Page 57

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” he demanded.

“Saving your miserable life!” Her eyes flashed fire at him, and he realized he'd never seen her so angry.

Almost as angry as he was. “Daphne, you little idiot. Do you realize how dangerous this little stunt was?” Without realizing what he was doing, his hands wrapped around her shoulders and started to shake. “One of us could have shot you.”

“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “You hadn't even reached your end of the field.”

She had a point, but he was far too furious to acknowledge it. “And riding here in the dead of night by yourself,” he yelled. “You should know better.”

“I do know better,” she shot back. “Colin escorted me.”

“Colin?” Simon's head whipped back and forth as he looked for the youngest of her older brothers. “I'm going to kill him!”

“Would that be before or after Anthony shoots you through the heart?”

“Oh, definitely before,” Simon growled. “Where is he? Bridgerton!” he bellowed.

Three chestnut heads swiveled in his direction.

Simon stomped across the grass, murder in his eyes. “I meant the idiot Bridgerton.”

“That, I believe,” Anthony said mildly, tilting his chin toward Colin, “would refer to you.”

Colin turned a deadly stare in his direction. “And I was supposed to let her stay at home and cry her eyes out?”

“Yes!” This came from three different sources.

“Simon!” Daphne yelled, tripping across the grass after him. “Get back here!”

Simon turned to Benedict. “Get her out of here.”

Benedict looked undecided.

“Do it,” Anthony ordered.

Benedict held still, his eyes darting back and forth between his brothers, his sister, and the man who'd shamed her.

“For the love of Christ,” Anthony swore.

“She deserves to have her say,” Benedict said, and crossed his arms.

“What the hell is wrong with you two?” Anthony roared, glaring at his two younger brothers.

“Simon,” Daphne said, gasping for breath after her race across the field, “you must listen to me.”

Simon tried to ignore her tugs on his sleeve. “Daphne, leave it. There's nothing you can do.”

Daphne looked pleadingly at her brothers. Colin and Benedict were obviously sympathetic, but there was little they could do to help her. Anthony still looked like an angry god.

Finally she did the only thing she could think of to delay the duel. She punched Simon.

In his good eye.

Simon howled in pain as he staggered back. “What the hell was that for?”

“Fall down, you idiot,” she hissed. If he was prostrate on the ground, Anthony couldn't very well shoot him.

“I am certainly not going to fall down!” He clutched his eye as he muttered, “Good God, being felled by a woman. Intolerable.”

“Men,” Daphne grunted. “Idiots, all.” She turned to her brothers, who were staring at her with identical expressions of openmouthed shock. “What are you looking at?” she snapped.

Colin started to clap.

Anthony smacked him in the shoulder.

“Might I have one, single, tiny, ever-so-brief moment with his grace?” she asked, half the words mere hisses.

Colin and Benedict nodded and walked away. Anthony didn't move.

Daphne glared at him. “I'll hit you, too.”

And she might have done it too, except that Benedict returned and nearly yanked Anthony's arm out of the socket as he pulled him away.

She stared at Simon, who was pressing his fingers against his eyebrow, as if that might lessen the pain in his eye.

“I can't believe you punched me,” he said.

She glanced back at her brothers to make sure they'd moved out of earshot. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“I don't know what you hoped to accomplish here,” he said.

“I should think that would be abundantly obvious.”

He sighed, and in that moment he looked weary and sad and infinitely old. “I've already told you I cannot marry you.”

“You have to.”

Her words emerged with such urgency and force that he looked up, his eyes on sharp alert. “What do you mean?” he asked, his voice a study in control.

“I mean that we were seen.”

“By whom?”

“Macclesfield.”

Simon relaxed visibly. “He won't talk.”

“But there were others!” Daphne bit her lip. It wasn't necessarily a lie. There might have been others. In fact, there probably were others.

“Whom?”

“I don't know,” she admitted. “But I've heard rumblings. By tomorrow it will be all over London.”

Simon swore so viciously that Daphne actually took a step back.

“If you don't marry me,” she said in a low voice, “I will be ruined.”

“That's not true.” But his voice lacked conviction.

“It is true, and you know it.” She forced her eyes to meet his. Her entire future—and his life!—was riding on this moment. She couldn't afford to falter. “No one will have me. I shall be packed away to some godforsaken corner of the country—”

“You know your mother would never send you away.”

“But I will never marry. You know that.” She took a step forward, forcing him to acknowledge her nearness. “I will be forever branded as used goods. I'll never have a husband, never bear children—”

“Stop!” Simon fairly yelled. “For the love of God, just stop.”