A Cold Legacy (The Madman's Daughter 3)

I couldn’t let it end like this.

Radcliffe wiped away a line of blood running down his nose, breathing hard. “Tell your staff to throw their weapons down here and come outside.”

I clenched my jaw. I might as well be ordering McKenna and the others to commit suicide. “Go to hell,” I spat.

“Wait!” McKenna leaned out the upstairs window. “We’ll do as you say. I’m sorry, Mistress, but it’s our duty to protect you as much as this home.” She threw down her rifle and I winced. With Edward immobile, she and the others had been our greatest asset. Moira and Lily threw theirs down as well, followed by Carlyle’s heavy old Weston. The pistols clattered uselessly to the ground, where one of Radcliffe’s heavyset mercenaries picked them up.

“You can kill all of us and scour the house,” I seethed. “You’ll never find where Elizabeth hid those journals.”

Radcliffe didn’t seem troubled by my threat. The front door groaned open and the servants filed out, defenseless. They lined up under the eave of the door.

Radcliffe’s jaw clenched as he looked among them. “Tell Lucy to come out as well. I want to see that she hasn’t been harmed.”

My stomach twisted. My own father had never shown such concern over me, not even when my life had been in danger. He’d only studied my fear like another one of his twisted experiments.

“She isn’t in the house. She’s hiding out because she doesn’t want to see you. You might as well leave because you’ll never get her or the journals.”

“Leave?” His cold countenance was falling, and there was rage beneath it. “Perhaps, after you are dead.”

“I’m the only one who’s memorized the information. Shoot me, and the knowledge will be lost forever.”

Something about my words caught his attention. A strange look gleamed in his pale blue eyes. “You’ve memorized the science, have you? Suppose I were to kill your lover, then. Journals or not, you would have to use Frankenstein’s science to bring him back. All I’d have to do was watch over your shoulder. It’s your choice how we get there, Miss Moreau, but I assure you we’ll reach the same conclusion.”

I balled my fist, furious. “It’s Mrs. James now. Not Moreau.”

Radcliffe cocked his gun. “A difference I care nothing about.”

Time slowed, my vision becoming a series of flashes as panic took hold of my body. I couldn’t let it end like this, and yet I was helpless. There was the pistol in Radcliffe’s hand. His finger on the trigger. Montgomery’s eyes sinking closed, waiting for the bullet that would take his life.

Out of the fog lurched a figure. It seemed like a ghost at first, a shadow. I saw a flash of tweed cloak, pale white skin, as the figure threw itself in front of Montgomery’s kneeling body.

“Wait!” the figure cried. Only then did I recognize the voice.

Lucy.

The sound of a bullet ripped through the night. It was too late. Radcliffe had already pulled the trigger.

I stumbled back, stunned. Montgomery’s eyes flew open at the gunshot. Lucy rolled over, her hood falling back. Dark brown hair not so different from my own spilled out. My throat closed tight.

“Lucy!” I collapsed beside her.

“Papa,” she choked as a line of blood appeared at the edge of her mouth. I pressed a hand against my mouth, sealing in a scream, but it didn’t help. My desperate wail rang out over the moors as I scrambled close to her, touching her face, her hair, her cloak.

“Lucy. God, no!”

But her eyes weren’t on me. They were fixed on Radcliffe. His pistol clattered to the ground as he stumbled back. His icy façade was gone now, and there was only horror at what he’d done.

“Lucy? No . . .”

“Papa.” She had to force words out as more blood trickled from her mouth, “I didn’t think you would shoot me.”

My eyes trailed down her body in horror. Her cloak and dress was already soaked through. The bullet must have hit an artery. Blood was everywhere.

“I didn’t know,” Radcliffe pleaded. He wasn’t the cold leader of the King’s Club now; he was merely a father watching his daughter die. “I didn’t see you. Lucy . . .”

Her eyes rolled back in her head. I felt frozen. Another part of me took over, taking in the scene with the objective eyes of a scientist. The line of blood at her mouth. The paleness of her skin. The way her chest had stopped rising and falling.

It was too late.

THIRTY-EIGHT

I PRESSED MY HANDS against the bullet wound as if that could somehow keep the life inside her. Montgomery tore free from the startled officers and knelt next to me, feeling her pulse. His movements were skilled, yet there was a dazed look to his eyes.

  “She’s gone,” he said, as if struggling to believe it himself.

I sank back on my heels. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. My entire body had gone numb, as if it was my blood dripping out into the mud. Gone? The girl I’d grown up with, the only friend who’d stood by me after the scandal, the daughter who’d abandoned her wealthy life for what was right?

“You did this!” Radcliffe hauled me to my feet. Montgomery stood, too, but Radcliffe’s remaining men aimed their rifles at our heads. “It was supposed to be you, Mr. James. Lucy shouldn’t ever have been brought into this!”

“You brought her into this!” I screamed, twisting out of his hand. “She fled with us to escape you!”

He blinked. For a few terrible seconds, none of us spoke. I threw a look to where Edward’s body still lay in the puddle. Was he truly gone, like her? Had we lost them both? Had we lost everything?

“Leave,” I spat at Radcliffe. “Take your men and go. What do a few journals matter when your daughter just died by your own hands?”

He looked at me as if I were some nightmarish specter. He dragged a hand over his mouth, murmuring something to himself, refusing to believe it. “Died?” he said aloud, testing the word. “No.”

All his mad plans about acquiring the journals and selling the science seemed like an afterthought now. He turned to the wall, breathing heavily. In a way, I understood how he felt. My best friend was dead. After that, did anything matter?

“Juliet,” Montgomery whispered. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

Radcliffe’s men still stood around us with rifles aimed. I could tell Montgomery wanted to fold me into his arms, but we dared not. Radcliffe still faced the wall, arms braced against it, shaking his head back and forth.