Grace flinched at the word harlot but she retained her regal manner. “Better a harlot than a bully and a fraud and a thief, my lord.”
“Why, you insolent slut!” His uncle surged to his feet and raised his hand.
Before the blow made contact, Matthew lunged forward to stand as a barrier before his uncle. As he moved, Grace gasped and jerked back against the couch.
“Strike her and you’ll regret it,” Matthew snarled, leaning forward so his height dwarfed the older man.
Violence surged close in the overheated room. In eleven years, the simmering hatred between uncle and nephew had never exploded into physical confrontation. Now the anger boiling in Matthew’s blood blinded him to everything but the urge to kill. He could almost feel his hands squeeze the last poisonous breath from his enemy’s throat. Rage was a searing, caustic taste in his mouth. His muscles bunched in readiness for action. The world shrank to a pulsing red pinpoint that held only his uncle’s loathsome face.
Grace flattened her palm against his spine. The simple connection dragged him back from the perilous edge, reminded him what was at stake.
Jesus, what was he doing? He couldn’t kill his uncle here. Lord John’s henchmen outnumbered him and would inevitably overpower him afterward.
Then what would happen to Grace?
Grappling for control, he clenched his teeth so hard that his jaw ached. How he wanted to lash out, to destroy. He couldn’t. Not yet. Satisfaction must wait until Grace was on the other side of the polished white walls.
“Good God, restrain yourself, man!” Lord John lurched out of immediate reach. “I wouldn’t lower myself to touch the jade.”
“See that you don’t.” Matthew fought to steady his breathing. Grace’s touch on his heaving back was his only frai
l connection to reason. The warmth of that contact calmed the storm in his blood. Slowly he straightened from his threatening slant.
“I’ve seen enough. The whore goes tonight,” Lord John growled. “I’ll get you another woman. One mare is the same as another in the dark.”
Matthew was aware enough now to hear Grace’s shocked release of breath. “I don’t want another woman,” he said. “I told you—Mrs. Paget stays.”
His uncle’s overweening self-assurance already showed signs of reviving. “Proving yourself with a female has given you the mistaken impression you have some choice, nephew.”
“There’s always a choice,” Matthew said austerely. Their battle was open in a way it hadn’t been for years. Pray God he kept his nerve long enough to win. He tamped down the remnants of fury and fixed a level stare on Lord John. “You forget I hold ultimate power over you, Uncle.”
Lord John responded with a scoffing chuckle. “Are you mad again in truth? How long before Monks has to strap you down and feed you like a puling baby and wipe the filth from your body while you cry and scream and babble nonsense?”
Matthew didn’t react to the humiliating description. Instead, he spoke with a calmness grounded in absolute confidence. A confidence he’d never felt before when he confronted his uncle. Grace had made him a stronger, surer man. Her hand dropped away from his back but the warmth lingered, much as her image would linger in his heart till the day he died.
“If you harm Mrs. Paget, Uncle, I swear on my parents’ graves you’ll lose control of the Lansdowne fortune.”
His uncle’s scorn was palpable in the suffocating room. “Just how do you plan to achieve that, boy?”
Lord John could call him boy and lad a thousand times, but it didn’t change the fact that the power balance had permanently shifted. With Grace at his side, Matthew was invincible. His uncle had made a fatal error when he’d sent his bullies to Bristol and they’d snatched this particular woman.
Matthew allowed himself a small, superior smile. “Why, with my life, Uncle. Your power hangs by one slender thread—that I stay this side of heaven. I die and you lose all chance to dip your greedy paws into the family money.” His voice hardened. “Touch Grace Paget, steal her from me, injure her, and my days are numbered.”
“No,” Grace protested frantically from behind him. “This is wrong.”
His heart ached for her distress but he didn’t look at her. All his strength, his mind, his determination focused on vanquishing his uncle.
“Idle words from a useless popinjay.” Lord John tried for a careless laugh but the blood had receded from his cheeks, leaving him even more pasty-faced than usual.
Matthew forced himself to shrug with a nonchalance he didn’t feel. “That is my final power, Uncle. There are a hundred ways I could kill myself in this room alone. Then my cousin becomes Marquess of Sheene. Your access to the Lansdowne coffers ends unless you intend to bribe doctors to say he’s mad too. I doubt you’d get away with this scheme twice.”
“Cease your melodramatic drivel,” Lord John snapped, although his effortless air of command noticeably frayed.
“Matthew, I’m not worth it,” Grace breathed. “Don’t do this. I beg of you.”
He turned to meet her troubled eyes. “It’s the only way, my darling.”
“You offer to lay down your life for this whore?” Lord John said with disgusted incomprehension. “She’s nothing but a cheap harlot. You’d buy her equal for twopence in any alley.”