Lord Falchester never finished because instantly, an iron hand latched onto the back of his coat, swift and violent, and ripped him away from her. Isabella gasped, her eyes wide in horror.
Lord Falchester stumbled backward with a strangled grunt, nearly falling onto the stone path. Isabella staggered, breathing hard, then she looked up and saw who had intervened.
Cassian. Her husband.
He stood between them, shoulders broad, body rigid with fury, his grey eyes lit with a storm so fierce, the entire garden felt colder for it.
A crowd had gathered at the garden entrance behind him, ladies and gentlemen drawn by the sudden commotion, their whispers rippling like wind through reeds.
“Is that the Duke of Everthorne?”
“What on earth?”
“Is that Lord Falchester with the Duchess of Everthorne?”
“Why are they alone together?”
“Oh dear heavens, the scandal.”
The words sparked like flame catching dry grass, and Isabella’s heart dropped to her stomach as she took in the crowd, but most especially her husband. He had seen them, and he’d heard those words.
Isabella’s stomach roiled, sinking, plummeting, because she knew exactly how this looked and how it would be twisted. She had been standing too close to Lord Falchester when Cassian had arrived. Lord Falchester’s hand had been on her wrist, and no one would believe he’d grabbed it violently or the horrible words he said to her and the even more horrible things he insinuated.
Lord Falchester straightened, his expression flickering between fear and smug triumph. “Your Grace,” he said, smoothing his coat, “surely you do not imagine that I…”
Cassian did not look at him. Not once. Not yet.
Isabella’s heart thumped as she watched him. She couldn’t tell his thoughts, and her breath came unevenly, her throat tightening painfully at her inability to tell.
Even though she had done nothing wrong, even though she had gone to help Emily?—
She hadn’t the liberty to finish her thoughts when, suddenly, Cassian stalked forward toward Lord Falchester, anger blazing in his eyes.
Cassian did not merely see Falchester’s fingers around Isabella’s wrist; he felt it. As though those same filthy hands had reached into the locked recess of his memory and dragged forth ghosts he had spent years burying.
The garden blurred. The lantern glow, the winter roses, the gathered silhouettes, everything vanished beneath a red haze that reminded him too closely of another night. A cold barn, rope biting into his arms, the stench of sweat and whisky as his captors loomed. The helplessness he felt.
Lord Falchester’s smirk became their smirks, and his grip became their grip.
Something in him snapped.
“How. Dare. You!”
The words rumbled from deep inside him, not spoken so much as torn from him, and the entire crowd behind him froze at the low, feral promise threaded through each syllable. Even Isabella flinched.
Falchester straightened, indignant, smoothing his sleeve as though he had been affronted. “Your Grace, this is hardly a…”
He never finished because Cassian’s fist collided with his jaw in a brutal, cracking arc that echoed through the rose garden like a gunshot. A collective gasp rose from the onlookers; someone shrieked, another stumbled backward, knocking into a hedge.
Falchester staggered, clutching his jaw.
“You, you struck me!”
“You put your hands on her?” Cassian roared, advancing on him. “On my wife?”
Another punch landed, this one squarely against Lord Falchester’s cheekbone, sending him sprawling to the ground with a strangled cry. The guests recoiled, skirts and coats rustling.
“Cassian!” Isabella stepped forward, breathless. “Stop—please, just stop?—”
