Mena’s words haunted Liam as he stomped around his private room at St. Margaret’s Royal Hospital.
He did things to my body, to my soul. I let him. I had to.
She’d had to let him because she’d been fucking married to him.
His head pounded every time he stood upright. His shoulder burned like someone persisted in needling him with a branding iron, even though his left arm had been secured to his chest with a sling. He had enough thread in his hairline and his chest to stitch a quilt.
But none of that mattered. It barely registered. His wounds were more annoyance than pain. They slowed him down when there was so much to be done.
Everything had been ripped open and was falling apart, and he needed to be out there triaging the bleeding damage, not holed up here like a goddamned invalid.
Just when Liam had been certain Jani had become family rather than foe, the boy had chosen the worst possible moment to exact his revenge. His children were probably worried out of their minds, stuck with a grandmother they’d only visited a handful of times. Had Gavin been able to deliver Hamish to the proper authorities?
And Mena …
Mena was in the clutches of that smarmy fuck-wit who’d struck her, shackled her, and dragged her away.
Her. Husband.
Christ.
Liam pressed his palm to his throbbing temple with his right hand and kicked the edge of his hospital bed. She’d lied to him in the most fundamental of ways. Not just about whom she was, but what she was. A viscountess. A fugitive.
A madwoman? Liam couldn’t quite believe it. He’d lived with a madwoman before. Had seen the toll, physically and mentally, that insanity took on a person. Mena had seemed desperate, secretive in the extreme, but never mad.
But did he truly believe that? Or was it his own fervent wish that made it seem thus?
He had to know the truth. All of it. Not only to question her, but to see her, and touch her. To know that she was all right. His anger at her, at the whole fucking mess, was knitted tightly with the love that still burned in his heart, and concern, not to mention an intense frustration at his own ignorance. If Lord Benchley had struck her in front of everyone, what had he done to her once they were alone?
His stomach gave a mutinous surge at the thought.
Every moment counted in this situation, and every second apart from her was pure torture. She had much to answer for, but dammit, she’d give him those answers in person.
“Someone bring me a bloody shirt!” he bellowed into the stark and curiously empty hallway. His trousers had been replaced by some flimsy gray cotton pants tied by a string, and his upper half was bared to the chilly hospital air. “Where are my goddammed boots?”
The little mouse of a nurse had disappeared when he’d woken violently, and nearly struck her with his flailing limb mere minutes ago. She’d whimpered something about lying still while she fled to find a doctor. Now there was no one to be seen.
Lie still? Didn’t they ken who the fuck he was? He hadn’t become the Demon Highlander by holding still.
Whirling around, he searched the sparse, clean room for a trace of his belongings and found nothing but a bed, a chair, a table on the far wall with various medical implements on it, and an ugly stand next to the bed upon which a lone glass of water sat.
He reached the table in two long strides and opened its only drawer, finding it empty. Bits of red began to creep into his vision as his heart thudded against his chest, marking the rise of his temper. An image of Mena’s pleading, tear-filled eyes swam across his murky vision.
She’d begged him to save her, and he’d let her down.
I’ll die first.
Dear Christ, what he if was too late?
His hand connected with the glass, and it went flying across the room, shattering on the far wall.
He wasn’t staying here a moment longer, he’d walk the gray autumn streets of London in these flimsy trousers if he had to. He needed to find Mena.
Now.
He turned on his bare heel and had to reach for the bedpost. Not only to counteract the dizziness, but to offset the astonishment of finding his doorway filled by the last person he ever expected to encounter here in London.
Let alone his hospital room.
“You look as though you’ve been to war, Ravencroft.” Dorian Blackwell, the Blackheart of Ben More, stepped into his room with the unconcerned bearing and lithe prowl of a cat, assessing Liam with his one good eye. One that was as obsidian as Liam’s own. An eye patch covered the other, hiding an egregious wound. “I’ve only been shot the once,” he continued conversationally. “But I remember that it smarted like the very devil.”
“What are ye doing here?” Liam growled by way of greeting.
“I have … friends at every train station and on the hospital staff.” Dorian shrugged. “They keep me informed of any interesting goings-on in the city, and I’d say the attempted murder of a marquess and the arrest of a fugitive viscountess certainly fit the bill.”
“Spies, ye mean?”
With a dismissive gesture, Dorian moved closer. “Technically, I’m your next of kin hereabouts, though very few know it. It’d be ungentlemanly of me not to check on my injured brother.”
Christopher Argent’s wide shoulders silently filled the door frame Dorian had only just vacated, and the large, pale-eyed assassin stood like a cold sentinel, never making a move to invade Liam’s room.
Dorian was right to have brought muscle. Liam might only have use of his one arm, but he was still tempted to choke the life from the reigning king of the London Underworld.