Chapter 27 #2
This Alexander was all force. All focus.
The breadth of him seemed to fill the opening entirely, shoulders squared beneath his dark riding coat, sandy blond hair wind-tossed, green eyes lit with something so savage it stole the breath from her lungs.
He looked dangerous enough to terrify any reasonable person.
Diana had never seen anyone so beautiful in her life.
“Step away from her,” he said, his voice low, but it hit the cramped carriage like a whip crack.
Martin recovered first. “You have no right—”
Alexander did not even look at him as he leaned in, one gloved hand reaching for Diana. “Come here.”
She moved without thinking.
The instant his hand closed around hers, warm and hard and devastatingly sure, something inside her that had been clenched in dread gave way all at once. Relief hit so violently it was almost painful.
His fingers tightened around hers as though testing that she was truly there, within reach, and then he was lifting her down from the carriage with a care that did not match the murderous look in his face.
The ground shifted beneath her the moment her feet touched it. Her knees nearly gave, the air hitting her too fast, too sharp. Alexander’s hand was already at her waist, pulling her back against him before she could falter. She could feel his heat, his breath against her temple.
For one raw, unguarded moment, she wanted nothing more than to turn into him, to press closer, to let herself be held and forget everything else.
Martin jumped down from the carriage a second later, his face flushed dark with fury.
“You self-righteous bastard,” he spat. “Have you come to play the rescuer now? After ruining her life? Diana, come with me.”
Alexander shifted, placing himself between Diana and Martin with an instinctive possessiveness so immediate it made her heart stutter. She could still see Martin’s face, the distortion of it, the ugliness newly unleashed.
“You will speak to me,” Alexander said, each word cut from ice, “and not to her.”
Martin laughed harshly. “To her? She ought to hear this more than anyone. He was the disaster, Diana. He was the one who poisoned everything. He married you for convenience, cast you aside, came back only to cloud your judgment again. I tried to rid you of him, and the devil would not die. He survived like a cockroach.”
Diana stared.
For one horrifying second, the words had no shape. Then slowly, their meaning became clear.
Her gaze flew to Alexander. He met it, and the savage brightness in his eyes did not lessen, but he gave one tight, unmistakable nod.
“I remembered his voice,” he said. “From that night.”
The world tilted. Martin did that.
Martin had struck Alexander down and left him for dead, and all the while had gone on smiling in drawing rooms, bringing drinks to her hand, offering sympathy, standing near enough to hear her speak of her marriage, all while carrying that inside him.
Diana’s stomach turned so hard she nearly swayed.
Alexander felt it. His hand at her waist tightened, just enough to steady.
“Stand back,” he murmured, the words for her alone, though his gaze never left Martin.
But Martin was no longer looking at Alexander. He was looking at her with naked desperation now, as though everything depended on his ability to wrench her back into the dream he had made of her.
“Diana,” he said, taking one step forward, “come with me now. Leave this. Leave him. He will destroy you again. You know he will. He already has.”
Her whole body was trembling with the sick, splitting pain of seeing an old affection rot in front of her until nothing recognizable remained.
“You speak,” she said, and had to swallow before she could continue, “as though I do not know my own mind. As though I belong wherever you decide I should.”
Martin’s face changed, softened in a terrible parody of gentleness. “You are frightened. That is all.”
“No.” Diana shook her head slowly, tears stinging anew, for the friend she had thought she had, the years she had trusted him, the kindness she had believed real. “No, I am seeing you clearly for the first time, and I do not recognize what I see.”
Pain flashed across his face. Then anger devoured it. “You do know me.”
“I knew a man I trusted.”
“You can trust me.”
“I could,” she said, her voice breaking now despite every effort to keep it steady, “once. But now…” She drew in a shaking breath. “Now you are a monster.”
Martin froze.
Something passed over his face, as though the final barrier between fantasy and consequence had at last shattered. Even the air seemed to change with it. Diana felt Alexander tense beside her at once, every line of him sharpening.
“Do not come nearer,” Alexander said.
Martin’s eyes did not leave Diana’s face. “If I cannot have her—”
The words were not finished before his hand went inside his coat.
Alexander moved first, his body turning toward her just as Diana’s breath caught, sharp and startled in her chest. At the same time, Martin reached into his coat and drew out a pistol, lifting it with a steady hand. The moment tightened around them, the world seeming to hold its breath.
The road. The hedges. The two halted carriages.
The horses tossing their heads in the cold air.
Alexander half turned before her, one arm already moving as though to throw her behind him.
Martin is standing opposite with his face transformed by obsession and despair.
The black mouth of the pistol lifting, lifting—
And then it pointed at her.
The breath left Diana’s body in a sharp, soundless shock. She stared at the weapon, at the terrible steadiness of Martin’s hand, and for one frozen instant, the whole world narrowed to that single horrifying truth.
His voice, when it came, was too quiet.
“If I cannot have you,” he said, “no one can.”