“And that cost me everything,” Owen said. “So I’ll cost him. When I break him through you, everyone will see that too.”
“You think you’re clever,” she mustered up the courage, “But you’re a coward. You couldn’t fight him straight, so you wentafter a woman. You really are bankrupt in more ways than one,” she said.
“Defending your poor little husband so ardently?” He stepped close again. “You really love him, it seems.”
“Yes,” the words came immediately. It was no longer even a question in her mind what she felt for him.
“And does he return those feelings?” Owen grinned. “Or is he just keeping you in that marriage as a way to protect you?”
“That is between us,” she said. “Not you.”
“But it makes you easier to use,” he said. “You’ll keep quiet, and you’ll try not to make it worse for him. That helps me.”
“You are wrong,” Maria said. “I will do anything to make it worse for you.”
“Sharp tongue for a duchess,” He laughed once. “You want another lesson?”
“Try it,” she said, voice flat. “And when he walks in, he will not let you live this through. Didn’t you learn the lesson the first time?”
He held her stare for a long second, then smirked and stepped back. “Talk big while you’re tied.”
“I won’t be tied long.” She held his gaze. “You’re a small man, and you will have your reckoning.”
Owen’s smile flickered, just once.
“You will not take that tone with me,” he said.
“Why,” she whispered, “because I remind you what you are?”
His hand lifted, and the slap cracked across her cheek, a flaring pain that made her ear ring. It was not the worst she had endured in her life, but it had the peculiar cruelty of being given as a lesson by a man who had decided he was owed something that he did not even deserve.
He stared a second at what he had done and then set his mouth hard. “Be quiet.”
She swallowed. Her lip had gone numb.
“I will be quiet,” she managed, “when I have nothing left to say to you.”
“You have plenty left,” he said. “Save it for him.”
As if summoned by the word, sound rose beyond the door, followed by the sound of running footsteps. Owen’s head snapped toward the noise.
Was it him?A raw hope took root in Maria’s heart.
“Stay here,” Owen snarled, and turned for the door. “Hold the front!”
The corridor exploded with noise again, and the door flew open, slammed back, then swung wide.
Stephen burst into the room, and he came straight for her without looking at anyone else.
“Maria,” there was a desperation in his voice that she had never heard before from him.
“Stephen.”
This was not the reunion that she had hoped to have, but the relief she felt was palpable.
He took one step toward her.
One of Owen’s staff hurled himself at his back. Stephen turned without looking, caught the man’s arm, and drove him into the jamb. The man crumpled. Stephen’s hand flexed once, shaking off the impact, and then he was at her side again.