He blinked those devil eyes, black as sin. “Why should I? So the little hellcat can have another chance to scratch my eyes out?”
Bess’s near-infinite well of patience abruptly ran dry. “There is a human being bleeding on the ground before you and there’s nothing better you can think to do than taunt an innocent young girl into losing her temper. And all of you so-called gentlemen simply stand about and watch, as if it is the greatest entertainment, offering no help at all. Not one of you is worth the effort it would take to wring your necks! If those ships turned their guns on the shore at this moment, it would be no great loss to the world.”
She broke off, chest heaving and hands trembling with the force of her anger.
“You are all utterly worthless,” she spat. “Is there no man in this godforsaken city worthy of the name?”
“Oh, so it’s a man you’re after, sweetheart?” called out one of the dandies, a gentleman dressed to the nines in imitation of Thornecliff but somehow still looking disheveled, as though he’d been out drinking all night. She’d noted him before as he was the one standing right at Thornecliff’s shoulder and egging him on.
Now, he blatantly reached down and cupped his privates, jiggling the lump in his tight breeches in her direction and sneering, “I’ve got what you’re looking for right here!”
Even as he said it, he glanced at Thornecliff to see if he was watching.
Bess looked the fellow up and down, from the toes of his mirror-polished Hessians to the artfully tousled curl falling over his forehead and into small eyes, set too close together to make him look intelligent.
“I said a man,” she snapped. “Not a silly pup wagging his little tail and looking to his master for pets and praise.”
The crowd of assembled onlookers shouted with laughter and began to bark and howl at the sandy-haired gentleman, who flushed with furious humiliation and took a menacing step toward Bess.
She lifted her chin and stared at him, unwilling to back down, but before the man could make another move, a soft, penetrating voice from beyond the crowd said, “What is going on here?”
The words dropped like ice into a glass of whiskey, cold and deep, resonating with a dominance that made every person present straighten their shoulders.
Everyone except Thornecliff, of course, who merely rolled his eyes and said, “Nothing you need concern yourself with. I’m surprised to see you here at all; surely everyone present is beneath your notice.”
A stranger stepped forward, the crowd parting around him as though afraid to touch him. He loomed over Bess and her fallen sailor, the width of his shoulders blocking out the sun and casting her in shadow. A shiver ran through her whole body, a low, liquid pulse of yearning that shocked her to the core.
It was the way the man moved. With predatory grace, but slow, as though he had no need to hurry.
As though his prey wouldn’t dare to flee.
His angular face was shaded by the brim of his hat, but Bess caught a gleam as his eyes passed over her briefly before focusing on Lucy and her captor.
“Stand back from the ladies,” the stranger said, impassive as a judge. His eyes were unusual, she saw, light and almost colorless, possessed of a strange intensity.
Thornecliff proved his reckless disregard for his own skin by sneering, “Or what?”
The man paused, as though unaccustomed to hearing any response other than a snappy “Yes, sir!”
“You will let her go,” he finally rumbled, still with that disconcerting lack of emotion, “or I will take her from you.”
There was no indication in his voice that he felt one way or another about it. There was no hissing threat or angry bluster. Only a simple statement of fact.
Bess shivered again. She didn’t know why, but for some reason she was convinced that beneath the cold stranger’s blankness…he actually wanted Thornecliff to refuse.
That he would welcome the chance of a little violence.
However, Thornecliff seemed finally to register the danger he was in. Bess noted the brief tightening of his grasp before the reprobate dropped his hands and stepped away from Lucy with a laugh, as if the whole thing had been no more than a joke.
“You may have her, with my blessing,” he said mockingly, shaking the hand he’d had over Lucy’s mouth. “Take care, though, the little cat has teeth.”
Lucy spun away from him and spat on the ground at his feet. The puppy who’d shoved his pathetic prick at Bess swore and jumped backward, knocking into Thornecliff, who gave him an icy glare.
“Have a care, Lord Phillip. Or should I call you Lord Pup?”
The rest of the crowd of gentlemen laughed and jeered, turning on one of their own like a pack of wild dogs. Lucy gave an audible snort of disgust.
Bess set her jaw grimly, already regretting her own part in this mess. She knew better than to rile up a pack of spoiled, entitled young gentlemen—she ought to have bit her tongue.
