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“Not in a physical way,” she said, struggling to explain. “I told you about the angry man.”

Devin made a low noise that sounded like a growl. “Who was it? I’ll teach him to terrify young women.”

“He didn’t threaten me,” Viola said. “He was angry, that’s all, and I had never seen a truly angry man. My stepfather is angry sometimes, but he is always in control. My mother is calm by nature. Aunt Knowe gets vexed, but she’s never enraged.”

“Ah.” He didn’t say anything for a moment. “As I’ve told you, my father was angry a great deal of the time. If you added up the hours, I suspect he was angry for most of his life.”

Viola tentatively reached out a hand to touch his.

“It leaves its tracks,” Devin said slowly. “You chide me for not showing emotion, but I know better than most that some emotion is better kept silent. An angry man can damage those around him if he can’t control himself.”

“What frightened me,” Viola said, “was the idea that all that rage brewed behind a gentleman’s attire and fine manners. I will never forget the way rage boiled out of him.”

“This was the married couple whose argument you interrupted?”

“I wasn’t precisely accurate before,” Viola said. She felt herself turning pink. “You see he was engaged in . . . in an activity.”

Devin looked up sharply. “At a ball?”

She nodded. “A ball at Lindow Castle. It was my first such public event. I wasn’t enjoying it, and I decided to escape through the servants’ entrance.”

“A gentleman was tupping a woman in the hallway, where any young lady might happen on them and be horrified,” Devin said harshly.

There was something ferociously judgmental in his voice. “That wasn’t the part that bothered me,” Viola said. “It was a shock, but I once rounded a corner and came on one of my brothers and his wife looking quite disheveled. I wasn’t a complete idiot, even as a girl.”

“You were not the idiot; he was,” Devin said. He put down his fork.

“That did bother me,” Viola said, trying to explain. “In retrospect, it was almost funny because she wore yellow shoes and it looked absurd. But I was in a state of highly strung nerves—” She broke off. “It all sounds stupid now. I can’t believe it had such a powerful effect on me.”

“But it did.” Devin’s voice was grim, and Viola had a sudden image of him hunting down the man, all these years later, and exacting a punishment.

“Only because I was already on the verge of throwing up in public,” she said hastily. “You see, the woman in question was trying to trap the gentleman into matrimony. He mistook me for a witness who would force the question, I gather.”

“A mistake.”

She waved her hand. “He lost his temper and shouted because he thought I was part of a nefarious scheme, you see. He told her that if they married he would force her to live in the country. It was—”

She broke off. “What’s the matter?”

Chapter Twenty-six

Devin stared silently across the table, unable to answer.

Viola reached out and her warm hand curled over his. “It wasn’t such a terrible experience, Devin. I never told my father because I knew he would be most displeased.”

“For good reason,” he said hollowly.

Fear was curling in his stomach in a way he hadn’t felt since childhood.

He hadn’t given much thought to his marriage: From the moment he met Viola, he knew he had a fierce need to win her, and that was that. It felt right.

Now he realized that feeling “right” was just an inarticulate way of saying “love.” He was in love with his wife, desperately, wildly in love with his wife, and she was telling him that he was the reason for the greatest anguish she’d ever experienced.

His rage had thrown her into such fear that she experienced crippling shyness for years afterward.

A dark feeling swept through him, blurring her concerned expression.

“Devin,” she said, her fingers tightening. “You must not find and punish the gentleman in question. I never told anyone of the episode for that reason: It wouldn’t be fair to him. He didn’t want to marry that woman.”