“I’ve got ’er!” a wiry, unfamiliar man crowed from beneath a grimy hat. His clawlike fingers bit into Mena’s arm as she struggled to free herself. “I’ve got the viscountess!”
A cold fear Mena had never before experienced speared her chest as five men detached from where they stood posted next to every exit to the platform, and began to hurry in their direction. They were dressed to blend with the crowd in plain clothing, but each of them had the demeanor of hired muscle. Two of them brandished clubs and one swung irons much like the ones she’d been subjected to in Belle Glen.
Somehow, they’d found her. They’d known that Philomena St. Vincent, Viscountess Benchley, was going to arrive on a train at Euston Station today.
How?
This couldn’t be happening.
“Let me go!” she cried, twisting in the thin man’s surprisingly strong grip.
By the time Mena processed that the sickening snap she heard before the thin man’s scream was his arm breaking, Liam had already planted a knee in her assailant’s face with such force, blood exploded onto the white stone floor and sullied Liam’s fine gray trousers.
He didn’t seem to notice, let alone care. He thrust her behind him, turning to face the others, who sprinted toward them now.
Mena would have thought that the first one to reach them was a big bruiser if he hadn’t been advancing on someone the size of Liam Mackenzie. Running at full speed, the man raised his club and prepared a vicious and dangerous swing at Liam’s head.
Liam never let him get close enough. He lifted his boot and drove it into the man’s chest with such force, the bruiser seemed to collapse around it, folding in on himself. Liam finished him with an uppercut that sent more blood flinging into the air, and somehow he ended up with the man’s club.
Chaos erupted after a breathless moment of pure shock. Screaming travelers scattered through the pillars of the portico and spilled onto Drummond Street, or they retreated to the stairs leading to the great hall to avoid the violence.
Mena wanted to lose herself within their ranks. With sickening, detached clarity she knew her ruse was at an end. Even if Liam managed to defeat all these men, there would be questions. Ones she’d have no choice but to answer.
But she couldn’t bring herself to run. Didn’t take the moment to escape, because the true sight of the Demon Highlander pinned her feet to the ground in pure, unmitigated awe.
Realizing the threat he posed, the three advancing men began to fan out and attempt to flank him, one with a club, one brandishing a pistol, and the other swinging the irons like a mace.
Liam took no time to consider his enemy or formulate a plan. True to his reputation, he lunged forward, an animal of pure aggression and predatory rage. Fearless. Flawless.
And furious.
He didn’t seem to hear the screams of the people around him, nor did he note those who may have been in his way. He merely charged forward with all the power of a Spanish bull.
Dropping his shoulder as he reached his first quarry, Liam drove it into the man’s chest with enough force to lift him from his feet. Using the momentum, he flung the man up and over his shoulder like a rag doll and dropped him on his back. Turning, Liam stomped the sprawled man very low in the ribs, doubtless breaking a few, before scooping up a second club.
A terrible smile pulled that hard mouth away from his teeth in a wolfish snarl before he turned for the two men only now rounding a small mountain of luggage heaped onto the platform.
Jani and the footman ducked behind the luggage before Liam advanced, striking his two clubs against each other to make ready.
The one with the pistol aimed at Liam’s enormous chest and fired. He got two rounds off before Liam reached him and struck him on the face with his club. The pistol clattered to the platform as the man’s head jerked to the side with such speed, Mena feared his neck had broken.
After two more swings of Liam’s clubs, the irons went flying end over end across the floor right before the man holding them did the same thing in an eerily similar fashion.
The Demon Highlander hadn’t a scratch on him. Not one drop of blood was his own. How was that even possible?
It was Mena’s scream of pain as a hand wound into her hair that stopped Liam short. He whirled around, and roared as she was brandished once again as a shield against him.
Mena’s captor didn’t have to speak for her to recognize him. This grip she knew. This man she feared.
This moment marked the end of all hope.
“How kind you are, Lord Ravencroft, to bring back my missing wife.”
She noted the moment the singular word permeated the haze of crimson violence surrounding Liam.
Wife.
Heedless of the blood of his enemies staining his clothes, Liam drew himself up to a regimental stance, long and wide, and undeniably commanding.
“Ye will take yer hands off her,” he commanded in the voice that sent many a hardened soldier scurrying to do his bidding. “And then ye’ll tell me who the fuck ye think ye are.”
“I’m well within my rights to subdue my property in any manner I see fit,” Gordon St. Vincent, her husband, taunted Ravencroft from behind her, though he released her hair and subdued her wrists, instead. Every movement he made was calculated, and she knew he did this to mitigate any pathos her pain might cause. “Permit me to introduce us both,” Gordon said genially. “As I have it on good authority, you’ve never truly met the fugitive you’ve been harboring. I am Lord Gordon St. Vincent, the Viscount Benchley, and this”—Gordon gave Mena a firm shake—“is Lady Philomena St. Vincent, my reluctant viscountess and wife of five years.”
The marquess stared at her with unblinking dark chasms for eyes. “Ye’re … married?”
