Free Truly Yours by Bárbara Metzger Page A

enough for Sir Nigel and the courts?”
    Rex did not know, which worried him. “Are you ready? I do not like leaving her alone in that household. Most of the servants are on holiday.” He stood, with effort. Damn, but his bad leg was not up to this much activity. He took a last swallow of his wine for the trip back to Mayfair.
    Daniel watched, without offering a hand. “Well, if she is convicted, at least your mother won’t make you marry the chit.”
    The wineglass slid out of Rex’s fingers. “What do you mean?”
    “Stands to reason Aunt Margaret won’t want a killer in the family, even if the gal is her goddaughter. Might shoot her husband next. That’d be you,” he added, in case Rex missed the barb.
    Rex was still on the dire word. “Marry?”
    “Well, the wife of a peer gets special privileges in the courts, doesn’t she? And there’s no doubt that you compromised the female. Took her off on your horse, brought her to your mother’s house with no respectable female present. Undressed her, too. If that’s not compromising a lady, I don’t know what is, unless you raise her skirts on a park bench in Hyde Park.”
    While Rex sputtered and tried to explain the situation, Daniel tied another spotted kerchief around his neck in lieu of a cravat and then hauled his trunk onto his shoulder. He looked more like a dockworker than a gentleman, but Rex was not in any position to cast aspersions, not with his shirt and coat stained with blood, his red-soaked neckcloth tossed in the trash altogether. Besides, who cared about neatness when Daniel spoke of nuptials?
    “Deuce take it, I saved her from being beaten and raped! I took her to where she could be tended and healed.”
    Daniel headed down the stairs with his burden, as if he carried a bandbox instead of a trunk. “You ought to know the ton don’t care a whit about the right or the reason. They only care about the looks of the thing. An earl’s son, a spinster lady alone in a house. Sounds like wedding bells to me. You better hope she’s guilty.”
    “No, I shall not hope for that. And no one can force me to the altar.”
    “I don’t know about that,” Daniel called back over his shoulder. “Your mother is a powerful woman. Made me take tea with her cronies and their daughters a few times. You know how I hate that kind of thing. Makes me break out in a rash.”
    “That’s not pushing you to wed one of them.”
    “I don’t know. Your mother had that look in her eye. I was glad she left for Bath when she did, except she did set a fine table. Oh, pull the door shut behind you, there’s a good fellow.”
    There’s a wed man walking.

Chapter Seven
    N anny Brown clutched her heart when she opened Miss Carville’s door to see Rex looking as if he’d been run over by an oxcart.
    Rex almost had palpitations too, when he saw the gun wavering in the old woman’s gnarled fingers.
    “My stars!”
    “My pistol.” Rex still had the mate tucked into his waistband. He gingerly reached out to take the weapon.
    Nanny almost dropped it before he had his hands on the barrel. Daniel ducked, behind him.
    “Oh, it is not loaded, but I thought it best to keep the thing nearby. My knitting needles are in my pocket and the warming pan is next to my chair.”
    “You needed a weapon to defend yourself from Miss Carville?” Good grief, had he carelessly left his former nursemaid alone with a homicidal maniac? He’d supposed that the younger woman had a good excuse for shooting Hawley, if she actually did commit the murder. Not that she was liable to murder a frail old woman in her sleep along with the rest of Lady Royce’s household.
    Rex shuddered to recall his last day in the army, when the same overconfidence in his intuition almost let a troop of French scouts fire on headquarters. He was the only casualty, thank goodness, or he never would have been able to forgive himself. Lud, if something happened to Nanny, he’d be in worse straits. She was not even a