Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Malcolm heard Hector first.
The dog’s frantic, booming barks tore through the gray afternoon rain, sharp and echoing enough to make every thoroughbred in the stable yard rear and startle. Malcolm pulled his dark stallion’s mount hard to a sudden stop, the iron horseshoes skidding violently against the mud.
“What the…?” Malcolm muttered, his rugged features hardening.
Then, through the veil of downpouring rain, he saw Nicholas.
The little boy came sprinting wildly across the vast expanse of the south lawn. He was soaked completely through, his small face bone-white with an absolute, paralyzing terror. Hector raced in frantic, bounding leaps directly beside him.
“Papa! Papa!”
Every single muscle in Malcolm’s massive body instantly locked like cold iron. Nicholas stumbled blindly in the deep mud, nearly throwing himself headfirst into the gravel, but Malcolm hit the ground running before his stallion had even fully stopped moving.
“Nicholas!”
The boy crashed directly into his chest with so much momentum that Malcolm nearly lost his balance, his large hands reaching down to instantly steady the child. Nicholas gripped Malcolm’s wet leather riding coat with a desperate, white-knuckled strength.
“It’s Mama,” Nicholas gasped, his chest heaving so violently he could barely force the words past his trembling lips. “The glasshouse, Uncle Charles, he is there!”
Malcolm was already moving before the sentence was fully finished, his boots tearing up the turf.
“Stay with Barrow!” he barked over his shoulder toward the nearest stable groom, his voice a lethal command. “Take the boy to the house! Do not let him out of your sight for a single damn second!”
Nicholas grabbed for his sleeve one last time, his voice breaking. “Papa!”
Malcolm crouched with lightning speed, fast enough to look the boy directly in the eyes, his hands steady on his frame. “You did well, son.”
The word son left his throat entirely without conscious thought, heavy and absolute. Nicholas’s small face crumpled with a mixture of profound, frightened relief and exhaustion.
Then Malcolm ran.
The heavy iron doors of the old glasshouse didn’t just open, they burst entirely inward beneath the crushing weight of Malcolm’s shoulder, the iron bolt shearing clean off the stone frame.
The rain hammered the overhead panes like a volley of musketry. Broken terracotta pottery and dark, spilled earth covered the pristine stone floor. And there, near the center of the path, Charles had Penelope pinned brutally against a wooden potting table.
Her elegant green silk gown hung torn at one shoulder, exposing the pale skin beneath.
Her chocolate-brown hair had come loose entirely from its pins, cascading down her back in a wild tangle.
One side of her delicate face was flushed a violent, swollen red where she had been viciously struck, and Charles’s greedy hands were roaming across her body.
Something deep inside Malcolm’s soul snapped cleanly in two. He snarled, a sound more animalistic than the name the ton knew him by.
Charles looked up at the sound of the crash, a sudden, blinding panic flaring in his eyes.
Malcolm crossed the remaining distance in three predatory strides, unleashed a roar of pure, unadulterated savagery, and hit him once. The punch landed squarely across Charles’s jaw with a sickening, bone-crushing crack.
Charles’s head snapped violently sideways. His entire body was lifted completely off balance, thrown backward through the air into the rigid iron supports of the greenhouse before collapsing hard and unconscious onto the wet stone floor.
Penelope gasped sharply, her hands flying to her chest as she trembled violently against the table.
Malcolm turned toward her immediately, the lethal ice in his expression melting into a desperate, frantic panic. “Penelope.”
Her chest heaved in uneven, shallow gasps. She stared at him through wide, tear-filled eyes, looking at his rain-drenched frame as though she could not quite believe he was real, that he was truly standing there in the flesh.
Then, her knees simply gave out beneath her.
Malcolm caught her effortlessly before her slippers could even hit the stone floor. She let out a broken, shuddering sound the exact millisecond his massive arms closed around her, burying her face into the crook of his neck.
“Malcolm… oh Heavens, Malcolm…”
“I have you,” he murmured roughly, his voice thick with an emotion that threatened to choke him. “I have you, Penelope. You are safe.”
His large hands moved over her skin quickly, frantically checking every inch of her.
His thumbs lightly traced her face, her trembling arms, her slender waist. Checking for blood.
