Page 109 of The Wedding-Crashing Duchess

She hesitated for one terrible second, her small torn between the instinct to flee and some deeper, more devastating instinct to stay beside her father. But in the end, she ran.

Ronan couldn’t afford to watch her go as Jonathan was already moving again, already recovering from the shock of having his own blade turned aside by his brother’s body rather than finding its intended mark, and Ronan met him with the only weapon he had left.

His fist drove hard into Jonathan’s jaw.

Jonathan staggered backward, more startled than hurt, and Ronan pressed after him despite the blood already soaking hot and slick through his coat.

He caught Jonathan’s wrist, twisting it hard away from both their bodies even as Jonathan’s free hand came up to claw at his face, at his throat, at the wound already bleeding freely beneath his ribs.

Ronan did not let go, not while there was any chance, however small, that Jonathan might yet break free and go after Sarah who was crossing the clearing behind them.

“Let go of me,” Jonathan snarled, and there was real fear in it now, the first true fear Ronan had heard from him all morning.

“No,” Ronan said, and drove his shoulder into his brother’s chest, forcing him back another step, and another, his eyes fixed over Jonathan’s shoulder on the small white shape of his daughter’s nightgown, drawing steadily nearer to the tree line and the men who waited beyond it.

He held on even through the black spots that had begun to crowd the edges of his vision. Gregory burst through the trees at the far edge of the clearing, and he saw him drop to his knees and gather Sarah up into his arms.

Safe.

She was safe.

He turned on Jonathan with nothing left holding him back.

“You held a knife to my daughter’s throat.” His voice did not sound like his own. “You made her cry out for me while you dragged her through the dark like an animal. You stabbed me, and you would have done far worse to her, and my wife…. my wife will carry the fear of this morning with her for the rest of her life because of what you have done.”

Jonathan’s eyes had gone wide with something that was, for the first time, unmistakably fear, and he began to stammer some manner of answer, some attempt at negotiation or apology, but Ronan was no longer listening.

He struck him again, and again, driven by a fury that had nothing left of the careful, controlled Duke of Ravenhill in it at all.

Jonathan tried to fight back, but his strength had never truly matched Ronan’s, whatever confidence he had carried into their meeting, and the weapon fell from his grasp somewhere in the struggle.

Ronan did not stop. He did not know how long he might have gone on, because it was at that moment that other hands seized him from behind.

“Ronan. Ronan, that is enough; he is done, let the constables have him now.” Gregory’s voice, close at his ear, breathless from his own run through the woods. “Ronan. Look at me. It is over.”

The words seemed to reach him from a very great distance. He became aware, slowly, of the constables closing in around them, of rough hands hauling Jonathan up from the ground and binding his wrists, of Jonathan’s face, bloodied and swollen now, staring back at him with an expression Ronan could not entirely read.

“You were not supposed to fight for her like that,” Jonathan said, almost to himself, as the constables dragged him past. “You were never supposed to care that much.”

Ronan did not answer him.

“You are bleeding rather badly,” Gregory said, his usual easy charm entirely absent, replaced by something Ronan had rarely seen in his old friend’s face before. “Don’t you dare fall down on me now, Ronan.”

“Sarah.” The word came out of him rough and urgent, cutting through everything else. “Where is Sarah?”

“Safe. I promise you she is safe; I have not let her out of my sight.” Gregory’s grip tightened on his shoulder, steadying him as his leg finally, entirely, gave way beneath him. “Come. Let us get you to her before you fall.”

They found her a short distance away, wrapped now in a constable’s greatcoat far too large for her small frame, her face still streaked with tears but her eyes wide and searching the moment she caught sight of her father limping toward her, held upright between Gregory and one of the constables.

“Father!” She broke free of the woman who had been comforting her and ran towards him.

Ronan sank to his knees to meet her, ignoring the fresh, tearing pain the movement cost him, and gathered his daughter into his arms as though he might never again let her go. She was sobbing now in earnest, her small fists gripping the front of his ruined coat, and he held her close and pressed his face into her hair and let himself, for one long moment, simply feel the impossible, overwhelming relief of having her safe against him.

“I have you,” he murmured, over and over, into her hair. “I have you. You are safe now, my darling. I promise you, you are safe.”

“You are bleeding.” Her small voice was thick with tears, and she pulled back just enough to look at the dark, spreading stain along his side with wide, frightened eyes. “You are hurt.”

“It is nothing,” he said, though the grey creeping in at the edges of his vision suggested otherwise. “It is nothing at all, compared to having you safe in my arms again. Do you understand me, Sarah?”