“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She had missed the H key and typed a G.
Matthews’s left eyelid was twitching furiously. “Are you trying to play me for a fool?”
“N-no. I have trouble t-typing.”
“For Christ’s sake.” He ripped the sheet from the machine. “Get up. Move.” He took her place and put the pistol onto the desk. “Don’t do anything reckless,” he said. “Stand there nice and still. Don’t compel me to do something drastic.”
Nice and still. She stood like a puppet, but anger began broiling beneath the icy sheet of fear. How dare he wreck Lucian’s study and try to steal from him?
Matthews was typing, and after a few moments, he murmured, “Apologies. I forgot myself. Of course, you do not grasp the severity of the situation.”
It had to be the gambling henchmen on his heels; it was the only explanation.
He hacked away at the typewriter, humming through clenched teeth. Schubert, she thought numbly, he was humming Schubert’s “St?ndchen.”
He pulled the sheet from the machine and placed it before her.
It was a letter—a letter as if written from her own hand. Telling Lucian that she had gone to stay with family on the continent awhile, and that she wished to live separately … Her stomach clenched with fresh panic.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No—”
Matthews picked up his pistol again. “Sign it, please. Here is a pen.”
She looked him in the eye. “Why are you doing this?” she whispered.
“To buy us time,” he said tightly. “Since you interrupted me, and he should be here soon, I can hardly leave you here to tattle. You must understand that.”
Us? The letter swam before her eyes. The note would send Lucian in a wrong direction. She would be alone with a bungling criminal. Worse, after their row at the inn, Lucian would think she had indeed abandoned him, that she still loathed him … Perhaps he would even think she had taken Matthews for a lover, and she’d never have the chance to tell him otherwise. The pen slipped from her damp fingers.
“Mr. Blackstone will never believe I ransacked his office and left,” she said. “You said it yourself: I have become his creature, and he knows this—”
A metallic click, then Matthews’s arm jerked up and he fired. Wood and plaster exploded above, and Hattie screamed as debris pelted her.
“He shall believe it because females are fickle creatures,” Matthews murmured, his voice trembling, “and you were morally loose enough to enjoy London unchaperoned even before you wed him. Sign. It.”
She signed it. Her fingers were gray with plaster dust. Red bloomed on the back of her hand from a shrapnel cut. She hadn’t felt the splinter strike.
“Good,” Matthews said when she put down the pen, “good. Now sit down again, on your hands. No, first, put your earrings and your necklace in here.” He pointed the smoking pistol at the open briefcase. “Your brooch, too.” He hastily began gathering papers and folders.
“Have you any knowledge where he keeps his ledger of debts?” he asked as he flung the contents of Lucian’s drawers into the briefcase.
“No,” she said.
His gaze narrowed at her. “The book where he keeps incriminating secrets of the ton.”
Her cheekbone felt oddly numb. Perhaps she had been hurt there, too. “Why would I know such a thing?” she whispered.
Matthews muttered something.
Then he froze and dropped the papers.
She had heard the fall of footsteps, too.
When the door behind them opened, Matthews was already next to Hattie, gripping her arm and yanking her in front of him. The cool pressure of the pistol touched her temple. But something colder and deadlier had entered the room. Lucian. He was holding a revolver and wore an expression as dark as the devil himself.
Harriet was bleeding. The red rivulet streaked from a gash that ran from her cheekbone to her jaw and pinkened the lace at her throat. But it was the flash of hope in his wife’s eyes that unleashed something terrible in Lucian. A crimson haze washed over his vision. Matthews was a dead man walking.
It must have been plain on his face, for his assistant flinched and folded himself more tightly into the shelter of Harriet’s body.
“Your revolver,” Matthews said. “Put it down, on the floor. Then … put your arms behind your head.”
Matthews’s pistol was cocked, and his trembling finger was curled around the trigger. An accidental slip—and it would be the end. Of everything. Lucian went light-headed for a beat. He took a sobering breath.