Page 61 of A Duke Changes Everything
Even from a distance, Mina made out Lord Lyle’s ugly sneer. The man looked down on everyone, but he’d never shown this level of disrespect to Eustace or the old duke.
“Or should I call you Nick Lyon?”
“Call me whatever you damn well please, but get the hell off my property.”
“Property is precisely why I’m here. Your lad filched my stallion, and I mean to see justice done.”
Nick cast a glance at Mina over his shoulder. She bit her lower lip. He had every reason to be angry at her about the stallion, but all she saw in his eyes was concern.
“Do we have Lord Lyle’s horse, Tobias?”
The young man flicked his gaze from the duke to Mina and then Lord Lyle but didn’t utter a word.
Mina noticed movement out of the corner of her eye and spied Gregory slinking into the stable. It wouldn’t take him long to find Hades. She broke into a run, found him inspecting the stalls with two fingers pinched over his nose, and latched her hand around his arm.
“How dare you?” He elbowed to dislodge her, and then his eyes rounded when he turned and saw her face. “Mina?”
He trailed a glance down her body. His gaze flared with the interest she’d seen many times in his cool gray eyes. “You’re wearing trousers.”
“Please, Gregory. I’m asking you not to do this.”
“Retrieve Lyle property? Of course, I must.” He indicated with his chin toward where Nick and his father stood arguing. “Not even a duke’s groom can steal another man’s horseflesh. Tremayne’s stable boy must be made to pay for this.”
“I’m the one who brought the stallion into the stables.”
“Don’t speak nonsense. Your pathetic attempt to protect Tremayne’s ragtag staff won’t do.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe you’ve been fool enough to remain on this wretched estate. Get yourself a husband or a keeper. You need a man to show you your place.”
Mina tensed so fiercely, a spike of pain shot across her shoulders and up her neck. She ignored the supreme irony of Gregory Lyle chastising her, when he’d been the one who’d tried convincing her thather placewas on a stone bench in his family’s conservatory under his heaving body.
Thank God she’d been sensible enough not to let matters between them go that far.
“The stallion was bleeding when I found him. Your father beat the horse viciously.” Mina waited for a reaction, but the news didn’t seem to surprise him.
He leaned in, the shapely lips she’d once kissed peeled back in a hideous smirk. “He’s my horse. Father never rides him. The beast’s too willful and needs to be broken.” He dropped his gaze to her neck, to the swath of skin and peek of cleavage Nicholas had exposed. “Just like you, Mina. We both know I should have been the man to break you.”
Her fingers curled instinctively and her fist flew like an arrow straight to its target, the small, perfectly sculpted nose in the center of Gregory Lyle’s arrogant face.
“You bitch!” Blood trickled between his fingers. He swiped for her with his free hand and Mina stumbled back.
Her hand stung, but Mina didn’t regret striking Gregory’s arrogant face. Only the rage in his eyes scared her. And not for her but for Nick, especially if Gregory and his father chose to make trouble. And for Hades too, if the poor creature ever fell back into the Lyles’ hands.
A thud against the stable’s outer wall made them both jump. It sounded like the chaos of a scuffle. Bodies crashing against wood.
Mina spun away and darted toward the yard. Tobias sat on his backside, fingers pressed against a swollen cut on his lip. The burly man who worked for Lord Lyle loomed over him, smirking with brutal satisfaction.
“Leave him alone.” Mina started over, prepared to intervene, but she also scanned the yard for Nick.
A few feet away, he and the viscount stood inches apart, speaking in low, menacing tones. Then, in a flash, Lyle turned violent. Raising his walking cane above his head, he snarled at the duke.
“You bloody bastard.”
Mina changed course, rushed over, and squeezed her body between the two men. With her bottom pressed to Nicholas’s groin, she reached a hand back to hold him at bay and found her fingers wrapped around the hard, shifting muscles of his thigh. Even in this chaos, the solid feel of his body against hers ignited all Mina’s senses.
“I took the horse,” she confessed to Lord Lyle.
“You?” The viscount arched back, lowering his cane an inch. “Aren’t you the impertinent chit who tried to seduce my son?”
“How dare you?” Nicholas’s arm shot out around her, gathering the lapel of Lyle’s coat in his fist.
