Her eyes widened. “You confronted him?”
“A small altercation,” he admitted. “Are we staying here or moving to my house?”
A thrill shot through her. She didn’t just trust that he was a man. She also trusted that he wanted to protect her. But what to do with that trust? She still felt betrayed and confused. So many conflicting emotions rampaged through her heart, Phaedra didn’t know how to make sense of it all.
All she wanted to do was pull him into her bed and snuggle tightly, and she nearly did just that, but a small noise, almost too faint to hear, caught her attention.
Almost as if...
A shadow moved on the balcony of her bedchamber. Her eyes flicked to Deerhurst, who had also gone utterly still.
“Who is that?” she asked softly. Cromby? Could he even climb up to her window?
A soft finger grazed her lips indicating complete silence. Fear spiked in Phaedra’s belly. This was no ploy or trick. Deerhurst had been serious.
She watched wide-eyed as Deerhurst crept to the balcony door, careful to keep to the shadows of the room and not alert the intruder. There was a faint scratching sound, as though the burglar was now picking the lock, before the balcony door slowly opened.
Saints help her. Surely it wasn’t that easy to break into her chamber? With Deerhurst she didn’t even dwell over the matter. She just assumed he’d slipped through the same back door to her house he’d used the last time, the one Phaedra also suspected her aunt used for her lover.
But this...
She’d never feel safe in her chamber again!
The moment the man stepped into her chamber, Deerhurst grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him into the wall with a loud crash.
“Deerhurst!” Phaedra cried out when the man tackled him to the ground.
The pistol! She had a pistol.
She scrambled from the bed and darted to the drawer of her writing desk as the men pummeled each other on the floor, each blow and crunch of bone sickening to Phaedra. The cold steel grip of her pistol was the only comfort as she swung around and pointed it at the men.
Her door burst open.
“What the devil is going on here?”
*
Deerhurst wiped theblood from his nose as he straightened to his full height, yanking the intruding bastard to his feet as well. His eyes instantly gravitated toward Phaedra, who stood, pale as snow, with a pistol pointed at the intruder.
She hadn’t been harmed. A relief.
However, Huntly stood in the doorframe, behind him was the countess as well as a woman he recognized as Phaedra’s aunt and another man. Jack Brayton? What was he doing here? He had a sudden epiphany.
Bloody hell.So many witnesses...
At least Phaedra was pointing a pistol at them. He had expected when he entered her chamber he might be staring at the end of a barrel once again tonight. Luckily, it had happened. Not quite as he thought, but this would do. No one would suspect anything less or anything more than what they were privy to at the moment.
“Huntly,” Deerhurst spoke up when no one said a word after Huntly’s roar. Shock, he presumed. “I overheard Cromby say he’d sent a man to Lady Phaedra’s chamber. I arrived just in time to intercept him.”
Huntly’s frosty eyes moved to the intruder, who they now recognized as Lord Neville Howard, third son of Viscount Purbeck.
“Is that true?” Huntly demanded.
Howard clenched his jaw, refusing to say a word.
“Speak or I’ll dust the floor with your face,” Deerhurst growled. His grip on the man’s shoulder tightened. He was not in a charitable mood. If he hadn’t been on his guard, hadn’t overheard Cromby—if anything had gone differently tonight, Phaedra would be hurt right now.
“I wouldn’t have harmed her.”
