"In the process, Devonshire could then make a grab for both companies. Donally and Bailey would never survive."

"Except in this case Lord Bathwick owns a large portion of D&B, mum," Stewart said. "Mr. Donally already believes they have a foothold."

But that made no sense. Did it? Lord Bathwick wanted to stop the merger. She would not believe it of him. "Where did Ryan go when he left here?"

"He went to Ore Industries, mum. He believes that if files have been tampered with here, then they have there as well. The good news, if there can be any under the circumstances, is that it looks like we found the second site where the steel went. That's what I wanted to tell all of you."

Rachel wanted to go to Ryan. That someone could hate him so much frightened her to the core of her being. "Are you all right, mum?"

"I left my satchel here yesterday," she said, pulling her composure around her and finding a reason to remain and await Johnny. She would finish her correspondence.

Rachel walked down the corridor and into her office, attempting to stave off her uncertainty as she forced herself to think. Ryan must have already suspected Devonshire's involvement, or he wouldn't have been so specific in his requests. Her office was dark. Outside, the rain had started to pebble against the window and roof.

She glimpsed her satchel lying beside the desk where she'd left it yesterday and started forward. But as she moved into the room, the door slammed shut behind her.

Rachel swung around and nearly fell over her skirts. Her heart struck her chest, for she had been thinking about the thunder in the sky.

Lord Devonshire stood with his back against the door. Her heart went still. Reeking of spirits, he took in her gasp, recognized her shock, and clicked the key in the lock. "Is that Donally's daughter in the other room?"

Her breathing stopped. She would die before she allowed this man near that little girl. Her gaze swung to the second door that opened to the conference room, but Devonshire stepped into her line of sight before she could think of breaking for the other door. Aware of the danger, she took a step backward. "Get out of my way."

"Or what? I doubt you'll scream and chance bringing Donally's daughter in here." He advanced on her. "And I'll have any man who touches me arrested if he lays a finger to this suit. Indeed let them try."

Rachel stepped around the edge of the desk. "What is it you want?"

"Donally's head on a platter? Ore Industries? My niece's whereabouts? The possibilities are endless. Depending on how much he wishes to protect you." His height forced her chin up. Her heart hammered against her ribs.

"He was clever to get Gwyneth to break the contracts." He poked a finger in her shoulder. "Clever to hide her from me. But not so clever that I don't know his vulnerability. Did you know he killed two major mergers at a total cost of a hundred thousand pounds to my coffers? But of course you must. You put him up to it."

Rachel had no idea that Ryan had given up that much. Her thighs came up against the edge of the desk. "Now that bloody Irisher removed me from the board of Ore Industries." His voice seemed to draw venom from a new surge of energy. "From my own corporation! As if he has the right to take what belongs to me."

Her fingers probed the desk for a weapon. "You must think yourself invincible to threaten me," she whispered. "How did you get in here?"

"I told you what would happen if you got in my way. I bloody warned you. I told you I'd make you both pay."

"Get out of here!"

He raked everything off the desk. The lamp shattered on the floor. Books and papers scattered. "I want Donally to know what it feels like to lose everything in the world."

She lunged past him. He grabbed a handful of her hair and, without thinking, she slammed her palm against his face. "Don't you dare touch me!"

"Bitch!" He grabbed a fistful of her bodice.

She tried to swing her other arm, tried to fight. Her knuckles connected with his shoulder. He shoved her back against the desk.

His breath coming in gasps, Devonshire glared in disbelief at the blood on his hand. Immobilized by the violent weight of her shock, she'd momentarily frozen. Then he pounced on her, and she was fighting with all her strength. He jerked her around and pressed her face down on the desk. "Because of Donally, I have nothing! Nothing!"

A hand to her nape held her immobile. Her chest hurt. His weight pushed her against the desk and, finally she screamed. All she could think of was that Mary Elizabeth was in another room.

Please, God, don't let her come in here.

"He'll kill you." A sound like a sob escaped her.

Her hip burned from where she'd struck the corner of the desk. Somewhere she heard banging on the door. She slapped her hand toward the letter opener. It teetered, then toppled onto the floor. "Think about it, Miss Bailey." His lips pressed against her ear. "I could do whatever I wanted and he couldn't touch me without first destroying you. But I'm not going to rape you." He loosened his grip. "This is only a lesson. Take that message to Donally."

Her mouth tasted coppery. She caught her breath and started to twist around to face him, when he was dragged away from her. Johnny shoved him against a bookcase, his eyes darkened like a storm cloud. The door to the office hung on its hinges as if he had kicked it open. "You bloody, fooking bastard-"

"No!" She grabbed Johnny's arm. "He wants you to attack him!"

