Silk and Shadows(150)

Three steps at a time, he raced up the stairs. A second scream led him to the bedchamber at the end of the corridor. This time he was sure the voice was Sara's.

To his surprise, the knob turned in his hand. Knowing it might be a trap, he ducked before opening the door. Keeping low to present a difficult target, he charged into the room.

At his explosive entrance, the struggling figures on the floor stared up at him, immobilized by shock. Peregrine's gaze met his wife's for a fractional moment.

Relief flared in her dark eyes, followed instantly by concern. "Look out, Mikahl, he has a gun!"

Simultaneously Weldon leapt to his feet and reached under his coat, snarling, "You foolish bastard, you have delivered yourself into my hands."

Afraid that a bullet might hit his wife, Peregrine held his fire. "Sara, get out of the way!"

As she scrambled to one side of the room, Weldon cocked and leveled his pistol. Peregrine shot first, aiming high so that he would not endanger Sara.

The bullet only grazed Weldon's right shoulder, but it forced him to drop his gun. The weapon skidded across the floor, mercifully not discharging.

Now it was just the two of them, man to man, without firearms to lend false superiority. Peregrine launched himself at Weldon, staggering the other man with a ferocious blow to the jaw. Weldon gasped, but he had studied boxing in his youth, and old skills returned to help him block the next blow.

It was a savage, hand-to-hand struggle without rules or quarter. For Peregrine, twenty-five years fell away in an instant, and once more he was an abused, betrayed child.

But the wheel of fortune had spun around, and this time all the power and all the choices were his. He pummeled his enemy's flesh with fierce joy, every one of Weldon's groans a balm to his wounded spirit.

Weldon was heavier and he fought with the strength of madness, but he was older and softer than his opponent, and without a weapon he had no chance. After absorbing several minutes of bruising punishment, Weldon crashed to the floor, face bleeding and expression dazed.

Sliding the knife from his boot, Peregrine dropped to one knee beside the other man. "You laughed when I swore vengeance, but finally your doom has found you." His voice throbbing with hatred, he laid the razor-sharp steel on Weldon's throat and drew a thin crimson line with delicate precision. "For twenty-five years I have lived for this moment."

The touch of the blade brought Weldon back to alertness. With a surge of defiance he sneered, "If not for me, you would be a slave in Islam or an ignorant sailor. You should thank me for spurring you to better yourself."

Peregrine almost drove the knife through the other man's throat. Barely in time he stopped himself, not yet ready to send his enemy to hell. "Do you think that Jamie McFarland would have thanked you for what you did? Or any of his sailors, who died as slaves because you would not lift a finger to help them?" he said with ice-eyed fury. "A pity that you will die too quickly to suffer as much as you made them suffer."

He shifted the knife from Weldon's throat to his groin, driving the tip through fabric to rest on flesh. "Shall I do to you what you wanted done to me, Weldon?" he said softly. "How long will it take you to bleed to death if I decide to kill you by castration?"

"You filthy savage!" Weldon was no longer the urbane businessman and aristocrat. Face twisted with terror, he tried desperately to grab his assailant's weapon.

Peregrine lifted the knife out of his enemy's reach and struck a paralyzing blow to the other man's solar plexus with his left hand. As Weldon convulsed, retching with pain, Peregrine touched the knife to his enemy's eye socket.

"Shall we play a game of blind-man's buff?" he asked with mocking courtesy. "First I will gouge out your eyes. Every time you make a wrong move, I will slice away another part of your body. An English version of the Chinese death of a thousand cuts."

"I am glad for what I did to you," Weldon spat out, glaring up at his tormentor. "I only wish I had killed you in Tripoli."

"It was your mistake that you did not." Peregrine soared on wings of fiery justice, savoring the culmination of his mission. Weldon was at his mercy and nothing could save his enemy now.

Then Peregrine felt the pressure of someone's gaze.

In his rage he had forgotten when and where he was, but now he glanced up and saw Sara. She stood flattened against the wall, watching him with agonized sibyl eyes. Sara, his conscience and salvation.

Her expression cooled Peregrine's fury like a shock of ice water. The raw anguish that fueled his rage ebbed and was replaced by vivid memories of Sara's warmth, the touch of her lips on his ravaged back, the sweet totality of her love.