Page 89 of In Compromise with the Earl
“Leo—” the Dowager tried to intervene.
He spun and brandished the knife. “Be quiet.”
Aphrodite tottered forward, her eyes flicking between Oswald’s bloodied sleeve and his eyes. “Leo, h…he’s bleeding, badly.”
“He’s had worse, so he’ll be fine,” Leo said nonchalantly. “Well for now.”
“Please,” she begged, “let me help him.”
“You cannot,” Leo said stiffly. “He is not worthy of you, that is why I sent you that packet of truth he had been hiding from you all this time. He is not worthy of you, Aphrodite, just as he was not worthy of Claire.”
“You did not have to kill her,” Oswald said. “What had she done to you for you to murder her?”
Leo’s face tightened. “Because, for once I had found a good thing in my life and just like you and your kin, you had to steal her away from me. I loved her, deeply loved her, had given her my heart and soul and yet you had to come and steal her. Ofcourse,she would take the titled lord instead of the poor preacher.
“But there was one thing…” Leo leaned menacingly, “I never stopped having her in my bed. Do you know how sweet she looked on the verge of her crisis, how she called my name when I took her in my bed? Do you know how she begged to stay with me instead of going back you, a frigid man with no sense of what it took to please a woman?”
Aphrodite gasped. “You…you had an affair with her!”
“I’d hardly call it an affair if we were together before she and my cousin decided to make a sham marriage,” Leo replied.
“Why?” Oswald worked his heavy tongue. “Why did you kill her?”
“Because she was playing me for a fool just as she was doing to you,” Leo spat. “When I found that she had other lovers and would not cleave to me alone, I…reacted.”
“With a dagger to her heart,” Oswald said as a twinge of pain in his arm told him the drug was starting to wear off.
“I had planned a much more gruesome death, but that was easiest,” Leo replied. “And now, you will meet the same fate.”
“No,” Aphrodite said as she came forward, “please, leave them alone.”
He shot her a look. “And why would I do that?”
She came to him and reached out. “Because of what we feel for each other, or was I imagining the love you have for me those times we talked?”
Leo reached out to cup her face, his thumb stroking over her cheekbone. “No, Aphrodite, you’re not wrong but Oswald doesn’t deserve you either.”
“So? I feel the same, it was a shame I had met and married Oswald before I met you,” she asked, coming close to him and lifting a hand up Leo’s arm. The gaze she gave Leo was full of adoration and a jealous burn branded itself in Oswald’s mostly numbed chest. “Let us leave them behind.”
He dropped the hand with his dagger and leaned into her face as if to kiss, and Oswald watched her closely. His eyes were on her while his hands were working the knots behind his back to loosen them. Leo had made the knots tight. He had worked a few of them loose and he was glad that Aphrodite was distracting him so he could get free.
Aphrodite tipped on her toes and while sliding her hand down to the dagger and before her lips touched Leo’s, she wrenched the dagger from him and stabbed Leo’s thigh.
“You bitch!” Leo shouted while Aphrodite raced behind Oswald and slashed the ropes quickly. Before Leo straightened, Oswald was up and punching him, landing a swift uppercut to his jaw and sending Leo spinning.
Red filled his vision as he slammed his cut-throat cousin into the wall and using a hand to pin him by the throat, he drove his fist into Leo’s face and belly again and again andagain.
“You baseborn filth,” Oswald growled, while caught in the grip of bloodlust and revenge. “Who did you pay to kill me last night?”
Leo’s face was a bloody mess as he tried to fight back, eventually breaking Oswald’s hold, but Oswald kept on punching. He drew his fist back again, but Leo blocked him and landed a blow on Oswald’s injured arm.
Fire raced up his body, turning his head into a swarming, seething mix of pain.
“Who did you pay to kill me?” he demanded.
“Doesn’t matter,” Leo lurched himself at Oswald. “You’ll see them in the afterlife.”
Feinting to left at the last moment, Oswald plowed his fist into Leo’s belly and he bowled over. Oswald wrenched the other’s arm, forcing him up but Leo kicked Oswald’s feet from under him and landed a facer that sent Oswald sprawling.
