Slowly she pulled her fingers from his neck cloth and looked at them. They were stained red, true. But it was a curious red, a thin red, a red not at all like the blood she had stanched when he had been wounded in the explosion. This red was…well, it was false. And if the blood on his shirt was not real…

“Aaaaaaaaaaagh!” she shrieked as she threw herself over her husband’s body, then shrieked again, louder, to cover up his grunt as she landed hard on his chest. She wailed, she ranted, she raised her fists to heaven and promised retribution on a God who would be so cruel as to take her husband, she did all but pour ashes on her hair and don sackcloth.

“Lady Charlotte, please, if you would just step back, I have seen many wounds. Perhaps I can help your husband.”

Charlotte looked over her shoulder and glared at Lord Beverly for a moment before transferring her watery gaze to that of her brother. “He’s gone, he’s gone, that horrible man has murdered my beloved husband. Oh, woe is me!”

“Truly, my lady, I feel certain I can help him, if you will just move aside—”

“Go away,” she hissed under her breath before loudly claiming she would die without her Alasdair.

“Here, you,” Lord Beverly said. “Attend to your mistress. She is temporarily deranged and knows not what she says. If you will take Lady Charlotte to her carriage, I will see how badly you’ve wounded McGregor, although what the world is coming to when one’s man shoots one’s rival for one…”

“He’s dead!” Batsfoam, to whom this last was addressed, shrieked as he knelt by Geoffrey’s body. “I’ve killed Lord Carlisle! He’s dead, dead, dead! Oh, that it would bring my beloved master back!”

“Dead? Both of them?” Lord Beverly wrung his hands.

Charlotte sighed. Clearly Lord Beverly wasn’t privy to whatever plan Dare and, she suspected, McGregor—no doubt his wound was of the same type as Dare’s—had enacted. Thus, it was up to her to save the situation. With a heartbreaking sob, she threw herself upon Algernon, sobbing into his collar and clutching his shoulders in her attempt to keep him from examining Dare or Geoffrey.

“Listen carefully,” she whispered in his ear while Crouch and Batsfoam quickly arranged a blanket over Dare’s body, then did likewise for the other fallen man. “If you do not stop trying to see Dare’s body, I will harm you in ways you cannot even begin to understand. Do I make myself clear?”

Lord Beverly stammered something as Charlotte peeled herself off him, turning to face her brother. She had no idea what Dare intended with his plan—she, after all, was only his wife, and thus not allowed the privilege of being made cognizant of his plans, a fact that she would punish him for later—but she knew enough to guess how to act.

“He’s dead,” she told the two men, her lower lip quivering of its own volition as she stood slowly. The words were so chilling, she had the strongest urge to peek under the blanket to make sure he was quite all right before continuing, but Charlotte was nothing if not determined. She fought that need down and trusted that Dare hadn’t lied when he told her he wouldn’t leave her. “They’re both dead. You killed them. You killed my Dare.”