Page 73 of The Countess Caper

She was not the only one who noticed.

Roarke saw her halt. It was just for a moment while she wondered how best to react, if at all. She did not realize how her hand drifted to the cut on her throat, still red, likely to leave a mark.

Roarke noticed.

“Him?” he asked in that dark voice, the one that rumbled like thunder and promised fire.

Tessa swallowed. “I don’t—”

“You,” Roarke fairly roared, seizing Lord Beville by the necktie and hauling him bodily from the hall.

Roarke noticed the moment Tessa paused on the stairs, her cheeks going pale.

He took a step forward when they turned red with anger.

When her hand drifted to the delicate skin of her throat and the cut that marred it, he followed her gaze.

After that, it was difficult to remember his thought process. Beyond the kind of cold, simmering rage that made him feel savage. To his bones.

He was the tree cracking in the storm, the ice in spring, the sun on rock. The wasp, the bear. There was nothing of the gentleman left of him.

That man had hurt his wife. Tessa.

He had Beville by the throat and sailing into the nearest room before he registered the decision to move. He barely heard the gasps erupt all around him, someone’s startled squeak. He released Beville only long enough to slam his fist into the man’s face, sending him crashing into a chair and upending on the polished floor. It was satisfying, but nowhere near enough. The man had touched his wife, had tried to hurt her. Had marked her.

Tessa was at his heel. “Roarke.”

“No use, devil,” he said, not taking his eyes from the man groaning and trying to push to his feet. “I saw your face. I know it was him.”

She placed her hands on her hips. “I wasn’t going to say otherwise.” She was. She absolutely was. He could read it in the set of her stubborn chin before he looked back to Beville. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I’m getting tired of hearing you say that.”

She poked his arm. He was threatening the life of a man, and even when he wasn’t, he was accustomed to a certain amount of trepidation when people spoke to him. There was blood on his knuckles and murder in his heart, and she poked him. “This isn’t the place.”

“He owes you an apology.” His voice darkened. “He owes you blood.”

Every drop of Tessa’s blood that he had spilled under his knife would be repaid tenfold. A hundredfold. Roarke knew every solitary inch of the moors. They’d never find the body. He’d make certain of it.

Lord Beville, not strong on self-preservation, pushed into a crouch, scowling. Blood spattered his pristine cravat.

Not good enough.

Not nearly good enough.

Lord Beville made a fist, settling into a stance that would be passable in the ring at Gentleman Jackson’s.

“I don’t think so,” Roarke said, and planted him another facer.

Lord Beville had a glass jaw and was not used to resistance of any kind. Not to his title, his estate, his face. He hit the sideboard, rattling the tray of brandy glasses. The decanter tipped over, rolled to the edge, and hit the floor with a smash. Glass skittered like agitated bugs. Roarke already had Tessa held a few inches in the air, protecting her ankles. He set her down gently. The sharpness of spilled liquor punched the air.

“You broke my nose,” Beville gasped, shocked.

“It’s your jaw next.”

“Dartmoor,” Kensington said from the doorway, sounding curious and not particularly incensed. At least not over the state of Beville. Over the state of his house was another matter. “Not that I mind a bit of violence,” he continued. “But this is my library. I’m rather fond of it. And I was very fond of that decanter. My wife gave it to me.”

Lady Kensington peeked over his shoulder. “You hated that decanter.”