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.
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.