Page 51 of Enticed By an Earl
The shock nearly knocked Kit off his feet. “What are you doing here?” he gasped, his voice high and wispy.
His father ignored his question, breaking into a disgusted sneer as he looked Kit over. “So it’s true,” he said, narrowing his eyes and tilting his chin up. “You are even more of an aberration than I thought you were.”
“I want no trouble with you,” Kit said, clutching his hands together to keep himself from trembling to pieces. “All I want is to be left alone to live the life that is best suited for me.”
“As some tart on the arm of a gentleman of dubious reputation?” his father asked with a snort.
“Deveraux is among the very best of men,” Kit defended his love as best he could, lowering his face.
George snorted. “He’s as much of a pervert as you for carrying on with this ridiculous charade.”
“He’s a good man and true,” Kit insisted, lifting his chin in perhaps the first show of defiance he’d ever displayed to his father and brother. “He is kinder and more generous than either of you.”
Kit’s father growled. “What did you say? Kindness?” he sneered the word as though it were a curse and took a step closer to Kit.
Every alarm bell Kit possessed rang like mad in his head. He backed up, but before he could turn and race for the door, George jumped ahead of him, slamming it and blocking the way.
“No son of mine is going to make a fool of me by pretending to be a woman,” his father said. “I won’t have it.” He made a fist and ground it into his opposite hand.
“Please, just leave me alone,” Kit said, glancing desperately around as if help might come out of the woodwork. “I want nothing of the life I used to live. You can have it all.”
“It should be mine at any rate,” George said. His tone was slightly less threatening than their father’s. It wasn’t much to hang hope on, but it seemed George might truly have been amenable to the idea of declaring Lord Castleton dead and letting Kit move on.
Would have been, but their father clearly had other ideas.
“It’s a perversion of nature,” he growled, stepping closer still to Kit. “I will not have you divulging your little secret to whomever you please as a way to humiliate me.”
“I swear to you, I would never do such a thing,” Kit insisted, so afraid he could barely draw breath. “I want nothing to do with my old life or with you. I am Kitty Dryden, soon to be Kitty Ogilvy, wife of Lord Deveraux Ogilvy.”
“Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you,” his father snapped, raising his fist.
“But it is who I am, I am she,” Kit said.
Or at least he tried to say. Before he could finish his defense, his father lashed out, striking him across the face.
Pain and the shock of his father’s fist hitting him square in the jaw jerked Kit to the side. He would have lost his balance and spilled to the floor if George was not there to catch him.
That was not a blessing, however.
“Hold him,” their father demanded, pushing up his sleeves as if he was ready for another blow.
George laughed in delight and held Kit exactly as his father demanded. Kit barely had time to suck in a breath before his father threw a punch straight into his stomach.
The pain of that blow was blinding, but it did not stop there. His father punched him again, then again, in his gut and across his face. Kit felt the pins in his wig loosen and fall, but that was the least of his worries.
“No son of mine will defy the laws of nature and live to humiliate me with it!” his father shouted, landing blow after blow. “I will not have a madman as part of my line or inheriting anything from me!”
The blows were so heavy and caused so much pain throughout Kit’s body that he couldn’t breathe, let alone fight back. All he wanted was to fall to the floor and curl into a ball to protect himself. If that failed, he would pray for death.
He was certain that death would have come as blood spilled from his nose and split lip, but in the midst of another flurry of punches, the door to his rooms flew open so hard it banged against the wall, and in a blessed moment, Dev was there, along with Mrs. Torrance.
“Good gracious!” Mrs. Torrance shouted. “We’re too late.”
“Get off of him!” Dev roared, lunging for George.
A moment later, the restriction that had kept Kit upright for his father’s assault disappeared, and just as he’d wanted to from the start, Kit spilled to the ground. He could do littlemore than hug his aching body as blood dripped on his gown and stare up sideways at Dev as he threw a punch at George.
“Abomination!” Kit’s father shouted. “You will hang for this.”
