Page 66 of The Iron Earl
She grabbed his free hand and wrapped her fingers around the back of it, bringing it to her breast, cupping it. “This is yours to do with anything you’d like—just let me come with you.”
Her nipple hardened under his palm and he groaned. “Not fair, you little minx.”
Her wanton smile grew into unabashed indecency. She shrugged.
“Fine. Yes, you can come.” He grabbed her around the waist, dragging her naked skin onto his. “But I expect to be rewarded.”
Her smile went wider, the tip of her tongue licking her lips. “You will be.”
{ Chapter 15 }
He was livid.
Livid to the point he was shaking. His foot bouncing up and down—energy with no place to escape.
She could hardly sit next to her husband without her own skin prickling, innate shots of panic skittering across her muscles.
He is not my stepfather.
Evalyn repeated the mantra in her mind for the thousandth time that week. Lachlan was not her stepfather. His anger would not find a target on her. He wouldn’t let it.
How very much she wanted to believe that.
Aside from those few seconds when he’d first entered his bedchamber the previous night, he’d given her no reason to doubt him. To doubt his control—for once he heard her, listened to her voice, the curbing of his anger had been infallible.
Yet the raging whirlwind of angst swirling in the air about him on the bench next to her was almost too much to bear.
She glanced to her right. They sat in the second row of benches in the courtroom, the row in front of them effectively trapping her. Lachlan to her left. The high back of the bench in front. To her right she would have to push past one man at the end of the row to reach a door she assumed led out of the courthouse.
But no.
She couldn’t do that to Lachlan. She couldn’t abandon him to witness the atrocity of this trial by himself.
He is not my stepfather.
Her eyes swung forward and she concentrated on the young ruffian stepping away from the witness table. His brown hair had been combed over and slicked down with thick pomade to lend an air of respectability, but the holes in his coat belied how desperate the lad was.
Paid to take the stand, or so his mostly incoherent, rambling testimony gave evidence to.
But another one testifying to the fact that Mr. Lipinstein was a smuggler. Not a murderer.
A title her husband would soon have to add to his name if the fury consuming him didn’t abate.
Whispered murmurs pitched to a rumbled commotion in the courtroom as the lad stepped to the back of the building and the main white-wigged judge addressed the crowd, asking for quiet. His voice was drowned out by the catcalls and whistles as he announced the next witness.
Lachlan shifted, his bouncing foot tapping harder on the floorboards, making the wood vibrate under her toes. His knuckles were clasped so tightly together, they had gone beyond white, the tip of each knuckle pulsating red.
She didn’t need to glance at Lachlan’s face to know he was ready to explode.
Her gut flipped, hardening into a rock as the urgency to escape shot through her limbs.
Now. She needed to excuse herself now.
Instinct told her to run. Run before the explosion. Run before misplaced anger found her as the target. Her legs clenched, ready to gain her feet and move to the right toward the door when her left hand did the oddest thing.
It wandered away from her body with a mind of its own.
Wandered away and set itself on Lachlan’s arm, sliding down to wedge itself between his clenched hands.