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“Mine,” she countered.

Satisfied by the love she saw on his face, Ella tucked her cheek into the curve of his shoulder and fell asleep.

She didn’t stir until the darkest hour, just before dawn. The hour when a house is at its quietest, and even the ever-busy London streets scarcely make their presence known beyond the occasional rattle of a carriage.

Her fiancé had swung his legs off the narrow bed.

She was still blinking when Fiennes jerked open the door.

Her uncle fell into the room.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

THE SHAME!

Ella flew out of bed to Fiennes’s side. He stood in the shadows cast by bright moonlight, watching as her uncle stumbled into the center of the room.

The viscount didn’t seem to notice that the door had magically opened for him.

“Niece!” he bawled, even that one word slurred.

Fiennes nudged Ella slightly behind him. “Careful,” he breathed. “He’s sozzled.”

“Get out of bed, you jade,” her uncle rumbled, cursing as he caught his shin on the rocking chair. “Or stay in it, if that’s what you’d prefer. Don’t think I’ve overlooked how you stole my daughter’s husband. Your talents must be potent.” He chuckled drunkenly. “Potent … Ha!”

Fiennes took a step forward into the streak of moonlight pouring through the window.

The viscount squinted at him, fighting to focus his glare. “Peregrine,” he grunted. “Not that I blame you. That gown she wore … where is the tart, anyway? Asking for it, she was.”

“I am here, Uncle,” Ella said, staying precisely where she was: in the shadows, safely out of reach behind Fiennes.

“Man in her room. There’s the bloody proof,” her uncle muttered. “The women in my family are brazen whores. I should have opened a brothel. Could have used—”

Fiennes’s fist caught him under the chin. The viscount staggered back but managed to catch himself on the iron railing of Ella’s bed. “Damnation!” he squealed, clapping his hand to his face. “You’ve rattled my jaw!”

“Do you want another?” Fiennes asked coolly.

The viscount bared his yellowing teeth. “Think I’m afraid of you?”

To Ella, the air in the attic felt thick with the promise of violence: radiating not just from one enraged man in the prime of life, but also from her reckless uncle, unable to calculate the odds even in a situation as clear as this.

She put a hand on Fiennes’s arm. He glanced at her, his gaze piercing. What he saw made his shoulders relax.

Just like that, danger receded.

The threat of blood and perhaps death evident on Fiennes’s face faded to the alertness of a man on guard.

“Uncle, why are you in my bedchamber?” Ella asked.

“Need to put you in your place,” he said, glowering at her. “Peregrine will be marrying my daughter—my daughter, not James’s daughter.”

Fiennes looked at her and mouthed, “Your father?”

She nodded.

“I suppose you’re already his mistress,” her uncle said. “Your cousin might object, mind you. But keep it in the family, eh?”

“Uncle, Fulvia married Thomas Woodward by special license,” Ella said, managing to keep disgust out of her voice.