AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Damn you, Rufus, what the hell are you doing?”
“Don’t you understand that she has to die?” he said plaintively. “It’s part of the plan. We can’t let her mesmerize you.”
“What are you talking about?” Alexander’s voice had quieted, as he tried to calm his half brother. “Whose plan?”
“I’m supposed to be the viscount,” Rufus whined. “You know it. You stole it from me, just as you stole everything from me.”
A frown of confusion lined Alexander’s forehead. “I’m eight years older than you are, Rufus. Of course I got the title, for all it’s worth.”
“It’s not fair. You don’t even care about it, when it really belongs to me.”
“There’s nothing I can do about it, old man,” he said gently.
“That’s why I have to take care of it. And you. I’m sorry, Alexander, but this is the way it has to be.” He started to yank at Sophie’s arms, pulling her toward the far edge.
“No!” Alexander screamed, and it startled Rufus enough that his hold on her arms loosened slightly. It was all Sophie needed.
She didn’t hesitate for a moment, slamming her head into his damaged leg with a satisfying thunk. He crumpled, releasing her, and for a moment he squatted there, teetering on the edge with a look of complete disbelief. In the next he went over the edge, his screams echoing in the night as he rolled down to disappear over the far side of the roof. There was a horrible, crunching noise, of bones shattering, and the screaming stopped. All was silence.
And then she was being pulled up, into Alexander’s strong arms, as the drizzle fell around them, and she clung to him, so tightly she felt she could never let go. She heard words, soft words from him, but none of them made any sense. The sound of his voice, the racing of his heart, was enough. She was safe, she was home, and she wanted nothing more than to melt into his hard body, to lose herself in him.
He tipped her chin up, staring down with his stormy gray eyes. “Aren’t you ever going to learn to listen to me?”
She tried to say something, but she was beyond words, so she simply gripped him tighter and pulled his head down, kissing his hard, beautiful mouth.
He kissed her back, and if he hadn’t been holding on to her she would have tumbled over the side as sheer rapture washed over her. When he kissed her, nothing mattered; the world disappeared.
It was a new voice that broke her dream, an achingly familiar one, and she lifted her head in time to see first Bryony and then Maddy emerge onto the slippery roof, with two men beside them.
Sophie’s sense of unreality grew proportionately, and for a second she wondered if Rufus had won, if she was the one who’d died and this was some strange sort of heaven. And then she heard Maddy’s familiar voice say, “I should have known you’d get yourself into a mess,” and she knew it was real; everything was real. If she were anywhere else but in Alexander’s arms she would have turned and rushed to her sisters, but right now he was her rock, her safety, her heart.
“She got herself out of it,” Bryony said, clinging to the arm of an elegantly dressed man who could only be Lord Kilmartyn. She had no idea who stood with Maddy but he looked like a gypsy, the complete opposite of what Maddy had always wanted.
“Be careful!” Sophie warned her sisters, her arms still tight around Alexander as the wind buffeted around them. “You’ll fall. Go back inside.”
“Not until you’re safe,” Bryony said, moving farther out onto the street side, holding on to Kilmartyn.
Sophie released her death grip on Alexander reluctantly, knowing she had to head for the door, for her sisters, when she heard an eerie scream.
She’d forgotten one important thing. They weren’t alone on the roof. Alexander hadn’t even known the old witch was there, but a moment later Mrs. Griffiths emerged from behind the massive chimney, shrieking like a madwoman. “You killed him! You killed my baby!” she screamed. She shoved her way past Maddy and the gypsy, almost sending them tumbling, and came straight for Sophie, madness in her small rat’s eyes.
Sophie stared at her, frozen, unable to move. Alexander was still holding her hand, but if he tried to stop the woman he’d likely go over himself. She tried to move, to draw the woman’s attention, and Alexander released her arm, ready to let her go.
Until he moved, with such quick grace she almost missed it. He stepped in front of her, fast and deft as some circus performer, his foot went out, and Mrs. Griffiths went screaming over the front edge of the town house, ending with a loud crashing noise and the sound of frightened horses.
Lord Kilmartyn peered over the side of the roof, then turned to Bryony. “I’m afraid, dear one, that we’re going to have to buy a new carriage,” he said languidly.
And for the first time in her life Sophie fainted, directly into Alexander’s arms, knowing she was home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THEY WOULDN’T LET HIM stay with her, those chattering sisters of hers, Alexander thought, watching as they surrounded the chaise in the drawing room where he’d put Sophie and crowded him out of the way.
“We need a doctor,” he said harshly.
“No, we don’t,” said the woman he assumed was the new countess. “She’s just fainted.”
“And I believe your late, lamented family is beyond mending,” Kilmartyn drawled.
