or some other man, easily disposed of usually, but on point today. The last dregs of Cornelius’s force—men trying to find someone to carry their banner.
Garrett did possess some charisma.
Andreas’s pistol discharged. His bullet knocked the shooter from his feet but not before the man’s close-range shot was fired.
The peculiar thought that he was never letting Phoebe Pace enter a carriage again, heir to a carriage empire or not, slammed through his mind as the nightmare took form. The carriage containing Roman and Phoebe crumpled as the wheel burst into a thousand splinters. The rig detached, the horses bolted, and the carriage skidded across the cobblestones with a terrible screech.
Andreas was out of his carriage and firing again before Phoebe and Roman’s carriage finally stopped, striking another conveyance stopped at the edge of the street. The horses attached to the other vehicle spooked, surging upward.
He ran over, compensating for the cobblestones as he moved. The brace was an asset as long as he could endure the pain of the knobs bruising the flesh beneath.
He pulled the carriage door open from the top, expecting others to cover him as he did so. The shots were quickly quelled though. The attack had been a last effort.
The long-term problem resided in the fact that there could always be a last effort from someone with nothing to lose.
Phoebe emerged quickly, thank God, with Roman right behind her. She had lost her cap in the crash. And he was absolutely sure of the thought that she would never see the light of day again once he was done securing her safety—bricking her in the walls, if necessary, when they returned.
Roman lifted Phoebe out to Andreas, but his eyes were tracking their men grouping around the downed vehicle. Collecting the signals they were sending. “Four strong. All down. No one’s seen Garrett,” Roman said, as he vaulted from the vehicle, easily landing in a half crouch before rising to his full height.
They were only a few blocks from their destination. Andreas nodded sharply. “Cover all sides.” He motioned to Phoebe. “Let’s go. We need to get inside.”
He couldn’t credit it, but he could have sworn he heard her grumble—“A Pace carriage wouldn’t lose a wheel like that”—as she hurried ahead.
He couldn’t leave her exposed in the open, and he didn’t trust the situation enough to put her in another carriage without him. They would formulate a plan at Nana’s.
Frankly, this type of danger was not amusing. He wasn’t used to personally caring about people in dangerous situations. Roman could take care of himself, and the others were good men but not friends.
When he entered the house, he expected Nana to be baking or puttering around her garden. Not to see Henry and Edward Wilcox trying to lift her from the floor.
“Get away from her,” Andreas hissed, new pistol in hand.
He and Henry stared at each other, for what felt like a lifetime. It had been a long, long time—it had
been
a lifetime—since they had seen each other, eye to eye, this close. Henry slowly raised his hands in surrender. “We are here to help, just as you are.”
“Oh, boys,” Nana fussed. “I always hated it when you fought.”
Andreas clamped his lips together, promising death to Henry with his eyes if he spoke otherwise.
“We’ve made our peace, Nana,” Henry said, eyes not leaving Andreas. “You’ll be happy to know.”
“Oh, good, dear. I’m so happy to see you boys all together where you belong.”
He glanced quickly at Phoebe’s face. Saw the lack of surprise. Still, having things confirmed aloud was . . . well, final. He could hear Roman asking Edward what the hell they were doing there and how they had entered.
“Roman!” Nana exclaimed, his whispers catching her attention. “Such a good boy.”
He wondered how Phoebe would feel about Nana? Everything was a little foggy for some reason. He could hear Edward saying that Nana had invited them inside. That they had found some document on their father’s desk saying—
“Jane!” Nana reached up to grab Phoebe’s hand warmly in hers as if this were all some strange family reunion. “Look, Roman,” she said. “It’s Jane.”
The room grew cold around him.
Jane?
Andreas pinned his darkest look on Roman—who just smiled charmingly, though there was a worried light in his eyes.
That
bastard.
Andreas stood stiffly, wondering at a thousand things suddenly. What was real? Roman’s smile dropped instantly. Always able to read exactly what Andreas was thinking.
Bastard.
“Andreas, it isn’t what you think.”
“Isn’t it?” he said blackly.
“Well, it is. A bit,” he placated.
Phoebe—Phoebe
Jane
Pace, shit he should have figured it all out sooner—pushed into his view. “We met, the week before I first came to your office. But I’m not going to feel guilt for anything that brought me to you.” She gave him a dark glance.
For some reason that dark look made him feel better than one full of calm.
And then there was no more time to think.
“So
sweet.
” That most hated voice emerged from a doorway hidden to the side. And he watched Nana gasp before her eyes rolled back and she fainted.
P
hoebe whipped around to see Lord Garrett emerge. Nana’s hand slipped from hers.
She knew instinctively that if she and Nana hadn’t been in the room, blood would already be spilling across the floor. But Roman and Andreas just shifted their positions slowly.
“Yes. She is.” Andreas sounded flatly irritated. She suddenly knew she would pay dearly for being here if they made it out alive.
She thought on it. No, at this point, still better quick death here than by her mother’s slow hand.
“You can’t kill us all,” Roman said pleasantly, inspecting his nails, then his knuckles. She could see the barest glint of steel as the nail he had been examining pulled something from his wrist into his palm.
“I don’t care,” Garrett said, pistol steady on Andreas. “I have made arrangements. As long as
he
dies, that is all that matters. He should have been dead a long time ago. I should have finished it myself after I crushed him. He was broken in five places—bleeding everywhere. No one survives that much blood loss.” Duncan Wilcox, Lord Garrett, spat, pistol shaking for a moment. “You won’t
die.
