Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
For one breathless second, the room went entirely still.
Penelope’s hand remained pressed hard over her mouth, her eyes wet, wide, and dark with terror.
Charles’ face was a mottled crimson from his unchecked temper, his jaw locked, one linen cuff half-twisted where his nervous fingers had been tearing at the threads.
Malcolm looked at Penelope first. His eyes tracked the tear tracks on her cheeks, the frantic rise and fall of her chest, and the way her fingers dug into her own skin.
Then his gaze shifted to Charles. The temperature in the room dropped instantly.
“I asked, what did you say to her?” he repeated.
Charles recovered first, letting out a sharp, breathless laugh. “Your Grace. How very convenient.”
Malcolm stepped inside. He reached behind him and shut the heavy door.
Penelope flinched at the sound of the latch clicking, her shoulders drawing inward. Malcolm’s eyes caught the shiver of movement. His left hand curled into a massive, tight fist at his side.
“I asked you a question.”
Charles lifted his chin, smoothing his waistcoat in a desperate bid for dignity. “This is a family matter.”
Malcolm crossed the room in three predatory strides and struck him.
The blow landed with a sickening, heavy crack across Charles’s jaw.
Charles reeled sideways, his boots leaving the floor. He crashed hard into a velvet armchair, his arm flailing to catch the edge of a mahogany side table before he could collapse entirely. A delicate porcelain figurine toppled from the tier, shattering into a dozen white shards on the carpet.
Penelope gasped, a hand flying to her chest. “Malcolm!”
Charles remained bent over, one hand braced heavily on the table, the other pressed flat against his mouth. Bright crimson blood began to ooze between his pale fingers.
Malcolm did not look away. He stood over him, his broad shoulders squared, his breathing perfectly controlled.
“Threaten her again,” he said, his voice a low, lethal vibration, “and I shall not stop with one.”
Charles spat a mouthful of blood onto Benedict’s fine carpet and laughed. The sound came out wet and choked. “You fool.”
Malcolm took another step forward.
Charles held up one bloody hand, still smiling through his split lip. “No, by all means. Strike me again, Your Grace. Bruise me, break a tooth, if you like. Every mark you leave on my flesh will be useful.”
The remaining color drained from Penelope’s face.
Malcolm’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Useful?”
“Oh, exceedingly.”
Charles straightened up slowly, wincing as his fingers brushed his swelling jaw. “A duke caught alone in a closed room with my late brother’s widow. A widow whose gown is rumpled, whose eyes are full of tears, whose reputation has survived only because I’ve protected it. Until now.”
Penelope’s breath caught hard in her throat. Malcolm heard the small, wounded sound.
Charles’s eyes darted past him, a predatory gleam in them as he looked at her. “There now. You understand the consequences, Penelope.”
“Do not look at her,” Malcolm growled, stepping into his path.
Charles turned his bloodied face back to him. “Why not? She is the lovely subject of this charming little scandal. They will think Lady Romwich has become the Duke of Brigrock’s mistress.”
Penelope made a small, choked sound of horror.
Malcolm’s entire upper body locked. Charles watched the hit land, his cruel smile sharpening as he pressed the blade deeper.
“They will think she has taken up with a violent recluse who cannot keep his hands to himself. They will think she has brought a monster near her innocent son. They will decide she has no judgment. No modesty. No restraint.”
“Charles,” Penelope whispered, her voice breaking. “Please.”
Malcolm turned to her at once.
She was gripping the edge of the writing desk behind her so hard her knuckles were white. Her other hand had slipped down to her middle, pressing flat against her stomach as though she were physically holding herself together.
Charles’s grin widened. “Yes, Penelope. Plead. That becomes you far better than defiance.”
Malcolm lunged toward him again.
Charles scrambled backward, nearly tripping over the overturned chair, but his mouth kept working. “Careful, Your Grace. The more savage you appear, the better my case looks to the barristers.”
Penelope shook her head wildly, her eyes locked on her brother-in-law. “Do not do this. Please. You cannot take Nicholas from me.”
Malcolm looked down at her fingers. They were trembling against the dark mahogany of the desk. Not faintly. The lace at her cuff was quivering with the violent force of her shuddering breaths.
Something hard, cold, and entirely merciless settled inside Malcolm’s chest.
He had seen men threatened before. He had seen men with loaded pistols pointed at their hearts. He had seen men with ships burning to ash beneath their boots. Those men cursed and bled and laughed because fear had nowhere else to go.
