“Why should I believe you?” the baron shouted suddenly, making her jump. Valentine replied, sounding calm and unflustered, and she knew he was trying to defuse the dangerous situation.
She peeped through the gap and into the house only to pull back almost immediately with shock. But she’d seen enough.
Valentine was seated on the stairs, hands clasped loosely between his knees, head tipped to the side as though considering what he’d been told. Von Hautt was standing before him, his back to Marissa, but she could see he was holding a pistol pointed in Valentine’s direction.
Her own hand slid into her pocket and closed around the petite weapon the innkeeper’s wife had given her. Peering at it in the faint moonlight, she managed to cock the firing mechanism. It was just possible that she may be able to slip through the gap in the door and creep in behind the baron, taking him by surprise, forcing him to surrender his pistol.
And if he refused to surrender? Or threatened her?
Marissa knew she would have to shoot him.
“Your father seduced my mother and abandoned her,” the baron was saying bitterly. “When I was born she died, leaving me to the scorn of my relatives. My father hated me, too, because I was not his. But I am your brother, Valentine. You cannot deny me that, at least.”
His words were wild, bizarre, and as far as Marissa knew completely untrue. Where could he have got such a story? From the expression on Valentine’s face he was wondering the same thing.
“Did you know my father was also a seeker after the Crusader’s Rose?” the baron went on. “He had heard the legend from my mother’s family, that one of her distant ancestors helped to bring the rose back to England after the Crusades, and he wanted to find it. He was told of your father, Valentine, and that he, too, was on the quest.”
“I didn’t know,” Valentine said with feeling. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Because I hate you,” Von Hautt spat. “You would take everything from me, if you could. It is I who should be Lord Kent. I am the eldest born son. But how to prove it? How to satisfy your English blue bloods that I am as good as them.”
“I assure you, Von Hautt, my father is not yours. It simply cannot be. My father was never in Prussia in his life.”
“Because he told you so?” Von Hautt mocked. “You are a fool. Of course it is true. My grandmother told me the truth when I was a boy. She said my father was a wealthy and aristocratic gentleman, a lord, and that he lived close by Bentley Green in an old manor house and that he also had an interest in roses. Who could it be but your father?”
Valentine looked away, as if considering the question, but he was clearly finding it difficult to answer without antagonizing the baron.
Marissa moved into the gap, careful not to let her cloak brush against the warped wood. At first she was half hidden by the dresser that seemed to have been used to bulwark the door, but she knew she couldn’t stay there indefinitely.
“I wanted to find the rose before you, to prove to you I was the better of the two of us. I wanted to be like one of the knights of old, honorable and good. You believed that, too, didn’t you?”
“When I was a boy, yes, I did feel like that,” Valentine said, sounding as if his throat was dry. “But now I see there are other things more important.”
“You are wrong. You don’t deserve to find it.”
“At least I didn’t cheat and steal.”
Von Hautt went white.
“You have a spy in my house! Tell me who it is?” Valentine roared, rising up from the stairs.
Von Hautt’s grip on his pistol tightened and he took up a firing stance. “Sit down!” he shouted.
Marissa’s heart was thudding. The two men were yelling at each other, their voices echoing up into the dusty heights of the old house. The tension grew unbearable. There was no time to wait; it must be now. She came around the dresser toward them, knowing they wouldn’t hear her anyway with the noise, but she’d reckoned without the moonlight.
She hadn’t realized the clouds had cleared away and the moon had come out, bright and beaming, and was shining through the gap in the door behind her. As she mov
ed her shadow stretched across the floor and fell upon the men.
Von Hautt spun around, eyes wide, the pistol wavering as he saw her. There was a moment, just a moment, when she read the shock and fury in his gaze, and then Valentine called her name and was running toward her and she knew if she didn’t fire now then one or other of them would die.
She pressed the trigger.
The retort wasn’t very loud. Von Hautt had not fired and she saw that he was still upright, still standing facing her and Valentine, who by now had reached her.
Von Hautt looked down at his torso. “You shot me, Miss Rotherhild,” he said in wonderment. There was a hole on the left side, but very small, and although blood was beginning to seep onto his clothes it was very little. He put his hand over the wound and actually laughed. “Next time you play the heroine, you must use a real gun and not a toy,” he teased.
“Put your pistol down, Von Hautt,” Valentine said firmly. “It is over.”