She spun around, glaring at the culprit. Of course he was there. Weeds were oftentimes impossible to get rid of unless you plucked them from the roots. Percival clutched the doorway, breathing heavily, his expression pinched. One might even believehewere the injured party in all this.
Dagger followed her gaze. “Who is this fool?”
“My former fiancé,” Violet answered flatly.
“You’re engaged?” His gaze darted to her. “What about my brother?”
“Former,” she snapped. And she blurted before her better judgment returned, “And what about your brother? The man rejected me.”Urgh, Vi. Sour, still?
“Drake? Rejected. You?”
She scowled at him. “Don’t sound so disbelieving.”
All right, he hadn’t rejected her. Not precisely. He hadn’t spoken the words, hadn’t cast her aside with cruelty or finality, but that didn’t mean what happened the day she’d left hadn’t felt like rejection all the same. Distance could wound just as cleanly as dismissal. And honestly, at this moment, she had no ideawhere they stood. But before she could untangle that mess for herself,thiscoxcomb had chosen to intrude. And now that they both had been rescued, some uncertainty had returned.
“It’s not disbelieving,” Dagger replied. “I believe.”
Violet scowled at the man.Well, thank you very much for that.She pointed the wooden dagger at him. “Can you not soften the blow? Must you Furys be so blunt?”
“Evangeline!” Percival barked, stepping forward. “You dare much by ignoring me!”
Violet turned her glare to the man truly deserving of it. “Hah, is it not you who dares much? Following us without your guards present to protect you? Did my knee not make it clear enough?”
“Insolent!” His face contorted.
Dagger shifted, subtly placing himself between them.
Percival puffed up. “And who areyoumeant to be?”
“Dagger.”
“Well,” his gaze slid back to Violet, “you seem to get ar—” He broke off with a grunt and crumbled in an undignified heap at the door.
Knight stood behind him, sleeves rolled to his elbows, already tucking a pistol into the waistband of his trousers. He glanced over at them. “Talks too much.”
Violet stared down at Percival’s unconscious form, then back up at Knight. Then she exhaled, something in her finally unspooling.
Knight hauled the man up by the scruff.
“What are you doing?” she asked, blinking as he dragged Percival over to them.
“Drake wants him.”
No chorus of angels could have sounded sweeter than those words.
*
“Where the hellis she?” Drake growled, pacing up and down the tap room of their tavern, the bandage wrapped around his head a constant, irritating presence.
Had Dagger not been able to locate her?
The thought of Violet alone in that chaos, hemmed in by men who would not hesitate to hurt her, sent a vicious spike of heat through his chest. He crossed the length of the tavern again, fists flexing at his sides. He should have gone after her himself. Should have ignored his brothers, ignored reason.
He pressed his fingers briefly to his brow, every muscle in his body taut with the tension of wanting to do something and having no clue what that something should be. He could fight half of Brighton and win. He could break bones and make men beg. But this? This sitting and waiting and hoping for God knows what?
It peeled him back to the bone.
“Sit down,frère,” Reaper said from his stool at the bar, “before you fall down.”
