In truth, Mariah had not thought any further beyond the need she felt to prevent Darian from challenging the older man, as she had known he fully intended doing when he left her side so precipitously.
Outside, and alone on the terrace with William Edgewood—who appeared to have dropped all pretence of being that amiable fool everyone believed him to be and now looked at her with shrewdly calculating eyes—she now had time and opportunity to realise her mistake.
To realise that cornered animal had now turned its rabid attentions on to her.
She faced Edgewood unflinchingly as she decided to do exactly as he had suggested and cease all pretence. ‘Your cohort has already fled.’
‘So Clara unwittingly informed me a few minutes ago.’ He nodded tersely.
Mariah nodded briskly. ‘There is no way of escaping, nowhere you might go now where you will not be caught and held for trial as a traitor and attempted assassin.’
‘Would not France be the practical choice?’ he derided.
Mariah gave a pained frown. ‘Why? Why would you turn traitor on your own country? On your Regent?’ She had once asked Martin the same question.
‘You can ask me that here, in the midst of this debauchery that has become England?’ Edgewood scoffed. ‘And with a Regent more licentious than the rest?’
And Martin’s answer had been just the same.
‘You are just as guilty of that licentiousness—’
‘Necessarily so...’ he nodded ‘...if I was to fool others into not suspecting my real feelings on the matter. My mother was French, you know. I am half-French, and my loyalties lie there rather than— Ah, Wolfingham, I wondered how long it would take for you to follow your mistress!’ Edgewood murmured derisively as he glanced over Mariah’s shoulder. ‘And I see you have brought several of your friends with you, too!’
Mariah turned sharply to look at where Darian—and several of his friends?—had now joined them outside on the terrace.
At least, she had fully intended to turn and look at them.
Instead, she found herself suddenly held as Lord Edgewood’s prisoner, as he pulled her roughly in front of him and anchored her there, by placing an arm about her throat and pressing a pistol painfully against her temple.
A single glance at Darian showed his eyes to be glittering intently behind his mask in the moonlight, his displeasure, at the vulnerable position in which Mariah now found herself, clear for all to see as he glared at her furiously.
She quickly moved her gaze to the three masked gentlemen standing behind him, believing she recognised one of them as being the grey-haired Aubrey Maystone, but the identity of the other two were hidden behind their masks. ‘It would seem you are outnumbered, Lord Edgewood,’ she remarked slightly huskily, the tightness of his arm about her throat preventing her from breathing properly.
‘But I have the pistol,’ he pointed out conversationally.
‘We all have pistols, Edgewood,’ Aubrey Maystone assured drily as those pistols now appeared in all the other gentlemen’s hands.
Including Darian’s, Mariah realised, wondering where on his person he could have kept it hidden until now.
Was she becoming slightly hysterical, in questioning something so trivial, when Lord Edgewood had a pistol pressed so painfully against her temple? Lord, she hoped not!
‘But I also have the Countess of Carlisle,’ Edgewood came back confidently. ‘Eh, Wolfingham?’ he added challengingly.
Darian was well aware of the fact that Edgewood now held a pistol against Mariah’s temple. Could see all too clearly how the end of the barrel of that pistol was digging into her tender flesh. Hurting her.
‘You are only making your situation worse, Edgewood.’ Aubrey Maystone drew the other man’s attention back to him.
‘Could it possibly be any worse, when I am obviously already known as a conspirator and traitor against the Crown?’ The other man eyed Maystone coldly.
Darian took advantage of Edgewood’s distraction to inch his way slowly to the side and then forward, aided in his stealth of movement by Sutherland and Rotherham, as they both moved to flank Aubrey Maystone.
If Darian could just move a little further forward he might be able to—
‘Stay exactly where you are, Wolfingham,’ Edgewood warned harshly as he now pointed the pistol in Darian’s direction.
It needed only that brief moment of Edgewood’s distraction from Mariah for there to be a blur of movement at Darian’s side as Sutherland dived downwards towards Edgewood’s legs, at the same time as Rotherham leapt forward, with the obvious intention of wrestling the raised pistol from Edgewood’s hand.
Leaving Darian to stand and watch as the scene played out before him.
Mariah was deafened as Lord Edgewood’s pistol suddenly went off beside her ear, quickly followed by the report of another shot being fired, before she then felt herself toppling over as Lord Edgewood’s legs were knocked from beneath him, pulling her down heavily on top of him. Her last vision was of a horrified Darian before she hit her head hard on the floor of the terrace and she knew no more.
‘I trust you know that I am still very angry with you for behaving so recklessly, madam?’
Mariah was nestled comfortably against Darian’s shoulder, held securely in his arms as they travelled back to London in his ducal coach several hours later. Despite the lateness of the hour neither one of them had wished to remain at Eton Park a moment longer than they had to, once the worst of the furore had died down.
Clara Nichols had been hysterical, of course, as had many of her female guests, at learning that her friend and lover Wedgy now lay dead upon the terrace at Eton Park, a bullet through his heart.
The gentlemen present had been more prosaic regarding the situation, readily accepting Aubrey Maystone’s explanation of Lord Wedgewood having been caught in the act, by the Duke of Wolfingham, of forcing his attentions upon the Countess of Carlisle, before then being accidentally killed by his own pistol in the tussle that had followed. An act witnessed and confirmed by the Dukes of Sutherland and Rotherham.
It was far from an accurate account of the truth, of course, the fatal bullet having been fired by Aubrey Maystone himself. But none present had wished to challenge the word of men as powerful as Lord Maystone, and the Dukes of Wolfingham, Rotherham and Sutherland. And Clara Nichols had been too hysterical to question the fact that Lord Maystone, and the Dukes of Rotherham and Sutherland, had not even been invited to her masked ball.
No doubt the other woman would remember that fact once she had calmed down, but she had been far too busy enjoying being at the centre of the scandal, and the scandalous success of her masked ball, when Darian and Mariah had quietly taken their leave earlier.
The two of them had gone up the stairs to their rooms so that Mariah might change her bloodied clothes before departing, leaving Mariah’s maid and Darian’s valet to pack up their things before following tomorrow.
‘Mariah, you are not to fall asleep until you have listened to what I have to say!’ Darian gave her shoulders a shake to prevent that from happening. ‘Do you have any idea how I felt when I looked down and saw you unconscious upon the floor and covered in blood?’ he demanded harshly, his impatience barely contained. ‘Do you even realise that my own heart stopped beating, when I thought Maystone had missed Edgewood and had shot you instead?’
Mariah was too tired, felt too safe in Darian’s arms, to care about much of anything else at the moment. ‘As you