He could not confront De Rees here, though his body burned with a desire to strike him where he stood.
Amelia’s implorations alone stopped him.
Placing his hand over hers where it rested on his arm, calming himself, he laced his fingers through hers, bidding her to look up at him.
“Then it iswewho should leave,” he muttered, though his body pulsed with the urge to cut through the room and knock the smile from De Rees’s face. “I will inform your uncle of our departure immediately.”
Baron Spencer, interrupted in the middle of another story, leaned in close as Nicholas whispered that they were leaving.
“Is it Amelia? Her health?” the uncle asked, shooting a nervous look at his niece. “Why then, yes, of course, Your Grace. We willmiss you both, but of course, you should go. I will have my driver take you to Riverside Court at once.”
Leading Amelia out of the drawing room with Baron Spencer, Nicholas thanked the man as they parted ways. Once their coats were secured, nearby staff were ordered to inform their valet and maid that they were leaving, and their trunks were prepared silently upstairs.
Outside on the portico, Nicholas guided Amelia down the steps. The sky was the color of an old bruise overhead, the first stars breaking through the dark. He could not bring himself to speak to her, worried that anything he might say would cause another fit.
Suddenly, the grunt of footsteps crunching against the gravel sounded from beside them.
A darkly clad figure approached from the side of the house, pausing a few yards from them to sit beneath a window. The tip of a cheroot burned bright orange in the gloom, the smell strong and intoxicating as it carried on the air toward them.
“Who…?” Nicholas murmured to himself, squinting toward the figure. A sense of familiarity washed over him. The height. The length of his limbs. A shock of thick hair. “No…”
Before he could act, Amelia pointed out the carriage driving toward them from the opposite side of the house. A lantern lit the driver’s way forward, the Spencer family crest emblazoned on the side of the vehicle.
It parked before Amelia, and the driver descended to escort her inside. Then came the servants. His valet, her maid. But Nicholas’s gaze remained fixed on that spot of fire in the darkness.
“Nicholas,” Amelia pressed from inside the waiting carriage, having not seen what he had. “Nicholas, we must leave.”
The ember flared again, smoke curling into the night air. Nicholas marched forward automatically, boots grinding against the gravel. Paul turned, startled, but did not straighten.
“What—” he faltered, ash falling to the ground.
Nicholas said nothing. Did not slow.
His fist connected with Paul’s jaw hard in a single, brutal arc.
The man crumpled before him and clutched his face, blood trickling from his mouth.
Amelia’s gasp cut through the otherwise silent night.
De Rees’s cheroot clattered to the stones.
“You… You madman!” De Rees protested, cowering in fear.
Nicholas ground the cheroot under his boot and returned to the carriage, where Amelia awaited, afraid, his hand on fire with pain.
“What on earth were you thinking?” Amelia cried, grabbing Nicholas’s hand where it rested limply in his lap. “What if he had struck you back? I begged you not to confront him, Nicholas. I begged you!”
The carriage rolled out of the gates, proceeding down the thoroughfare connecting the Spencer lands to Oxford.
She blinked away the tears in her eyes, inspecting his hand. They had left so quickly, he had not had time to put his gloves on, and his knuckles had split open with the force of the blow. Two angry red seams glistened at the base of his trembling fingers.
“Why did you do it?” she asked. The carriage shook, and Amelia gasped, falling closer toward him. She growled, furious with him. “He will have gone back to the party by now and told everyone how you hit him!”
“As he should.” Nicholas refused to look at her, his face contorted in anger. “All the world should know what sort of man he is. This was the least he deserved.”
“And what of me?” she sobbed. “What if he tells them that he was the one who followed me at the Bodleian ball, not you, and that was why you attacked him tonight?”
“It does not matter. We are married.”
