Alec Mackenzie's Art of Seduction (Mackenzies & McBrides #9)(81)

Celia twisted the spent pistol from her grasp. “Lady Flora, for heaven’s sake. Edward, see to Papa.”

“I am all right.” Her father sat down suddenly on a chair, the linen pressed hard to his face. “I think. ’Twas only a graze. I had worse as a young man in the army.”

“You, sir, are going nowhere.” Celia stepped in front of the colonel, who was trying to flee out the door.

Mrs. Reynolds stood beside her, the two of them making a formidable wall. Behind the colonel, Lady Flora sank to the floor, head in her hands, weeping.

“Don’t worry, Flora, dear gel,” the duke said weakly. “We will not have to put him on trial. He can be ruined all the same, when it’s put about that he’s a rakehell and a wastrel, not to be trusted around decent women.”

“I keep explaining, I did not know who she was,” Colonel Kell said in desperation.

“That is hardly the point.” The chill in Edward’s voice was worthy of their mother. “A man of honor would not touch a woman, no matter what her status. We take our orders to protect the weak, not be as horrible to them as any enemy.”

Lady Flora raised her head. Her face was blotchy with tears, her eyes red and streaming. “It’s worse. He and Lord Chesfield are keeping prisoners—not ransoming them or trying and executing them. Keeping them penned up day after day, probably torturing them, terrifying them. Monsters.”

“Lady Flora,” Celia said, her eyes widening. Even now Alec must have reached the house where the prisoners were—did Flora mean to send Colonel Kell and all his men rushing there at this moment?

Lady Flora pointed a long finger at the duke. “And you condone it! You are as guilty of horrors as he is.”

The duke blinked over the now-bloody linen. “What are you talking about, my dear? What prisoners? We housed some temporarily, yes, but they’re gone now. Transported, or pressed into the army. We need such bloodthirsty fighters on our side.”

Edward shook his head. “No, Papa. They are still there. I saw them—I heard of some odd goings-on, so I came home to investigate. Lord Chesfield and his friends have three prisons, and they move their prisoners from place to place whenever they fear they’ll be discovered. These men—Scots all—have been thrown into foul cells, each put to the question several times a day. Lord Chesfield explained that they are trying out new interrogation techniques on the prisoners, to see what is the most effective. Monsters, indeed.”

Colonel Kell sneered. “They are the monsters. You fought them, Captain,” he said to Edward. “You saw their brutality.”

Edward looked down his nose at him. “Fighting on the battlefield is a damn sight different thing from banging up a man and torturing him, instead of giving him the clean dignity of an execution.”

“You’re soft, like your father,” Kell snarled. “I am not afraid of you, whelp.”

“You ought to be,” Edward said, his aristocratic hauteur rising. “I will be Duke of Crenshaw one day, while you will be the trumped-up country squire you always have been. You and Lord Chesfield will have those men transported or tried and executed, immediately. We will start in the morning.”

Celia’s heart thumped. If Alec could not find Will and get him free tonight …

“Papa.” She swallowed. “Can you not do something? You have nothing to do with torturing prisoners, do you?”

“Of course not.” The duke looked indignant. “I’d never condone such a thing.”

Celia believed him. Her relief that her father was as guiltless as she’d always thought him made her knees weak.

“But who did?” she asked, her curious mind surging ahead. “Lord Chesfield does not have that power, not without Papa’s permission—”

Edward was shaking his head again. “Not Father,” he said, his voice quiet. “Uncle Perry, pretending he had Father’s authority.”

“Oh.” Celia felt sick, the pistol heavy in her hand. She recalled the bluff conversation she’d overheard between her father, Chesfield, and Uncle Perry, where they’d advised her father to go play with his mistress and leave the difficult decisions to them. “Oh.” Her anger rose. “Damn him.”

“Celia.” Edward looked shocked.

He opened his mouth to say more, but was interrupted by the arrival of Uncle Perry himself, Lord Chesfield at his side. Celia heard others coming, the gunshots having attracted attention.

“Sir.” Colonel Kell snapped off a salute to Lord Chesfield. “They know, sir. About the prisoners.”

The duke levered himself to his feet and lowered the cloth, unmindful of the amount of blood that had poured out of his cheek.

“Explain yourself, Perry,” he said in a severe voice he rarely used. “And you, Chesfield. You both told me the Highlanders would be taken to trial right away. And now I hear you’ve been using them to practice interrogation and torture? Taking orders from Perry in my name? I’ll not stand for this. Where is the honor in it?”

“They’re traitors,” Uncle Perry said in the condescending tone he habitually used to explain things to Celia’s father. “They deserve to die vicious deaths, but only after they suffer a while first.”

“These are not barbaric times,” the duke snapped. “I fought under Marlborough, against the mighty Louis of France—the current Louis, his great-grandson, is a pale imitation. And even then we were not so merciless to our prisoners. War has rules for a reason.”