The very idea of him touching her, putting his hands on her—or heaven forbid, any other part of his body— left her feeling physically ill. There were some things, Benny thought, that might be worse than death. Living every day, infected with disease he had foisted upon her, and being reminded of how that disease had been contracted? It would be hell on earth.

  As they reached the narrow staircase that led to the rooms above, Benny allowed him to drag her up them. Near the top, she began to resist, causing him to stumble. Furiously, he turned, hauling her up and then shoving her forward so that she landed at the head of the stairwell. Immediately, Benny rolled to her back and drew her legs up. With all the force she could muster, she kicked out.

  Her booted feet caught him directly in his midsection. His breath rushed out on a broken “oomph”. Then he staggered back. His heels were too close to the edge of the top stair. Panic twisted his face into an expression that would have been comical had the situation not been so dire and so ugly. His arms pinwheeled for balance, but it eluded him. He tumbled, head over heels to the bottom of the stairs.

  It might have been wrong for her to pray for a broken neck, or a broken limb at the very least. But as she scrambled backward and finally rose to standing, Benny could see she had not been so lucky. He was already getting to his feet, a look of cold and bitter fury on his face. One foot on the bottom stair, then another. But then he stopped, not making another move. His features shifted from fury to fear.

  They’d attended a ball at the Assembly Rooms in Bath once when an elderly gentleman had danced too enthusiastically and suffered a fatal heart spasm. The expression that poor man had worn was terrifyingly similar to what she could now see on Lord Wainwright’s face.

  But it was no heart spasm, nor any other crisis of health that prompted the cessation of his pursuit. He turned slight to one side and Benny could see Payne at the foot of the stairs, a pistol in hand, leveled directly at her abductor. It was the most beautiful sight she had ever beheld. Bloodthirsty a thought as it was, she wanted him to shoot Wainwright on the spot.

  “Oh, thank heavens,” she said and immediately sank down to the floor once more, all the fight having simply flooded from her in a wave of relief.

  “Wainwright,” Payne said, not even sparing a glance at Benny. He couldn’t. If he looked at her, his focus would shatter or his temper would get the better of him. “I ought to call you out. But I’ll not jeopardize my wife’s reputation by allowing her name to be publicly associated with yours. But know this… if you come near her again, I will see you dead. Not in duel. Certainly not on a field of honor as you clearly lack the primary requirement to be welcomed there. Touch her again, look at her again… think of her again, and I will put a pistol ball directly between your eyes and spare the world the stain of your continued presence.”

  Wainwright’s sneering face was smug. “I told her. I warned her you would do nothing. You’re still a coward. You could have called me out years ago… I suppose poor Miss Bardwell wasn’t worthy of your defense. This is where I brought her, you know? Keep a room upstairs just for that purpose. The proprietor, for a bit of coin, will happily look the other way when they scream for help.”

  It was an effort to goad, to push him to react rashly. But a decade had given Payne perspective. And the woman sitting at the top of the stairs had given him a reason to be cautious. He would not ruin her. He would not abandon her because he had to flee to the Continent after committing a cold blooded murder with a dozen witnesses. “Anne’s death was a tragedy. What she endured at your hands was criminal. But I’ll not trade our future to avenge the past.”

  “I’m under no such compunction.”

  It was Gordon. Daring to glance over his shoulder as the viscount approached, Payne noted the hardness of the other man’s gaze. Immediately, he turned his attention back to Wainwright who was looking at Gordon in a perplexed manner.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Gordon pulled a pistol from his own pocket and pointed it directly at Wainwright. “Davenport, collect your wife and see her home. I will deal with Wainwright after you have gone.”

  “Why?” Payne demanded.

  Gordon didn’t bother to deny anything. “I will explain it all. You are more than entitled to the truth… Tomorrow. Right now, I want to get him out of here. We cannot trust anyone here, neither patron nor servant. Anyone of them could stab us in the back without a second’s warning.”

  Wainwright cackled. “You didn’t know. All this bloody time, and you had no idea! Your precious Miss Bardwell was no virgin when I had her, Davenport. That flower had already been plucked by the viscount. All because of a bet on the book at White’s.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Partially,” Gordon said. “But twisted to serve the purposes of this blackguard. I brought you to save your wife and you have. That’s earned me the benefit of a doubt, don’t you think?”

  That statement cut through to the heart of the matter. There were more pressing matters to deal with than his curiosity. “I will have that explanation, Gordon. Do not make me come looking for it.”

  The viscount didn’t bristle, but simply nodded. Then he grabbed Wainwright by the arm and began dragging him from the taproom. The man protested loudly, but it was ignored by Gordon and by the occupants of the room. They might turn a blind eye to the man’s misdeeds, but that was a far cry from being able to claim the loyalty of any person in that taproom.

  Payne climbed the steps to where Benny still sat. “Are you hurt?”

  Despite appearing impossibly small and fragile, when she looked up at him, even as her chin trembled, there was fire in her eyes. “Who is Anne Bardwell?”

  “Was,” he said. “Anne is dead and has been for nearly a decade.”

