“Oh, David.” Lord Murphy tsk-tsked. “If you could leave by simply informing me of that fact, you would have left this evening after dinner. If you manage to get away from me, I’ll raze all those homes you helped improve. The poor tenants—where would they go?”
David’s face turned to stone. “If you have no tenants, there will be no one to work the land. You won’t be able to keep this place profitable.”
Lord Murphy scoffed. “I don’t need it to be profitable. The tenants barely make a pittance now, with the new Corn Laws. This property is for status only. I have allowed you and your sister to pretend to run it, but you don’t. You never have.”
He was trying to get a rise out of David, but David didn’t take the bait. I hated the man who’d conditioned my husband to lock away his hurt and bite his tongue.
I, on the other hand, had been raised by a father who hadn’t minded my raising my voice on the rare occasion that called for it. “If you don’t need someone to run the estate, why do you care if we leave?” I ground out through my teeth.
Lord Murphy closed the distance from twenty feet to fifteen. “That depends.”
“On what?” I asked.
“Are you carrying his child?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Thatis none of your business.”
He smiled, and now that he was closer, I could see it. A dark smile, with his eyes nearly glowing in the moonlight. “I’m afraid it is, you see. Until Garrett finishes sowing his wild oats and settles down, any male child of David’s will be considered my heir. And I can’t have my heir, whether actually my blood or not, running around the countryside without me there to help raise him. Can I?”
I swallowed hard. There was no chance he was going to go anywhere near any of our children. “I’m not,” I said forcefully.
Lord Murphy shrugged his shoulders. “Well then, I don’t care what you do so long as you stay away from David. But I would have to keep you in London for several months to be certain. I’ve learned from experience I can’t often trust a woman’s word.”
My stomach turned at the thought of living with Lord Murphy. That wasn’t going to happen. He had no rights over me.
David closed his eyes. “You will not touch my wife, nor will you take her from me. Nothing about my blood is questionable, and you insult our mother every time you insinuate that.”
Lord Murphy sneered. “That is wishful thinking on your part.”
“No, Father, it’s not. No one would wish to be your son.”
Lord Murphy’s face went dark, his mouth twisted with rage. “She hated me by the time you were born.”
David was slowly trying to put me behind him as he spoke. “That doesn’t mean I’m another man’s child.”
Lord Murphy spat on the ground. “Have you looked in a mirror? You’re half a foot shorter than either me or your brother.”
Julia dropped my hand and stepped forward. “You didn’t give him enough food.” Her voice was low and steady, and something about its quality made me think, perhaps, she was the most dangerous person on this path. “And you were spouting off just as much nonsense about his birth before he ever reached his final height. Your mind distorts everything, but that doesn’t make it true,” she sneered. “You can’t slowly murder someone and then wonder why they are dying.”
Lord Murphy’s hands fisted, his eyes flashing. “You never would have talked to me like that if David hadn’t come along and spoiled everything. You were my treasure, my darling girl, and he has gone and ruined that by making you choose sides. I should have beaten your mother badly enough that he wouldn’t have been born. I shouldn’t have allowed her to give birth when I didn’t trust her.” His eyes slid to me. “It is a mistake I won’t make twice. Johnny, Bert, grab my children and take them back to Tate Hall. I’ll take care of the bride.”
Lord Murphy strode forward like a man possessed. David thrust me behind him in one swift movement. Instead of discouraging LordMurphy, a strange light flared on the viscount’s face, cold and furious as he turned on his son.
He reached into his coat and drew a knife, the blade flashing in the moonlight. “You won’t let me take her?” he hissed. “Well then, it is never too late to rid the world of a problem that never should have been allowed to live in the first place.” His face was an inhuman snarl. With a growl, he lunged forward.
A gunshot shattered the night.
One of Lord Murphy’s legs snapped backward, and his body pitched sideways to the ground as he released a bellowing curse.
I grabbed my ringing ear and turned to see Julia standing tall and unshaken, an American revolver in her hand. She lifted the gun from Lord Murphy to aim at the two stunned men standing behind him.
She narrowed her eyes at them, ignoring her father’s moans. “As my father likes to say, this is a family matter. You needn’t get involved.” Both men held still, arms slowly lifting in the air. “If he lives, he will kill you. He wouldn’t want a story spread about how his daughter shot him.”
“I would not kill you, you idiots.” Lord Murphy’s words were punctuated by pain as he held his leg in his hands. “Don’t listen to her. She doesn’t have the nerve to shoot you. Grab her gun.”
But the look on Julia’s face and the fact that shehadjust shot someone must have made the men falter.
“I don’t want to shoot you,” Julia said, her voice steady. “But I will. If you know anything about our family, you would be idiots not to believe me. Leave now, and I will let you go. That is more than you will get from my father.”
