Chapter Thirteen
Alyssia thought she might agree with Giles. Perhaps they shouldn’t have come.
Sometimes the best intentions could meet the cruelest timing and tonight seemed determined to prove it.
What had begun as curiosity and courage now pressed on her chest like a warning.
Ironic, truly, since they shouldn’t be surprised, or caught off guard, by anything that happened here tonight.
She’d wanted to face their troubles head-on, but standing there, watching the man who had stolen so much from her husband, she wondered if bravery sometimes meant knowing when to retreat.
Honestly, she even understood why Giles had stayed hidden for so long.
There was a peculiar safety in retreating, one she had mistaken for cowardice when they’d reunited in the Lyon’s Den.
Now she saw it for what it was: self-preservation.
Out here, between the judgmental whispers, every breath felt like exposure.
The ton had a way of turning truth into spectacle, and spectacle into truth, and she refused to dwell on what it might make of theirs.
Not anymore.
To perdition with them.
She had Giles.
They had one another.
They’d just turned to the entrance hall when she spotted a familiar bounding figure. “Annabelle is here,” she murmured to Giles.
“Shall we greet her before we go?” Giles asked.
She nodded.
Someone brushed past her shoulder with enough force to jar her off balance, and her hand slipped from Giles’s arm.
She turned, half expecting to find him still beside her, but only met a wall of shifting people.
Where had this crush suddenly come from?
She tried to move forward, but the vexing group of people had chosen that spot to settle.
A prickle of unease climbed her spine.
“Giles?” she called softly, but her voice vanished beneath the music and chatter. Foolish. He was likely only a pace beyond her. Still, her pulse quickened. For all her resolve to face the world without flinching, it was remarkably easy to feel small among masked strangers.
Then a hand caught her wrist.
Alyssia startled, half ready to wrench free, but before she could, a familiar scent and a low voice brushed her ear.
“Don’t lose me.”
The sound curled through her, equal parts command and comfort. She turned, breath catching as his mask came into view, his mouth dangerously close to hers.
“I could say the same,” she managed, her words breathless despite her best effort to keep her cool.
He smiled faintly, his hand slipping from her wrist to stroke her cheek. “Never.”
Silver-tongued devil. “Do you think we should just wait here for Annabelle?”
“I think she would forgive us if we left.”
“You don’t know Annabelle very well.”
He grunted. “I suspect that will change in the future.”
Alyssia chuckled. To be honest, she had regrets.
She should have taken him up on the offer to dance.
She’d have been his first dance, and that would have been so much better than listening to gossip.
She yearned for that distraction now. Dancing would have given her something to focus on besides the noise, besides the eyes she felt trailing over her gown, her mask, the swell of her breasts.
With Giles, she could have forgotten the rumor mill, as she had so far, and remembered only the sound of his voice close to her ear, her palm in his.
Well, depending on the dance. There was safety in that, a strange, wild safety.
He made her feel as if the world could not touch her so long as his hand was at her back.
“I once enjoyed these events. Now, they just feel like a mad crush,” she admitted to Giles as she watched a man in a black domino mask leaning into woman’s ear. Did she and Giles look as intimate?
“Don’t worry, princess,” he murmured with a smile. “When this matter with my uncle is over, you can host as many balls as you want and invite whoever you want.”
Now that held a great deal of appeal. The idea of an evening where she could choose every guest, every dance, every detail. No masks. No people who turned their backs on her. Just her and Giles, ruling over an evening of their own making.
“I will hold you to that,” she said.
He tilted his head toward her, eyes glinting beneath the mask. “I trust that you’ll do so.”
She smiled and turned to crane her neck in search of her friend, and came face to face with a man she loathed far too well.
He came into view in that particular way that clawed at her memory.
Broad shoulders. Confident stance. The faintest tilt of his head, his gaze assessing in a way that made her stomach twist. For a moment, her mind refused to catch up with her eyes.
Her body, on the other hand, recognized him beyond a shadow of a doubt, and the weeks since that nightmarish night condensed in an instant, bringing with them a rush of dread and humiliation.
Rafferty.
Her breath caught. Of all the people in London, of all the nights to appear before her, why him, why now?
The music dulled to a hum, her pulse drowning it out.
Hadn’t he been keeping a low profile as well?
Yet there he was, standing bold as brass amid the crowd, the same calculating smirk curving his lips, searching for someone.
He didn’t see her at first, so she ought to turn away—walk, run, vanish—but her feet rooted to the floor as though memory itself had fastened chains around her ankles.
Her mouth went dry. Every instinct screamed to look elsewhere, to focus on anything but the man who had once stripped her of dignity. Yet she couldn’t. Even now, after all these weeks, her skin prickled as though his eyes were already upon her.
She tried to steady her breathing. Inhale. Exhale.
Then their eyes met.
Oh, lord.
Rafferty had the sort of gaze that crawled over a person, cataloguing what could be used and what could be ruined, and she felt it slide over her like a thousand ants over her body.
Every inch of her wanted to recoil, to scrub the sensation away, but she stood perfectly still, spine rigid, heart hammering.
