Chapter 4

“W akey, wakey…”

Livian attempted to blink the thick haze of sleep away.

“…Wakey, wakey, sunshine…”

Verity hadn’t woken her with that warm, maternal, greeting for years.

Only, this morning awakening hadn’t been in her sister’s light, airy, tones. And it hadn’t been ‘wakey, wakey, sunshine’, but wakey, wakey… You’re Royal Hi …”

Royal?

Livian slogged her way through exhausted confusion.

That isn’t Verity.

Suddenly, a blast of cold struck her.

“ Fuuuuck .”

That vulgar curse brought Livian crashing back down to Earth.

Fully awake, she stared up at the living, breathing monster of a man in the flesh, bearing over her.

Oh, God.

Her heart hammered and she made herself absolutely still.

He’d entered the wrong rooms. This Viking warrior resurrected from the dead and haunter of her rented accommodations had gotten lost, and…

Her belly contracted.

Which meant he was drunk.

Livian took in the muscular stranger’s stunned expression, and using the skills her brother-in-law taught, took advantage of his brief paralysis.

When most anyone else would have rolled in the opposite direction, Livian, rolled quickly toward him. Cursing the hem of her night skirts which briefly hampered her movements, she managed to get her foot out in time.

Her foot collided squarely with the dastard’s member.

A sharp hiss exploded from between his teeth, and he brought his hands up to cover himself.

Briefly thrown off by the fact the stranger hadn’t crumpled into a ball as Malcom ensured he would, she drew her foot back again.

And before he could cover his wounded organ, Livian delivered another, even more solid kick between his legs.

This time, he crumpled to his knees. Even reduced in height as that disadvantage left him, the beast was still nearly eye-level with her.

“…Do not let up, Livvie…Keep hammering him, until he’s out cold…”

Her brother-in-law’s reminders about assailants fueled her movements.

Bringing back her arm, she delivered a solid, right hook.

Instead of Livian’s attack further staggering her assailant, his body tensed like her blows only made him stronger.

Gasping and out of breath, both from the fight and fear, Livian struck him again.

“Would you quit, you bloody ruthless chit,” he hissed.

Livian’s sinister assailant speaking, only made him—and his attack—more real. Her terror spiraled. “Never!” she rasped.

The moment he grabbed for her hand to intercept another assault on his face, Livian brought her knee up to catch him in the stomach.

Those same large, punishing, fingers she’d believed he’d intended to stop her latest punch, slid lower, in perfect anticipation of her latest strike.

He closed a punishing hand around her knee.

Livian gasped.

“Who’s in control now, you bloodthirsty wench?” he muttered, his voice graveled and ragged, and worse, amused .

“Bloodthirsty wench?” she raged. “How dare you, you cur.”

“Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.” His grin and tone were equally cold. “Here I’d thought a lady who fights like a street tough, would have the mouth of one, too.”

Then, he tightened about her knee, the same hand that held her; one that bore the size, scars, and stealth of any warrior.

“You bloody lobcock ,” she panted.

“ There .” His broad chest and even broader shoulders shook with laughter. “That is more in line with what’d I’d been—”

Rearing her head back, Livian surged forward and spit in his smug, grimly, chiseled features.

Her nameless foe went ominously silent; still .

Livian’s spittle dripped from his high, broad brow. Dread sapped the moisture from her mouth.

Like the drops striking her windowpane, her spittle, wound between his cruel-looking topaz eyes, and continued to the slight bump at the end of his blade-like nose; a nose with enough breaks to tell the story of a lethal past.

Oh, God.

Paralyzed with fear, Livian’s entire body went hot and then cold.

With a chilling deliberateness to his movements, her assailant withdrew a kerchief from his pocket. He gave that fabric a single, sharp, snap.

Livian recoiled.

Not breaking eye contact with Livian, he wiped the moisture from his face.

I went too far.

“Oh, I’d say somewhere around your second knee to my ballocks was the actual point of too far.”

Her throat lurched. “Did I speak that aloud?”

“About having gone too far?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Either that, or…” He leaned down so their brows touched. “I read your mind, sweetheart.”

