Gregory took a gamble. “I love her enough to keep your secrets.”
Robert Abernathy blanched. He went absolutely bloodless, and utterly still.
“It was you,” Gregory said softly.
Lucy twisted. “Uncle Robert?”
“Shut up,” he snapped.
“Did you
lie to me?” she asked, and her voice sounded almost wounded. “Did you?”
“Lucy, don’t,” Gregory said.
But she was already shaking her head. “It wasn’t my father, was it? It was you. Lord Davenport was blackmailing you for your own misdeeds.”
Her uncle said nothing, but they all saw the truth in his eyes.
“Oh, Uncle Robert,” she whispered sadly, “how could you?”
“I had nothing,” he hissed. “Nothing. Just your father’s droppings and leftovers.”
Lucy turned ashen. “Did you kill him?”
“No,” her uncle replied. Nothing else. Just no.
“Please,” she said, her voice small and pained. “Do not lie to me. Not about this.”
Her uncle let out an aggravated breath and said, “I know only what the authorities told me. He was found near a gambling hell, shot in the chest and robbed of all of his valuables.”
Lucy watched him for a moment, and then, her eyes brimming with tears, gave a little nod.
Gregory rose slowly to his feet. “It is over, Abernathy,” he said. “Haselby knows, as does Fennsworth. You cannot force Lucy to do your bidding.”
Lucy’s uncle gripped her more tightly. “I can use her to get away.”
“Indeed you can. By letting her go.”
Abernathy laughed at that. It was a bitter, caustic sound.
“We have nothing to gain by exposing you,” Gregory said carefully. “Better to allow you to quietly leave the country.”
“It will never be quiet,” Lucy’s uncle mocked. “If she does not marry that freakish fop, Davenport will shout it from here to Scotland. And the family will be ruined.”
“No.” Gregory shook his head. “They won’t. You were never the earl. You were never their father. There will be a scandal; that cannot be avoided. But Lucy’s brother will not lose his title, and it will all blow over when people begin to recall that they’d never quite liked you.”
In the blink of an eye, Lucy’s uncle moved the gun from her belly to her neck. “You watch what you say,” he snapped.
Gregory blanched and took a step back.
And then they all heard it.
A thunder of footsteps. Moving quickly down the hall.
“Put the gun down,” Gregory said. “You have only a moment before—”
The doorway filled with people. Richard, Haselby, Davenport, Hermione—they all dashed in, unaware of the deadly confrontation taking place.