to make certain, kicking him hard. And then he turned back to Charlotte, and she'd never seen such rage on anyone's face in her life.
"How dare you!" he shouted at her. "That's my child you're carrying—how dare you put yourself in danger."
She reached up and pulled the gag free, even with her wrists still bound, and struggled to her knees.
"Bastard," she said succinctly. "It would be nice if you cared whether I died, but instead you just don't want your precious heir put in danger. Well, to hell with you, you bloody-minded, pig-swiving, ridiculous man! I was trying to save your worthless, damnable life."
Apparently he realized there had been something missing in his protest. "Why?"
"Why what?" She tried to stand up but instead fell back again. She felt weak, her shoulder was paining her damnably and she was tired of fighting him.
"Why were you trying to save my worthless, damnable life?"
She considered passing out, just to avoid coming up with an answer. After all, she was pregnant—
she no longer had any doubt about the truth of it—and she hadn't eaten, and being kidnapped by a madman and nearly murdered was surely enough justification for even the most stalwart of females, which she hoped she was, to faint. But where was light-headedness when you really needed it? she thought.
"Because I love you," she shouted back at him, furious. "You do not deserve it. You're almost as worthless as your murderous cousin, and I still refuse to marry you, but whether I like it or not, I don'I want you dead. I'm in love with you, but I imagine it's simply because pregnancy disarranges women's minds, and I plan to do everything I can to get over it as quickly as I can."
He stared at her. It would make life so much simpler if he wasn't so damned beautiful, she thought.
She was really pathetically shallow, because looking at him made her heart melt. Her only choice was to close her eyes as she repudiated him, but that made the room swim, and she decided she really didn't want to faint after all. She summoned up a suitably truculent expression, glowering at him.
"You're bleeding. Goddamn it, Charlotte, the bastard shot you.”
"Oh," she said faintly. In that case it was perfectly all right to swoon. It would have been nice if she'd known mat a little sooner and avoided having to tell him she loved him. But at least she needn't say anything more.
And she happily slipped into darkness.
25
As if things weren't bad enough, Adrian thought, facing the tribunal that sat across from him in Montague's library. Even Monty seemed to have rallied enough to be carried in, though Adrian suspected he'd come more for amusement's sake than anything
He'd been carrying Charlotte's bleeding, unconscious body toward the landing when he saw them running toward him: Pagett, Dodson, half a dozen footmen and, to his utter and complete horror, his father. He hadn't wanted to let go of Charlotte's limp body, cradling her tightly in the boat as Pagett ripped away the sleeve of her dress to expose what was, in fact, nothing but a graze. If his father hadn't been watching him out of cool, assessing eyes he might have started crying. Instead he just held her closely, letting her bleed all over him as they made it back to They were wailing for her with a litter, and by this point he relinquished her. He knew when she'd but she'd elected not to let anyone know. He couldn't blame her. If he could manage to fate a fainting spell he would, anything to avoid his father's icy rage.
Even now she was tucked up into bed, a hot-water bottle at her feet, his mother sitting in a chair beside her. At least she wasn't here in the library, ready to have his liver served up to the wolves.
He surveyed the grim-faced row of judges. The only one who terrified him more than his father was Lady Whitmore, who would have most definitely gutted him on the spot if she could. She was sitting as far away from the vicar as she possibly could, which didn't fool most of the people there.
Monty was right—they wanted to shag each other silly, and he wondered if he could deflect attention from his own transgressions by pointing this out, then thought better of it.
-What do you have to say for yourself, Adrian?" His father was quite a remarkable old man, considering he'd spent a life of debauchery that