Somehow, they’d found her. They’d known that Philomena St. Vincent, Viscountess Benchley, was going to arrive on a train at Euston Station today.
How?
This couldn’t be happening.
“Let me go!” she cried, twisting in the thin man’s surprisingly strong grip.
By the time Mena processed that the sickening snap she heard before the thin man’s scream was his arm breaking, Liam had already planted a knee in her assailant’s face with such force, blood exploded onto the white stone floor and sullied Liam’s fine gray trousers.
He didn’t seem to notice, let alone care. He thrust her behind him, turning to face the others, who sprinted toward them now.
Mena would have thought that the first one to reach them was a big bruiser if he hadn’t been advancing on someone the size of Liam Mackenzie. Running at full speed, the man raised his club and prepared a vicious and dangerous swing at Liam’s head.
Liam never let him get close enough. He lifted his boot and drove it into the man’s chest with such force, the bruiser seemed to collapse around it, folding in on himself. Liam finished him with an uppercut that sent more blood flinging into the air, and somehow he ended up with the man’s club.
Chaos erupted after a breathless moment of pure shock. Screaming travelers scattered through the pillars of the portico and spilled onto Drummond Street, or they retreated to the stairs leading to the great hall to avoid the violence.
Mena wanted to lose herself within their ranks. With sickening, detached clarity she knew her ruse was at an end. Even if Liam managed to defeat all these men, there would be questions. Ones she’d have no choice but to answer.
But she couldn’t bring herself to run. Didn’t take the moment to escape, because the true sight of the Demon Highlander pinned her feet to the ground in pure, unmitigated awe.
Realizing the threat he posed, the three advancing men began to fan out and attempt to flank him, one with a club, one brandishing a pistol, and the other swinging the irons like a mace.
Liam took no time to consider his enemy or formulate a plan. True to his reputation, he lunged forward, an animal of pure aggression and predatory rage. Fearless. Flawless.
And furious.
He didn’t seem to hear the screams of the people around him, nor did he note those who may have been in his way. He merely charged forward with all the power of a Spanish bull.
Dropping his shoulder as he reached his first quarry, Liam drove it into the man’s chest with enough force to lift him from his feet. Using the momentum, he flung the man up and over his shoulder like a rag doll and dropped him on his back. Turning, Liam stomped the sprawled man very low in the ribs, doubtless breaking a few, before scooping up a second club.
A terrible smile pulled that hard mouth away from his teeth in a wolfish snarl before he turned for the two men only now rounding a small mountain of luggage heaped onto the platform.
Jani and the footman ducked behind the luggage before Liam advanced, striking his two clubs against each other to make ready.
The one with the pistol aimed at Liam’s enormous chest and fired. He got two rounds off before Liam reached him and struck him on the face with his club. The pistol clattered to the platform as the man’s head jerked to the side with such speed, Mena feared his neck had broken.
After two more swings of Liam’s clubs, the irons went flying end over end across the floor right before the man holding them did the same thing in an eerily similar fashion.
The Demon Highlander hadn’t a scratch on him. Not one drop of blood was his own. How was that even possible?
It was Mena’s scream of pain as a hand wound into her hair that stopped Liam short. He whirled around, and roared as she was brandished once again as a shield against him.
Mena’s captor didn’t have to speak for her to recognize him. This grip she knew. This man she feared.
This moment marked the end of all hope.
“How kind you are, Lord Ravencroft, to bring back my missing wife.”
She noted the moment the singular word permeated the haze of crimson violence surrounding Liam.
Wife.
Heedless of the blood of his enemies staining his clothes, Liam drew himself up to a regimental stance, long and wide, and undeniably commanding.
“Ye will take yer hands off her,” he commanded in the voice that sent many a hardened soldier scurrying to do his bidding. “And then ye’ll tell me who the fuck ye think ye are.”
“I’m well within my rights to subdue my property in any manner I see fit,” Gordon St. Vincent, her husband, taunted Ravencroft from behind her, though he released her hair and subdued her wrists, instead. Every movement he made was calculated, and she knew he did this to mitigate any pathos her pain might cause. “Permit me to introduce us both,” Gordon said genially. “As I have it on good authority, you’ve never truly met the fugitive you’ve been harboring. I am Lord Gordon St. Vincent, the Viscount Benchley, and this”—Gordon gave Mena a firm shake—“is Lady Philomena St. Vincent, my reluctant viscountess and wife of five years.”
The marquess stared at her with unblinking dark chasms for eyes. “Ye’re … married?”
Mena strained and twisted against the cruel grip of the man whom she’d vowed to love, honor, and obey in all things. Her master in the eyes of the law. She knew what Liam saw behind her. An elegant man with impeccable manners and a deceptively mild and trustworthy demeanor.
“Yes.” The word ripped from her on a hiss of pain. “You don’t understand what I was running from. You can’t know what it was like. What he did to me.” Even the Demon Highlander couldn’t imagine the depths of Gordon’s cruelty. Liam was nothing like him, though he was a soldier, a destroyer of life. Gordon had destroyed her will to live, and Mena knew that to be the greater sin.