Charles Todd - Legacy of the Dead

But his fingers touched the blade and then the handle of a knife instead. Protruding grotesquely from the throat.

Someone spoke.

Drummond jerked to his feet, and then saw in the pale square of light from a window that someone sat in a chair twenty feet away.

“Madelyn?” Drummond called softly, unconsciously using her given name as he’d done when she was a child. “What’s been done, then? Are you hurt?”

His voice seemed to roar through the stillness of the room.

The slumped figure in the chair didn’t answer.

Reading the awkward angle of the one shoulder he could see, Drummond hurried forward, right hand outstretched as if to ward off a blow.

The figure didn’t move. Drummond leaned down to touch the shoulder, and the head fell back. In the pale light, Drummond made out Rutledge’s profile.

His eyes were open-dark patches in a bone-white face Drummond, startled, fumbled for Rutledge’s throat, fingers slipping beneath the collar.

A pulse, faint, erratic. His hands moved down the front of Rutledge’s coat, where the white shirt was black with wet blood.

Shot, then, and barely alive. They’d all but killed each other Relief flooded through him, so sudden and wild, he felt light-headed with it. But not her. She was safe.

He bent to snatch up the crumpled white cloth he could just make out beyond Rutledge’s feet, and too late realized that it was gripped in hands that were soft, long-fingered. A woman’s Drummond began to pray again, raggedly and disjointedly, pleas tumbling over each other in his head. His hands ran over the body, the shoulder, the face, the silken hair.

He sprang to his feet, made his way to the lamp that was always kept on the bar, found it, and managed to light it on the second try.

Its gold-and-blue flame leapt up so brightly, he was blinded.

And then his gaze moved beyond the glass chimney and he saw the carnage all too clearly.

Holden, in the doorway. A pistol still clutched in his right hand, a skean dhu piercing his throat, projecting at an odd angle from front and back, cutting the great artery as cleanly as butter. Drummond whistled softly.

Rutledge, in the chair. Shot and barely alive, head forward now, his eyes closed.

And Madelyn Holden, lying almost at the Londoner’s feet, what appeared to be a child’s lacy christening gown still strained to her breast.

The men were soaked in their own blood.

There was none on her Drummond went to her, kneeling beside her, lifting her into his arms, crooning to her as a mother would croon to an ill child.

But the weight of her body, without buoyancy and life, the open eyes that didn’t focus on his face, told him the truth.

A surge of primeval pain ripped through Drummond, and he cried her name again, pulling her against his chest, bending his head over her, rocking her body with his, shaking with tremors that broke into deep, harsh sobs.

And he nearly missed the words.

He’d forgotten the man in the chair. Looking up, he realized that Rutledge must have spoken. But not to him.

Hardly words, more a murmur. “The pipes have stopped-”

Here was the only one left alive to tell him what had been done in this dark room Tears wet on his face, Drummond gently lowered Madelyn Holden’s body to the floor again, stumbled to his feet, and went to Rutledge.

The pulse in his throat was no more than a thread now, the breath so shallow, it seemed not to exist.

“You shall not die!” Drummond thundered in unconscious echo of Hamish’s voice. “Not here! Not till I’ve finished with you-!”

He curled his arms under Rutledge’s shoulders and then his knees, grunting as he lifted the unresisting weight.

Muscles straining, Drummond made his way to the door, stepping uncaring over Holden.

Tommy Braddock stood just outside, a large black umbrella over his head. The rain had subsided, but a cold wind blew, whipping the skirts of the coat he’d thrown on over his nightclothes.

“What the hell-” he exclaimed as Drummond stepped out into the drizzle, a man’s body gripped in his arms.

“Keep the rain off him!” Drummond ordered. “My house. Then the doctor. Bring him back as soon’s you can!”

Braddock slammed the inn door shut behind them and tilted the umbrella over the burden Drummond carried, recognizing the man from London and swearing in surprise under his breath. But one look at Drummond’s face and he said nothing, keeping pace as best he could.

Drummond paid no heed, concentrating on walking back the way he’d come barely ten minutes before. “You’ll live. Do you hear me?” he said once to Rutledge.

Ahead they could see the house door wide open and Drummond’s sister leaning out into the wet night, a lamp in her hand. The flame danced and shifted, then burned stark and straight.

He saw it, a beacon, his grief so heavy that the flame seemed to flicker through his tears.

If Holden had killed Madelyn, Drummond promised himself that he would come back to The Reivers this same night and cut out the bastard’s heart.

“You shall not die!” Drummond silently repeated the words in cadence with each step, a malediction-and a benison.

He moved strongly, steadily, toward the light.