Caroline moved.
Her hand closed over Powell’s wrist, and she twisted with all her strength, shoving his arm away from her body. The movement was sudden, desperate, and effective. The blade moved away from her ribs, and for one perfect second, there was space between them.
“Caroline, no—” Anthony was already moving, already across the room, already throwing himself between them without thought, without hesitation, without anything but the bone-deep certainty that he would not let her die.
Powell’s arm swung wide as she pushed him, and Anthony was there, between them, his body a wall. He felt the blade slide into his side with the cold, sharp clarity of something inevitable. Something that had always been coming. Something he had known, from the moment he walked into this room, would end this way.
The pain came a second later. White-hot, immediate, stealing his breath and his balance and every coherent thought in one brutal instant.
He heard Caroline scream his name.
Lewis was on Powell in an instant, wrenching the knife away, driving him to the ground with the kind of violence Anthony had only ever seen once before, years ago, when Lewis had discovered his first fiancée’s betrayal. The sound of fists meeting flesh was dull, rhythmic, and brutal. Esther was shouting something. Lord Talton had disappeared, presumably to fetch help.
Anthony staggered. His hand went to his side, came away wet and red. He looked at it with a kind of distant surprise. That was rather a lot of blood. More than he had expected.
“Anthony.”
Caroline’s hands were on his shoulders, his face. She was in front of him, her eyes wide and terrified, and he felt his chest tighten upon seeing her that way.
“I’m all right,” he managed, which was a lie, but he said it anyway because she looked like she needed to hear it. Because the alternative was watching her fall apart, and he could not bear that.
“You’re not.” Her voice broke. “You’re bleeding, you—Anthony, you’re…why…whydid you do that? Why?”
The door burst open. Constables poured in, four of them, moving with the efficiency of men who had been summoned in advance and had been waiting for the signal. They pulled Powell away from Lewis, dragged him upright, and clapped irons on his wrists.
Anthony had sent for them before he came. He had known this would not end quietly. He had known Powell would not go gently. Men like Powell never did.
Powell was shouting something, his face twisted with rage and desperation, but Anthony could not make out the words. The room was tilting, the edges of his vision softening into grey. Everything was getting very far away, very quickly.
“Anthony.” Caroline’s hands were on his face now, turning him toward her. “Look at me. Look at me. Please. Stay with me.”
He did. Her eyes were hazel, flecked with gold, and they were the only thing in the room that felt real. Everything else was noise and shadow and pain, but she was solid. She was here. She was safe.
That was all that mattered.
“You stupid, reckless man,” she whispered, and there were tears on her cheeks, running down her face in clean tracks. “You stupid, stupid man. Why did you do that? Why?”
His knees gave out. She caught him, or tried to, and they both went down. He pressed his back against the wall. Her hands were still on his face, her body pressed against his as though she could hold him together through will alone.
He lifted one hand, slowly, trembling, and touched her cheek. Her skin was warm beneath his palm, and he thought, distantly,that this was the last time he would touch her. That this was how it ended.
“Love,” he whispered.
The room was going dark now, the sounds fading into a kind of muffled distance. Voices were shouting. Someone was calling for bandages, for a doctor, for help. Lewis was beside him, his hands on Anthony’s shoulder, his face white with panic and fear. Esther was crying. The constables were dragging Powell toward the door, and Powell was still shouting, still threatening, and refusing to accept that he had lost.
But Anthony only saw Caroline.
Her face was the last thing he saw before the darkness took him.
“Are you awake?”
Lewis’s voice came from somewhere to his left, careful and measured in a way that suggested he had been sitting there for some time. Anthony opened his eyes. The ceiling above him was unfamiliar, painted white, edged with crown molding that belonged to Grayston House.
He was in a bed. A guest room, presumably. The light from the window was grey, early morning or late afternoon, he couldnot tell which. His side burned with a dull, persistent ache that sharpened when he tried to shift his weight.
The stabbing. Powell. Caroline.
He turned his head. Lewis sat in a chair beside the bed, his expression tight. Beyond him, near the window, Caroline stood with her arms wrapped around herself, her face pale and drawn. She looked exhausted. She looked as though she had not slept.