“And you would raise it under his influence,” Amos went on. “Under the same conditions that shaped him.”
Arabella studied him. “You assume a great deal.”
“I have seen enough to know.”
“And so you remove me,” she said. “From my home. From my family. From any choice I might have made.”
His expression hardened again. “I am giving you the chance to make it properly.”
The carriage began to slow.
The shift was subtle at first, more felt than heard. Amos glanced toward the door, his attention dividing for just a moment.
Arabella took it.
She pulled sharply against his grip, the motion sudden, unanticipated. It was not enough to free her, but it forced him to adjust, his balance shifting just long enough for her to gain a fraction of space.
“Do not—” he began, reaching for her again.
She did not let him finish.
“If you believed any of this,” she said, cutting through him, “you would not need to force me into it.”
The words landed harder than she expected.
For a moment, something like uncertainty flickered in his expression.
Then it was gone.
“You will understand,” he said. The conviction sounded thinner now. “In time.”
“I understand enough.”
He lifted his hand then to strike her.
Arabella’s breath caught. Her body tensed?—
The carriage door was torn open before the motion was completed.
Cold air rushed in, sharp and immediate, cutting through the enclosed tension. Amos turned at once, his attention snapping toward the intrusion.
And in that brief, fractured moment?—
Maxwell stood there.
CHAPTER 28
The door did not remain open long.
For a single, suspended moment, everything stopped— the rush of cold air, the startled shift of the carriage, the brief and unmistakable recognition that passes across Amos’s face.
Which went pale.
Maxwell did not step inside at once. His presence alone was enough, the intent clear in the way he stood, in the way his gaze fixed on the man before him without wavering.
“Step away from her.”
The command was quiet. There was no need to raise it.
