“I beg yer pardon?”
“I have wasted my time, then? Wasted on a woman in your position, a lowly Highland widow. You should be grateful for such an offer! I assure you, you will not receive a better offer than mine. You would do well to listen to me!”
“I owe ye nothin’, Lord Middleby,” Elspeth declared, her voice firm, all trace of sympathy gone. “If we are bein’ plain, yerattentionwas neither requested nor particularly welcome.”
“Not welcome? Are you joking? I watched you look at me.”
“I was only tryin’ to be polite to ye. If I ever gave you any other indication, it was surely yer readin’ into things that werenae there!”
Lord Middleby’s composure shattered. He clenched his fists at his sides, the vein in his neck pulsing.
“You foolish slip of a girl! You Scottish sorceress! Do you have any idea what you are throwing away by refusing my proposal? You will end up alone and destitute! Is that truly a better outcome than being with me?!”
He took a step closer, his brown eyes blazing with fury as they fixed on hers. He reached out suddenly, his fingers clamping roughly around her arms. She felt his grip tighten, her heart racing as she tried to think.
He pulled her closer, his lips nearing hers as she turned her head away with a grimace.
“Let me show you what you will be missing then,” he whispered.
“Leave me, Lord Middleby!”
“You ungrateful little Highland sl?—”
The drawing room doors burst open, slamming against the walls with a resoundingbang.
“Unhand her, Middleby!” Hugo’s voice roared through the room. “Now!”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Without hesitation, Hugo ran into the room and lunged at Middleby. His fist connected squarely with his jaw, his head turning with a jerk. The sickening thwack that followed only made him want to hurt the Earl more.
Middleby staggered backward, a look of shocked disbelief on his face as his legs wobbled beneath him like a toddler’s. Before he could recover, Hugo had a hand on his silken cravat and the other on his waistband. He lifted him into the air, dangling him as if he were a bag of trash.
Middleby, a sputtering and terrified mess, crashed hard on the floor. He might as well have been a rag doll.
“Get out,” Hugo snarled, chasing him down the hall and out of Arrowfell. “If I ever see you near her again, I will not only beat you, Middleby. I willdestroyyou. I will dismantle your family’s estate piece by piece until you have nothing left but the clothes on your back. Do you understand me?”
Middleby scrambled to his feet, rubbing his swelling jaw. “You… you cannot do that! You cannot treat me in such an insufferable manner for merely proposing to an unattached woman.”
“Try me,” Hugo dared, his eyes a terrifying, glacial blue. “I assure you, I can. And it looked like your attentions were most unwelcome. I am warning you one last time.”
Middleby did not need to be told twice. He turned and fled, a coward in full retreat as he bolted away from the house, looking around frantically as he hobbled.
Hugo watched him go for a long moment before turning and re-entering the house, closing the door behind him.
He turned to Elspeth, who had been waiting in the foyer, and his face immediately softened.
“Oh, Elspeth, are you all right?” he asked, his voice now a soft murmur. “He did not hurt you, did he? Because if he did, I would go back out there?—”
Elspeth was shaking, but she held herself with a rigid dignity as she put up a hand.
“No. I am fine.” She took a step back from him. “Thank ye, Hugo. I… I am grateful for yer intervention. I daenae ken what got into him—why he acted that way. I never gave an impression that I wanted anythin’ from him.”
“He is a worm.”
“Aye.”
“Elspeth…”