But Johnny wasn't listening. God in heaven, Elsie had run out of the drafting room, her eyes wide as Rachel yelled at her to go back down the corridor and shut the door.

"Get out of here, Rachel," Johnny snapped, when she grabbed his arms.

"No, Johnny!"

The watchman had come running into the office and stood motionless. No one knew what to do. Lord Devonshire was a peer.

One didn't attack a peer, for God's sake!

"It's not worth it!" she screamed, holding on to one arm. "He didn't hurt me." The blood roared in her brain. She was still holding his arm when Devonshire came away from the wall, a derringer in his hand, and shot him.

Chapter 22.

R yan stopped in the vast doorway with its soaring marble columns as he scanned the tables, his height distinctive in the archway. His coat swirled around his calves. Rain had soaked the wool. A wet lock of hair hung in his eyes. He wore no hat, having lost it somewhere outside. He stepped into the dimly lit interior of a club he had not walked into since the establishment had removed his name from the exclusive list of clientele last year. Though he had been reinstated after his battle with Devonshire, he'd rather have been found dead in the Thames than spend one second in this room.

Devonshire sat in the corner, a painted oriental screen granting partial privacy. A single taper burned on the table. The club was nearly empty this time of the afternoon. His lordship was sitting with his elbows braced on the table, a drink in his hand. Ryan made a furious straight line toward the table. Despite the man's arrogance, there was about him a cumbersome sense of isolation as he cradled the glass with shaking hands.

Ryan only knew he'd kill the bastard.

Devonshire looked up with bleary eyes.

Seeing Ryan's approach startled him into instant sobriety. Seeing the murder in Ryan's eyes brought him to his feet. He might have called for help if he'd had half his wits. Without breaking pace, Ryan grabbed Devonshire by the velvet lapels and slammed him against the wall. "That was my wife you bloody attacked this afternoon!"

"Get your hands off me!"

"My daughter was in that building, you bastard. So was Lord Ravenspur's son!"

"I only defended myself from your brother! Ask her. She was trying to hold him back."

Shouts emanated from the room behind him. Ryan could find no balance between control and savage fury. "The constable won't arrest you because it's your word against hers, but you and I both know why you were in that building today. Did Rachel walk in on you while you were trying to pilfer more files-?"

"You don't want to do this, Donally," Devonshire choked out in fury. "I swear you will regret it. Check my pocket," he rasped. "She won't be testifying against me. Or I swear to God, I'll ruin her."

Some modicum of sanity reared its head and slapped manacles on his temper.

"The papers are in my jacket pocket. Bloody ask her about Edinburgh," he hissed. "Then tell me how much you are willing to pay for my silence."

Two men lunged toward Ryan, but he jammed his forearm against Devonshire's windpipe and, shoving his hand inside the man's jacket, retrieved the packet, the blind incaution of his emotions vanquished beneath something far more dangerous. "I swear on my life if you take this any further, when I've finished with you, you'll have only your entailed land on which to stand-or you'll be dead," he hissed in Devonshire's ear. "There won't be a place on this earth you can hide. Do I make myself clear?"

"I want my holdings returned. Everything you stole, I want returned."

His brother lay dying with a bullet in his chest. His daughter had been within fifty feet of the attack. Rachel had been within inches. "Just know that I am not my brother."

Ryan let himself be dragged away by the hands clasped to his arms. Devonshire stumbled forward, catching air in his lungs. His hands braced on his knees, he raised his head. "I could have you arrested, you bloody mick."

"You could try. But that was my wife you attacked this afternoon, and no man will argue my right to protect what is mine." Ryan jerked loose from the hands that held him. "Even from you, my lord."

"I'll have to ask you to leave, Mr. Donally," someone said, his voice timid in the chaos surround him.

"We'll have none of this sort of thing in our establishment."

"Naturally, true gentlemen settle their differences privately, with a civilized duel to the death. Succinct. To the point. Is that what you want?"

"I've finally gotten you where you deserve, Donally." No longer guarded or wary, Devonshire's face was smug, a Sassenach pig when it came to venerating himself before his peers. "Such are the vagaries that go into winning and losing one's fortune and the company one keeps in bed. You'll be back to me on your knees, Donally."

Ryan rotated on the ball of his foot, his fist in motion when someone grabbed it in midair. Lord Ravenspur had appeared in the crowd beside him, his hand wrapped around Ryan's fist like a steel vise, looking as if he'd been traveling hard, his gray eyes warning him. "I've a carriage outside," he said.

Ryan felt the first semblance of rationality descend and eclipse his muddled emotions. He shifted his gaze to Devonshire. "Stay away from my wife."

