The smile that spread across his wife’s face as she moved toward him made it easy to ignore the arsehole who knocked into his side.
“The surprise is that I didn’t order two meat pies. I ordered three.” He reached into his inner pocket. “But if you’re going to be a right pain in the arse, I’m not inclined to share.”
Heated voices rose behind them, and an elbow stabbed into Sin’s back. He looked over his shoulder and growled. Bloody students.All wandering about with their heads down reading some leaflet, not looking where they were going.
“There he is!” someone shouted. The crowd turned like a flock of birds in flight, all focused on the man in professor’s gown who strolled a couple steps behind Winnifred.
“Now what?” Sin muttered. He threaded his way through the crowd toward his wife.
“Oy!” Sutton called. He pulled a paper-wrapped object from his coat. “Don’t you want—” A projectile smashed into the pie, meat and cheese exploding out onto his shirt and cravat. “What the …”
The rest of Sutton’s words were drowned out by the crowd’s dull roar. It surged forward across the lawn.
Toward Winnifred.
The professor’s face went slack with shock. A student shoved a pamphlet at him, screaming in his face.
Sin couldn’t distinguish the words, but he saw the rage. The inchoate violence that took hold of the student’s face. The face of everyone in the crowd. The mob stripped away their individuality, their ability to reason.
Another stone was thrown, striking the professor in the stomach. The man clutched his satchel to his chest and spun, his eyes going wide. He darted through a hole in the crowd, knocking into Winnifred.
Winnifred stumbled forward, throwing her hands out as another body hit hers, and disappeared from Sin’s sight.
His heart clogged his throat. His gaze never moving from the spot she disappeared, Sin powered his way through the mob, tossing students aside as they got in his way. “Winnifred!” Something stung his ear. “Winnifred!”
The professor’s scream was just background noise to Sin. Whatever the man had done to earn the wroth of Glasgow’s finest, Sin didn’t know. Didn’t care. Only his wife mattered.
He reached the spot where she’d disappeared and searched the ground. Two students tussled, getting in his way, and he grabbed them by the back of the neck and tossed them aside. Where the hell was she? She’d fallen right—
“Sin!”
He jerked his head to the left. There, rising from the ground, Summerset stood, Winnifred in his arms.
She had her arms wrapped around his friend’s neck, her face buried in his chest, and rage flooded his veins at the sight of his sensible, stoic wife in fear.
He shouldered his way to his wife and friend. Placing his fingertips under her jaw, he turned her head to face him. Relief weakened his knees when her sky-blue eyes met his. She looked a bit rattled, but her gaze was steady and she appeared unharmed. He took her from Summerset’s arms and clutched her to him, burying his face in her hair.
Safe.
Someone pushed into his back, and Summerset grabbed his arm to steady him.
For now.
He looked at his friend. “We have to get out of this.”
Summerset clenched his jaw and nodded. “Where’s Sutton?” he shouted.
Sin shook his head.
Summerset side-stepped another pair of fighting students, sweeping the leg of one of the boys and grabbing the back of the shoulders of the other, yanking him backwards to the ground. The boys blinked up at them, stunned, and the earl gave a satisfied nod. “Come on.” He turned and threaded his way through the riot.
A flash of wild hair, a dark beard. Sin swung his head to his right. He knocked Summerset’s shoulder. “Over there. Trying to protect the professor.”
Sutton threw another punch, curled his back to toss the arsehole jumping on it over his shoulder.
Summerset changed course. “Get her out of here,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll help Sutton.”
Sin hesitated. He didn’t like leaving a fight. didn’t want to abandon his friends when the odds were about fifty to two.
