Page 72 of Claiming His Lost Duchess
And she would be lost once more.
Just as she had begun to lose hope, the door burst open and heavy footfalls approached them, the sound seeming to fall in time with her heartbeat.
Then she heard a breathless, demanding voice.
“Let go of my wife this instant.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Graham stepped into the house, his eyes fixed on nothing other than his wife.
Her hair was disheveled, her cloak askew as she fought against the arm braced around her neck.
“Did you not hear me? I said —”
The sound of a gun cocking pierced the air and Joan went still, eyes wide as she watched the hand that wasn’t restraining her aim a weapon at her husband.
“You best believe on your way, boy,” Benedict spat. “There’s nothing here for the likes of you!”
As he spoke, he tightened his grip around Joan and she let out a cry of fright and pain.
That was the final straw for Graham.
His mind lost all reason, and his body was urged forward by the sight of his wife in danger, by the sound of her hurt, not caring at all about the gun aimed at him.
Benedict had not expected the Duke to charge, but even still, he fired his gun, the bullet only grazing its mark, and just like that, the viscount of Farhampton had used his one and only chance and failed.
With a roar of rage, Graham shoved him away from Joan and onto the ground, kicking the gun aside after it clattered uselessly against the floor boards.
“You —”
Benedict was cut off as a boot came out to strike him under the chin, causing him to choke and cough in pain.
As he wheezed, Graham pressed a hand onto the scratch he had gotten from the gun shot, barely flinching as his hand came away stained with blood.
“Did you really think this would stop me? I have been shot several times during hunting trips in Scotland! This is child’s play.”
And then he raised a foot and brought it down, hard, on one of Benedict’s hands. The sound of bones crunching filled the air,followed by a scream from the man on the floor who writhed around.
“That is all men like you know how to do,” Graham muttered, moving to sit on the man, before he braced a hand on him and reared the other back. “Take. You take the peace of others, their purity, their courage, their lives and you eat it all like the gluttonous bastard you are. You should have released her the moment I asked.”
Benedict gasped, his mouth parting to speak in his defense but no one got to hear the words as a close fist collided with his face before he exhaled a single syllable.
“You are not as smart as you think that you are,” Graham tutted, tightening his hold on the man. “You are simply a weak old man who thought too much of himself because you’d never been caught before.”
Benedict groaned and muttered what sounded like pleas to Joan’s ears, but Graham did not care, only clenching his fist and hitting the other man again, harder.
The contact between his fist and the middle of the man’s face caused Benedict to bleed through his nose and mouth and he drew increasingly horrified to find that his struggles had no effect on Graham.
The Scot had nothing within him but a thirst for blood and he intended to take every single drop from Benedict.
“You dared to lay a finger on my wife? To haunt her and take away our child?”
Joan felt alarmed by the behavior her husband displayed, worried about the harm he was putting himself through for her sake.
Suddenly, she was overwhelmed by a need to have him close by, to hold him and keep him from tainting himself with that man’s blood.
“Graham,” she called, heart sinking when the man did not look her way. “Graham, please stop.”