The peculiar conversational quality of their exchange, only further muddled Livian. Hearing that endearment Malcom bestowed upon her sister hardly helped.

“Which one scares you more, love?” her captor mocked.

His breath mingled with hers; his brandy or whiskey.

Drunk. He’s a drunkard.

Malcom’s guidance whispered forward once more. “…The drunks are the easiest to disarm, little Livvie…”

Livian, using his haughty arrogance against him, brought her hand flying up with such force she cried out from the burn of pain upon her palm—he, on the other hand, didn’t even flinch.

The sound of her flesh striking his came followed by an ominous rumbling of thunder.

Her assailant sharpened a lethal gaze upon her.

Oh, God.

In one fluid motion, he tugged Livian’s calf and brought her to the floor and covered her body with his own. Livian’s breaths came harder and faster. Her captor’s enormous biceps and defined chest muscles unnecessarily highlighted his power over Livian.

Her panic intensified. “ Let. Me. Go ,” she rasped.

He snorted. “Why? So I can take another knee to the ballocks or one of your impressive right cuffs?”

“Not impressive enough to have gotten myself free,” she cried, her voice broke on a sob.

His dry amusement faded. “Hey, now,” he said in soothing tones he might use with a scared child. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Her chest rose and fell violently. “You already are ,” she spat.

“Am I?” His black eyebrows came together into a single line. “Because it seems like of the two of us, sweetheart, you are the only violent— oomph .”

Livian connected her knee with his groin.

“My exact point,” he said drolly, his equanimity almost as enraging as his refusal to set her free.

Livian put up her wildest, greatest resistance yet, bucking and thrashing and twisting.

“Very well.” The indomitable stranger sighed. “As you are, then.”

She squirmed frantically from side to side. Cool air slapped her skin, climbing higher and higher.

Pinpricks of fear dotted her vision.

Her nightshift!

Oh, bloody hell. She’d all but lifted her skirts for him.

As if he were, in fact, the mind reader he’d earlier professed to be, her captor’s callused fingers brushed the side of her thigh; the pads of those long digits were coarse and harsh against her.

Livian’s eyes rolled back in her head.

I’m going to be ill…

He cursed. “Would you stop moving?” he demanded, catching her hem, which’d climbed up around her waist. With another foul utterance, he reached between them, grabbed her skirts, and yanked them…

“D-Don’t!” Livian cried out.

Back into place?

Wait a moment? He’d righted her nightgown? Confused, she tucked her chin into her chest and peered between the slight space between their bodies.

“Would you rather I leave them up?” he drawled. “Given the monstrosity and quality of your nightshift, I took you more as one who’d want them down around your ankles but if you’d—”

“No!” she rasped.

He flashed another one of his sarcastic smiles.

Livian drew back. “Why, why, you’re enjoying this,” she breathed in horror.

“This? I assure you, sweetheart, I can name a million other things I’d rather be doing than spending time with you.”

Livian didn’t know whether to be offended or grateful.

The latter. She was definitely the latter.

Grasping on his disappointment with her, Livian at last eased her struggles. “If that is the case Mr.…”

“Latimer.”

He’d truly just offered his name . Like they were two kindly strangers meeting for the first time. “ You’re mad .” A drunkard and a madman.

“I’m more annoyed than angry at this point,” he muttered.

Even better.

Livian managed to find a place of calm as she spoke with him. “Given you’ve both expressed an annoyance with me and an interest in finding a woman who suits you more, might I suggest you do just that…” His eyes went black. “…For the both of us,” she added on a rush.

“You think I’m going to rape you,” he stated bluntly.

As his wasn’t a question, she opted to not answer. No, his query threatened to bring them back to an uglier, darker place she didn’t wish to descend with him.

When she remained silent, he snapped. “Well?”

Livian jumped. “I…”

“Never mind,” he clipped out.

Then, with a languid slowness, he lowered his frame the rest of the way until her breasts touched the wall of his built chest.

She couldn’t stop a whimper from escaping.

Her captor— Mr. Latimer —wasn’t done shrinking all space between them. He laid his brow against Raina’s so their eyes met.

