Lord of Ice (34 page)

The dancing hearth flames cast the shadows of their lovemaking across the expanse of bare walls and ceiling in the once-elegant drawing room, and as Damien felt his control melting away, he caught a glimpse of future dreams; this house would live again, he thought, for his fiery Miranda would give it new life—color and laughter and music and warmth—all of the rich gifts she had given to him. Then all thought dissolved, great currents of emotion rolling up from the depths of his heart like a river rising. He clutched her to him, lost in kissing her, consuming the sweet cries of her climax as he spilled his seed inside of her body, making her a part of himself irrevocably.

When it was over, he collapsed on her and stayed like that, caressing her cheek and her hair while she held him. They stared in mystical silence into each other’s eyes, both overcome by the depth of the passion they shared. At length, they drifted off to sleep, their bodies still entwined.

Algernon and fifteen members of the Raptors gang rode up to Bayley House as the red sun was glimmering on the eastern horizon.

“Surround the house and find them. Remember,” he ordered, “no one is to touch the girl. She is mine.”

Their swarthy ringleader gave him a surly nod and swung down from his horse, gesturing to the others to do the same.

One remained behind with him while the others darted off, slipping stealthily around the outer walls of the house. Algernon dismounted and jerked a nod to the remaining man to follow him to the front door. Creeping slowly up the front steps, he drew his pistol, then stood well off to the side as he tried the door.

Locked.

His heart pounding, he nodded again to the professional housebreaker next to him. The gang member pulled out a little metal pin from his ridiculous hat, knelt down smoothly, and picked the lock with the dextrous precision of a Swiss watchmaker. Less than a minute later, the thief turned the doorknob without a sound and pulled out a knife, then crept into the manor house ahead of him.

Following him into the tomblike silence of the huge, dilapidated house, Algernon passed a glance over the cobwebby entrance hall with its empty walls and peeling paint. The smell of a smoldering fire hung on the air. It seemed to be coming from somewhere upstairs. He nodded to his accomplice; then they stole silently toward the staircase.

Damien awoke with a start, though he didn’t know why. He had not been having a nightmare; he did not think he had heard anything, but wakefulness zoomed into him, calling all of his battle-honed senses onto high alert. Miranda slept peacefully beside him in his bedroll. He was glad they had put on some of their clothes before bedding down for the night, for the vast drawing room had gone cold. The fire was nothing but embers.

An orange-red glow filled the large, arched windows, however, from the rising sun beyond the eastern hillocks.

There.

He heard something: an indistinct creaking. He held very still, listening with highly attuned senses. Perhaps it was just one of those noises peculiar to the old house, but he slid out of their warm lovers’ nest to go make sure.

He was careful not to disturb Miranda’s slumber as he left her alone. Her beauty caught at his heart, but he did not linger, stalking over silently to glance out the window. He drew in his breath at the sight of over a dozen riderless horses on the lawn. He turned his head swiftly, just in time to see two men dart by on the ground beneath his window, gliding toward the back of the house.
Who the hell were they?
He did not stop to ponder the question.

In the next second, he was dragging Miranda out of the bedroll, barely awake.

“They’re here. Don’t breathe a word,” he whispered, half carrying her over to the wall by the main entrance of the drawing room. He ran back over to his camp around the fireplace and grabbed his weapons—pistols, sword, dagger—then returned to her and flattened his back against the wall.

She looked at him in bewilderment, sleep in her eyes. “Who’s come?”

“Whoever’s after you. We shall find out soon enough who it is, I warrant. Shh.”

He slipped his knife silently out of its sheath while she cowered in terror beside him, covering her mouth with her hands. He could hear the men coming down the corridor. There was scarcely time to wonder how their faceless enemy had known they had left Knight House and had come here. The trespassers were closer now; he could hear their creeping steps.

He cocked his head, focusing on discerning the number, weight, and height of the men by their footfalls, gauging their size before he had even clapped eyes on them. He counted two. He knew he had to kill them quietly, or it would bring the rest running. He held his breath as he waited, a terrible thrumming blood lust pounding in his brain.
How dare they storm his house?
He had to protect Miranda. He could feel them getting closer, closer. He flicked his fingers over the hilt of his knife and ticked off the seconds in his mind.
Four, three, two, one.

Now.

He whirled out of his hiding place as they stepped into the drawing room and swung out with the knife, slashing the first man’s throat, stabbing the second in the belly with one smooth, dancelike motion. The second one managed to squeeze off his pistol before Damien swooped down and finished him off, but the bullet went wide, slamming up into the ceiling. As a flurry of plaster scattered down on Damien and Miranda, he paused only to wrench the dead man’s sleeve up over his forearm. Sure enough, there was the tattoo of the bird of prey with a dagger in its talons. The Raptors. God damn it, what the hell did they want with him now? This was not going to be pleasant.

He reached over and seized Miranda’s wrist, pulling her at a run across the drawing room to the place where he had pulled up the floorboards.

“Get down, get down!” He thrust one of his pistols into her hand and shoved her down into the hiding place under the floorboards. Tall as she was, she had to fold herself up to fit. “No matter what happens, stay down there. If anyone sees you, shoot him.”

“Damien—”

“Quiet. I love you,” he whispered, then fixed the floorboards back over the spot and threw the blankets they had been sleeping in over it to help disguise the breach. He drew his sword and rushed to meet the men who were pounding toward the drawing room from all directions in answer to the gunshot.

