Page 62 of His Mistress, His Muse, and Other Madness
He stroked a finger down the curve of her cheek, and bile rose in her throat.
She jerked away, yelped when she felt the nothing behind her, and fell forward into his chest. She scrambled out of his embrace. “I had determined to make friends with you today, but I see you are not a man worth knowing.”
“And I see you are not worthy of that title you throw about,LadyCordelia.”
She remained trapped between him and the wall. She lunged to one side, and he followed. She tried the other, but he trapped her there, too.
“Still… you are a beauty. I can see why Lord Theodore would take on his father’s leavings. You could visit my bed if you tire of the Bromley men. Though there are, what, four more of them yet living. It may take you a while to—”
She slapped him, hard, spinning the vitriol of his speech into ringing silence.
“You willnot,” she snapped, “speak of me in such insulting ways. And you will stop spreading Simon’s lies.”
His elbow reared back as invectives left his lips, and his fist flew toward her.
She jerked away, avoided his fist, and fell backward into nothing, into rushing air, and then into the moat beneath the bridge.
Sixteen
Theo had suffered nightmares like this—falling forever, a plunge into darkness, loss. Always vague, more feeling than reality. But forever after watching Cordelia fall from the bridge, new images would accompany those nightmares. It would always be her body falling, disappearing. It would always be losing her.
He had been rounding the house when he’d seen Bradley pin her against the wall. He’d started running, and he still ran, gaze trained to the moat. Where was she?
There! Her head popping above the water, her mouth open, gasping.
He didn’t yell her name or make promises. He simply ran faster, dove into the moat, and swam toward her with straight, strong pulls until he had her in his arms.
“Theo,” she gasped. “I-I c-can swim.” Teeth chattering despite the sun above, the heat of the day. Bloody hell.
He towed her toward the shore and deposited her on the grass. She lay on her back for several seconds, blinking at the blue sky above.
He cupped her cheek with one hand and her shoulder with the other. Clothing soaked. Her bones seemed so fragile beneath his touch, her skin translucent, her muscles insubstantial. Too small, too easily harmed, her chest rising and falling in a rapid, ragged rhythm. He lay beside her, angling his body into hers, pressing her into the earth, needing to feel her beneath him.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No.” She reached up to cup his cheek. “I’m not, Theo. I’m well.”
“Good.” Now he could focus elsewhere. His head whipped up to face the bridge. “You bloody bastard!”
He tried to stand, to run after the villain, but Cordelia wrapped her arms around his middle, held him tight.
She shook her head. “No.”
“He tried to drown you. And who knows what else.”
“What if Pentshire throws you out? No prize money. No scandal to draw.”
Bradley was gathering his equipment and heading back to the house as if nothing had happened.
“I don’t care.” And hell if he didn’t. Not with this searing rage ripping through him. “Stay here.” He stood and ripped his jacket off, dropped it down to her. “Cover up with that.”
Then he sprinted up the hill and toward Bradley’s retreating back. Bradley must have felt the danger because he picked up the pace, darting in an almost sprint, but Theo—not weighted down by an easel and other art supplies, and brimming with the speed of retribution—reached him easily, grabbed his shoulder, swung him around, and slammed his eager fist into Bradley’s shocked face.
On the periphery of his vision, he saw others arrive—faces pressed to windows above, bodies running around the side of the house. But not one of them stopped his second punch. Nor did they stop him when Bradley fell to the dusty earth and Theo knelt with him, shoving a knee into the man’s gut and treating himself to a third hit.
“Theo!”
A fourth hit. Bradley gagged as Theo made a fist in the man’s cravat, tugged, twisted.