“Let me tell you something, sweetheart,” he whispered. “I don’t rape women. The women I have in my bed, are ones who beg to be there.”

“That…” She highly doubted. “Is very reassuring.” With his aura of power and ruthlessness, he’d more likely rouse fear than desire in his bedpartners.

The hardened glint in his eyes indicated he’d caught her lie. “Don’t believe me, my lady?” he taunted.

Bloody hell. “I did not say that, Mr. Latimer,” she said with all the calm she could muster.

She’d never been good at prevaricating, which is why she’d always opted for silence when necessity required she fib to her sister. What’d made her open her mouth this time?

“Whether or not you believe it, fortunate enough for you, the last woman I’d ever make love to is a proper lady.”

This time, Livian wisely pressed her lips together and let him to his incorrectly drawn supposition about her birth station.

“Despite the way you, with your genteel sensibilities, twisted this exchange,” he said coolly. “I haven’t shown you violence.” He paused. “The only violence I show is the kind my lovers beg for.”

Women who…wanted violence? Her throat convulsed. Oh, yes. He was madder than a hatter. She truly did need to escape him.

Mr. Latimer eased his form up slightly.

He’d been waiting to see if she struck.

Somehow, when every instinct within urged her to fight, Livian somehow made herself remain still under him—opting for a different approach with the marauder.

In the end, she’d fought him as hard as she could and proven unsuccessful. Having since fatigued, she would certainly be no match against him now .

Her hopeful thinking paid off.

Mr. Latimer eased himself off her frame.

The moment she found herself freed, she scooted backward on her buttocks and heaved in deep gasping breaths of air.

He stuck a hand out.

Up close, she eyed that hand that’d so effortlessly restrained her. His fingers were the bronzed sort, callused, and raw from real work. They were the hands belonging to the man she’d secretly imagined herself marrying one day. Someone who was like her. Someone who knew what it was to toil and didn’t look down on her for having lived that existence, but understood, on every level, her and the life she’d known for nearly all her life.

Mr. Latimer the Conqueror spoke, interrupting her distracted musings.

“Afraid to sully your hands,” he remarked with more of that perverse humor.

She blinked slowly, realizing she still stared intently at that purely masculine hand.

“Or,” he said, bringing her gaze flying up to his, “are you still worrying I’m going to lay you down and ravish y—?”

Unthinking, just not wanting him to complete that horrifying possibility, Livian grabbed his palm and used it to tug herself up.

The moment she was on her feet, however, she remained frozen.

An improbable and explosive electric current rushed between the place her flesh touched his. A tingling charge like the ones she’d used to get as a girl, running for the first time across the earl’s plush Aubusson.

Gasping, Livian ripped her hand back.

“Yea, better not touch a baseborn bastard like myself,” Mr. Latimer the Conqueror mocked. “Though, I suspect your reasons for not touching me had a little to do with both.”

Not wishing to offend him and earn his wrath, Livian cleared her throat.

“Yes, well, now that we’ve sorted all that out, if you’d be so gracious as to leave my rooms.” She attempted to appeal to whatever decency might exist in this savage creature. “I had the most arduous evening and had to walk some distance in the rain.”

“Some distance; you don’t say?”

She couldn’t decipher whether he toyed with her or truly sought clarification, but either way, she gave a vigorous nod. “It was quite bad weath…”

At once, she noted details she’d previously failed to establish.

His close-cut, brown hair, so dark as to almost be black, slick with water. His—surprisingly fine—black wool garments, equally wet.

“You were saying?” he drawled, folding his arms across his broad chest. “I believe…something about the weather.”

“Yes…” Nervously, she traced her tongue along the seam of her lips.

With searing intensity, his sharp gaze zeroed in on Livian’s mouth.

The glitter in his eyes transformed into some—unfamiliar to her—emotion. A heat, not like his previous annoyance and anger of before, and somehow more unnerving.

“The weather!” she blurted.

He stared at her in confusion.

He couldn’t very well kill her if they were of a shared experience and opinion.

