“I have every right,” he countered harshly. “She’s mine.”
He knew where the assertion had come from. It was a dark and dangerous place, deep within him. A place he had intentionally kept locked away, for fear of what would emerge should he ever open that door. But he couldn’t worry about that now.
“I’m not yours,” Rhiannon exclaimed, leaping from the bench and rushing to her beau’s side. “Has he hurt you?” she asked her companion.
The other man was rubbing his jaw. “I’ll live.” He turned furious eyes toward Aubrey. “You’re bloody mad, just like your sire.”
“Please, the two of you, cease this nonsense,” Rhiannon entreated, trying to come between them.
In a blink, the bastard had flung Rhiannon and her concern aside, pushing her away from them with vicious force. She stumbled in the gravel and fell backward with a cry. Aubrey lost his already tenuous grip on control. This man had dared not just to lure her alone into the gardens, but to put his hands on her. To hurt her. Now, he was going to pay for his sins.
Aubrey swung his fist wildly, gratified by the crunch of cartilage as he landed his punch on the bastard’s nose. Blood began spurting instantly, raining down the man’s face and soaking into his white shirt. He cupped a hand over his battered nose, trying to stem the flow.
“Apologize,” Aubrey demanded coldly, staring into the other man’s soul and letting him know just how desolate his own was.
He hoped the arsehole saw the madness burning deep inside him.
“I’m sorry,” the man was quick to offer, his bravado gone.
“Not to me,” Aubrey growled. “To her.”
He stalked toward Rhiannon, offering her his hand to help her to her feet. Predictably, she ignored his hand and rose on her own, brushing off her silk skirts and pinning him with a furious glare. “How could you?”
He would deal with her wrath later.
Aubrey glanced back at the sniveling, bleeding beau. “Apologize to the lady.”
“Forgive me,” the man said hastily, blood leaking through his fingers and dripping in fat droplets onto the gravel at his feet. “It won’t happen again.”
He began backing away from them, as if he feared Aubrey would follow, traveling in the opposite direction from which Aubrey had just come. Deeper into the maze, as it happened, but he was hardly inclined to offer the man counsel. Indeed, it would serve him right to get lost within the intricate Wingfield Hall labyrinth. Not only had the man dared to be too familiar with Rhiannon, he had alsopushedher.
He was fortunate Aubrey hadn’t ripped off his ballocks and made him eat them for supper. There had been the matter of the insult he’d paid him as well, but Aubrey wouldn’t dwell on that now, for Rhiannon was coming for him, blue eyes blazing.
“How dare you attack him?” she demanded as her former beau disappeared into the foliage, retreating like the coward he was. “All he was doing was chatting with me on the garden bench.”
Aubrey held her gaze, unaffected by her ire. “He pushed you. I’d break his nose a second time if I could as penance for daring to do you violence.”
“I don’t think he meant to shove me,” she protested, throwing back her shoulders in defiance.
“Don’t make excuses for him,” Aubrey snarled, feeling particularly vicious. “No man of honor would dare to hurl a woman to the ground as he did.”
“How rich.” She marched toward him, not stopping until they were breast to chest. “Because no man of honor would viciously attack someone for the supposed crime of merely sitting on a bench with me.”
“He intended to do far more. I can assure you of that. You’re damned fortunate I found you in time.”
Her vivid blue eyes sparkled in the sun as she glared up at him. “Perhaps I wished for him to do more.”
Aubrey wanted to touch her, but he didn’t trust himself. She was tempting, maddening, bloody glorious.His.He felt it to hismarrow in that moment, the rightness of it, as if there existed some unspoken innate connection between them. Truth be told, he’d always felt it, but he hadn’t been in her orbit long enough to allow himself to truly experience the magnetic pull.
He flexed his fingers at his sides instead, ignoring the ache in his knuckles from punching her companion. “What is his name?”
“I…don’t know,” she admitted.
“Ah, so you don’t know who he is, whether he’s married or a bachelor, whether he’s kind or cruel, but you wanted him to do what, Rhiannon? Kiss you? Lift your skirts and take your maidenhead on a stone bench?”
“Why should you care what I want?” she asked, raising her voice until it echoed off the maze walls. “Shouldn’t you be off with your paramour somewhere?”
“Did you accompany him to the gardens because you were jealous of Perdita?” he demanded, incredulous at the notion.