In the next moment, he was besieged on all sides as a dozen men crashed into the room, some hurtling in at him through the main entrance, others bursting in through the white double door from the adjoining music room and sweeping up on him from behind at a run. More plaster fell from the ceiling, and a window shattered as bullets whizzed through the drawing room. But miraculously, Damien was not hit.

Having saved his pistol until after they had emptied theirs, he took cool, level aim at the first thug who rushed at him with a sword. He squeezed the trigger, killing the man instantly with a bullet between the eyes. The others roared with fury and charged him.

He fought two at once with his sword, thrust his dagger into the neck of another, kicked another man away just in time to save himself from getting skewered. Another rushed up behind him, and he flipped the man over his shoulder and drove his sword down into his heart. While he was fighting for his life against the gang, he noticed a shadowy movement in the doorway; then Algernon, Lord Hubert, sauntered into the room.

Damien’s eyes turned red with fury when he saw him.
He was the one behind all this?
“Hubert!” he bellowed.

Algernon sent him a thin-lipped smile, but Damien was unable to go after him, for he had to keep fighting off the Raptors.

“How positively shocking, Winterley, to find you, the flower of chivalry, here, debauching my niece.”

“Go to hell!” Damien spat, fighting for his life.

“Ah, but then, I suppose you are not to be blamed. Her mother was a thoroughgoing harlot, after all, and the apple does not fall far from the tree. What else could we expect of Fanny Blair’s daughter, but to prove a lascivious slut like her mama?”

He let out a roar and drove his attackers back a step with a feint, then had to retreat himself a step or two, blades clanging furiously. Sweat streamed down his face.

The viscount snickered and took an idle stroll around the large drawing room, poking his head into Damien’s tent. He gestured at the swarthy thug by his side to check the unused fireplace on the other end of the room. He drifted over to the sole piece of furniture the previous owners had left behind in the room, a great armoire, and opened it, peering inside. Damien knew they were looking for Miranda, and though he had no inkling why they were after her, he felt the full power of his rage rushing into his veins, doubling his determination to protect her.

He cut and slashed at the men who were trying to kill him, inching toward a more advantageous position in the corner of the room so that he would not have to watch his back as well as fight the onslaught in front of him.

“She’s not here,” the thug grunted, returning to Algernon after having checked the fireplace.

“Oh, she’s here somewhere, the little hussy. We’ll keep looking.”

“You’re a dead man, Hubert!” Damien roared after him as Algernon drifted toward the doorway.

“No, Winterley,” the viscount replied with a smirk. “You are.”

Damien shouted as one of the thugs cut him across the leg, then bared his teeth and skewered the man on his sword.

It had been an exceedingly rude awakening, and now the floorboards shuddered and reverberated with the commotion as Miranda huddled in her cramped, musty hiding place. It sounded as though a full score of men were attacking her fiancé. She had heard her Uncle Algernon’s voice—had heard him insulting her mother’s memory. First Crispin had acted so irrationally at the ball, and now her uncle had arrived with an army of ruffians. But why? she wondered, her heart pounding in dread. What the devil was going on?

Damien suddenly let out a harsh, barbaric cry from somewhere above—she knew his voice. The blood drained from her face. Had he just been wounded? She did not know what that cry had meant. She strained to peer through the cracks in the floorboards, but could not see anything because he had covered up her hiding place with the blankets. She could only tell by the thunderous footsteps that he was badly outnumbered. If he had just gotten injured, that put him at an even greater disadvantage.

Her hands sweated with her indecision as she fingered the pistol. He had ordered her to stay here, but surely he had not expected to be beset so viciously. She had to help him. She was afraid, but she steeled herself. By God, as a child, she had watched helplessly while her parents drowned. She was not about to let her future husband die in the very room with her and do nothing to help him. If he was killed, she did not care what happened to her, but there was no reason to think that was going to happen. Damien had a gift for battle like the mythical Sir Lancelot, she reasoned, and she, why, she had this gun.

She was quite certain that she could pull the trigger if it meant saving her future husband’s life. She quelled the shaking of her hands by sheer dint of will and rested the gun gingerly to the side, then pressed both hands slowly against the boards. She moved silently to avoid alerting the foe to her presence, knowing she would need the element of surprise.

As she slipped out of her hiding place and reached back down into the hole for the gun, one of the hardened-looking thugs attacking Damien noticed her. The man left Damien entangled with the others and started toward her, leering. Miranda stood and brought up the pistol. She trained it on the man’s chest, then looked him in his beady brown eyes.
God, forgive me,
she thought, then fired.

“What the hell are you doing?” Damien roared at her as the man dropped to the ground, stone-cold dead. She had hit him in the heart.

Her fascinated stare zipped from her victim to her lover. “Helping you, darling.” She grabbed the fire poker in both hands and ran over toward the fray, cracking one of his assailants as hard as she could on the back of his skull.

“Good God,” Damien panted as the man dropped, unconscious. “Hand me that, would you?”

She tossed him the fire poker and darted out of the way as one of the thugs swung his sword at her. Damien hurled the fire poker like a spear, impaling the next thug who came after her. Miranda grimaced at the bloodcurdling scream; then the ruffian thunked down onto the floor. Damien was immediately embattled with the remaining five, until two broke away from him and stalked toward her. She backed away, glancing anxiously toward her guardian, waiting for him to tell her what to do. He glanced toward her between blows with a look of panic at the danger she was in.