“That is, I was going to mention the dreadful conditions. Given you also experienced first-hand the state of the weather, you know first-hand,” I said that twice , “how miserable it is and how very much a warm b—” do not say bed, “ accommodations and peace are on such a night.”

When she’d finished her ramblings, Mr. Latimer the Conquer still stared this time in an opaque way.

“Warm accommodations,” he repeated “And peace?”

Livian gave a frantic nod; her plait bounced wildly and flopped over her shoulder. “And food,” she quickly added. “Unless you haven’t eaten, and you really should…”

The rest of that suggestion , meant to send him rushing out, went unfinished as Mr. Latimer’s unnerving gaze slid over to the table in the corner.

Those undecipherable eyes revealing nothing, moved over the remaining scraps of her previously bountiful dinner: the small end of crusty breast, her half-eaten apple, four grapes, and a piece of cheese.

Before he got it into his head to stay, Livian raced over, gathered the remnants into a cloth.

Folding it as she walked, she stopped a full arm’s length from Mr. Latimer.

“Here.” Livian stuck the offering out. “In the event you don’t have food—”

“I don’t have food,” he said bluntly.

Poor man. Though, it was on the tip of her tongue to suggest he give up his drunken ways.

Again, thinking better of it, Livian sprinted over to her valise. As she fished around, she felt the stranger’s eyes boring into her back.

Unnerved, she found herself fumbling about the contents.

“Where is it?” she mumbled. “ Where ?”

Her fingers collided with the velvet pouch. “Here!” she exclaimed, she snatched the little bag out and gave it a jingle.

Livian rushed to join the stoic marauder.

“Please, take these,” she said softly, pressing that gift and the food offering into his stiff hands; his fingers so tense that even expansive as his palm was, she struggled to close the digits around them “ There .”

Smiling widely, Livian scrambled back several steps.

“Good evening, Mr. Latimer,” she said, nudging her chin in the direction of the doorway…the one now blocked by his broad frame.

He took a step closer. “Do you know why I experienced first-hand , the conditions outside—”

“Mrs. Lovelace,” she blurted, inventing a husband for herself and stopping the stranger as he spoke. She’d confounded him with her offering her name. One couldn’t go about offing or harming someone whom they were familiar with.

“Do you know why I experienced first-hand, the conditions outside, Mrs. Lovelace?”

All her hope sank like bricks to the bottom of the sea.

“I was out there, rescuing the young lad Mr. Lovelace sent out in search of your carriage, and who didn’t have the decency to inform the boy of your arrival.”

“ Mr. Lovelace ?” she asked, before remembering she’d invented a fictitious husband, herself.

“Yes, the same,” he sneered. “Mr. Lovelace who, even with a shortage of rooms that leaves other strangers in a storm without, wouldn’t make the sacrifice of having to spend a night with his shrewish wife.”

Livian gasped. “How dare you?” she exclaimed, so indignant she forgot for a moment there wasn’t a Mr. Lovelace. “I am no shrew.”

Mr. Latimer gave her an icy once-over. “Your mouth and actions this night tell a different tale, wench.”

A healthy rush of fury made her reckless or bold, or mayhap just both. “And tell me, Mr. Latimer,” Livian got herself up onto the mattress, on her knees, to better face him head-on. The lumpy mattress, however, dipped and ruined that attempt. “How should I act toward a hulking stranger who invades my rooms, wakes me from a sound sleep, and tackles me on the floor…?”

“I didn’t tackle you, darlin’,” he bit out. “You’re the one who charged at me—”

“At that, a dastard who invaded my rooms !”

“—and assaulted me.”

Livian saw red. “Charged you?” she squawked. “Charged you?”

“With the way you’re echoing like a parrot, I can see why your husband a—”

“ Ahhh ,” Livian jumped unevenly to her feet and raced for the bastard. However, each step she took, depressed the mattress.

Livian lost her balance. Squealing, she went flying through the air; and closing her eyes, she tensed in anticipation of her collision with the floor.

When the fall came, the air exploded from her lungs, sucking all the breath out of Livian’s body.

Running through a brick wall would’ve hurt less.

