Page 43 of The Baron’s Halo

Isabelle clutched the pistol, still aimed at Grey’s broad chest, tears trickling down her cheeks. “He needs to die, Sandy. That’s the only way we can be safe. The only way we can be free.”

“MacKay…” Grey licked his lips, fear in his voice. “You can tell she’s deranged by the nonsense she’s spewing.” He turned pleading eyes on Sandy. “Can you please get that damned pistol away from her before it goes off?”

Cutting his gaze from Grey to Isabelle, Sandy held out his hand. “Please give me the gun, my love. I will take it over until I hear the whole story.”

“No!” Isabelle shook her head, not even glancing at him, her focus locked on Grey the entire time. “I have to do this, Sandy. He won’t ever stop, don’t you see?” Her hand steadied and she became eerily calm. “Unless I stop him.”

“Isabelle, no!” Sandy jumped forward just as she smiled and pulled the trigger.

Chapter Seventeen

“So, Captain Grey arrived uninvited, you say?” Harold Gossing, the London coroner who’d been hastily summoned to Welwyn House, had convened his inquest at The Guinea Tavern not half an hour after Captain Grey had been pronounced dead. The twelve men hired as jurors who would determine if the matter would go to trial sat before the coroner and the witnesses moving restlessly.

“That’s what I surmise, Mr. Gossing.” Trying to act calm and concerned, Sandy had taken the stand as the first witness. He, along with Isabelle, his grandfather, and George the footman, had been summoned to testify at the inquest. “He was my wife’s stepfather. The two had been estranged ever since our marriage, so I doubt anyone in the house would have invited him in.” Sandy was determined to keep as much of the truth in his story as possible, but it was devilishly difficult as he still wasn’t certain exactly what had transpired between Isabelle and Grey. He’d been unable to get much out of Isabelle before the shot she fired brought servants and family members running.

“When you came into the room, she and Captain Grey were arguing?” The coroner looked up from his hastily scratched notes.

“No, not arguing. My wife was crying hysterically, terribly upset, as she told me later, at some things the captain had threatened to do to her mother—his wife—if Lady MacKay refused to reconcile with him.” That was as close to the truth as Sandy intended to get. He stared pointedly at his wife, willing her to remain silent.

Face pale, Isabelle shifted uncomfortably on the tavern bench. Her eyes, red from weeping, looked sore, but she lifted her chin and nodded infinitesimally.

Sandy then shifted his gaze to his grandfather, who sat stoically to the side with the footman. In the carriage on the way to the inquest, Grandfather had intimated he wished to put the full authority of his title and station on display for the coroner. With his sober countenance and piercing gaze, he couldn’t have been more imposing if he’d been wearing his ducal robes and coronet. Grandfather nodded at Sandy, who sighed in relief. Grandfather was the only other person to whom Sandy had confided the truth about the encounter this morning, including Grey’s perverted demand to Isabelle. His grandfather’s only comment had been that he wished he’d have been the one to pull the trigger.

“So Captain Grey was attempting to extort Lady MacKay with the promise of violence against her mother if she did not cooperate in the reconciliation?” Gossing’s face remained neutral, although his gaze flicked over Sandy’s face.

“That is correct.” Sandy struggled to maintain a bland countenance, despite the raging anger that bubbled up each time he thought of Grey’s monstrous demand. “He had been violent with my wife before he left home in 1857. She feared a return to the same behavior if she acquiesced to a reconciliation.” Sandy hesitated over offering the next piece of evidence but believed it would help in the end. “You can see bruises on my wife’s arm where he grabbed her.” He would have words for Isabelle when this was over regarding the marks on her arm, marks she’d claimed the night before had been made by a footman who had caught her when she slipped on the staircase. “I don’t know what would have happened to her had I not come into the room when I did.”

“And when you came upon them, you happened to be carrying a pistol?” The coroner shot him a keen look. “Are you in the habit of carrying loaded firearms about the house?”

Grandfather leaned forward as if he meant to rebuke the man for his flippant remark.

Sandy gave a subtle shake of his head, and Grandfather sat back, none too pleased. “No, Mr. Gossing, of course I’m not. My family, however, is in the habit of wagering on a wide variety of things. My cousins and I had been discussing a recent wager at one of our clubs where the ability to hit a mark in the exact same place three times in a row had been in question. So of course, we wished to try our hand at such a wager. I’d been sent to the library for the pistol and was heading out to the front lawn where we were going to set up the marks, when I heard voices and asked a footman about it. He told me my wife was in there and when I opened the door, I came upon the scene I previously described.”

“You saw him assaulting Lady MacKay?”

“No, but he apparently had done so, perhaps trying to force her to leave with him.” Sandy threw up his hands. “What was I supposed to do? My wife was crying hysterically, Grey was close to her, shouting at her. I warned him away, but he didn’t seem to hear or care. I pointed the weapon at him, but he refused to back away. He took a step toward her so… I rushed toward them and the gun went off.”

Gossing glanced at him with narrowed eyes. “You didn’t think to call for assistance?”

“Lady MacKay was in tears. The brute was bearing down on her.” Sandy shrugged. “There was no time to do anything but act, Mr. Gossing. So I acted as any husband would to protect his wife and in the confusion, the gun fired.”

Gossing stared at him steadily, then finally said, “The witness may step down.” He shuffled some papers, then looked up. “I call Lady MacKay to the witness box, please.”

Looking as though she’d burst into tears at any moment, Isabelle rose just as Sandy sat down on the bench beside her. “Don’t worry my love. Just tell them what happened.” He prayed his meaningful glance wasn’t lost on his wife.

The minute he’d taken the pistol from her hand that morning, he’d insisted he would take responsibility.

“You will allow me to do this, Isabelle. If you are called, tell the absolute truth about everything else, but you will say that I was the one who fired the shot.”

“But why, Sandy?” Her face had been puffy from so many tears. “I was the one who shot him.”

“Because no matter how much we may believe you were justified to do so, my love, you could be tried for murder.” He shook his head, his heart tearing apart at the thought. “You took the pistol there in order to shoot him.”

“To threaten him. I…I didn’t know I was going to shoot him.” She’d sobbed anew. “But I suddenly didn’t see any other way to make him leave us alone.” She’d looked so hopelessly confused, all he could do was hold her close, even as servants and his cousins raced into the room. “Why won’t they arrest you if I say you killed him?” She dissolved into tears again. “Sandy, I don’t understand.”

“Trust me, my love. Just trust me.”

God, he hoped she trusted him enough to let him take the blame for this debacle.