Page 26 of The Rebellious Countess (The Ruined Duchess #2)

The thin man steadied his weapon and forged steel aimed at the broad muscled expanse of the man she loved.

Máira didn’t think. Winding her arm back, she let her blade fly.

Steel soared through the air the razor-sharp tip pointing at its target, slicing through the air like the blade of a guillotine.

The forest was eerily silent. Elias stopped grunting.

His attacker ceased groaning and the trigger of pistol behind him—pulled.

A heartbeat after her blade lodged in the shooter’s neck, his eyes bulged, and he crumpled to the ground and Máira became what she swore she would never become. A murderer.

She didn’t have time to think as the giant bellowed and Elias went flying. He landed with a thud before Máira could determine if the bullet had struck its mark on his back.

Then the beast was on his feet, blood pouring from his nose as if a spigot on a barrel of wine had been left to flow.

Elias didn’t look much the better, lying on the ground with one eye nearly swollen closed, his lower lip split in two different places.

His shirt, loosened from his trousers, was torn down to his waist. She didn’t mind the ruined shirt.

The injuries, however, were a different matter altogether.

Yet no blood spewed from any holes in his chest, and she had to believe the shot had gone wide of its target.

The huge Frenchman stalked Elias like the giant in the story about the beanstalk and she could have sworn she heard him repeat the stolen line from King Lear: “ Fee Fi Fo Fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive, or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread.”

Elias lifted his head, looked at the giant and then at her, before his head dropped back to the earth with a hollow thud.

It was as if he’d raised the white flag the Frenchman did not recognize.

Malevolence radiated off of him as he chose to end the brutality with nothing short of death.

He snarled and reached for her Elias’s shirt, lifting his limp body off the ground and into the air.

With no weapon, Máira did the only thing she could.

She launched herself onto his back. With the man’s height and breadth, that feat alone was difficult.

Her efforts produced a growl low in the man’s throat as he turned his head to see what he had failed to notice—her—and she suddenly questioned her own sanity.

Perhaps it had been the tenacity and fierce determination she’d seen in her mother-in-law’s eyes as she killed the man in the tavern that gave Máira strength.

It was in that moment she understood Hag. Máira had to be like her to save her husband from certain death, because the fight was out of him?—

Until it wasn’t.

From the ashes of certain death, Elias roared.

His arm swung and his fist, wrapped around a huge rock she hadn’t noticed before, slammed into the temple of the man who stood between them.

The three of them landed in a tangled heap on the ground and Máira was thankful she landed on the top of the pile.

“Did you kill him?” she asked Elias between breaths.

“I think I did.”

“You think?”

“He’s not moving, is he?”

“Well, no, but that doesn’t mean he’s dead.”

“His chest fails to rise.”

“My sisters say I sleep as if I am dead. He could just be unconscious.”

Elias blew out a long, heavy sigh. “Are you injured?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so, no. Are you?”

He quirked a brow. It happened to be the brow over his left eye that was currently red and swelling shut. It looked ghastly.

“Other than your face,” she qualified.

Elias chuckled and pushed her hair away from her cheek. “My ribs feel as if a herd of sheep have trampled across them for the past week.”

“That’s awful,” she said.

“Mmmm,” he responded. “Could I ask a favor?”

“Of course. Anything.”

“Could you kindly get off my chest so that I might breathe?”

“Good heavens, I’m sorry!” Máira scrambled off the top of him, feeling as stupid as a young girl seeing the first real man who’d struck her fancy. How was it possible Elias still rattled her so.

Pulling herself to rights, Máira attempted to help him up only to be turned away.

“I can do it.”

“Of course you can,” she replied, but she knew he couldn’t. He was badly beaten from his head to his toes, and everywhere in between, the pain evident in his grimace. He staggered to his feet but she was there for him, under his arm and guiding him away from the carnage they had created.

Elias looked over at what she now recognized as the body of a French officer in the military, her knife in his neck. “Is that your work?” He asked.

She didn’t want to look, but she supposed she had to face what she had done. “Yes.”

The dead man’s eyes were open, his jaw slack and his arms spread wide from his body. The pistol lay on the ground less than a foot away. It was hard to imagine the menace she had seen on his face moments earlier. His sheer determination to end Elias’s life was an image she would never forget.

Elias stopped for a moment, placing his large body in-between her and the dead man, and looked down into her eyes. Even though one of his eyes was completely swollen shut, the other looked at her in a manner he had not done before. “Thank you.”

Her eyes filled. Her hands began to shake. “For killing a man?” she croaked over the emotion tightening in her throat and looked away.

His hand raised to her chin and turned her head, forbidding her to look anywhere but into the depths of his mossy green gaze.

The sincerity she saw was the same as she had witnessed on their wedding day.

Solemn in nature, truth in volumes, as he wiped away tears she hadn’t realized had fallen.

“For saving my life.” He kissed her forehead, and she wished he’d kissed her lips.

His large body swayed and she let her emotions fade into oblivion as she wrapped her arm around his waist once more to guide him to a fallen tree where he could sit and she could tend his wounds.

“We’ll need his gun to see this through,” Elias told her.

“You’re expecting more trouble?”

“We are English citizens in France. I expect those two won’t be our last battle.”

“You are in no shape to battle.”

“I’ve been in worse. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You can barely stand.”

“Enough, Máira. In an hour I’ll be as good as new, and I will get you somewhere safe where you can wait until after I recover the earl.”

She wanted to argue but knew better. Having five sisters taught her to recognize a losing battle.

Robina, the youngest Blair sister, shared the same tranquil and friendly nature as Elias—docile and calm with a witty quirk of the brow—until she wasn’t happy.

Thoughts of Elias aboard the Maribelle crashed into her thoughts like the angry waves that had battered the ship.

He’d been angry at her, but more importantly, he’d been angry at himself and nature for endangering her safety.

It had been the same look he’d held when he’d killed the man mere moments ago. Every thought had been to protect her.

When in battle, he was a completely different creature.

Initially, she’d believed she’d been duped; when she woke up to find this imposing man aboard the Maribelle , she should have recognized the duality of his nature.

The autocratic figure in front of her was like Robina when she was told she must dress for an occasion and put on proper shoes.

As a child, she’d resisted with every bit of her will.

Robina had been of the mindset that a stiff upper lip wouldn’t get her as far as a stiff uppercut of her fist. There had been several instances when their nursemaid had to hold Robbie still while Máira slipped a gown over her head and shoes onto her feet.

Robbie’s fist were weapons of mass destruction.

They landed blows on any chin in the vicinity if she was in a mood, and then she would present herself in public as the ever-obedient, contrite little girl.

Like Robbie, Elias was congenial in polite society. A gentleman who would recover her package and grin a devilishly forward smile as if he knew her every thought when she’d stuttered a shy thank you .

Take the man out of the pomp and circumstances of their courtship and put him into a mission to save another, however, and the docile man she’d known, rarely appeared.

Yet somehow, she found she loved this strong, powerful, and utterly ruthless side of him more.

He commanded respect without the obvious station of a gentleman dressed in his finest attire.

Even off ship, most men stepped out of his path to avoid his raw masculinity.

But there was something else she liked even more when she was with Elias.

She liked what she became while with him.

She liked this new fierce side of her personality.

She had done what she needed to do to save him.

An intensity she’d never known she possessed came to life when she was in his company.

Still…now was not the time to poke the injured beast, because whether he realized it or not, Elias needed her to see his mission through.