If You Deceive

Chapter Eleven

"I'm doomed," Maddy whispered to herself as she wandered La Marais in the dark in a silk ball gown.

Oh, what was she thinking? She was always doomed in varying degrees. Why had she ever thought she would get a concession from fate? One bloody bit of luck?

"I'mmore doomed than usual," she amended. Toumard's pair lay in wait in the alley beside her building, forcing her to roam the streets until they gave up. She was in debt, with no prospects to pay them, and the one thing she'd possessed of value—her virtue—had been wasted with a laughable return.

And now she would pay for that wild, reckless night.

Because the count had heard from a contact in London, who'd heard from another, that his prospective bride had been free with herself, running with a fast crowd in London. The hypocrite! He'd demanded an examination to determine if she was still a virgin or possibly carrying another man's babe, as if these were the medieval times the ancient count had likely grown up in.

Maddy hadn't even known that people actually did that anymore. She'd been tempted to huff and whine, "But I was wearing my chastity belt!" Instead, she'd blankly refused his demand—trying to sound outraged, instead of baffled at the timing—and he'd withdrawn his proposal.

Refused by the count. He might as well have slapped her.

Worse, she'd allowed it to happen. She'd managed men for years and knew dozens of ways she could have finessed the situation, ways to wriggle and finagle to get what she wanted. She could cry at the drop of a hat and could have acted overwrought at his capriciousness. If that tactic hadn't worked, she could have adopted a seductive demeanor, or simply made sure she was examined by a bribable physician. And yet…

Shehadn't .

Did I do anything today to leave myself vulnerable?

A bit.

As though she'd been outside her own body, she'd heard the words spilling from her lips: "I never wanted to marry you anyway! And your wig smells fusty."

She'd burned her ships. Why? She was never so foolish—except with the Scot.

Maddy should never have gone to England. Returning to her native land after such a long exile had made her miss it even more. She had been arrogant and rash there, and apparently she hadn't left those traits behind.

"Oh, please, justone crumb of fortune!" she whispered urgently to the sky. As if in answering jest, she spied thunderclouds swelling, obscuring the stars. Where would she go if it rained? Not all drunks on stoops were as passive as her building's collection. They could be ferociously territorial.

The air was thick and damp, presaging the storm. Maddy hated storms. Every tragedy in her life had been accompanied by thunderclaps and pounding rain.

The morning her father's second had come to report his death in a duel, lightning had punctuated the man's words. The day of her father's funeral, rain had spilled in torrents. When Maddy and her mother had returned from burying him, they'd been turned away, their home of Iveley Hall having been seized by creditors while they'd been gone.

Though one ring or brooch could have kept them for years, it was considered in poor taste to wear jewelry to a funeral, so they'd fled with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. As they'd ridden away, Maddy had looked back at the manor through the rain-streaked window of the coach and known she would never find a way to return home….

The fire that had nearly taken her life when she was eleven had raged, whipped to a frenzy by the fierce winds of a storm, yet barely dampened by the scattered bouts of rain. Maddy had been trapped inside the small apartment she and her mother shared several floors up. She'd been convinced she would die even before a burning beam had fallen on her and fractured her arm.

When she'd finally battled her way through the flames to reach the window, Maddy had blinked against the smoke, gaping in incomprehension down at the street.

Her mother—obviously one of the first ones out—stood outside.

In that moment of flames and terror, Maddy had thought,I'm as good as alone .

To this day, she had nightmares filled with fire that always ended in that gut-wrenching recognition….

Maddy jerked, startled, when the sky opened up. As the rain poured, she ran beneath the closest cover, a chestnut tree.

And laughed until she wept when the leaves began to fall on her in clumps.

Clawing the cobblestones in pain, Ethan lay in a pool of his own blood funneling from his upper chest. He cracked open his eyes, realizing he'd released his hold on his pistol when he'd fallen. As he listened for Grey's approach, he heard people filing out from the front of the tavern.

Gritting his teeth, Ethan swept his hand to the side until he brushed his gun. Stretching his arm, his very fingers, he glanced his fingertips off the handle, spinning it—

Too late. He looked up to find that Grey had a bead on him, gun raised. As Grey approached Ethan, his demeanor was as pleasant as ever. With his free hand, Grey poked his finger through a still-smoking hole in his shirt and jacket, and grinned. Ethan's bullet had only hit a deceptive billow in the man's bagging clothes.

"And people said you were better than I?" Grey said.

I was for ten years….Ethan tasted blood in his mouth and knew he was about to die, even if Grey didn't plug another bullet into him. "Hugh will destroy you," Ethan said, choking out the words.

Grey shrugged. "So everyone keeps assuring me. And yet, I'd always believed it would be you."

The tavern's nearby side door creaked open, and noise and dim light spilled out into the alley. Grey glanced up, then faced Ethan once more, furtively stowing his pistol. "That's a kill shot, old friend, and we both know it." He cast Ethan his disconcertingly sympathetic smile. "You had to have been thinking about a woman earlier with an expression like that." He turned to lope away, saying over his shoulder, "I hope she was worth it."

Ethan rolled to his side for his gun, biting back an agonized yell, but Grey had already disappeared.

Though Ethan couldn't see who'd exited the tavern out the side door, he could hear them.

Grimacing to the clouded night sky above, Ethan listened as the MacReedys soddingdebated whether to help him or not:"I'll no' get dragged into trouble."; "We do owe him."; "He's turned into a blackguard."; "Think he might've deserved the shot?"

"Warn my brother," Ethan grated to them, blood spilling from his mouth, but they ignored him. His body was beginning to shudder with cold. "Listen to me…." They didn't.

He had failed Hugh utterly. Never had Ethan been so careless, walking into the street without even a cursory scan of the vantages surrounding him. He was dying, and he had only two thoughts—getting a warning to his brother…and the fact that he'd never get to see that damned little witch again.

Ethan perceived hands under his arms, and braced for the pain as they lifted him, but he still blacked out….

He had no idea how long he'd been unconscious, but when he came to, he was in a bed, with a shaky-handed surgeon removing the bullet while others held Ethan down. He roared with agony as the man plucked metal and charred cloth from the wound then splashed whisky into it.

Before he began stitching, the doctor tossed back half the bottle down his own throat. "I did what I could," he said when he finished.

"Will he live?" the MacReedy whelp asked.

In and out of consciousness, Ethan caught the doctor's parting words: "Let's put it this way. If he recovers from a wound like that and the fever to follow…I'll quit drinking."