“No, Kylemore,” Verity said firmly. Slowly and with great tenderness, she laid Ben’s head down on the thick grass verge.
Her intervention created a short silence. Kylemore looked at her more in surprise than anger. “No? You don’t know how close I am to shooting them here and now and letting the law go to the Devil.”
“Believe me, I know,” she said gently, reading the vibrating tension in his lean body.
She rose and squared her shoulders before she crossed to the duke’s side. Gingerly, she reached out and, after a moment’s resistance from him, took the pistol. It rested cold and hard and heavy in her palm.
“Her Grace is right. A public scandal will damage you as much as those you prosecute,” she said quietly, while inside her, her heart galloped with apprehension. Pray heaven she could make him bow to reason. “Let her go to Norfolk. Let her take her henchmen—the threat of arrest should keep them there safely enough.”
“She tried to kill you.” Kylemore’s deep voice was a whiplash of fury. “And these animals who may yet have killed your brother aided her.”
“I haven’t forgotten Ben.” She cast a glance across to where Hamish still worked methodically on Ben’s injuries. “But if you put these men in the dock, the whole sorry story comes out, and that will do nobody any good.”
“You’re more generous than I, mo cridhe,” Kylemore said softly.
He reached out and took his mother’s arm in a punishing grip. “So what do you say? Norfolk? Or confinement in an asylum for insatiable carnal mania? And damn the scandal.”
Tears glittered in the duchess’s deep blue eyes—tears of thwarted fury rather than remorse, Verity was sure.
“Justin, you’re hurting me!” his mother whined.
The change from threats to abject weakness didn’t sway the duke. “Hurt you? God, I’d like to dismember you.”
He visibly reined in his sparking temper. “Well, madam? I await your answer.”
The duchess was pale and drawn, and she at last looked her age. Only the faintest vestiges of her remarkable beauty remained as she licked nervous lips and met her son’s ruthless expression. “I’ll go to Norfolk.”
“Good.” He didn’t unhand her. “Before you go, beg this lady’s pardon.”
The woman’s face hardened in abomination while shock thundered through Verity and rendered her speechless. A great lady of the ton apologize to a whore? The idea was unthinkable.
The duchess tried to jerk free but failed. “Damn you, Justin, I will never humble myself to this harlot.”
“You will, madam. Or you will face the consequences.”
“This slut should be cast into the gutter, where she belongs,” she snapped. Traces of her earlier confidence resurfaced. “And don’t threaten me with confinement in an asylum. That particular bird won’t fly, sir. You’d no more have your own mother committed than you’d swim to Ireland. End this absurd playacting immediately and release me. I’ll go to Norfolk, and you have my word as Duchess of Kylemore that your whore is safe. That is concession enough.”
“Not nearly,” he said in a voice that made Verity wince. He turned to his waiting men, who stood guard over the duchess’s henchmen. “Duncan, is Sir John Firth still the local magistrate?”
“Aye, Your Grace,” a man Verity didn’t know answered.
“Then go to Claverton Hall and inform him I have prisoners for arraignment.”
“Your Grace.” Duncan lowered his pistol and strode toward the trees.
Verity waited in quivering silence as cold sweat slicked her hold on the pistol. Surely the duchess wouldn’t permit her pride to bring disaster upon them all.
But the duchess’s pride was an unpredictable and terrifying force, as Verity had discovered on this lonely road.
Only when Duncan was almost out of earshot did the older woman relent. “No! Damn you to hell, Justin. Stop. I’ll do it.” Her voice was low and uneven as she scowled at her son. “I curse the day my womb gave you life.”
Kylemore bowed ironically toward her and with implacable strength drew her around to face Verity. “Life is full of small disappointments, madam. I assume this vituperative outburst forms an introduction to your apology.” Without looking away from his mother, he called out after Duncan. “Wait a moment.”
The duchess stared over Verity’s head, her face masklike. Her voice was flat with abhorrence. “I ask forgiveness for the injuries I have done you and yours.”
“Perhaps again with sincerity,” Kylemore said silkily.
Verity had had enough. “Kylemore, you don’t need to humiliate her further,” she said through stiff lips. “You’ve won. She isn’t worth your spite. Let her go. Ben needs a doctor.”