Page 57 of Greed: The Savage
“You got something to say for yourself?” The courtesan launched a full attack of his character. “What kind of guard are you? What right do you have being in charge of security here, if you couldn’t even protect Addien?”
Malric didn’t even try to defend himself. He took the rebuke in silence, as if it were deserved—because, for a man like him, it would be. A gentleman lived by a code: gentlemen protectedladies. In the new world he inhabited here with them at the Devil’s Den, he’d view women just the same—ladies.
But in Addien’s dark society, there was no such code. No men looking after women, no women shielding children. Only survival. Every soul for themselves.
In the time she’d come to know him here at the club, Addien picked up the nuances that were strictly Malric’s. The grim set at the corners of his mouth. That slight twitch beside his left eye when he’d been upset.
He didn’t show it, but the courtesan’s words deeply affected him.
Addien cleared her throat. “If you’ll excuse us?”
With a grunt, a fiery-eyed Delilah favored the marquess with one last black glare and let herself out.
For all the earlier resentment she carried, and jealousy, she didn’t want that on her account. This guilt was like he had bathed in it, soaked his skin until it got in there good and deep, and wore it now like human flesh. Maybe it was because he had saved her. Maybe it was because he had possibly beaten the viscount to death. Either way, the gentleman was going to be wishing he died after the beating he’d been dealt. Maybe it was because he’d cared when Roy hadn’t even given her a glance upon her return. And perhaps that was also why she hadn’t much cared when Roy called her by her given name. So many questions. So many maybes. Perhaps as so much unknown.
When they were alone, Addien spoke on her friend’s behalf. “I am sorry. She is protective of—”
“Do not apologize.” His eyes like storm-dark glass revealed the dark storm clouds gathering before a tempest. “I deserve that and more,” he said between teeth clenched so tight it was a wonder he didn’t crack those neat, pearly white, even rows. “I should have been there. You shouldn’t have been alone.”
He was torn up with guilt.
She’d been petty enough to want him to feel like a bastard—and she had succeeded more than she’d ever intended. What a hollow victory.
She didn’t want his guilt. She wanted…more. Things she couldn’t even put a name to.
Oh, in the immediacy of the attack, she’d been seething with jealousy, but when the day was said and done, Addien didn’t expect anyone to take care of her. Certainly not a man. Her resentment had been rooted in something far baser—insufferable jealousy over what he’d been doing with the baroness.
“What ’appened today, Malric? It wasn’t your fault.”
“It absolutely was,” he said quietly, cutting her off—back to his usual self-control, the way she’d always known him. Bristling with indignation, challenging her at every turn, but master and commander of himself in an instant. “I had an obligation to protect you. You deserve to be protected.” His words made her warm all over. “That was my fault.” Malric thumped a fist against his chest. “I own my transgression.” His arm dropped uselessly to his side, his grimace deepening. “Though that brings you no relief.”
Addien wasn’t a woman who blamed one man for another’s evil. “You were meeting with the baroness.”
He flinched. “I’m well aware,” he said tonelessly.
She gave him a half-smile. “You fail to understand my meaning.”
His gaze sharpened. “Your meaning, madam?”
Addien stepped closer, and he instinctively mirrored the movement. “You weren’t the one attacking me.”
Her assurances made it worse—his eyes went dark and ravaged.
Addien winced. Perhaps there’d been a better way to say that.
She pressed on, determined to make him see reason. “The viscount—and the viscount alone—did what he did. The guilt is his. Consider yourself pardoned, Malric.” She managed a smile, though it trembled at the edges.
Her attempt at levity faltered against the storm in his eyes. He did not soften. If anything, her words seemed to weigh heavier on him, not lighter.
“Thank you again,” she said quickly, unwilling to let him wallow. As much as he was a master at tipping her about, she had learned how to throw him off balance as well. And before his dark brows even snapped together in that rigid line of confusion, Addien beat him to it. “For the bath,” she said.
Thistime, her efforts to keep him off-kilter proved effective.
Malric grunted. “What reason do you have to believe it was me?”
“Am I wrong?” she riposted.
And wonder of wonder that innocent quality reared itself once more, this time in the form of a small smile.
