Page 40 of The Rogue and the Viscountess

“Half-brother, haven’t you heard? And I’m left with nothing. Nothing! They’ve taken it all.”

He turned and slammed his fist into the doorcase. Prunella flinched. The door was set in a stone frame, and Calvin’s knuckles split instantly, the red blood seeping over his pale skin.

Prunella swallowed hard. She did not deal well with the sight of blood.

“Surely not nothing.” She wanted to shriek at him, but she adopted a soothing voice, the way she would talk to a spooked animal. “You are still of Greenfield. Your brother will have some place for you, if you share a father—”

“I want nothing from him.” Calvin whirled to face her, shaking out his hand. Drops of blood spattered the stone floor. “So he’s a knight and now Beaufort’s lieutenant in leading the Monmouth and Brecon Militia. Insufferably full of himself, he is, and I shall undermine him any way I can. Daron Sutton was a miserable Black Hound, made a hash of things from the beginning. But I.” Calvin pounded his chest, staining the white of his neckcloth. “I have taken over the empire, and I will rule it.”

Prunella narrowed her eyes at him. “You’ll get yourself hanged.”

His expression shifted, the hot fury giving away to a cold glitter. The prickle of unease intensified. Calvin Vaughn was quite mad. He stalked toward her, and the room dimmed. The sun sank behind the wall of the garden where he’d taken her, just behind the Hungerford houses. They’d been here for hours, her subject to his mutterings and caprice. She was hungry. She would need to use the necessary soon.

And she was suddenly, enormously, magnificently furious that men like Calvin Vaughn could go throwing their weight about, disrupting the course of an ordinary person’s life with their insatiable demands of vanity and greed.

She stumbled to her feet, curling her hands into fists. She was shaking with rage and indignation.

“Do you know something? You are very like Edwin. My husband. Big. Blond. Stupid.”

He narrowed his eyes, stalking closer. “You dare call me stupid?”

“You are. And so was he.” Her fists shook with all the cries she had held back for years, because a good wife was docile and submissive. “Oh, Edwin wasn’t mean and small like you. I don’t think he meant anyone harm. But he didn’t think of anything beyond his own pleasures or the sport he could have with his friends. He spent coin at the gaming tables like it was nothing, when that could have supported our household. Children. I might have fostered a few if I couldn’t have my own. Not that he tried often enough for us to really know. He was always off following his own pursuits, thinking the world was designed for his ease. Leaving me behind.”

She pressed a fist to her middle. “And then he was foolish enough to get himself killed, leaving Rhydian all his debts and me nothing but promises. And what about poor Lydia? She wanted more than this too, you know. She wanted to be a peer’s wife, a great hostess with political influence. And instead she’s got a townhouse to let in London and a debt at the mantua maker’s and she doesn’t know how she shall support herself either. All because of men like you.”

She was shouting now, all that she’d suppressed rushing to the fore like a stream in spate. “Men who think they are owed something. Men who don’t think, not for a moment, of the needs of anyone else. Men who believe the whole world should cater to what they want simply because they were born with something between their legs.”

“You’re an uppity one.” Calvin was close to her now. The scent of old tobacco made her want to gag. “If you’re interested what’s between my legs, happy to show you.”

He closed his hands around her upper arms, yanking her forward and off balance. His mouth was a wet dank press against her own, and Prunella thought how he had forced himself on Mathry, how he had tried to force himself on Gwen, how he had forced himself upon so many women because he was a male animal who had never been taught manners.

She wriggled a hand to her bodice, found what she wanted. She pulled her hand free and plunged it toward his face.

Calvin yowled and let her go. Prunella stumbled backward as he clapped his hands to his temple. “You bitch! My eye!”

“Try that again and I will stab your eyes out.” Prunella brandished the pin in her fist, though her hand trembled. “Mayhap then you’ll stop thinking you can have whatever you look on.”

His face turned murderous, brows rushing together, mouth contorting into a snarl. Blood ran from his temple down along his ear. He curled his fingers into claws, reaching for her. “Time you learned—”

A mighty thud shook one of the doors in its frame. Prunella thought at first it was simply the blood roaring in her head, but Calvin looked around, equally surprised. “What the devil—”

“Calvin Vaughn!” came the enormous bellow. “Let her go, or I’ll tear this house down brick by brick, and then I’ll tear you apart down to your entrails.”

Prunella reeled and put a hand on the back of a chair to steady herself, her knees washing weak at the sound of Pete’s voice. He’d come for her.

“Pete!” she cried. “He’s locked the doors.”

“Then he’d better unlock them, if he wants me to stay civil.”

Calvin’s face filled with rage, his eyes gleaming. He wheeled on Prunella. “I’ve your lady,” he bellowed, reaching for her neck.

“No, you’ve not!” She tugged another pin from her jacket and held them before her like tiny fencing foils. She’d fill her fists if she had to. She’d become a veritable hedgehog. She’d go down fighting, fierce with joy that Pete had come for her, ready to scrabble for any chance to stay and be with him.

A thud shook the door again. Prunella rushed to the window. In the failing light she saw Pete, towering against the sky like a hero of legend. He held one of the giant stone knobs she’d seen atop the pillars flanking the gate to the almshouses. It must be enormously heavy, yet Pete held it like a child’s ball. As she watched he swung in a circle with arms outstretched, gave a little hop, and then smashed his missile against the door again.

The wooden portal splintered around the panel holding the latch. Calvin stumbled backward, bumping against one of the iron chairs.

“Be reasonable, Wilkins! It’s not you I want. It’s Penrydd or the other viscountess. You can’t pay me what I’m owed.”