Duke of Desire (Maiden Lane #12)(80)

He flinched at her words. “Not to me. Never to me.”

He might as well have struck her. She felt as if she were wounded. As if she were dripping blood on the floor.

She raised her chin. “If you send me away now, I will never forgive you.”

He bowed his head. “So be it.”

Iris turned and left the room without another word, pressing Tansy to her face.

Half an hour later she descended the front steps to a carriage driven by Ubertino. Five other Corsicans were on the carriage, either in back or beside Ubertino on the box. They were all armed.

Raphael was nowhere to be seen.

Bardo helped her inside and then slammed the door, standing back to wave the carriage on.

Donna Pieri sat opposite her.

The older woman eyed her as the carriage jolted away. “He is worried.”

Iris shook her head. She couldn’t talk. If she did, she might burst into tears.

Tansy was in her basket on the seat beside her, asleep under a blanket.

Iris stared out the window with aching eyes and wondered if they could ever resolve this break. Or if this was the end of everything.

Would she ever hear him laugh in honest joy?

It was two hours later and they’d left London when she heard the boom.

The carriage shook and swayed and then jolted to a stop. Donna Pieri fell to the floor, as did Tansy’s basket.

Gunfire exploded outside, like fireworks in the sky, except this was no happy occasion. The shots were fast and close together. She couldn’t even count them.

A man shouted in Corsican and then stopped midword.

Iris threw herself to the floor and opened the seat, searching for the pistol. Surely it had been replaced? Her scrabbling fingers found metal and she drew out the pistol. Checked to see if it was loaded.

It wasn’t.

A small hole exploded near the window on her side of the carriage.

“Stay down,” she said to Donna Pieri.

The other woman nodded calmly.

Iris dived back into the seat compartment and found a bag with the bullets and powder. She knew in theory how to load a gun, but it had been a while since she’d seen it done.

The shooting stopped.

Iris poured the powder in the gun, her hands shaking, the powder spilling onto the carriage floor.

Someone wrenched at the door.

The ball was already wrapped in wadding. She shoved it down the barrel.

A man in a mask—a terrible mask, the mask of a young man with grapes in his hair—climbed into the carriage.

She pointed the pistol at him, straight armed, from her position, kneeling on the floor.

He laughed and kept moving toward her.

She pulled the trigger, but of course nothing happened.

She’d not had time to pour the gunpowder in the priming pan.

The Dionysus laughed and roughly pulled Iris to her feet. He dragged her, stumbling, from the carriage. Iris just had time to catch a glimpse of Donna Pieri’s white face and then the door was slammed behind them.

Outside there were at least a dozen men surrounding the carriage. Iris could see a few of the Corsicans still on their feet, but many were on the ground, lying still. She couldn’t tell who had fallen—who was still alive and who was dead—before the Dionysus shoved her into another carriage.

Iris fell, her palms scraping across the carriage floorboards.

“You know what to do,” she heard the Dionysus say behind her, and Iris’s blood froze. Had he just ordered the death of Zia Lina and the remaining Corsicans?

Before she could do anything but get to her knees, he had climbed into the carriage and seated himself.

“Now then, Your Grace,” he said in a soft voice. “Let us have a pleasant chat.”

Late that afternoon Raphael stood at the window of his study, looking out over the back of his garden. He could see small blue flowers blooming along the gravel paths, but for the life of him he could not recall what their name was.

Somehow he knew that Iris would be able to name the tiny blue flowers.

He pushed the thought aside. He’d lived over thirty years without Iris in his life and never felt the lack. Yet now she was gone merely hours and he was gazing out the window, mooning after her.

He could shove her from his mind.

He must shove her from his mind.

But he still saw her tearstained face. Heard her pleading with him. Remembered her saying, “I love you.”

He closed his eyes.

She was haunting him.

It was as if she were in his blood now, a part of him as surely as the veins running under his skin, the lungs that let him breathe air. She’d permeated him until he could no more separate her from himself than tear the heart from his body.

She was essential to his life.

He opened his eyes and turned back to his study, trying to distract himself from his pain.

It was a strange room. His grandfather had seen fit to decorate it in murals of the dead being sorted in Hades. Demons danced on one wall, driving cowering souls, while on another the souls were naked and being lashed by hoofed monstrosities. None seemed to have found peace in death.

Perhaps the lesson spoke to him especially today because he was at an impasse in his mission.

He’d gone to Lord Royce’s town house only to find both him and his brother gone and not expected back for some time.

Their butler had informed him that they’d not told him where they were going.