Three Nights with a Scoundrel (Stud Club #3)(98)

Of all the untenable notions, that would be the most impossible to accept—that they were here for nothing. That after all this, no answers awaited him. No future.

Morland swore. “I have to leave. Jesus Christ, that man is in my house.”

“Faraday had nothing to do with it,” Julian insisted. Lily tugged at his sleeve, but he pulled his arm free and gestured toward the two convicts on the breakwater. “If those men killed Leo, we can’t let them walk free. He was our friend.”

“He was my brother,” Lily argued. “I’m his closest kin. If there’s a question over how to deal with this, shouldn’t it be mine to say?”

Click. The sound of a gun being cocked, uncomfortably close.

“I loved him. It’s mine to say.”

Julian wheeled around to see another man had joined them on the platform. Peter Faraday—standing tall and fit, armed with a double-barreled flintlock pistol.

Hatred flickered in the man’s gaze as he raised his gun. “No one move.”

Chapter Twenty-four

A shot cracked the air.

Julian had no time to raise his own weapon. No time to do anything, save throw his body in front of Lily’s. Faraday fired again, and a ball whistled past Julian’s ear.

After a split-second inventory of his vital organs to assure himself he was alive and unharmed, Julian whipped his head around, following the shots’ trajectory. Through the acrid cloud of black powder, he glimpsed Stone and Macleod reeling on the breakwater. The two convicts made slow, insensate dives into the Thames, shackles and all. If they weren’t already dead from their gunshot wounds, they would drown within the minute.

“No!” Julian cried. He surged toward the edge, in his desperation thinking to leap straight off the shipyard platform. How many feet down to the riverbank? Fifteen, perhaps? If he survived the jump with no broken bones, maybe he could fish the men out of the river.

But Lily wrapped her arms about him, holding him back. “No, don’t! There’s nothing you can do.”

Julian froze, swearing with helpless rage. He had no choice but to stop. It was that, or drag Lily over, too.

“It’s done,” Faraday said, coming to stand beside them. “It’s over.”

Yes, it was over. And Julian was done for. God damn it to hell. With those men went his only hope of identifying his enemy. His future was sinking to the bottom of the Thames like a lead weight. Nothing was left to mark Stone and Macleod’s presence on this earth, save a few ripples. The officers seemed not to have noticed a thing. It had all happened so fast, and what was the sound of two gunshots in the midst of an armory?

He choked on a sob. What did he do now? Numbness struck him in the knees. Feeling hopeless and doomed, he turned, took his wife in his arms, and held her. This was what he would do. He would hold on to Lily for as long as he could.

No one knew what to say.

Finally Morland said to Faraday, “I thought you were an invalid.”

“I was for a time.” He lowered his still-smoking weapon. “I got better.”

No doubt about it. Julian scarcely recognized Faraday as the same person they’d visited in Cornwall. Aside from his miraculous physical recovery, the man’s whole demeanor had changed. The Peter Faraday of Julian’s recollection had been vacuous, irreverent, shiftless. This Faraday was collected and sure. Ruthless, in a strangely professional way.

“Rot in hell,” the man said through gritted teeth, glaring hard at the breakwater.

Morland said, “You seem certain they were the right ones. Thought you said you couldn’t identify them.”

“I lied. I’d know them anywhere,” Faraday said. “They were the ones. They killed him.”

Another prolonged silence.

“Impressive marksmanship,” put in Ashworth at length, in some absurd attempt at small talk. “From your form, I would have marked you as military trained. But I’d know if you’d served in the army.”

“No. No army,” Faraday said, finally standing back from the edge. “My service to the Crown was in … shall we say, an unofficial capacity.”

“A spy?” Julian blurted out. “You’re a bloody spy?”

Faraday sighed and glanced around. “Yes, well. Generally, we avoid shouting that out in public.”

Julian could only stare at the man. Peter Faraday, a secret agent? In a dozen years, Julian never would have suspected him of espionage. But then, he supposed that was rather the point.

“What?” Faraday quirked a brow. “Did you think yourself the only man in England with a double life … Mr. Bell?”

“You.” Stunned, Julian allowed Lily to slide from his arms. He leveled a finger at Faraday. “In the street the other day … It was you.”

Faraday nodded. “It was me.”

“So when you said in Cornwall that the attackers had meant to kill me … you—”

“Lied. Yes. Men in my line of work tend to do that.”

Dizzied, Julian put a hand to his temple. From the beginning, everything that had led Julian to believe the attack was intended for him … all of it came from Faraday. And if Faraday had been lying to him the whole time, that meant no one wanted to kill Julian at all. He’d spent the past months seeing phantoms in shadows and tilting at windmills. “But why?”