Chapter Sixteen
Good heavens, what is happening?
Emma didn’t know how to react once Cecil dragged his fellow club member out onto the terrace.
Had the Duke of Galahad overstepped a line very clearly drawn by her husband?
Of course. Was he serious about tearing her away from Thornton?
She hadn’t been entirely sure, but she wouldn’t put it past him.
The men from Club Damnation would dare anything, she was coming to understand, and they were all big personalities that refused to be ignored.
Now, her husband was embroiled in a fight with one of the men who should have been a friend. Would he forget everything he’d learned in these heated moments and do something rash?
With her heart in her throat, she rushed outside, along with more than a few curious guests.
Though the chill sank into her skin and the breeze chased up her skirting to remind her that it was still February, Emma ignored her own discomfort in order to focus on her husband.
From all accounts, he and Galahad had already exchanged blows.
A trace of blood went across Thornton’s cheek while the other man’s nose streamed the dark, thick liquid.
For the moment, a couple of the Club Damnation men ringed Thornton, keeping him from Galahad, while two more did the same with the younger man.
“Keep your damned head, Thornton,” one of the club men warned.
He was older than the others by perhaps ten years or so, and had the air of being in charge.
Vaguely, she recognized him as the founder of the club.
In fact, she recalled meeting him at least twice since she’d married Thornton.
“Galahad is a hot head, and he thinks he’s invincible. ”
Cecil shook off that man’s hold. “He needs to learn that he can’t go ‘round romancing other men’s wives.” He narrowed his gaze and held out a hand. “Lend me your pistol.”
“What?” The man shook his head. “No.”
He wriggled his fingers. “Give me your damned pistol, Eggleton. I will end this now, so he won’t continue to sour my future.”
“Cecil, no!” Emma couldn’t wait, and as the Duke of Eggleton gave her husband a pistol, she ran over to him, put a hand on his arm, felt those muscles go taut as he fought her touch. Fear played icy fingers down her spine. “If you do this you will be a criminal, a murderer. Is Galahad worth that?”
“I’m a duke.” With a growl, he shook off her hold. “No one would dare to prosecute a duke regardless.” When he shrugged, it only lifted one shoulder. “Besides, what is one more death on my conscience, hmm?”
“I will absolutely not let you go down that particular rabbit hole. Not again. Not after everything we’ve been through.
” She put her palm against the side of his face and made him look at her.
“The difference is that you have a choice, right in this moment. You didn’t before, and you’re a different man besides. ”
He frowned as more guests poured out onto the terrace. “Do you truly believe that, Emma? Can you honestly look me in the eye and tell me that I have, indeed, changed?”
“There is no doubt in my mind that you have.” Conscious that several pairs of eyes were resting on them, she continued.
“I meant what I said the other day. I’m in love with you, Cecil, and I have been since our letter writing days.
I adored the man you were back then, but I am so very much in love with the man you are becoming.
” She curled her fingers around those of his that clutched the pistol.
“Don’t destroy that man for some foolish bit of flattery from a dolt who doesn’t know better. ”
“Except he does know better!” Cecil shook off her hand.
Then he wheeled about and leveled the nose of the pistol at Galahad, who stood flanked by two of the club members.
“One of the unspoken, gentlemanly rules of the club is that every woman is fair play except wives of members. He disregarded that, so here we are.”
“It was all in good fun, Thornton. No need to come the crab,” Galahad said with the shake of his head. He brushed snow from the shoulder of his tailcoat even though his cravat was spotted with blood. “I had no true designs on the duchess.”
“Ah, then you would have bedded her and tossed her away afterward?”
Emma frowned. Before she’d come back together with her husband, she’d entertained the offer from Galahad, and he would have callously used her as if she were no better than a common trollop? Hot annoyance rose into her throat. “What a cad.”
He gave her a half-bow from the waist. “Did you truly think that members of Club Damnation were men of sterling character?”
“Of course not. I suspected what sort of men Eggleton must have put together, and I also realize why.” She included all the men in her gaze. “Broken men need a place to gather and feel safe the same as everyone else, but that can only help so much.”
