Page 82

“Don’t worry,” Ella whispered.

Gently, gently, she tilted the box just enough so that the little family slid to the back. Then she picked it up and stood.

With infinite patience, Fiennes moved toward the door. They were almost there when the abrasive sound of a pistol being cocked ripped through the room.

“I should just blow my head off,” her uncle growled. His language was more slurred than it had been.

“Then you wouldn’t get the settlement I’m giving you for the honor of marrying Ella,” Fiennes told him, moving again, keeping his large body between Ella and the firearm.

“Damn right, you’re going to have to pay,” the viscount muttered, caressing the barrel of his weapon. “Suppose you don’t think this is loaded. Well, it is.”

“The settlement,” Fiennes repeated.

At the same moment Ella said, “No one knows of my aunt’s indiscretion, Uncle.”

“But I do,” he snarled. “The shame is more than I can bear.” He ran a finger down the pistol again. “This was your father’s, you know. Like everything I have.”

Fiennes soundlessly opened the door.

Her uncle raised his head. His face was haggard, eyes gleaming with rage.

Fiennes jerked his head, and Ella flew through the door, Starlight at her feet. She turned only to see with horror that Fiennes was walking directly toward his uncle.

The viscount lifted the pistol and aimed at him. “Wouldn’t happen to you, would it? No woman will cheat on you. Talked your way into my namby-pamby niece’s bedchamber, prig that she is.”

Movement a blur, Fiennes snatched the pistol with one hand and twisted the viscount’s arm with the other. He jerked him from the seat, seemingly holding him upright because her uncle hung from his grip like a baby kitten in its mother’s jaws.

“Ella.” His voice was utterly composed.

“Yes?” The word wavered, but truthfully, the shock of the last twenty minutes was starting to make her feel physically ill.

“I’m sorry to ask you, darling, but could you please take this weapon from me and, keeping it facing away from you, place it very gently on your bed?”

Ella set the hatbox down on the landing outside her door and walked to Fiennes. She gingerly took the pistol, putting it on the bedspread as gently as she could.

Behind her she heard a thump, and sure enough, when she spun about, her uncle was on the floor.

“I’ll take the weapon,” Fiennes told her uncle. “In the future, if I see you within fifty yards of my wife or my mother-in-law, I’ll have you thrown in prison. I have friends in the constabulary. Viscount or no, you can be certain that you would never again see the light of day except through bars.”

Fiennes bent over. Ella caught sight of his face and swallowed hard.

“I have a feeling that you pinched my wife on her arm,” Fiennes said, his voice flinty.

“No,” her uncle said dully.

Ella couldn’t hear when Fiennes said to her uncle, but the older man shuddered and rolled on his side, curled like a snail.

“It’s the shame that I can’t take,” the viscount said dully. “I just can’t take the bloody shame of it.”

Then, when they were through the door, and Ella took a huge gulp of air, she heard a last bellow.

“If only it wasn’t the fucking butler!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

TIL DEATH DO US PART

Fiennes had never bothered to imagine his wedding beyond the expectation that someday a woman would walk toward him down the interminable aisle of a cathedral, and they would mutter half-hearted vows to each other.