neck, down a darkened hallway. Crispin was trying to loosen his cravat as Nicolas’s grasp was choking him. Dear God! The crush in the ballroom slowed her movements and it felt like it took forever to reach the passageway down which they had disappeared. Gathering the skirts of her gown, she ran down the hallway before coming to a shuddering halt.
“I told you all that you asked,” her brother said shakily. “Please remove your blade from my throat.”
“Please, Nicolas, please!” Maryann cried, rushing up to where he held her brother against the wall with a knife at his throat. “Why do you threaten him so?”
“It was the most effective way to loosen his tongue,” Nicolas said menacingly. “Leave, now.”
She gripped her gloved hands before her to prevent them from shaking. “No! You are in a dangerous mood; I will not leave!”
There was a speck of blood on the corner of her brother’s mouth and his jaw appeared bruised.
“There must be an explanation, something we are missing,” she said tremulously, a desperate uncertainty quaking through her heart.
A cruel curve slanted Nicolas’s mouth. “He’s already admitted that he was there.”
Maryann’s heart stopped. “No…I…what?”
Her brother had paled. “You involved my sister in your madness?” he demanded. “You damn—”
The knife sank deeper, and blood kissed the edge of the blade, stripping her brother of his verbal attack.
“You did not kill the others!” she cried, so frightened she wanted to crumple to the floor. She knew what Nicolas’s retribution meant to him, and his vow that none would be spared was implacable and impenetrable. “He was only seventeen! A boy who was foolish and afraid,” she said hoarsely.
“What are those who stand silent in the face of evil? How are they judged?”
His tone was a lash of rage when he asked the question.
“Answer me!”
“Guilty!” she cried, swiping at the tears which spilled over on her cheeks. “They are guilty.”
“Do you wish me to treat him as I did the others?”
She pressed a hand over her mouth. “No.”
Those other men had been ruined financially, stripped of the things they valued, divested of their pride, and their financial security to live their idle lives in luxury. He had broken them beyond redemption. Maryann’s logical mind asserted that justice had been done for their heinous crime, but looking at the pale fright in her brother’s eyes and knowing he had only been a lad almost felled her to her knees.
“He watched while she was violated, and he did nothing. He is just as guilty,” Nicolas said.
“I am so damned sorry,” Crispin said, tears leaking down his face, even though with speech, more blood flowed. “I have lived with that torment for years. I wished…I wished I had been brave enough to speak up then, to fight them off and damn the consequences. Not a day goes by that I’ve not thought of Miss Arianna and the pain she endured. I have tried to atone—”
“Nicolas!” Maryann screamed when the blade shifted. “Stop this right now, please!” When he did not respond she said, “You promised never had I to fear harm from you. Hurting him is harming me.”
The very air itself became still at her desperate plea.
Nicolas stepped back from her brother and faced her. His eyes were shadowed with such agony, they almost broke her. He had warned her, but she had still gone ahead and fallen hopelessly in love with him. Yet here he stood, the enemy of her brother, and she had no notion how to fix it. Or even if she could.
“We can fix this,” she said, aware of how much her mouth trembled.
Nicolas came over to her, and cupped her cheek, his thumb swiping at her tears. She closed her eyes, a trembling breath escaping her. “Maryann?”
Her lashes fluttered open. “Yes?”
“I will let him go.”
Relief made her wilt into his embrace. Her lips parted, but the words of gratitude could not come. Even as his vow filled her with such profound relief, how could she accept it?
That admission cost Nicolas—his pride and his honor.
“Nicolas?”
“For you…” He closed his eyes, a shudder worked through his frame. “For you I shall let him off.”
When he looked down at her, the chilling distance in his gaze shattered something deep inside her. “No,” she whispered. “Nicolas, no! We can—”
Still cupping her cheeks, he tugged her face closer to him, their mouths mere inches apart.
“I cannot bear the idea of these eyes looking at me with hatred, pain, and regret of ever knowing me. Do you understand?”