Checking for fractures. Already, dark, ugly purple bruises were beginning to darken visibly beneath her delicate skin where Charles had gripped her.
A fresh wave of murderous rage flooded Malcolm’s veins so intensely his vision blurred briefly at the edges.
Penelope gripped the wet front of his riding coat tightly, her fingers digging into the wool. “Nicholas… where is Nicholas?”
“He is safe. He found me on the lawn. He’s at the house.”
Her honey-brown eyes shut instantly at the words. The long, shuddering breath that left her lungs sounded almost painful in its profound relief.
Behind them, the sound of heavy boots came pounding toward the ruined glasshouse doors. Three footmen and two burly stable hands burst inside, carrying glowing lanterns and iron rods, their breath misting in the chill air.
All of them stopped completely dead in their tracks at the scene before them: Charles lay sprawled completely unconscious in a pool of dirt and shattered pottery. The new Duchess was half-clinging, half-collapsed against the Duke, her gown torn. Broken glass and shattered clay were everywhere.
Malcolm didn’t look away from Penelope for a single second, keeping her shielded against his chest. “Bring him to the house,” he ordered the servants, his deep voice dropping into a cold, flat register that brooked no delay.
“Lock him in the cellar rooms. And send a rider for the magistrate immediately.”
The oldest footman swallowed visibly, bowing his head. “Yes, Your Grace.”
Malcolm slid one powerful arm beneath Penelope’s knees and lifted her fully, effortlessly, into his arms. She clung to him the exact moment her feet left the ground.
Not delicately, not as a timid society lady, but desperately, her arms locked around his neck as if he were the only solid thing left in a crumbling world.
Malcolm’s jaw tightened until the muscles jumped. As he carried her out of the wreckage of the glasshouse and into the cool autumn rain, he did not look back once at the unconscious form of Charles.
He knew with absolute certainty that if he looked at the man again, he would kill him with his bare hands.
Nicholas was waiting anxiously in the grand entrance hall of Brigrock Hall, wrapped tightly in three heavy wool blankets beside a roaring hearth.
The moment the heavy front doors swung open and he saw them, the boy tore entirely free from the grasp of the elderly groom holding him and ran across the marble floor.
“Mama!”
Penelope nearly tumbled straight out of Malcolm’s arms, reaching downward with desperate, open hands. “Nicholas! Oh, my darling!”
Malcolm set her down with immense care, ensuring her feet were steady beneath her silk skirts.
The little boy collided into both of them at once, throwing his arms wildly around Penelope’s neck while simultaneously burying his face against her side and clutching a fistful of Malcolm’s wet leather coat.
Penelope dropped directly to her knees on the cold marble, completely unbothered by her ruined skirts. Malcolm’s large hand tightened immediately at her waist, providing the steady, unyielding support she needed to keep from collapsing.
Nicholas pulled back slightly, his small, trembling fingers reaching up to carefully, reverently touch the dark red bruise blooming across her cheekbone. “Did… did you get hurt, Mama?”
Penelope forced a small smile that trembled violently at the edges, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “No. No, my dear, I am all right.”
She pulled Nicholas tightly against her chest again, burying her face in his damp hair.
Malcolm crouched down beside them on the floor, his massive frame enveloping them both.
The sheer sight of them hit him harder, deeper, than any of the physical violence in the glasshouse had.
Here was Penelope, shaking with a profound, lingering terror, yet using every ounce of her maternal strength to keep from frightening her son.
And here was Nicholas, trying so desperately to be a brave little man while still clutching both of them as though he feared one might vanish into thin air if he let go.
My family.
The realization struck Malcolm deep in his chest, absolute and terrifyingly beautiful. He had spent years wandering an empty house of ghosts, believing himself incapable of protecting anything of worth. But looking at the two of them, he knew.
He would burn the entire world to ash before he let anyone touch them again.
An hour later, two local magistrates arrived at Brigrock Hall, accompanied by four armed constables.
Charles, dragged up from the lower rooms with a cloth held to his bloody, ruined jaw, attempted a display of aristocratic outrage first. When that failed under the cold glares of the law, he turned to frantic denial, and finally, to desperate, venomous threats.