"An Irisher with airs." Devonshire straightened his cravat. "I can't imagine whatever gives you people the idea you have any rights at all."

Ryan pulled away from Ravenspur, his arm already in motion. But Ravenspur smashed Devonshire in the jaw first, the fluid momentum of his fist driving him off his feet, against the table, and sending him to the floor on the other side. His lordship dropped like a slab of beef on a chopping block. "An Irish commoner who was the Edinburgh pugilist champion," Ravenspur said over the prone body. "Feel lucky he let you live at all. And luckier still that I have for what you have done this day."

Ryan tore up the contents in the envelope and tossed the pieces into the fireplace on his way outside. "I didn't bloody need your help," he said between his teeth, as they walked shoulder and shoulder out of the door.

"Perhaps not, but if you had hit him, then who would be with your wife and daughter when the authorities carted your Irish ass off to jail."

He stopped at the top of the marble stairs. The rain poured off the eaves like a waterfall. Rain sheeted off the eaves and poured in waterfalls over the walkway. Rachel was standing at the bottom of the stairs, her clothes soaked, feebly clutching her cloak to her chest. "She insisted on following," Ravenspur said from beside him.

Her eyes were brilliant in the gray wet light, and Ryan knew he could drown in that gaze if he allowed himself, if he wasn't so appalled that his own actions had brought them all to this point in the first place.

Rachel sat on the chair beside the bed where Johnny lay unmoving. Wide strips of cloth bound his chest. She lay with her head on the mattress folded against the crook of her arm, nauseated and frightened.

The door opened, and a nurse entered with a bowl of clean water. Earlier, she'd heard Ryan's raised voice downstairs. A slew of officials had dropped by in the last three days since Johnny was brought to Lord Ravenspur's residence. Ryan had gone earlier with the constable. Looking at her brother-in-law lying like death on the bed brought the tears all over again.

"Who is downstairs?" she heard Lord Ravenspur's voice.

He sat in the chair across from her. A shadow roughened his jaw. He'd turned his head to speak to someone who had come into the room with the nurse. "An inspector from Scotland Yard, Your Grace," the butler's quiet voice came from the other side of the room. "He wishes to have a word with Miss Bailey. Mr. Donally left a half hour ago."

After the butler had gone, she gave the full force of her gaze to Lord Ravenspur.

"You've already given your deposition to the constable." His gray eyes stark in his face, he looked at herfrom across the bed. "Let Ryan handle the authorities, Miss...Rachel.""How can I?""Ryan knows what he's doing, Rachel. You have to stay out of this."Outside the rain had ruined another sunset. She walked to the window and gripped the curtain, Devonshire's words ringing in her head like broken mantra. I want Donally to know what it feels like to lose everything in the world.

This was her fault.

Her fault for not being smarter. For bringing the children to the office when they should have gone to the park. Brianna had retreated to the nursery and not come out. Ryan had been with Mary Elizabeth.

Rachel was afraid.

Not for herself. She didn't care for herself, but because she knew if Johnny died, Ryan would go afterDevonshire, and, this time he would kill him. He'd already proven himself capable. He would get himselfhanged.

She had not wept until she'd seen Ryan coming out of the club, until she'd touched him and felt his heartbeating beneath her palm. She'd wept, with Ryan holding her in the carriage, unable to stop the tears.

Now she couldn't stop crying, and she gripped the velvet drapery and wept silently within its softness."Look at you, Rache," Ryan was suddenly beside her. His palm at her nape, Ryan pressed his chinagainst her temple, his clothes damp from the rain. "Don't cry."

"Was Scotland Yard here to arrest Johnny?"

"No one is arresting Johnny."

He tipped her head back to look into her wet eyes with a possessiveness that left her afraid for him.

Rachel clung to him as he took her to bed. He undressed her and laid her beneath the blankets, and she fell asleep. Somewhere she dreamed she'd heard a little girl crying. When next she awakened, Ryan was gone, and it was night again.

The rain had stopped. The draperies drawn wide. Moonlight spilled into the room.

"Mr. Donally is with his daughter, mum," Elsie said from her chair beside the bed. "She had a nightmare."

Rachel wanted to go to her, but Mary Elizabeth's place was with her father. She pulled the cover to her

chest and slid to the edge of the bed. "Johnny..."

"His missus and bairns arrived a few hours ago. Colin brought them. Sir Christopher and Lady Alexandra arrived just after you fell asleep."

God, they were gathering for a funeral.

"Do you know if someone has been able to reach David?"

"Her Grace has been trying, mum. She has sent a personal courier since they cannot seem to reach him by telegraph."

Rachel twisted around to her bedside table and dragged the silver-domed clock around to face her. Strange, it was only eleven o'clock in the evening.