Realm 04 - A Touch of Grace Read Free

ordered. “Make a move, and I will shoot!”
    Gabriel crawled swiftly among the ruins to reach a position for a better shot, but the Baloch remained partially hidden. He crept closer as Jamot taunted sarcastically, “You sound exactly like Lady Worthing right before I took the gun from her. She died with your name on her lips, Your Lordship.”
    Crowden noted how Kerrington physically recoiled with the Baloch’s goading. Lord Worthing had married Brantley Fowler’s sister Eleanor within the past year. The enceinte viscountess had soothed Kerrington’s loneliness and had brought the viscount contentment. Gabriel had admired Eleanor Fowler from the moment he had laid eyes on the woman, and he had envied how Kerrington had finally achieved happiness.
    “You lie!” his friend growled.
    Jamot glanced in Gabriel’s direction. He edged further into the shadows, and Gabriel countered by easing up behind a high-backed wooden pew. Having found a target, the Baloch continued his insulting burlesque. “Do I?” he called confidently. Crowden knew Mir’s agent would use Kerrington’s love for Lady Worthing against his friend. The Baloch jeered, “Less than a week past, I found my way into Ashton’s home.”
    Baron Ashton was former Realm and the maternal uncle to the Aldridge sisters, who Thornhill and Wellston had chosen as their wives. “Lady Worthing,” Jamot called contemptuously, “interrupted my dispensing with the one you call Lexford.” Gabriel counted Aidan Kimbolt, Viscount Lexford, among his closest friends. They had left Lexford in Cheshire when the viscount had suffered a debilitating head injury in this caper. “Unfortunately, the lady insisted. I held no choice,” Jamot snarled. “You lost a wife and a child, Lord Worthing.”
    Gabriel’s stomach lurched in anguish. It could not be so. God would not be so cruel as to snatch happiness from Kerrington’s grasp a second time. Worthing’s first wife had died in childbirth. It was the event that had driven Kerrington from his home to serve with the Realm.
    “Do not trust him, Captain,” Crowden called to Kerrington, whose shoulders had hunched with regret. “If Lady Worthing was no more, you’d know. Your heart would know.”
    His words had hit their mark. Kerrington’s chest rose with hope. “I plan to kill you, Jamot,” he called lethally.
    “You plan to try, Worthing,” the Baloch answered confidently.
    Before the words could die in the confines of the medieval cathedral, the bullet hissed as it struck the arch above Kerrington’s head. Gabriel saw his friend dive from the way. Immediately, Gabriel returned fire, but the cathedral’s architecture hid Jamot well. In the next instant, the echo of Jamot’s retreating footsteps filled the air. A curse from Kerrington signaled their pursuit. Bursting through the fog of gunpowder, Gabriel pulled a hidden pistol from the harness under his jacket, but they were too late. Jamot rode away into the setting horizon.
    *
    Grace Nelson rushed through the manor house’s upper floors. For days, she had expected the commotion below, but now it had come, she had found herself totally unprepared for the violent response of Samuel Aldridge, Viscount Averette, her employer. Things had not been right in the Averette household since the family’s return from London.
    Grace had suspected Lord Averette greatly regretted his sojourn into England. On a pleasure trip into the Lake District, His Lordship had received an urgent message informing him of the demise of William Fowler, the Duke of Thornhill. With the news, Lord Averette had thought it incumbent on him to rush to Kent to secure the safety of his niece Velvet Aldridge.
    Their journey had come to a screeching halt when His Lordship’s carriage had broken an axel outside of Linton Park, home of the Earl of Linworth. There, Averette had discovered Eleanor Fowler awaiting her marriage to James Kerrington, Linworth’s son. Lady Eleanor had welcomed her cousins,