Page 339 of From Rakes to Riches

He caught her elbow. “Any number of those men are not above taking hostages to escape the police. There are innocent people threaded throughout a labyrinth of warring factions. And, as you said, most of them are out for my blood. How am I supposed to concentrate on the task at hand if you’re in danger?”

“I’m not harmless, I’ll have you know.” Her jaw thrust forward as she reached into her sleeve and produced an impressive-looking knife. “Do you really think I’d trust a suicidal gangster to set things to right? Not bloody likely, I’ll take my chances down there, thank you.”

“But—”

She gave her golden curls a saucy toss. “No one knows of our...connection. So if someone comes for your throat, I’ll simply step aside and let them have at you, and it’d be what you deserve.”

As she flounced away, one knee-weakening truth became unerringly obvious.

He was in trouble.

No.

He...was in love.

To him, the emotion hadn’t been definable. He’d never truly stopped to ponder it. Just accepted that he felt something like it for his brother. Had done so once for his mother.

Not that his emotions for Mercy were anything filial. Indeed, he hated to admit they might be stronger even in so short a time.

He’d known he’d loved Gabriel because his brother meant more than himself. Because he’d die for him. Kill for him. His loyalty was absolute and unquestioned.

But for Mercy?

He’d burn the entire world to the ground if she asked him. He’d accomplish any Herculean task. Sail to the ends of the world to fetch a trinket she liked.

He not only loved her enough to stay if it were possible.

He loved her enough to let her go if it meant keeping her safe.

The realization galvanized him forward as she wrenched the door open and plunged into the hall.

He hovered behind her like the very wrath of God, brandishing his own sharp dagger as they spiraled back down the stairs. Raphael searched for another way out, but the only entrance and exit to this specific tower dumped them right toward the main hall of the keep.

Damn these old fortresses.

He lunged around her as they struggled through the short corridor toward the great hall, gathering her free hand in his. “You’ll stay glued to me, Mercy, or so help me God!”

To his surprise and utter relief, she nodded in compliance.

Keeping her latched between him and the wall, Raphael shoved past bodies who’d begun to flee down whichever hall they could find, not knowing they raced toward a dead end.

An acrid smell itched at his nose, smoke and something bitter.

He snatched a panicked footman clean off his feet. “What’s going on out there?” he demanded.

“Madness!” The gawky lad’s voice squeaked with the fear of a man barely out of his teenage years. “Someone spied the Bobbies and before we knew it, a tussle broke out right on the ballroom floor. Men at each other’s throats. Never seen anything like it.Someone tossed over an oil lamp and now the drapes in the gaming den have caught. Best we run, man.”

Cursing, Raphael released him and shouldered his way to the end of the hall.

He took a quick toll of the anarchy when they broke onto the landing that wrapped around the great room’s second story, at eye level with the ostentatious chandelier.

Morley’s men spilled into the courtyard like blue-coated rats. Some doing their best to contain the tide of panicked partygoers, funneling them out to safety.

Others brandished an asp to meet the blows of gangster cudgels.

Longueville was nowhere to be found, and without him and Raphael to maintain the temperature on the simmering tension between the Fauves and the Butchers, it had boiled over into this potentially lethal catastrophe.

It wasn’t supposed to have happened this way. Only the leaders and their closest comrades were to meet here and witness his challenge.

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