Liam took a step toward them, tightening his grip on the club as if he’d decided to free her.
“What it was like for you?” Gordon scoffed, his breath stinking of opium smoke and his father’s expensive cigars. “What about me, Philomena? Can you comprehend what it is like to be married to a madwoman? Do you realize how selfish it was to run from the asylum and leave no one with any clue as to your whereabouts? You almost killed poor mother, Philomena. We have been sick with worry.”
Liam’s step faltered at the word madwoman.
“Like hell!” Mena accused, sending a pleading look toward the man she loved as suspicion brewed beneath the tempest in his eyes. “They committed me to the asylum because they’d spent my money and I was no longer useful to them. Because I turned his sister in to the authorities when she had a young actress murdered. I am married to a monster, Liam. And he left me in that place to rot indefinitely. I had no choice but to escape. I am not mad. Ask your—ask Dorian Blackwell, he’s the one who facilitated my flight.”
A dark look crossed Ravencroft’s features, one that told her that Liam planned to do just that.
“You witnessed my wounds,” she continued, hating how her voice began to climb to a hysterical pitch. “The bruises, the torture. I refuse to go back there. I’ll die first!”
“My poor unfortunate wife. She’s a delusional woman, Lord Ravencroft, and you’re not the first to be taken in by her.” Gordon tightened his hold on her and Mena heard the boot falls of someone else bringing chains. “When she escaped Belle Glen Asylum, I hadn’t seen her in months. Her wounds were self-inflicted; it was part of why I had to lock her away in the first place.”
Twisting and jerking in his hold with all her strength, she watched in horror as suspicion began to drown the anger on Liam’s features. The odds were against her. Liam’s first wife had been insane, and she could read the doubt that created within him. The reticence to go through something like that again, to put his children through it. Any reasonable man would pause to wonder if he’d been had.
“Your every action has been one of insanity.” Mena didn’t miss the mocking note beneath Gordon’s tone as one iron clamped over her wrist with cold and gritty finality. “A viscountess employed as a governess? Changing your very identity? Seducing a marquess whilst still married? You’re seriously ill, my darling, I’m taking you back where they can take care of you.”
“This is my secret,” she cried to Liam, as desperation cracked in her raw throat. Her shoulders wrenched painfully as she struggled toward him. “This is what I was afraid to reveal. What I was going to confess. I’ll tell you everything, Liam, just please don’t let them take me.”
Mena never thought she’d see something as human and pedestrian as indecision in Liam’s eyes. Mena’s desperation became desolation. He didn’t trust her, and who could blame him? Guilt and pain crushed any hope she had left. With a cry, she was able to wrench her arm away from Gordon and whirl on him, landing a blow to the aristocratic features she couldn’t believe she’d once found handsome.
“Unhand me,” she demanded.
Gordon returned her strike with the back of his hand, and Mena’s knees buckled as, for a precious moment, the lights of Euston Station dimmed as shadows danced, threatening her consciousness.
In her periphery, she saw Liam lunge forward, retribution etched onto his features.
Her husband had just signed his own death warrant, and thank God for that. Even if he didn’t believe her, Liam’s honor wouldn’t allow her to be struck.
She turned toward him, anticipating the moment he’d come between her and the man she’d grown to fear and hate.
The unmistakable blast of a pistol shot echoed through the portico with such deafening reverberation, even time seemed to hold its breath.
Mena whirled to see that Gordon was as stunned as she, the two men at his side looking past her in openmouthed astonishment. There was not a pistol among them.
Her heart stalled, then dropped into her stomach as she slowly turned back to see her worst fear confirmed. A pool of red bloomed over the left chest of Liam’s gray waistcoat.
Mena cried out and reached for him with her one free hand, burning to go to him, unable to claw herself from her husband’s punishing grip.
Liam’s expression turned from astonished to enraged in an instant, and he leaped around, his bludgeon lifted to swing at his attacker, heedless of his injury.
Mena saw him hesitate, and she couldn’t fathom why. Had they missed one of Gordon’s thugs? What did he see that seemed to deflate his lungs and extinguish the inferno of his fury?
The hesitation cost him dearly as a heavy piece of luggage connected with his temple.
Mena screamed and lunged forward as he fell, but someone seized her free wrist and clamped the shackle around it, leaving her to watch in horror as Liam’s magnificent body folded to the platform, landing hard enough to shake the ground.
A ragged sound escaped her as it uncovered just who held a pistol in one hand, and sharp-edged baggage in the other.
“No,” she sobbed, as the resolute anger in Jani’s dark eyes was blurred by the storm of her hysterical tears.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
My only means of escape is to be other than I was. You know I have a secret. A terrible secret. You can’t imagine the depth of it. The scope of it. You don’t know who I am … what I’ve become. To tell you would be the end of me.