Why?
”
She could see Roman and Andreas sending signals back and forth. Quick flicks of their fingertips. Roman inching to the side so slowly that she only noticed because she was staring right at him.
“I didn’t want to do anything that could please you.” Andreas smiled coldly.
“That bitch was supposed to make sure you were
dead.
” Garrett seemed to need verbal resolution before dispensing death. That could only be to their advantage, though she had no idea what she should be doing to help.
“Mother always was a contrary woman.”
“Her devil spawn. His seed still running down her thigh when you were born. That
bitch.
And she said
nothing
while you were marked legitimate forevermore in the eyes of the world.” Garrett smiled suddenly, madly, though. With the feral edge of a man with nothing left to lose. “But she didn’t care about you, did she? It only took a few whispered words to get her to consent to your death. Satan’s spawn.”
“The devil always swindles his own.”
Phoebe looked quickly between the four men. The features that Andreas shared with Edward and Henry were not those of Lord Garrett. Of
course.
Her hand covered her mouth, everything finally slotting into place.
“Your bitch finally figured it out,” Garrett said derisively.
Andreas went still as death. “I will rip out your tongue before you die,” he said, voice flat and absolutely sincere.
She suddenly saw Roman, shifting on the balls of his feet, a diabolical look glittering in his eyes like those of the devil’s right hand. How had he gotten over there? He had been moving so slowly. And what was he doing with his hands?
“I won’t make the mistake of missing this time.” Garrett steadied his hand, the pistol aimed straight at Andreas’s chest.
“Edward, be a dear?”
She thought Roman had said it, but the thought was completely knocked from her along with her breath as she hit the ground and went rolling across the floor.
Gunshots exploded around the room. When she finally looked up, Andreas was covered in blood. Again. But he was still standing, eyes dark. Next to her lay Edward, absolutely dazed, but unharmed.
That was who had tackled her.
And Lord Garrett . . . Lord Garrett was flat on his front, stretched out. Henry Wilcox was standing above him with a pistol still outstretched, eyes vacant.
She scrambled toward Andreas to assess the damage. Shot in the arm. Grazed, thankfully. The hysterical thought that she had said something about that very injury just last night wove through her.
In her peripheral vision, she saw Henry bend on one knee over his father, pistol hanging loosely from his fingers. Edward shuffled over and put a hand on his shoulder. Andreas stared at the tableau for a long moment, then his eyes went to Roman, and something was exchanged between them. Andreas’s eyes turned to meet hers again.
“I’m sorry, Andreas,” she said softly. No matter what existed in the past . . . she shook her head and squeezed the hand attached to his uninjured arm.
He tilted his head to her, and she leaned up and pulled her lips across his, uncaring of the audience.
They made it to Roman’s house with Nana, then back to the hell and Andreas’s rooms without further incident. Phoebe barely remembered either trip.
She had somehow managed to convince her mother to grant her a stay of execution when she’d seen them return, Andreas’s arm splattered with blood, as they’d walked down the hall.
Phoebe had seen the resignation underneath the outrage in her mother’s eyes. It would be an interesting and awkward chat later, but she would talk her mother around in the end. Andreas was who she wanted.
Phoebe rummaged through Andreas’s shelves, worrying less about the expensive statues this time while locating the supplies she needed. Andreas leaned back, head against the chair. Again.
“Am I forever doomed to bandaging you up, then?” she asked, plucking the salve.
He cracked an eye. “Maybe.”
Her heart swelled. Maybe . . . maybe there was hope.
S
he was quiet for a long time as she worked.
“Henry could go to prison if the wrong story emerges,” she said finally.
Andreas grunted. That was on the bottom of the agenda of topics he wished to discuss. He looked at the ceiling. He had hated Henry forever. Henry, who he had once blamed for turning their mother against him. Though he knew, he had
known,
it had been Garrett and a weakness in his mother that had been to blame. Having seen enough of madness by now to recognize the look, he could see it in his memories of her. Especially in the memories after Edward was born.
Still,
Henry
had silently watched the beatings, the pain inflicted on Andreas. He had smiled. Had seen his opportunity to become heir.
He could keep Henry from prison and scandal. There was one person who could ensure it. Andreas had never asked the man for anything. He had never, ever planned to, either.
The long stretch of road extended in front of him. A gleaming knocker and hall of gold. Of bent pride.
“Tell me of how you met Nana,” he asked Phoebe, not wanting to think of those other things.
Nana was safely ensconced in Roman’s Grosvenor Square fortress. But there were a lot of decisions that needed to be made in the next few days.
“I, well, your brother—your brother Roman,” she amended. “He—”
“I only have one brother,” he enunciated.
She pulled the bandage a little tighter on the next wrap. “Very well. Your brother found out about my father’s condition. He introduced me to Nana.”
“Roman said that he couldn’t bribe your staff.”
“He couldn’t. That didn’t stop him from knocking on the door and inviting himself inside to speak with me.”
Of course. Of course, Roman had done that. He had known Andreas was interested in her. And it reiterated what Roman had said earlier, away from Phoebe, little snippets of information.
—“You never showed interest in anyone. I followed you to the theater the third time you went—watched you from the shadows while you watched her. I knew from that moment that she was yours.”
—“The plan had only been for her to tell you she had already met me and that she had met Nana. And to secure new negotiating terms. I had no other part in her plans or actions. You. You gave her a chance to chip away at you.”