  “I know she is dead. I even know how she died thanks to Wainwright. What I want to know is who she was to you. Did you love her?”

  Payne sighed. “I thought I did. But this is not the place to discuss it. Let us get you home and I will tell you whatever you wish to know… Given Gordon’s presence here, I think perhaps there are parts to the story that I do not even know.”

  They didn’t even make it to the door before a shot rang out.

  17

  A chorus of shouts erupted from the taproom and the occupants began to scatter. Benny was so startled that at first she did not react at all. It wasn’t until Payne grabbed her and pulled her down into a small cubby beneath the stairs that she understood what was happening. Across the room, Wainwright and Gordon were struggling for a pistol. The one that already been discharged lay on the floor, spent and useless.

  Where he found the strength, she did not know, because Viscount Gordon was quite young and fit. Regardless, Lord Wainwright managed to shove the other man backwards with enough force that he toppled, falling over a table. His head struck the hearth of the truly massive fireplace that dominated one wall, the sickening thud of it reverberating throughout the room. After, the viscount lay unmoving while Wainwright pulled the hammer back on the pistol.

  She felt Payne move, but it did not immediately register what he was doing. Only when she saw him rush forward, gun in hand, did it begin to make sense.

  “Do not do it, Wainwright. Lower your weapon!” Payne ordered him.

  Wainwright simply tightened his grip. “Or you’ll kill me? I am a dead man already, Davenport. Hasn’t your little harlot of a wife told you? I have the bloody pox! It’s already eating away at my face… a pistol ball would be preferable to a slow and miserable death!”

  “You cannot shoot an unarmed and unconscious man!” Payne snapped. “Even in your self-pitying misery, surely you can see that.”

  Every attempt to reason with the man was met with obstinance. Wainwright would murder Viscount Gordon in cold blood. Because the pox was not simply rotting his face. His brain was no doubt riddled with the disease, as well. No sooner had that realization struck than Payne pulled back the hammer on the pistol he had.

  To Wainwright he offered, “Do not let your last act on this earth be one of such selfishness. If you kill him, I will kill you. Two dead needlessly. But if you truly feel death is preferable, then you have the means in your hand to end your own existence.”

  “To spare your conscience? I think not, Davenport. I rather like the idea that my death will weigh on your soul for all time.” With that Wainwright turned the gun away from Gordon and aimed directly at Benny instead. “What’s that old line? If I can’t have her then no one will?”

  The shot rang out and Benny waited for the explosion of pain, for the blood that would surely be flowing freely from her body to fully saturate her gown. And yet it never came. Glancing up, she saw the pistol in Payne’s hand was smoking. Then she heard the terrible thump as Wainwright’s body hit the floor.

  “Is he… ?” Benny couldn’t actually form the question fully. But then she didn’t need to. Payne turned to face her and his expression, grim and bleak, told the story. He’d killed Wainwright because the man had left him with no other choice. “You had to. He would have killed the viscount or he would have killed me. He made you do it.”

  “We’ll have to go before the magistrate. My hope is that it will all go away quietly without the need for an inquest. There are enough witnesses if they can be bothered to speak up,” he said.

  “Payne?”

  “Do not,” he said. “I know what my options were and I know I made the right decision. But I cannot speak of it now and then turn about and go through it all with the magistrate again. Let’s just leave it for the moment.”

  No matter what was happening between them, she could see that he was suffering. And it broke her heart for him. That was the moment that she realized she loved him. Three days, three hundred days, three thousand days. Did it matter? But loving him did not guarantee being loved by him and that meant she had to be cautious. She had to protect herself.

  Benny nodded. “All right.”

  After two hours, the magistrate, who conveniently was also the coroner, had come and gone. After speaking with the witnesses, he’d elected not to pursue any formal charges. There would still be a scandal, at least some small degree of it, but far better than it would have been had he been tried for murder.

  Gordon had awakened prior to the man’s arrival and provided his account of Wainwright’s abduction of Benny. The man still had not explained exactly what his relationship with Anne had been or why he felt the need to avenge her. But in truth, Payne wasn’t sure it mattered. Anne was gone. Her short life had ended tragically but he could not and would not dwell on it any further than he already had. Enough of his life had been eaten away by that thanks to his mother’s manipulations and his own obstinate nature.

  After some finagling, he’d hired a carriage to get them home, Gordon included given his recent head injury, and their horses would be fetched by a stable lad in the morning. As he bundled Benny into that carriage, neither of them spoke. They remained silent for the journey.

  As if sensing that the mood was not conducive to idle chatter, Viscount Gordon remained silent also. It was just as well, there was really only one thing that the man could have to talk about that would be of any interest to Payne and that was not a conversation he was certain he wanted to have in front of Benny. Not because he felt her sensibilities too delicate or because he wished to keep any secrets from her.

  His mother had hurt her with her exaggerations of his continued mourning of Anne. And his secrecy, unintentional as it had been, had contributed to that hurt. To dive into Anne’s apparently tumultuous history in front of her would only be to invite further speculation regarding his feelings for a woman that, in truth, he was finding it harder by the day to even remember. Clearly, he had not known her as well as he had once thought.

