Page 57 of Three Nights with the Beastly Duke

A second later, the carriage door was ripped open, and Lavinia looked up to see Arthur standing in front of her. Relief and happiness soared through her as she smiled at him.

“Hello, you,” he said softly, giving her a sad smile as he ever so gently picked her up.

“You’re here,” she sobbed with relief.

“Of course I am,” Arthur replied, getting her out of the carriage. He eyed her up and down, his gaze full of worry and relief. “Did he do this to you?” he asked, caressing her blood-stained lips and chin.

Lavinia quickly shook her head. “He tried to kiss me, so I tried to bite his tongue off,” she replied.

Arthur chuckled as he shook his head and pulled out his kerchief to clean her up. “That’s my girl,” he praised, wiping Timothy’s blood from her lips.

From the carriage, they both heard a groan, and Timothy appeared in the doorway. He was bleeding from where he’d hit his head and looked shaky on his feet. But his eyes glittered with rage as he saw Lavinia and Arthur holding one another, and with a gurgle of rage, he lunged at them.

CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE

Arthur pushed Lavinia out of his arms toward Susan and Archie, and he grounded his feet as Timothy lunged at him. The man lashed at him like a wild animal, snarling and pummeling his fists into Arthur with abandon.

“Get her untied!” Arthur managed to call out as he grappled Timothy with a wrestling move. He had seen this type of behavior in battle—when a man was no longer a man, but a beast with no capacity for sane thought.

Timothy’s back slammed into the dirt road as Arthur put him down, but he was able to successfully connect his fist to Arthur’s chin and knocked him backward. In an instant, Timothy was on top of him, his fists hailing down.

Arthur wasn’t sure if it was adrenaline or rage that protected him, but suddenly, he felt numb to the assault and delivered a hard blow to Timothy’s stomach.

“She’s mine!” Timothy bellowed as he fell back. “She’ll never belong to a monster like you!”

Arthur drew in a ragged breath as Timothy scrambled to his feet and pulled out a knife. His eyes began to track the man’s movements closely, waiting for him to make his move.

“I’m the monster?” Arthur roared, rising onto the balls of his feet. His pistols burned at his side, but he didn’t want to use them unless it was absolutely necessary.

Arthur had known many men like Timothy, who let their rage blind them. And he knew that it was only a matter of time before white-hot rage burned out, rendering the man useless.

“I would never kidnap a woman,” he continued, looking at Timothy with disgust. “I would never poison my own wife!”

This seemed to bring Timothy up short, and for a moment, he looked shocked.

“That’s right,” Arthur went on, squaring up as he kept his eyes on Timothy’s blade. “I know all about you. And if this wasn’t enough to get you put away, the evidence I’ve gathered on you certainly will be. Give it up, Timothy. You have failed.”

“Shoot him and be done with it!” Archie yelled.

Arthur’s lips curled into a wicked smile as he shook his head, his eyes still on Timothy. “He doesn’t deserve the bullet.”

“Timothy, please!” Lavinia urged, rushing between the two men.

Arthur, Archie, and Susan all yelled for her to stop, but she ignored them.

“Don’t do this,” she begged. “If you ever truly loved me, stop this moment!”

“Why?” Timothy snarled back, his sanity now completely gone. “So you can birth this-thisthing’swhelps?”

“Timo—”

“No!” he roared, his eyes full of hatred as he centered his focus on her. “I’d rather youdiethan give him that!”

At that moment, everything around Arthur seemed to move in slow motion. He saw Timothy raise his blade, watched as he sprang forward on his feet and ran directly toward Lavinia. And then, suddenly, Arthur was there, standing just a hairbreadth in front of his wife, and he felt the blade sink deep into the flesh of his right shoulder.

Behind him, he heard Lavinia’s scream, and in front of him, he saw Timothy’s bitter smile.

“Now you will know how I felt,” Timothy whispered, his voice laced with glee as he pushed the blade further into Arthur’s shoulder. “How much it hurt to see you with my woman.”

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