None of his words survived contact with the sheer, oppressive reality of the room.
Malcolm stood silently, like an executioner, directly beside Penelope in the grand drawing room. The amber candlelight left nowhere to hide; the dark purple bruises were now darkening visibly along her delicate throat and her shoulder.
One of the veteran constables took a single look at her ripped silk sleeve, her split lip, and the clear finger marks on her neck before turning toward Charles with a look of open, unadulterated disgust.
Charles realized then, as the color drained from his face, that he had lost. Entirely.
“You cannot do this to a gentleman!” Charles spat, his voice cracking with humiliation as two constables seized his arms, forcing him toward the door. “She is a liar! She lured me there! She is a whore who sold herself to a madman!”
“Take the prisoner away,” the head magistrate ordered quietly, his tone laced with disgust.
Charles struggled once against the heavy iron cuffs, his face contorting into a pathetic mask. “This is not finished, Brigrock! I have connections in London! This is not finished!”
Malcolm finally spoke, his deep baritone cutting through the villain’s frantic shouting.
“Yes,” the Duke said, his dark eyes tracking Charles to the threshold. “It is.”
The constables dragged Charles out of the room, his boots scuffing loudly against the floorboards. Only after the heavy oak front doors of Brigrock Hall slammed shut behind them, signaling his permanent removal from their lives, did Penelope’s rigid shoulders finally sag.
The defiance vanished, leaving her exhausted. Malcolm caught her immediately, wrapping his powerful arms around her waist before her knees could buckle.
“I have you,” he murmured against her hair, his chest a solid wall against her cheek. “I have you, my love.”
This time, with the threat finally gone, Penelope buried her face deeply against his chest and began to shake, letting the tears fall freely into the wool of his coat.
Later that night, Nicholas refused to sleep alone in his own bedchamber. Malcolm didn’t blame the boy in the slightest; the trauma of the afternoon was too fresh, too heavy, for a seven-year-old mind to carry in the dark.
The boy sat squarely in the center of the Duke’s enormous four-poster bed in his white nightshirt, his small knees pulled to his chest, while Hector sprawled protectively across Malcolm’s feet at the edge of the mattress, his heavy tail thumping occasionally.
Penelope sat on the edge of the velvet coverlet, her trembling fingers gently brushing the dark waves of hair away from Nicholas’s forehead. “You frightened us very badly today, sweetling,” she whispered, her voice thick with emotion.
Nicholas looked down at his lap, his expression turning miserable. “I tried not to leave you, Mama. I tried to hit him harder.”
“I know you did.”
“I did not want to run away like a coward.”
Malcolm sat down on the other side of the mattress, his massive frame sinking into the feathers. He looked at the boy with immense seriousness. “You obeyed your mother’s direct command, Nicholas.”
Nicholas looked down at his small hands, his bottom lip trembling. “But I left her alone with him. I ran away.”
“You saved her life.”
The boy’s head lifted sharply at that, his wide eyes searching the Duke’s face. Malcolm held his gaze with unyielding intensity.
“You ran exactly when she told you to. You kept your wits about you, you protected the hound, and you brought the only man who could clear that room. That is not cowardice, Nicholas. That is exactly what brave, smart soldiers do on a battlefield.”
Nicholas swallowed hard, a tiny spark of hope flaring in his eyes. “Really, Papa?”
“Really,” Malcolm rumbled gently. “I could not have done better myself.”
A long silence stretched over the large bedroom, the crackle of the hearth fire the only sound. Then, without warning, Nicholas leaned sideways, throwing his small arms entirely around Malcolm’s massive neck, burying his face in the Duke’s shirt.
Over the boy’s shoulder, Penelope pressed her trembling fingers tightly against her mouth, fresh tears slipping down her cheeks at the sight of them.
Nicholas eventually drifted off into a deep, exhausted sleep between them, his small hand still loosely clutching the fabric of Malcolm’s shirt. Hector let out a loud, rumbling snore from the foot of the bed, thoroughly content with his guard duty.
Penelope stood up quietly, tucking the heavy velvet blankets carefully beneath her son’s shoulders before following Malcolm out into the dark corridor.