Her body went limp but she remained standing. The icy chill had faded from the floor and left her surprisingly, but welcomingly warm.

Livian, addled from the force of her collision, tried to understand what’d happened.

Strong, wide, but gentle hands came to rest upon her back.

She cried out and tried to wrestle herself away.

A smooth murmuring whispered against Livian’s temple. “Wohh, darling.” Those strokes, no, caresses, became lighter, gentler. “I’ve got you.”

…I’ve got you…

Unlike every moment that’d built to this one, fear didn’t hold Livian in its grip. Maybe she was the only mad one of their pair. For Mr. Latimer’s husky promise combined with the quixotic massage played a new kind of havoc on her senses.

Instead of fleeing, she closed her eyes and shamefully welcomed his soothing caress.

“I’ve got you,” he repeated, against her temple.

She’d yearned to have a man make that promise to her.

None had.

None ever would.

Out of respect for their employer, any of the men from her station she knew because of her brother-in-law, kept a distance.

The nobility with their weak spines, lily-white hands, and undeserved arrogance, had never looked her way. Nor had she ever wanted them to. They’d all left her feeling as out of place as a fish on land.

Thought, at the end of the day—or more accurately, this fraught journey’s conclusion—one of those lords awaited Livian.

Tears threatened.

Maybe it was exhaustion and the reality of what she was days away from doing, but she found borrowing strength from this stranger’s arms. He, her captor, became her unwitting comforter.

Livian buried her face deeper into Mr. Latimer’s wet wool jacket. The cool of his garments didn’t transfer the chill she expected, but instead a peculiar heat radiated throughout her.

Her throat worked spasmodically.

Despite her sister’s thoughts to the contrary or complete lack of knowing, Livian had been as strong as, or stronger than Verity—just in different ways, ways Verity didn’t know. Now, she, who never cried, strangled on a sob.

Here she stood, taking solace in the arms of a stranger, who might or might not be a thief or murderer or—even though he insisted he wasn’t—a rapist. If he were going to do any of those things, he’d likely have done them by now.

All the while, she silently wept, her unexpected comforter continued massaging her back in that soothing way. He did so until her body ceased trembling, and her tears faded.

With a soft exhalation, she sagged against him.

How peculiar, she felt somehow better from being held by this man.

Mr. Latimer pressed his lips against her temple. All the shockingly discovered calm vanished.

He…is kissing me.

His tender kiss resurrected the accelerated beat of her heart. Livian’s pulse raced not from fear, but the mesmerizing quality of that—

“Are you looking for comfort?” he murmured, his tone, so singularly fierce as to never be mistaken for silky, entranced Livian. “I can give you that.”

He already was, and Livian wanted nothing more than to be held—even if it was by this dark stranger.

Mr. Latimer’s voice broke through her mind’s confused musings.

“ Or ,” that slight emphasis placed a suggestiveness to his next question, “are you looking for company?” he whispered, trailing a path of kisses lower. “I can offer both, darlin’.”

Mr. Latimer traveled his questing lips along the curve of her cheek.

Livian stiffened. “Are you attempting to seduce me, Mr. Latimer?” The breathless quality of her rejoinder ruined any attempt at clear outrage.

“If you have to ask, I’m doing a poor job of it, sweetheart.” He touched his lips to the edge of her ear, and his warm breath fanned her skin. “I’m going to have to fix that…immediately.” A wicked promise hung on that last spoken word.

Slap him.

Run.

Knee him in the groin.

Everything Livian knew she should do, she couldn’t .

Her belly fluttered in such a way she remained motionless in this warrior’s arms.

Then, he drew the shell of her ear deep into his mouth and suckled the sensitive flesh. Her body went hot all over, and her eyes slid closed. She’d never been kissed, not once. Now to have her first, in this way, with a stranger sucking and nipping at that flesh sent a sharp ache to that forbidden place between her legs.

She moaned softly.

His broad chest rumbled with amusement, and she felt that sonorous swell all the way through her being, as welcome and quixotic as his kiss.