She watched as various muscles twitched across the visible parts of his face. Then he stepped up to her.
Those light blue eyes, almost the color of his mask, narrowed on her, anger flashing in their depths, swiftly replaced by satisfaction.
“Lady Alyssia.”
Bishop hadn’t noticed something off with his wife at the outset. Since those deuced people had parted them—damn you very much—he’d been keeping his uncle in sight, assuring himself that the man’s attention hadn’t been drawn to them.
Well. Attention had been drawn.
From this damn arse.
Every muscle in Bishop’s body went taut.
For an instant, he thought perhaps he was mistaken, that this couldn’t be the same lanky boy who had once called himself a friend. But the way Alyssia reacted, there was no mistaking it.
John Rafferty.
Coveter of things that were not his.
The name alone was enough to sour his blood.
Twelve years had dulled the memory of this particular person.
However, he did remember, as Knox had pointed out, the way he’d always watched what others possessed and tried to either make it his own or best it.
Bishop had seen it and ignored it back then. He wouldn’t again.
Bishop shifted, stepping forward, positioning himself so that he stood between Alyssia and the man—not barring her, but placing himself squarely in the line of sight. His gaze locked on Rafferty. “Is there a problem?”
“How fortuitous, Lady Alyssia. I’d begun to think you’d left London entirely.” His gaze slid, insolent, from her face to her bosom. “And yet here you are, looking radiant.”
Bishop’s teeth ground together, temper sparking. The blackguard’s tone was bloody grating. He felt it in his knuckles—the instinct to strike, to cut the man’s words out of existence. “I asked, is there a problem?”
Rafferty finally scowled his way. “Who are you?”
“I believe that’s my line,” Bishop said. “Who the devil are you?”
“That’s none of your concern,” Rafferty growled. “But since the lady is of my concern, who you are is as well.”
You dare.
“I am none of your concern, sir,” Alyssia spoke up, firmer than Bishop had ever heard her. “And this man is my husband, so you’d best have the decency to take care.”
“Decency?” Rafferty laughed softly, fury bleeding from the man as his gaze glanced between the two of them. “I heard you’d wed but didn’t believe it to be true. Does your husband know about your past?”
Bloody hell. “I know that you’re a worthless coward who resorts to tricks to try to trap an innocent woman into marriage.”
“Is that what she told you?”
“That is what I believe.”
“Then you must be just as damaged as she is.”
“Rafferty,” Bishop said, his tone low and dangerous.
The man laughed. “So you do know who I am. You have me at a disadvantage.”
“It seems you haven’t changed from the past at all then since that has always been your natural state, has it not?”
Rafferty took a threatening step forward. “Just who the hell are you?”
“Not a friend.”
The man sneered. “I thought I knew every ghost in London. But it seems one’s come back to haunt me. Or are you just posturing? One never knows what to believe.”
“Believe this.” Bishop stepped in closer, deliberately close enough that Rafferty had to tilt his head back a fraction. “If you ever so much as look at my wife again, I will break every finger you have.”
A murmur rippled through those nearest, but he didn’t care.
“And I’ll help,” Alyssia said cheekily.
Some of his anger cleared enough to chuckle. “Very well, princess. I’ll let you take half.”
Rafferty bristled, tossing out, “Tell me, was the dowry compensation enough for another man’s leftov—”
Bishop’s fist connected before the word finished leaving Rafferty’s mouth, striking him square in the Adam’s apple.
The man staggered back, shock twisting his face before the pain caught up, eyes wide, hand clawing at his throat.
The sound splitting through the music was deuced satisfying, as was the sight of the earl falling to his knees, making choking sounds.
Gasps erupted, and the watching crowd drew back as if the disgrace were contagious. Fury burned behind Rafferty’s watering eyes, but underneath it, Bishop saw something far sweeter. Fear.
Bloody good.
Alyssia’s hand caught Bishop’s sleeve, her voice a soft but urgent whisper. “Giles.”
But he wasn’t listening. “Get up,” Bishop said, his voice a growl now, violence straining beneath it.
Rafferty tried to speak, but only a rasp escaped.
“He’s not worth it,” Alyssia said. “He will suffer more in the future.”
Damn it.
By now, everyone should know it was Alyssia behind the mask. He circled her wrist and was about to make his way out when Rafferty sneered.
“You blackguard, do you even know—”
“Enough,” Alyssia snapped. “You are nothing but a scoundrel. You’re not worthy even to touch my husband’s air. I didn’t realize this before, but I do now. You didn’t ruin me. You never could. You think me damaged goods? Look again.”
Bishop’s chest swelled with something fierce and proud.
Rafferty blinked, momentarily thrown off balance. “You always were dramatic.”
“Better dramatic than despicable,” she shot back. “You used deceit to trap me, and you failed. That’s all history will remember.”
“History remembers what men decide it should,” he sneered.
“Then perhaps it’s time a woman rewrote it.”
Christ, he loved her.
That was his wife.
“Hah!” a woman exclaimed.
Lady Annabelle.
Before Bishop could bloody blink, a glass of devil’s tea splashed into Rafferty’s face. Alyssia’s friend turned to them and barked another single word. “Run!”