Page 7 of The Duke of a Thousand Desires

A flash from above disturbed her concentration. A falling star? The sky sparkled tonight like a jewelry shop displaying priceless gems.

Absently she lifted her head. Her gaze reached no higher than to the figure of a man stretched out lengthwise across a broad limb of the walnut tree. He was not dressed for the party in a cap and bulky grayish coat.

A star had not glinted on her venture. The metallic gleam of the gun in his hand had.

A chill went down her neck.

His focus appeared to be fixed on some object in the garden. He shifted his weight to his upper body. She backed up a step. The heel of her slipper scuffed the shells again, the sound amplified in the stillness. Had he heard?

His back seemed to tense. She swallowed hard as he returned to his task. He leveled the gun on his target. Who was – the duke? Who else? David and Lady Frampton continued their mortifying spectacle of unbound lust at the temple, out of firing range. The man hidden in the tree was certainly not the aging viscount seeking revenge on his wife’s lover.

Remain calm. Imagine that you are invisible.Words of counsel once given to her from an old friend, from Simon as a matter of fact. She had never forgotten his advice, nor needed to obey it. Still, remaining calm would not save Simon’s life.

Couldn’t Rhys sense something had interrupted her plan? He might have known if not for Miss Haviland’s untimely appearance.

How many minutes had passed? David had become inconsequential, her plan discarded. She could not stand by and allow Simon’s murder. It was irrelevant what he might have done to encourage a violent act. She would intervene to save even a stranger.

Nor could she allow her brother to run blithely into danger.

She would reveal her own presence if she made another sound. There was nothing to do about that.

The branches creaked. She reacted.

Instinctively, she raised her head again to send out a warning to Simon. To her horror what emerged from her throat was not a call of distress, but a battle cry.

She released the unholy scream that in her girlhood she had practiced on the battlements outside her bedchamber. It was the blood-curdling call her aunts had forbidden her to use and claimed was so powerful it could chase off the wind and raise the wings of the long-disappeared dragons that had once inhabited the castle woods.

It was shockingly indelicate. It resonated with power.

Her alarm must have reached the terrace, the person in the tree, his intended victim. However, it came too late. The gunman fired even as her voice faded in the air. In the aftermath of her delayed panic she could not discern whether Simon was still standing near the statue or had fallen.