My Plain Jane (The Lady Janies #2)(80)

“Faster!” Mr. Blackwood said.

“We’re going as fast as we can,” Charlotte said back. “Have you seen the shoes we’re expected to wear?”

The three of them made it to the great hall, and almost across it, but Rochester caught up and he tackled Mr. Blackwood. Both men flew to the ground.

Jane and Charlotte stopped.

The two men lay there, their chests heaving as they tried to regain their breath.

“Mr. Blackwood, are you all right?” Charlotte said.

“Yes,” he said, mid-cough.

The men brushed themselves off and then stood, facing each other, knees bent, hands out, combat position.

“Go!” Mr. Blackwood said to Jane and Charlotte.

“Find us at Haworth,” Charlotte said. “We’ll go to Haworth!”

“I will find you! Now go!” Mr. Blackwood said as he lunged for a sword on the wall.

The two ladies flew through the door and out into the cold dark night.





TWENTY-SEVEN


Alexander

Alexander grabbed a sword off its mount on the wall. A sword wouldn’t have been his first choice as a weapon, but he certainly knew how to use one. It wasn’t as though people like Rochester kept pistols mounted to their walls. (Meanwhile, in America . . .) A pistol would have made the intimidation factor much higher, he thought.

Rochester’s glare settled on him. The sword. The guarded stance he’d taken up. “You’re ruining everything,” Rochester growled. “She’s supposed to be mine!”

“She won’t have you,” Alexander said.

“I’m going to get her back no matter what it takes.”

“Get over it.”

Rochester scanned the room for another weapon. There. A second sword. “We were meant to be together!” Rochester slid the blade from its mount.

So it would be a duel, then. That was fine. Alexander could duel. “You had to possess her with a ghost to make her agree to marry you.” And who had that woman been? She’d been young and beautiful, and dressed in some—ah—interesting attire that made Alexander immediately avert his eyes. Yet, somehow she seemed familiar, too. He’d seen that interesting attire before—briefly.

“She’s like the sun and I am the earth feeling its rays!”

“The sun and the earth will never be together!” Alexander frowned. Miss Eyre was delightful, sure, but like the sun? That seemed a little over the top. “Who was that woman? That ghost you were about to marry.”

“Someone who used to be mine.” Rochester attacked with a flurry of maneuvers that would have startled Alexander if Alexander had been less prepared. But he blocked so quickly that steel rang and both men launched into a complicated dance of death.

Fire roared through his veins. This was what Alexander had wanted all along. “I know it was you,” he said. “And now you’re going to pay.”

Rochester performed a Marionette’s Demise, a move that involved several smaller moves and lots of feinting. “What did I do?”

Alexander countered Rochester’s attack with an Artist’s Curse. “My name is Alexander Blackwood. You killed my father. Prepare to—”

“Who was your father?”

“Nicholas—”

“I’ve never met anyone named Nicholas.”

A lie. Alexander knew it was a lie. Lots of people were named Nicholas.

He attacked using a new move called the Three Ladies’ Luck, thinking his opponent might not know how to counter it, but Rochester was clearly a man who’d continued his sword studies throughout his life, because two sharp clacks of the blades and Alexander was blocked.

“You’re outmatched, boy. I’m a master swordsman, unlike my—I mean you. Unlike you.” Rochester growled as their fight spilled across the room, around sofas and chairs, endangering paintings and potted plants.

“Prepare to die.” Alexander shot forward, trying to surprise Rochester by going straight for the man’s heart, but the villain darted aside and tapped Alexander’s sword away. “My father was your friend!”

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Rochester as the fight moved into the drawing room. “I haven’t killed anyone.”

Why was the man denying it? What was the point?

Alexander charged with the Three Ladies’ Luck again, hoping Rochester wouldn’t expect it a second time. The man did. He was a better swordsman, Alexander had to admit. But then Rochester slipped on a pair of spectacles someone had carelessly left lying around, and Alexander pressed his advantage while the man was off balance, shoving him to the floor.

Chest heaving, Alexander dug the tip of his sword to Rochester’s throat. “I’ve waited fourteen years to avenge my father’s murder.”

“I don’t know him,” Rochester said. “Truly, I do not.”

Alexander glared down, hatred making his hand shake. Blood pooled where the sword point pierced skin. He’d never killed a man before, and there was no coming back from it once he took this step.

“I didn’t kill him,” repeated Rochester.

At the man’s throat, a small iron key gleamed, and several thoughts crashed through Alexander at once: Mrs. Rochester insisting this man wasn’t her husband, the repeated confused claims about not knowing Alexander’s father, and his description of Miss Eyre’s beauty.