Clearly, she’d decided bravado was her best strategy. Verity could have told her she was wrong. When Kylemore looked like that, nothing swayed him.
“Try me,” he said in the same terrifyingly mild voice.
Still the duchess didn’t take warning. A triumphant smile curled her lips. “You forget I have four men and you are alone.”
Kylemore’s lordly manner didn’t falter. “Four men who will soon be in custody and incriminating you with every word of their testimony.”
He signaled with one hand to someone behind him. Eight armed men surged from the woods that edged the road. Verity recognized Hamish and Andy and Angus among the newcomers.
“Justin, think of the scandal!” the duchess snapped.
“Yes, think of it,” he said with satisfaction.
With taciturn efficiency, Kylemore’s companions took, at gunpoint, the boy who had come so close to scarring Verity and the bully who guarded Ben’s ominously unmoving body.
The duke glanced at the man who still restrained Verity. “If you hope to live through the next minute, let her go.”
His voice rang with absolute authority. Immediately, she was free. The abruptness of the action threw her off balance. She staggered and gasped for air to combat her sudden light-headedness.
Kylemore lunged to catch her before she fell. “Christ, mo leannan, what have they done to you?” he muttered under his breath.
She felt his arm snake around her waist to hold her upright. At his touch, her faintness receded. She turned toward his strength and heat as a flower opens to the sun.
He is here, he is here.
The trilling carol of relief and wonder allowed her to take her first unfettered breath in what felt like hours. It was a breath full of the haunting essence of Kylemore. She fought the impulse to bury her nose in his chest and pretend all danger had passed.
Because, of course, it hadn’t.
Even while he sheltered her against his body, Kylemore kept his pistol leveled. A few feet away, Angus and Andy took charge of her former captor and herded him toward his two cohorts. The three thugs who had so terrified her were cowed and silent as they huddled together on the roadside.
She looked away from them and up at the man she’d thought never to see again. Her heart blossomed with difficult joy. How she wished she could stay in his embrace forever, but her wishes were as impossible now as they had ever been.
Reaction to what she’d been through set in, and she shook in his hold as though she had a fever. She stifled the urge to cling to Kylemore and shower him with grateful tears.
Struggling for control, she sucked in another deep breath. Right now, she needed to check on her brother. He’d been silent for too long.
“I have to see to Ben,” she said urgently. “He’s over there, beaten to within an inch of his life.”
“Hamish, go with her,” Kylemore said, releasing her.
He kept his pistol aimed at his mother while Verity hurried across to her brother. Ben lay on the ground, still tied up. He must have finally, mercifully lost consciousness before the duchess had grabbed the knife.
With a broken sob, Verity fell to her knees at his side.
Is he alive? Please, let him be so.
She hunched forward over his poor, battered body, cradling him to her breast. Even in the gloaming’s forgiving light, she saw how badly hurt he was. Thank heaven, he was still breathing. This close to him, she could hear the air’s uneven passage through his mashed mouth.
“Oh, Ben,” she murmured, tears running unchecked down her cheeks as she rocked him the way she’d rocked him when he’d been a child in her care. “My poor darling brother.”
He didn’t hear her. Perhaps he’d never hear her again.
The beating had been prolonged and unconstrained. Who knew what damage he’d sustained? Very gently, she raised his torn and bruised head onto her lap while Hamish rolled him over on his side and cut his bonds with a horn-handled knife.
“They did a gey good job on him, my lady.” The Scotsman ran his hands over her brother’s frighteningly unresponsive body.
“It’s all my fault,” she whispered, fumbling in her sleeve for the handkerchief Ben had pressed upon her earlier.