“Agreed, and Thornton needs more help than any of us can give him,” Galahad continued as he wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve. “Pity, that. I doubt he’ll ever be fully back in reality, especially as afraid of it as he is.”
That wasn’t what they needed just now. She narrowed her gaze. “So help me if you set Thornton’s healing back, he won’t be your only problem,” she said in a measured voice.
The club members exchanged concerned glances, but it was Galahad’s mocking laughter that burrowed beneath her skin.
“Healing?” A flicker of vulnerability went through his golden eyes. “Do you think there is hope for any of us, duchess? We all have dark secrets in our pasts. How can anyone overlook those things?”
“Have faith, Galahad. Even a man with the blackest soul can find redemption if he wants it.” Perhaps she understood him more than most. “Sins and secrets don’t make for bad men, necessarily, unless you don’t wish to change.”
He fought to bring his expression into a bland mask. “That is more easily accomplished if I have a willing woman in my bed with her lips wrapped around my prick.”
“Stand aside, Emma. I’ve heard enough from him.” Cecil again raised the pistol and leveled the nose on the other man. With his free hand, he tugged her to his side and out of the way of harm. “Friend or not, that was outside of enough, and I’m done listening to him.”
“Leave him alone, I beg of you.” Once more, she clung to his arm in the hopes she could turn him away. “Don’t do this.”
“He has to know that you are mine, and always will be. He will never win you.” The pistol never once wavered in his hand.
“Of course he knows that! All of this is just a game to him because he’s a pampered, bored man with far more coin than good sense, constantly pandered to by men like you!
” And sadly, at Galahad’s heart, just like all of them, he practically cried out for understanding and help.
He needed love, much of it, but he’d never find it if he continued to act so cavalierly.
“I doubt it.” A few seconds of silence passed before Thornton’s index finger squeezed on the trigger.
Bang!
Emma screamed.
The people around her cried out in alarm.
Smoke from the pistol discharging created a cloud of acrid smoke.
In the next second, a howl of pain came from the blond-haired Galahad, and when the smoke cleared, he’d slumped against one of the other club members with a hand clutched to his left shoulder where the dark stain of blood seeped through his fingers.
“You shot me!”
“I did.” As if nothing had happened, Cecil gave the pistol back to the Duke of Eggleton.
“I told you to keep your hands off my wife. I also warned you that I’d shoot you if you didn’t.
Since you continued to talk about her as if she were your whore, I’d had enough.
” He shook his head. “Perhaps you’ll listen next time, and as you heal, you’ll have plenty of time to ponder various things. ”
“Bad form,” Eggleton whispered while he slipped the pistol into the waist of his evening breeches. “To shoot a friend in cold blood.”
“He’s not a friend if he’s constantly chasing after my wife after it’s clear I’ve reconciled with her, don’t you think?” Then, with a glance around at the people standing on the terrace in various degrees of shock and curiosity, he stooped, hefted her up onto his shoulder.
“Put me down, you dratted man!” Though she beat a fist on his back, he completely ignored her.
Again, his gaze landed on his would-be rival. “Emma is mine, and if you come sniffing about her skirts a second time, I’m afraid I won’t spare your life.”
Galahad huffed, but his face had paled. “You won’t get off another shot.”
“Try me.”
“Where the hell are you going?” Eggleton demanded with surprise in his expression.
“Away from here. I trust you’ll escort Galahad back to Town?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Her husband didn’t appear to care to listen to the answer. Instead, he settled her more comfortably on his shoulder and then made his way off the terrace, scattering onlookers as he went. Seconds later, he loped across the snow-covered lawn like a thief in the night.
“That wasn’t well done of you, Thornton.”
“I don’t particularly care.”
Fair enough. Since she didn’t know what was going on in his mind, she couldn’t give an opinion. “Where are we going?”
“To the stables.”
Tired of being spirited off as if she were naught but a sack of grain, she blew out a breath.
“Why?” And why couldn’t he merely talk to her?
Would he always be this broken? Eventually, would she lose him to the lingering demons in his mind regardless of progress they’d already made?
It sent a chill down her spine, for she’d given him everything.
“I am taking you back to London.”
“Now?
“Yes.”
“But we are in the middle of hosting a ball.”
“The ball can go hang.”