“If you have nothing further to add to this case, I must insist you, sir, and the princess remove yourselves out of these doors.” Dr. Stan flipped open the folder in front of him and squinted between the filed papers and the new report in his hand. “In the meantime this board will suspend its vote. My apologies for extending your purgatory, Your Grace, but rather we should discover all of the truth than condemn a man for his duties as a physician. If you could but give us a few minutes more for discussion.”
“Certainly.” Wynn turned back to his wife, wanting with all his heart to leap across the low wall and kiss her senseless between words of love, but the impending danger outweighed all else. “Go to Savoy Hotel and wait for me in my room. You’ll be safe there until we can decide what to do next.”
The faintest hint of a smile curved her lips. “
What was it she had said once? Russians were never ruled by their hearts because they were too fond of misery? Perhaps when they returned to Thornhill they could let go of the misery and put more effort into matters of the heart. Their hearts.
“Yes, because that’s what
“No worries, Mac. I protect Angel with life until you arrive. After you arrive too.” Furrows wrinkled Leonid’s brow. “Never
much like
With that inarguable proclamation, he offered Svetlana his arm and escorted her from the room. She glimpsed over her shoulder and smiled at Wynn, making his heart soar as the door swung shut.
The gunshot echoed outside the door.
Wynn leaped over the divider and barreled down the aisle. Bursting into the corridor, he stumbled over Leonid sprawled on the floor in a thin puddle of blood.
Clutching the bleeding wound in his arm, Leonid fired off in rapid Russian, curse words if Wynn’s ear picked them out correctly, before switching to English. “That way, Mac! Go!”
Wynn sprinted after the distant echo of feminine heels clicking down the tiled hall. He knocked past men in white coats and orderlies pushing trollies until the heel clicks vanished behind a slamming door leading to the back alley of the building. Ripping open the door, he raced out.
“Wynn!” Svetlana screamed as she was shoved into a waiting carriage.
Dressed in Hugh’s stolen clothing, Sergey was wild-eyed as the devil himself as he leaped into the carriage after her and slammed the door. His accomplice, a man wearing all black and sporting a red armband, cracked the reins over the horses and the carriage shot off like a bullet.
Chapter 32
Svetlana stared at the man seated across from her in the carriage. A face familiar to her yet the man within utterly unknown.
“How could you do this? How could you turn traitor and become a Bolshevik? I thought I knew you better.”
“I am not one of them. Whatever foul thoughts you may have for me at present, at least know that truth.” Sweat dotted Sergey’s pale brow. Gripping a gun in one hand until his knuckles whitened, he withdrew a soiled handkerchief from his pocket with his other equally strained hand and swiped his face. Never in her life had she seen him without a clean linen or with frayed cuffs. He had been living rough since he’d fled Thornhill, and the loss did not agree with him.
Quaking inside, she refused to let him see her fear. “Then it is well you cannot read my mind, for it is black enough to blot out all manner of niceties. How dare you turn a gun on me? Stop this carriage at once.”
“There will be no stopping, at least not until we reach our destination. And do not think to take your leave early. The doors are locked.”
The secured shades closed off all recognition of the passing landmarks Svetlana could use to determine their route. Any clue along the way for a means of escape. Without visual aid, she tried following the map of Glasgow in her mind, but as the carriage veered around corner after corner the map tangled into confusion. “Where might our destination be?”
“You are going home. To Russia.”
“To be executed.”
A sob escaped from Svetlana’s mother who cowered against her daughter’s side. Dressed in a fine traveling ensemble of black and gray, she clearly had not been kidnapped. Her face had registered absolute shock when Svetlana was unceremoniously stuffed inside the waiting carriage.
Svetlana put her arm around her shaking mother. Whatever tension existed between them no longer mattered. “What did he tell you, Mama?”