She did not answer, and at that, he turned. He did not wait for her to move or respond. He reached out; his hands still trembling with the aftershocks of the adrenaline, and hauled her against him. He didn’t care who was watching from the neighboring windows or the servants’ quarters. He crushed her against his damp wool coat, burying his face in the crook of her neck. His grip was so tight it was almost bruising, his fingers digging into the fabric of her cloak as if he were trying to pull her into his very skin.
“Speak to me. Are you hurt?” he whispered into her hair, his voice raw and frantic. “Tell me he did not hurt you. If he touched you, if he did anything, I’ll go back and finish it.”
“I-I-I’m fine,” she breathed, her own hands finding the lapels of his coat and clinging to him as if he were the only solid thing in a world turned to ice. “Nothing I haven’t had to deal with before. Ambrose, please stop. I am fine. I’m safe.”
He let out a shuddering, broken breath, holding her for one more long, forbidden moment. The rain soaked through their clothes. When he finally pulled back, it was only an inch.
His thumbs, stained with Presholm’s blood, brushed the freezing rain from her cheeks. He searched her gaze with a desperate, aching yearning that no amount of duty or avoidance could ever hide again.
In that moment, in the middle of a London street, the Duke was gone. There was only a man who had nearly lost the only thing that made him feel alive.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Inside the warmth of the foyer, the air felt thick with the adrenaline of the last few moments. Ambrose’s hand was still wrapped firmly around Imogen’s arm, his touch possessive and protective as he guided her into the drawing room.
“Your Grace, please,” Imogen whispered, her voice trembling as she tried to gently disengage. She smoothed her damp skirts with shaking hands. “You shouldn’t have done that. People… the neighbors… they saw. It was a mistake to cause such a scene …”
“A mistake? There is right, and there is wrong,” Ambrose’s voice was like a low peal of thunder. He turned to her, his eyes blazing. “The man had his hands on you, Imogen. He was accosting you on my very doorstep. No one, peer of the realm or otherwise, has the right to lay a finger on you in such a manner, nor any member of my household. I would have done more than break his nose if I thought it would stop him for good.”
“But the scandal, I cannot bear the thought of it!”
“To hell with the scandal,” he snapped, though his expression softened when he saw her flinch. He reached out, his leather-gloved hand hovering near her cheek before he pulled it back. “I will not apologize for defending a member of my household. What is the world coming to if villains like Presholm can…” His voice trailed off.
The quiet of the foyer was shattered by the front door being flung open with such violence that the brass handle dented the plaster. Lady Presholm didn’t just walk into the hall. No, she erupted into the space with force. Her silk skirts were soaked and heavy, and her umbrella dripped a trail of muddy rainwater across the pristine white marble.
“Your Grace! Have you lost your senses?” she shrieked, her voice hitting a register that made the crystal chandelier vibrate overhead. Her face was a mask of contorted fury, her rouge standing out in garish patches against her deathly pale skin. “I just found my husband collapsed in the foyer of our home like a common drunk, his face unrecognizable! You assaulted a peer of the realm! You broke the nose of an Earl! Overher?”
“You would do well to watch your tongue in my household, Lady Presholm.”
She leveled a trembling, gloved finger at Imogen then, her thin lips curling back to reveal her teeth in a snarl of pure, unadulterated loathing. “You would drag the Welton namethrough the gutter for this… this pathetic, penniless parasite? It is positively mad!”
“Lady Presholm, that is quite enough,” Ambrose warned. “You have entered my household uninvited.” The tone was low, vibrating with a tectonic pressure that should have silenced any sane person.
“You assaulted my husband!”
He stepped toward her, his shadow falling long and dark across the foyer. “Get out of my house before I have the footmen throw you into the street.”
“Oh, do you think I fear your posturing?” She laughed, a shrill, jagged sound that bordered on the hysterical. She turned her venomous gaze toward Imogen, who stood paralyzed, her hands clutching the maps of the world as if they could save her. “Do you even know what you’ve brought into your home, Your Grace? Do you know why I find her very breath an insult to a respectable household? She is a contagion. A moral rot. Has she told you of her heritage?”
“Please, My Lady,” Imogen whispered, her voice barely audible. “I beg of you, do not do this. This is all just a misunderstanding.”
“Watch your tongue, Lady Presholm,” Ambrose roared, his voice echoing off the lofty ceilings like a cannon blast. “I will not warn you again.”
“Why would I do that? Will you assaultme?”
“My Lady,” Imogen whispered.
“Do you want to continue to play house with a creature of the shadows?” Lady Presholm said as she stepped closer to Imogen, the scent of her rain-dampened perfume turning cloying and sour. “She isn’t some tragic waif, Your Grace. She is the living, breathing stain on my family’s honor!”
“I beg your pardon?” Ambrose said, breathless.
“You did not know? She is the byproduct of my late husband’s filth. She is the result of his disgusting lust for a common, third-rate stage dancer! Look at her! She has the same manipulative eyes as her mother, the same low-born cunning.”
The words hit Imogen like a knife in the back. She felt the blood drain from her extremities, a cold numbness spreading from her chest to her fingertips.
Her secret, the shame she had carried like a lead weight since her father’s death, was stripped bare in the most brutal, public fashion. And in front ofhim. She reached inside her dress and pulled out her beloved locket, feeling the cool metal of it in her hands.
Give me strength, mother, to face such cruelty.
