“This is the thief, Your Grace?” asked a tall, mustachioed man who was lean as a bean.
“Yes,” Longleigh answered. “He was a trusted guest here at my home, but now he refuses to leave. Only look to the evidence. He wears the jewelry he has stolen from me.”
The policeman nodded. “The sapphire ring with the head of a lion, I see plainly upon his hand.”
Adrian was filled with ice.
“The pocket watch and cufflinks as well,” Longleigh said. “I have no notion of what else he has taken. Search him thoroughly, if you please.”
Thought ceased to exist. Understanding hit him like an unforgiving fist to the jaw.
Longleigh was having him arrested for stealing.
With an animalistic roar, Adrian launched himself at the bastard who had sired him. His own hands were balled, and he was swinging. But before he could make contact, the policemen were upon him.
“You can see how violent he is,” Longleigh said coolly, as if no emotion dwelled within him. As if he were nothing more than an icy monster. “He has just attacked me now. I will bring charges against him for assaulting a peer of the realm as well.”
“No!” Adrian cried, trying to free himself.
But he was outnumbered, and that was when the clubs began flying, connecting with bone.
The voice cut through the panic barraging him, the attack which he could not control. Not just the voice. Not any voice.Hers.Soft and yet commanding. The voice he had heard in his sleep almost every night.
“Fetch me some water, Boyle, if you please, and a cloth for his brow,” Tilly was ordering a servant.
Slowly, the fragments of the past fled. He became aware of his surroundings. He was slumped on a settee in the blue sitting room. The same one he had been sitting upon when Longleigh had burst over the threshold that day.
Oh Christ, oh Christ.He was going to besick.
Someone must have dragged him here. Servants? Footmen? Did it matter?
“Mr. Hastings?”
Soft, smooth hands cupped his cheeks. Hands he had dreamed of. A touch he craved. He had not been touched with anything other than the intent to harm for as long as he could recall. His skin ached.
He cried out.
“Have I hurt you?”
Her worried countenance swam before him.
“Going to be ill.” The mumbled words fled him.
Enough, he supposed. She flitted away, returned with a basin she had procured as if by miracle.
Just in time.
A violent clench of his gut.
He snatched the vessel from her, bent over it, and emptied his stomach.
He was disgusted, loathed himself for this unexpected weakness. This reversal of progress. How humiliating to slip into madness before her.
But there was her hand again, soothing. Up and down his spine. She had not gone. There was a dip of the cushion at his side. Fingers slipped over his nape, rubbing his neck in gentle, sure touches.
“You should go,” he bit out. “I am not fit in this state.”
“And leave you to be ill on your own?” She continued her ministrations. Slow and steady and determined.