Mena strained and twisted against the cruel grip of the man whom she’d vowed to love, honor, and obey in all things. Her master in the eyes of the law. She knew what Liam saw behind her. An elegant man with impeccable manners and a deceptively mild and trustworthy demeanor.
“Yes.” The word ripped from her on a hiss of pain. “You don’t understand what I was running from. You can’t know what it was like. What he did to me.” Even the Demon Highlander couldn’t imagine the depths of Gordon’s cruelty. Liam was nothing like him, though he was a soldier, a destroyer of life. Gordon had destroyed her will to live, and Mena knew that to be the greater sin.
Liam took a step toward them, tightening his grip on the club as if he’d decided to free her.
“What it was like for you?” Gordon scoffed, his breath stinking of opium smoke and his father’s expensive cigars. “What about me, Philomena? Can you comprehend what it is like to be married to a madwoman? Do you realize how selfish it was to run from the asylum and leave no one with any clue as to your whereabouts? You almost killed poor mother, Philomena. We have been sick with worry.”
Liam’s step faltered at the word madwoman.
“Like hell!” Mena accused, sending a pleading look toward the man she loved as suspicion brewed beneath the tempest in his eyes. “They committed me to the asylum because they’d spent my money and I was no longer useful to them. Because I turned his sister in to the authorities when she had a young actress murdered. I am married to a monster, Liam. And he left me in that place to rot indefinitely. I had no choice but to escape. I am not mad. Ask your—ask Dorian Blackwell, he’s the one who facilitated my flight.”
A dark look crossed Ravencroft’s features, one that told her that Liam planned to do just that.
“You witnessed my wounds,” she continued, hating how her voice began to climb to a hysterical pitch. “The bruises, the torture. I refuse to go back there. I’ll die first!”
“My poor unfortunate wife. She’s a delusional woman, Lord Ravencroft, and you’re not the first to be taken in by her.” Gordon tightened his hold on her and Mena heard the boot falls of someone else bringing chains. “When she escaped Belle Glen Asylum, I hadn’t seen her in months. Her wounds were self-inflicted; it was part of why I had to lock her away in the first place.”
Twisting and jerking in his hold with all her strength, she watched in horror as suspicion began to drown the anger on Liam’s features. The odds were against her. Liam’s first wife had been insane, and she could read the doubt that created within him. The reticence to go through something like that again, to put his children through it. Any reasonable man would pause to wonder if he’d been had.
“Your every action has been one of insanity.” Mena didn’t miss the mocking note beneath Gordon’s tone as one iron clamped over her wrist with cold and gritty finality. “A viscountess employed as a governess? Changing your very identity? Seducing a marquess whilst still married? You’re seriously ill, my darling, I’m taking you back where they can take care of you.”
“This is my secret,” she cried to Liam, as desperation cracked in her raw throat. Her shoulders wrenched painfully as she struggled toward him. “This is what I was afraid to reveal. What I was going to confess. I’ll tell you everything, Liam, just please don’t let them take me.”
Mena never thought she’d see something as human and pedestrian as indecision in Liam’s eyes. Mena’s desperation became desolation. He didn’t trust her, and who could blame him? Guilt and pain crushed any hope she had left. With a cry, she was able to wrench her arm away from Gordon and whirl on him, landing a blow to the aristocratic features she couldn’t believe she’d once found handsome.
“Unhand me,” she demanded.
Gordon returned her strike with the back of his hand, and Mena’s knees buckled as, for a precious moment, the lights of Euston Station dimmed as shadows danced, threatening her consciousness.
In her periphery, she saw Liam lunge forward, retribution etched onto his features.
Her husband had just signed his own death warrant, and thank God for that. Even if he didn’t believe her, Liam’s honor wouldn’t allow her to be struck.
She turned toward him, anticipating the moment he’d come between her and the man she’d grown to fear and hate.
The unmistakable blast of a pistol shot echoed through the portico with such deafening reverberation, even time seemed to hold its breath.
Mena whirled to see that Gordon was as stunned as she, the two men at his side looking past her in openmouthed astonishment. There was not a pistol among them.
Her heart stalled, then dropped into her stomach as she slowly turned back to see her worst fear confirmed. A pool of red bloomed over the left chest of Liam’s gray waistcoat.
Mena cried out and reached for him with her one free hand, burning to go to him, unable to claw herself from her husband’s punishing grip.
Liam’s expression turned from astonished to enraged in an instant, and he leaped around, his bludgeon lifted to swing at his attacker, heedless of his injury.
Mena saw him hesitate, and she couldn’t fathom why. Had they missed one of Gordon’s thugs? What did he see that seemed to deflate his lungs and extinguish the inferno of his fury?
The hesitation cost him dearly as a heavy piece of luggage connected with his temple.
Mena screamed and lunged forward as he fell, but someone seized her free wrist and clamped the shackle around it, leaving her to watch in horror as Liam’s magnificent body folded to the platform, landing hard enough to shake the ground.
A ragged sound escaped her as it uncovered just who held a pistol in one hand, and sharp-edged baggage in the other.
“No,” she sobbed, as the resolute anger in Jani’s dark eyes was blurred by the storm of her hysterical tears.
