This shocked Farah. “You mean—he betrothed us because…”
“Because I convinced him I could love, protect, and adore a spoiled git like you.” He stood in front of her now, the pistol pressed into the tender flesh beneath her jaw. Farah could feel it as she swallowed, and morbid, terrified thoughts crowded out all else.
“I didn’t know all this,” she whispered, trying not to focus on which was worse, his breath or the smell of the bucket in the other corner. “Please,” she beseeched him with her eyes. “It doesn’t have to end this way. I can give you the money that you would have been promised as my dowry. You can start over somewhere on the Continent or America. Stake a claim on land that’s your very own. Have something no one can take from you.”
“It’s too late for that!” he screamed in her face, the vibrations echoing off the stone walls and being absorbed by the dirt floor. “Too late for me,” he said in a quieter, flat tone, trailing the nose of the pistol down her neck, past her collarbone, and resting it in the valley between her breasts. “Too late for you.”
“It’s never too late,” she told him. “As long as you’re alive, you can choose to live. To be happy, even if it means starting over.” She truly believed that. Though she felt as though she could see her chance at life draining away along with the last of the sanity in his eyes.
“That bitch I married gave me a whore’s disease. The doctors say I’ll be dead within a month, but it’ll steal my mind before it takes my body.”
With every breath, Farah’s chest pressed against the pistol, now warmed by the heat of her skin. The sensation terrified her, paralyzed her body, but her mind raced for a way to survive.
He had nothing left to lose. He lived only for revenge.
“I was going to rape you,” he informed her in a voice as soft as death. “I was going to make you waste away with me, rotting from the inside. But it seems that I am no longer able, the syphilis has stolen the use of my cock.”
Grateful for that small mercy, the threat had bile crawling up her throat, and a moan of disgust escaped her lips.
The weight of the pistol left her ribs as he backhanded her across the mouth so hard she had to blink against spots of blindness and regain her bearings. When her vision cleared, the pistol was inches away from her forehead at the end of his outstretched arm. She could only focus on it or his face, but not both.
“Don’t act like you’re better than lying beneath the likes of me,” he snarled. “You may be a countess by birth, but you’ve already wallowed in the mud with the lowest kind of filth. You’ve corrupted that perfect body with his touch and shamed the Northwalk title and the Townsend name by becoming a Blackwell. It would disgust me to lie where he’s already been.”
Farah wiped a trickle of blood from the side of her mouth. A cold rage blocked out the pain and sharpened her vision, even in the dim light. “Do not speak ill of my husband,” she warned in a voice so hard it didn’t even sound like her own. “You’re not even fit to lick his boots, not worthy to speak his name. He’s better than the law, more powerful than any lord, and more of a man than you’ll ever be.”
Warrington’s lip curled, unveiling teeth barely rooted in a rotting mouth. “Too bad he’ll never hear you say that. I imagine Dorian Blackwell will always wonder what became of his pretty wife. For he’ll never find your body down here. We’ll rot away together, buried in the same grave for eternity.” His finger tightened on the trigger, the pad turning white with the beginnings of pressure. “Good-bye, Lady Northwalk.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Northwalk Abbey glowed against the night sky as Dorian pounded up on the back of his Thoroughbred. Every window blazed with light, and frantic movements from within prickled the hairs on the back of his neck.
Something was amiss.
Clattering into the cobblestone courtyard, Dorian leaped from his horse and threw the reins to a stable boy, his focus on the men clustered in the yard studying a map in their hands.
“What’s going on here?” he demanded.
Peter Kenwick, an employee he’d installed to watch his wife, led the handful of men. His dark eyes widened as Dorian approached. “Blackwell!” he exclaimed, crumpling the map. “It’s Murdoch, he’s been shot.”
“Is he alive?”
“Yes, we sent for the doctor, and to get word to you. Tallow’s with him now.”
Dorian ripped off his riding gloves and mounted the stairs two at a time. “Where is my wife? Who did this? I assume he’s been dealt with.”
The men followed him up the steps, their silence screaming a warning. “Murdoch was found in Lady Blackwell’s bedroom,” one of the men was brave enough to answer. “She’s missing.”
Speared by an arrow of cold dread, Dorian spun at the top of the stairs and glared down at them. “What do you mean, missing?”
No one met his eyes.
“Answer me if you value your lives.”
Kenwick, more accustomed to Dorian’s visage, stepped ahead. “All we know is we can’t find her, or the gun. The house is being scoured, sir, and we were going to start a search of the grounds. She can’t have gone far.”
The prick of dread turned to a douse of icy fear. “How long since the gunshot?”
“Minutes,” Kenwick answered. “If that long.”