  Payne could clearly recall that he’d been quite enamored of her. But recalling the details of who she was, recalling the events that had transpired between them during their courtship—it had all grown hazy, muddled by the fog of anger and the objective of justice or vengeance. Those thoughts weighed heavily on him, making him question whether or not his feelings for Anne had ever been as deep as he’d once thought them, or if what he’d perceived to be love was nothing more than youthful enthusiasm.

  After Gordon was dropped off at his rooms on Jermyn Street, the coach turned, leading them through Mayfair and toward Upper Brook Street. When the carriage halted, the driver lowered the steps and Payne climbed down, reaching back to offer Benny his hand.

  But she was looking into the distance, her lips parted on a silent cry and an expression crossed her face that could only have been described as agony. Had she been injured and he simply hadn’t noticed it? Or worse still, had she been injured and not said anything because she deemed it somehow not important. It would certainly be like her. “Are you in pain?”

  “No. But I soon will be. That is my father’s carriage,” she said, pointing toward a carriage that loitered at the end of the street. “He and my mother have descended upon us… They are here to demand an accounting, no doubt. Well, my father is. My mother is here to weep piteously as she bemoans the fact that I denied her the joy—nay the right—of planning her eldest child’s wedding.”

  It was like a comedy of errors, except none of it was funny. The day had been filled with one dreadful event after another and there seemed to be no end to it. Still, he tried to force a smile for her benefit. “You bravely faced down my mother. How can I do less?”

  18

  They climbed the steps and Benny was consumed with dread. Payne stood behind her, his hand at the small of her back. As soon as she could, she stepped away from him, putting distance between them. It wasn’t anger. It was caution. Until she knew the truth about his past and about Anne Bardwell, and about his feelings for her, she needed to guard herself.

  Looking up, she caught his puzzled and questioning gaze. But before he could even give voice to whatever he was thinking, the door opened and Barrett simply appeared there, rather like magic. The sound of raised voices could be heard from within.

  “Oh, dear,” Benny said and then rushed up the steps and past the startled butler. She could hear her father shouting in the drawing room. Her mother was weeping copiously, sobbing that her daughter had vanished.

  “I have not vanished, Mother,” Benny called out, as she paused before the mirror hanging in the entryway to tidy her hair and dress a bit before facing them. She should have known better. Always impatient, her father burst from the drawing room and out into the corridor. His face was florid with anger, a vein in his forehead visibly pulsing.

  “Benedicta, what is the meaning of this? You have married this… this… this scoundrel?” her father demanded.

  “He is not a scoundrel. He is a baron,” she replied. “And yes, we have married, and no we do not plan to alter that at any point in the near future. Do we, Payne?” She hated that her voice sounded less than confident there at the end.

  “Most assuredly not,” he seconded.

  That did not mollify her father at all. “I do not care if he’s the Prince Regent! A man does not simply marry another man’s daughter without so much as a by your leave… not a man of honor at any rate!” He appeared to be ready to throttle the both of them.

  For herself, Benny had been too much at the whims of men for one day. It sparked her temper and, as always, it got the better of her. “And when that daughter does something so terribly foolish that she risks not only her reputation but that of her sister and cousin, as well? I put myself in a situation that was fraught with danger and could only lead to ruin and I did so willfully,” she snapped. “I was fortunate enough that this very kind and very honorable man happened upon me when he did!”

  Her father blustered. “Kind? Honorable? He has ruined you, Benedicta. Because of his actions you have become a laughing stock! Not even that, for no one is laughing. Everyone will turn their backs on us. A hasty marriage cannot fix everything!”

  Benny was well aware of that fact, but she also knew that her married state was certainly a help. “Had he not married me so hastily, I cannot even begin to imagine what I might have had to endure. But in the process of saving my life, my reputation was compromised. Very publicly, I might add. And you are correct that marriage will not alter that fact, but it should curb the damage to some degree.”

  Her father started to shout again, but Benny simply held up her hand. “No, Father. While I certainly hate to pull rank, so to speak, I do now outrank you… as does my husband. And this is our home. At present, you are a guest here. I will say this last thing and then the matter is settled. Social ruin is a kind of agony that people in our world cannot even fathom, though I am beginning to think we have terribly skewed priorities. Payne certainly did not have to offer marriage to spare me that fate, but he did. As to the hastiness, we married so expeditiously to prevent the scandal from further diminishing Cordelia’s and Charity’s chances of making a match this season. It was the only way. You may yell as you wish, but there is nothing that has been done which can be undone.”

  Her father drew back, almost as if she had struck him. Never in her life had she stood up to him in such a way. She’d simply let him rant endlessly as he tried to bully them into whatever it was he wanted, always with the best of intentions, of course. He wasn’t a bad father or a bad man. He was simply a man, and they all took being obeyed as their right regardless.

  And, always, when he was done with his rants, she’d very quietly go behind him and do precisely as she pleased. That had hardly been a secret. He’d known and he’d never said a word. There was more blustering and barking than biting. It was simply the way things worked between all of them. She’d simply never barked or bitten back so obviously.