“Imagine that,” he whispered. “It turns out I don’t mind your choosing my bed over Mr. Lovelace’s, after all, sweetheart.” Then, he glided his enormous palms under her buttocks and drew her against the hard ridge of his shaft.

Livian gasped.

“Aye, there’s more of that, I promise,” he tempted, taking Livian’s s shocked exhalation as the wanton eagerness of some tart.

“Mr. Latimer,” she began pertly, but again, her chastisement emerged solid as air. “You, sir—”

“Do you have a name?” He rubbed his enormous length in the same smooth circles against her belly. He moved his lips near hers. “That is, other than Mrs. Lovelace.”

“Other than Mrs. Lovelace?” she squawked. Livian immediately brought her palms against his chest and made to shove him away a second time this night, which had contained an eternity of experiences.

“Should I take that as a ‘no’?” he drawled huskily, with so much of his smug arrogance, the hypnotic hold he had over her broke.

Shrieking, Livian shoved Mr. Latimer away, and raced to the other side of the bed.

“How dare you?” she hissed between her teeth.

He eyed her with an infuriatingly crooked smile. “Is this where you feel you have to show some modesty and act all aghast?”

Livian saw red. “It is not an act,” she gritted out. “How dare you put your hands on me?”

His gaze darkened. “I felt you trembling, in my arms and heard those hungry little moans of yours, darlin’”

She gasped. “Why, I never—”

“Have a care, wench,” he said, warningly. “I’ve been patient, too patient—”

“There is no such thing as ‘too patient’,” Livian pointed out.

“Are you making light of me?” A smile coated his question, but the pinpricks of rage glinting from his eyes warned Livian she danced in dangerous territory.

From the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of the fireplace shovel and poker.

“I’m speaking the truth, Mr. Latimer,” she somehow found the courage to say, inching carefully away. “Patience is a virtue.”

“As is charity, but you don’t seem to give two shites on Sunday about that.”

That blistering accusation stopped her slow flight. Livian frowned. “Just what is that supposed to mean?”

“I didn’t expect it would be clear to you. Let me spell it out, sweetheart,” he said bluntly. “I went about to retrieve the young servant your husband sent to wait for your carriage outside, and while I was off fetching the foul-mouthed lad, you availed yourself of my rooms.”

Livian opened her mouth and closed it, several times.

Confused, by all the incorrect statements tossed at her, she shook her head. Then it finally hit her reason. “ This is why you’ve been so angry and rude because you believe I stole your rooms?”

He chuckled, and unlike his scathing, empty, mirth of before, this laugh contained genuine amusement. “Darlin’, you haven’t even begun to feel my wrath.”

“Oh,” Livian said weakly.

She managed to find her voice. “I’d like to assure you, you accuse the wrong person of taking your rooms, Mr. Latimer. I—” Don’t have a husband.

Livian stopped herself quick. She couldn’t very well go mentioning the fabricated Mr. Lovelace.

Livian cleared her throat. “I forgive your misunderstanding, so if you’ll—”

“There’s no misunderstanding,” he cut her off. “My belongings were removed and I was slid out to make room for Mr. Felchin’s esteemed guest—a fine noble lady.”

A fine noble lady? Confused, Livian did a glance about.

Mr. Latimer stared pointedly at her.

Me! He’s referring to me.

“I’m not—” A Lady.

Again, she couldn’t bring herself to say that, either. She knew firsthand from her mother’s history men barely respected ladies and did not respect, at all , women outside that station—women such as Livian.

“You’re ‘not’…?” he prodded. “Believing any of this?”

Mr. Latimer reached inside his pocket.

A scream filled Livian’s throat.

He brandished a small, rusted key.

Livian’s cry for help died on her lips.

Instead of Mr. Latimer marching toward her, he headed for the exit and drew the door open. “Lock it,” he said, not looking back.

Livian didn’t need to be told twice. The minute he stepped outside, she’d already begun her flight over. By the time she reached the entryway, however, her nighttime marauder did Livian the favor of closing that panel between them.

With unsteady fingers, she bolted herself inside.

Click.

Closing her eyes, Livian sagged against the door.