This was worse. Penelope was not afraid for her own life. Charles knew it. He had found the exact place to bury the knife to inflict the most agony.
Malcolm turned slowly back to the smaller man. “You will withdraw whatever petition you mean to file.”
Charles laughed again, wiping a fresh line of blood from his chin. “I shall do no such thing.”
“You will.”
“And why? Because you glower handsomely, Your Grace?”
Malcolm stepped so close their chests nearly touched. Charles had to tilt his head back far enough to strain his neck. “Because if you lay a single finger on that boy, I will make every door in England close to you. Permanently.”
Charles’s throat bobbed. He swallowed hard. Then his eyes darted toward Penelope, and the reminder of her vulnerability brought some of his courage back. “You have no authority over Nicholas.”
“Nor do you, not yet.”
“I am his uncle.”
“You are a parasite coveting a dead man’s title until the rightful heir grows old enough to strip your power from you.”
Charles’s face darkened with rage. “Mind your tongue, Brigrock.”
Malcolm’s fist flexed, his knuckles whitening.
Penelope’s face crumpled. She pressed both hands over her mouth, turned her back to them, and let out a silent, racking sob.
Malcolm felt the sight like a cold steel blade slipping between his ribs.
Charles saw the hit land, too. “Ah,” he whispered, vindicated. “There it is.”
Malcolm looked at him.
Charles wiped his bloody mouth with the back of his hand. “You cannot save her with your fists, Your Grace. In fact, you have just handed me my case on a silver platter. No respectable English court will leave a young earl with a mother who behaves as she does.”
Penelope shook her head, her back still turned. “No.”
“A mother whose lover assaults her family.”
“He is not my lover,” she cried out, the words ragged and torn from her throat.
Charles smiled up from the floor. “Then what the devil is he?”
The room fell into a suffocating silence.
Malcolm looked at Penelope. She stood half-turned away from both of them, one trembling hand pressed against her throat. Her lashes were thick with tears. Her mouth shook violently before she bit down on her lower lip to stop it.
Faint music drifted through the thick oak door from the ballroom beyond. Faint laughter. A shallow, glittering world continuing just yards away while Penelope’s entire life balanced on the edge of Charles’ filthy smile.
Malcolm had not planned it. There was no strategy. There was only the raw, suffocating reality of her terror. Only Nicholas’s bright, innocent face in his garden. Only the absolute certainty that Charles would drag them both into the mud and call it family duty.
Malcolm turned fully toward the blackguard.
“She is my fiancée.”
Penelope froze.
Charles blinked, his bloody mouth dropping open. “What?”
Malcolm’s voice did not rise. It remained flat, hard, and terrifyingly steady. “Lady Romwich is my fiancée.”
Penelope turned toward him slowly, her eyes wide and completely stunned. “Your Grace…”
He did not look at her. If he looked at her now, he might see refusal. Or confusion. He could not afford either.
Charles stared at him for three long seconds, then let out a harsh scoff. “That is absurd. You expect me to believe that rubbish?”
“I do not care a damn what you believe.”
Charles’s face tightened, his nostrils flaring. “You cannot simply announce an engagement in a dark room because it suits your purposes.”
“I can.”
“Without her consent?”
Malcolm finally shifted his gaze to Penelope. Her honey-brown eyes searched his face, frantic and breathless. He held her look, pinning her with the sheer intensity of his stare.
“Lady Romwich,” he said quietly, his voice softening just enough for her ears, “will you permit me to make this true?”
Her lips parted, her chest heaving against her bodice.
Charles snapped, “Do not answer him, Penelope!”
Malcolm did not move an inch.
Penelope’s breathing shook the silk of her gown. She looked from Malcolm’s scarred, steady face to Charles’s blood-stained, frantic features. Her fingers were still trembling against the wood, but her chin lifted a fraction.
“You would do that? For us?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The question struck harder than either blow he had dealt Charles.
Because your son laughed in my garden. Because you look ready to break into a thousand pieces and you still stand between him and the world. Because I have been a dead man for years and you make me remember the shape of wanting.
He said none of it.
Instead, his gaze darkened with absolute possessiveness. “Because he cannot have you.”
Charles barked a wet laugh. “How touching. How noble.”
Penelope swallowed hard. Her eyes closed for one agonizing second. When they opened, the tears were still there, but the panic had cleared into something solid.
“Yes,” she whispered. “His Grace is my betrothed, Charles.”
Charles’s smug smile vanished instantly.
Malcolm turned back to the man, his broad chest blocking Penelope from view entirely. “There,” he said. “Now you have your answer.”