He nodded thoughtfully. “The women in my family are not weak by any means, and I imagine you are their equal. Most ladies would have cowered in fright last evening instead of coming to my rescue. You threw yourself into the battle like an avenging angel—a very impressive feat.”
She gave Traherne another deeply puzzled look. “So when I begged you to end your pursuit of Ophelia, you were simply being ornery by not telling me your plans and letting me think the worst of you?”
“Perhaps a little. As I said, I don’t enjoy being extorted. You might aim your pistol elsewhere, darling. Being held at gunpoint is rather discomfiting.”
“It is nothing more than you deserve,” she muttered even as she let the muzzle fall so that it was pointing at the flagstone. “You should have told me last night what you were about.”
“I found it much more pleasurable to ruffle your feathers and demand a kiss in exchange for my cooperation.”
He was boasting of his underhanded tactic? Shaking her head in disbelief, Venetia couldn’t hold back a reluctant chuckle. How did he manage to make her bristle in one breath, then laugh the next?
He shared her amusement, judging by the laughter in his blue eyes. A moment later, however, his expression changed. He was gazing over the railing at her back, she realized, as if something had caught his eye down in the gardens behind her.
Absently Venetia glanced over her shoulder and saw a figure below. One of the staff, she presumed, since he wore the Traherne livery and carried an implement like a shovel, raised to chest height.
By the time she returned her attention to Traherne, his face had darkened. Then suddenly he lunged at her and pulled her away from the railing. Spinning them both around so that his back was to the gardens, he pushed her down.
As she felt herself falling, Venetia gasped, too shocked to react otherwise. She was vaguely aware of the explosive retort in the distance. Then Traherne’s body jerked and he gave a soft grunt.
Even though he tried to cushion the impact with his right arm and shoulder, she landed hard, the breath knocked out of her.
It took her a moment to regain her senses and realize that he’d thrown her to the stone floor, behind the terrace rail.
She was pinned partly beneath him, but she recovered more quickly than he did. “What in blazes are you doing?”
“Were you…hit?” he demanded in a rough pant.
“Hit? What d
o you mean?”
Gritting his teeth, he rolled to one side, relieving her of his weight. “That was a rifle shot I heard.”
“That man below shot at us?” she repeated dumbly.
A surge of fear and fury flooded her veins. Without thinking, Venetia picked up her pistol and struggled to her feet. As she went to the terrace railing, Traherne tried to grasp her skirt but missed. “Keep your head down! The shooter could still be down there.”
She started to aim her pistol, for what purpose she wasn’t certain since her weapon wasn’t loaded and she couldn’t return fire.
“He must have fled,” she muttered. “I don’t see him any longer.”
Turning around, she saw that Traherne had been slow to rise and had merely pushed himself up to a sitting position. He was holding his side at waist level, and blood was seeping through his fingers, she realized in horror.
“Dear God…were you shot?”
“I believe so.”
Her shock deepened as a bright red stain spread farther across the pristine white of his shirt.
Alarmed by the sight, she knelt beside him. He was already pulling the tails of his shirt from his breeches in order to examine the extent of the damage.
A coarse gouge scored the fleshy part of his waist, just below his lowest rib.
“It is a flesh wound,” he observed unsteadily. “Not life threatening. The bullet missed any bone.”
“If you like, I could use your cravat to fashion a bandage until you can send for a doctor.”
Wincing in obvious pain, he unwound his intricately tied cravat from around his neck, then gingerly lifted his shirt over his head.