Midnight's Wild Passion

“You wouldn’t,” he said with utter certainty.

She didn’t bother answering. Instead with cold purpose, she pointed the gun at one of the finials on the seat behind his shoulder and pulled the trigger. A puff of sawdust replaced the delicate scrolled carving.

She jerked with the recoil, her ears ringing. Cassie screamed and cowered away. Achilles tossed his head and neighed, but he was trained to withstand gunfire and he didn’t bolt. The carriage horses whinnied and reared in the shafts but settled at a sharp word from Ranelaw.

He didn’t move although his shoulders tensed into a straight line. “You missed,” he said with another of those devil-may-care grins.

“That was merely a warning,” she said coolly. “I’m a crack shot. As you said, Lord Aveson’s daughter wouldn’t be anything else. And I have a second pistol.”

His mouth tightened and she recognized the instant he decided it wasn’t worth calling her bluff.

Cassie watched her with round-eyed shock, as if she’d never seen her before. Antonia cast her a faint smile meant to reassure, but the girl’s tension didn’t subside. “Cassie, hold the reins.”

She kept the loaded gun raised as Ranelaw leaped from the carriage with a breathtaking physical ease that, in spite of everything, made her heart lurch. Yet again, she marveled how outer magnificence disguised such corruption.

Keeping the gun leveled at Ranelaw, Antonia moved to tie Achilles behind the gig. She stepped up into the carriage and took the reins from Cassie.

“It’s all right. Nobody will even know this happened,” she said in a low voice.

Ranelaw regarded her with an unwavering light in his eyes. Once, she would have imagined his expression conveyed admiration. Now she couldn’t rely on anything she saw.

Pain battered at her shell of control. After she got Cassie home, she’d yield to disappointment and rage. First she must banish the snake from her Eden.

“Do you indeed mean to shoot me?” Ranelaw asked as if her answer made no difference either way.

She glanced to where he waited. “I should.” She paused. Harder with every second to muffle devastation. But she would. She would. “I will if you ever come near Cassie again.”

The rogue had the gall to smile. “What about you? Can I come near you?”

Antonia’s lips flattened as she battled the urge to scream. “Only if you want a bullet in your black heart, my lord.”

Last time they’d been together, she’d called him Nicholas. She wouldn’t call him Nicholas again. She wished with all her soul that she’d never met him.

Even through defeat, he retained his confidence. “Won’t you leave me the horse? You’ve made your point.”

“You have your life. Be grateful you’ve kept that much. The long walk is an opportunity to contemplate your sins, my lord. I suggest you start. It will be dark in a few hours.”

“Toni, he only took me because Papa ruined his sister,” Cassie said urgently.

Antonia’s gaze didn’t flinch from the man who had held her close through a night of fiery ecstasy. “Your innocence in exchange for his sister’s?

”

Ranelaw didn’t answer. Perhaps he was wise enough to realize any excuse Cassie offered him was no excuse at all.

“His sister had a baby who died,” Cassie said. “It’s so sad.”

Antonia didn’t shift her focus from Ranelaw’s deceitful face. Her voice was steely. “Even if it’s true, it means there’s no difference between the Marquess of Ranelaw and Godfrey Demarest. They both destroy anyone who interferes with their selfish pleasure.”

Through cold numbness, she felt a distant satisfaction when he paled. She waited for him to argue, but he remained silent.

Nausea rose, soured her mouth. She couldn’t bear to look at him any longer. She urged the horses on and bowled down the road without a backward glance.

Ranelaw stood unmoving under the sweltering sun and watched the gig speed away. He was under no illusions that Antonia would relent and return for him. He was under no illusions how close he’d come to a bullet between his eyes.

Dear God, he wished she had shot him.

It would save having to recognize the complete mull he’d made of everything. Only at this moment did he realize just what he’d done, how irretrievably he’d shattered all hope of happiness, how he deserved to stew in his own bitterness for however many empty years the Deity allotted him.