Safe.

Safe from what, exactly? He didn’t harm you, and you were all too eager to be held and caressed by him, the devil in her head taunted.

Livian drew in a slow, deep breath through her nose and let it out even more slowly through her mouth.

Either way, she didn’t have to think about her body’s shameful response or the way it’d felt being held by a man—a big stranger who’d disarmed her as easily as he might’ve a child—for the simple reason this would be the last she’d ever—

Click.

What?

The panel moved against her back.

Before she’d even fully registered what was happening, Mr. Latimer unlocked the door, edged it open carefully enough to push her forward, but not knock her over, and slip—as much as a towering figure such as he could—inside.

Mouth agape, Livian stared at the enigmatic stranger; the same enigmatic stranger she’d only just assured herself she’d never see again. “What…I don’t…How…?”

Wordlessly, Mr. Latimer held up the key—his key.

And then it hit her.

“Oh, God,” she whispered. “It is your room.”

Pressing her fingers against her temples, she wandered aimlessly about her accommodations—Mr. Latimer’s accommodations.

She’d shared her relation to the Earl of Maxwell with the innkeeper to ensure herself greater protection, but never had she sought to curry his favor and certainly not to have some guest he’d already installed thrown out because of her.

Stricken, she lifted her gaze.

Mr. Latimer remained silent by the doorway.

“I am so sorry,” she whispered.

He grunted.

How peculiar he appeared more unsteady now than all the times she’d spent assaulting him.

“Is Mr. Lovelace a man who needs a good beating?” he asked quietly.

A vein bulged in Mr. Latimer’s thick, strong, neck, as well-muscled as the rest of him.

Why, he’s angry on my behalf. A beautifully warm, gentle heat unfurled slowly throughout her entire being.

Here she’d spent the better part of, she knew not how long since his arrival time ceased to exist, fearing Mr. Latimer. He’d restrained her but not hurt her. He’d ceased kissing her when she’d demanded he stop.

Now, Mr. Latimer’s bear-like growl filled the room.

“No!” she exclaimed. “Mr. Lovelace —” Livian struggled to wrap her mouth around the name. The only Mr. Lovelace around in her time had been a grandfather she’d never even known. “Is a…” fictional, “good man,” she allowed.

“Do you not wish to sleep in his rooms?” he asked with such directness she blushed.

Apparently, Mr. Latimer hadn’t been satisfied with Livian’s reassurances.

A wistful smile played at her lips. “Mr. Latimer, are you suggesting, this very room you and I have battled over, you’d now freely give if I tell you Mr. Lovelace is a monster?”

He met her question with stony silence.

As it was, he needn’t answer. His penetrating expression said all too clearly; the gentleman would give up his chambers if Livian’s husband were a brute.

She cleared her throat. “Allow me to gather my things.”

Silent, he stepped out of the rooms. For a second time, he shut that panel between them and allowed Livian privacy.

She quickly set to work gathering her belongings. As she went about tidying the handful of things she had out, she rapidly stuffed them into her valise.

Livian shed her night shift and donned her simplest gown. Biting her lip, she reached behind and strained to fasten the handful of buttons there. A short while later, out of breath and the muscles in her arms straining from having to contort herself, she found herself dressed.

Bag in hand, she made her way over to the door. Livian reached for the handle, but something held her back.

She cast a glance around the room; perhaps it was the late hour or the wild exchange that’d unfolded here, but as she took one final look, she had the feeling that something special had happened here this night.

Shaking her head to free herself of those fanciful thoughts, Livian let herself out.

“Good evening, Mr. Latimer,” she murmured, dropping him a curtsy.

He touched his fingertips to his forehead. “Mrs. Lovelace.”

While Livian made a slow walk down the hall to a room that didn’t exist for her, she felt Mr. Latimer’s gaze following her the whole while.

When she’d reached the very end, and there was no other fake room to find, she stopped. Raising her fingertips she gave Mr. Latimer a small wave and a smile. He bowed in return.

And as she took the hall door handle in her hand, she heard the faint click as Mr. Latimer entered his rooms and disappeared from her life.