In an instant, Nathaniel had seized the blood-soaked front of his toga and lifted the smaller man clear off the ground.
“If you ever touch her again,” he snarled, landing a bone-shattering blow of his fist on the young man’s dazed face. “I’ll put you in the ground.”
As if to demonstrate, he shook Lord Phillip like a rag doll and threw him to the floor, where he curled into a ball and cowered.
With cold calculation, Nathaniel crouched beside him and used the tip of one finger to flick the dented, misshapen mask off the huddled man’s face.
Of course, a crowd had gathered by this time, inevitably drawn by the sounds of a fight. Bess heard whispers go through the group as people recognized the Duke of Thornecliff’s erstwhile friend, Lord Phillip Dewbury, sprawled on the ballroom floor.
Someone in the back of the crowd yipped like an excited spaniel, sending a ripple of laughter through the party.
His face was white under the smeared blood and a livid bruise had already begun to form on his cheek. With one last glare of angry mortification at Bess, Lord Phillip scrambled to his feet and staggered out of the ballroom.
“Tail tucked between his legs,” some wit observed with relish. “Farewell, Lord Pup.”
Bess couldn’t catch her breath.
What did Nathaniel see? Did he know she knew his name?
As the musicians picked up their tune once more, Nathaniel backed her into the darkest corner of the ballroom. He caged her in with his big body. His eyes were hot and wild as they traveled the length of her figure looking for damage.
Bess searched his masked face, consumed with a single thought.
What did Nathaniel hear?
Someone had laid hands on Bess. In violence.
The inside of Nathaniel’s skull was on fire. He didn’t trust himself to touch her, though all he wanted was to strip off her pink gown and catalog every inch of her skin, find every scrape and mark to torment himself with.
And under it all, beating like the pulse of his blood: She knows.
Bess knew who he was.
Had known all along, perhaps, and wanted him anyway.
Nathaniel couldn’t fathom it and didn’t have the capacity to try at this moment, with anger and terrible fear for her still riding him hard.
“I never should have left your side,” he said hoarsely.
“I’m unharmed,” she promised, her beautiful brown eyes flicking back and forth between Nathaniel’s. She was worried about what he’d overheard. Her declaration.
I will be whatever Ashbourn wants, for as long as he will have me.
He could not think about it now, or he would lose control.
Nathaniel wanted to kiss her. He wanted to smash something. He needed to master himself.
“No one touches you without your permission,” he growled.
Bess set her shoulders against the carved wood paneling of the wall and gazed up at him from beneath her lashes. “The only man I want touching me is you.”
Nathaniel stared at her, starved for the taste of her, frantic to get her someplace private where he could assure himself once and for all that she was safe.
He escorted her through the throngs of revelers and out the darkened entry hall of Wycombe House to find them a cab. He sat beside her and held her poor, bruised hand all the way to the Haymarket, nearly vibrating with his desperation to get her under him where he could hold her and keep her safe…keep her his.
At The Nemesis, Nathaniel took her through the dank side alley he always used and let them in through the back door. He led her up to the room he thought of as theirs and he undressed her in the dark, not even bothering to light a fire or a single candle.
By now, he knew every line and curve of her body by touch. Had he the skill, he could have sculpted her from memory alone.
