Page 34 of Lord of the Darkness

And his instincts had been right, in all ways.

***

“Jasper, you don’t have to do this.”

“Don’t try to stop me,” replied Lord Jasper, placing a finger on the trigger. “You and Darkmire have had your quarrels but I can tell when two people really love each other. If I seriously thought your marriage was ending, that he might cast you off, I might have let you live, but I couldn’t bear to see you go on living happily for another forty or fifty years together.”

“What are you talking about?”

Ariana was quite sure that she knew exactly what he was talking about, but she needed to keep him distracted, keep him speaking, to delay the moment when he might pull that trigger. Before he could answer, they were interrupted by a loud cry.

“Lord Jasper! Drop your weapon!”

Then, to Ariana’s immense relief — she thought she had never been so glad to see another person — Benedict and his friend came walking out of the misting rain.

They would have presented a ridiculous picture under any other circumstances. Benedict was carrying a large stone in one hand and carefully edging forward, half sideways like a crab, while Fitzherbert glided out of the mist in his cowled cloak, looking ten feet tall, like a giant with green twinkling eyes. Regardless of appearances, the sight of them filled her with relief.

“Don’t try to stop me, Darkmire,” said Lord Jasper in a bored tone, as if he had killed too many people to be really bothered by it. “Don’t be a fool like David was, or you’ll meet the same fate.”

“I’m not just going to stand here and let you kill my wife!”

“You were only too happy to poison her, weren’t you?”

Benedict turned his gaze directly to Ariana.

“It wasn’t real, I didn’t….”

Ariana blinked, but didn’t want to argue with the person trying to rescue her while someone else pointed a gun at her. Nonetheless, she could not prevent herself from responding, the words slipping from her mouth before she could call them back.

“Don’t try to deny it,” she said. “I know what you did. I overheard you and Fitzherbert talking about it. I never loved you, I — I only thought I did. I felt what you wanted me to feel.”

Lord Jasper smiled with malicious satisfaction as she glowered at Benedict.

“You felt what you felt,” said Fitzherbert, his head scraping against the boughs of the yew tree. “I never gave Benedict a love potion. I gave him a bottle of water to which a squeeze of lemon had been added. The tonic had no effects - apart from making him feel better about your marriage.”

“He only just told me this,” said Benedict. There was a desperate tone in his voice, as if he worried that Ariana might go to her death thinking he had manipulated her. “When you loved me, you loved me.”

Ariana wished that she hadn’t learnt this while staring a gun in the face. She ought to have known that she had really loved Benedict. Those feelings were too complex to have been manufactured, and in any case, she still loved him. Not that there was much she could do about it now, when death was imminent. Instinctively, her hand went out towards him.

“Very touching,” interrupted Lord Jasper, apparently irritated that Benedict had stolen Ariana’s attention away from him. “Do you have any other final words to say to each other?” Benedict held her gaze for a moment, his face pale, but said nothing as Lord Jasper watched, chuckling in a manner quite mad. “No? Then let’s make this quick…”

It ended quickly, though not in the way that Lord Jasper had intended. Once more he pointed the pistol at Ariana; but then, with a swiftness which might have proved fatal, he turned it in Benedict’s direction. Fortunately, it appeared that Benedict was prepared for just such an eventuality. Without a second’s hesitation he surged forward and flung the rock at Lord Jasper, just as the gun fired. Both men cried out in pain — a bloody wound had blossomed above Benedict’s right arm, while Lord Jasper, perhaps underestimating Benedict’s aim and the size of the rock, was surprised by a blow to the head.

For a split-second Lord Jasper stood there foolishly, as if regretting the actions of the past hour. He then fell to his knees, revealing a massive gash on the side of his head, tumbled over the cliff edge, bounced off the rocks and slipped head-first into the water below, whose powerful currents snatched him and dragged him away.

Ariana could only feel that justice had been served.

Lord Jasper was surely doomed, and he could be retrieved later – for now, Benedict was all that mattered to her.

With a speed and urgency that she hadn’t known she possessed, Ariana ran to Benedict’s side, fell to her knees, and began tearing off strips of her petticoat in the hopes of staunching the bleeding. Fitzherbert lowered himself to assist her, wadding the cloth, and holding it hard against Benedict’s bleeding shoulder whilst Ariana used more strips of her petticoat as a makeshift bandage to hold the wad of cloth in place.

She wasn’t quite sure how she continued moving, continued doing what was necessary, in the confusion of the next several minutes. Part of her felt sure that Benedict was going to die in front of her, now that she had realised how much she loved him.

She was stunned by his bravery in defending her from Lord Jasper, especially given the fact that Lord Jasper had been carrying a weapon and Benedict had not.

“He doesn’t deserve to die like this,” said Fitzherbert gravely. “He deserves a long life with his tea and his books. And with you.”

“I don’t know if he would have wanted me, given all the times that I turned away from him.”