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Off to the side, she saw that Josephina was wide awake, sitting alertly beside the hatbox, her tail lashing. The cat’s eyes caught an unsettling glint from the moonlight as she stared at the intruder to their peaceful attic.

“The hell she did,” the viscount snarled.

“Marriage by special license cannot be invalidated if consummated,” Fiennes said. He left the obvious unspoken.

Caving at the waist like a rotten tomato, the viscount collapsed into the rocking chair. “Most beautiful woman in London! She could have anyone. I promised her a rich husband.”

“Fulvia didn’t want a rich husband,” Ella said. She may not know her cousin as well as she thought, but she knew Fulvia’s essential nature. “She loves the stage more than anything, certainly more than money. Mr. Woodward is a leading actor, so she will spend her life in and around the theater.”

“Ruined!” the viscount spat.

True.

Fulvia may be ruined in the eyes of polite society, but Ella had the feeling that her cousin would consider herself the opposite of “ruined.”

Fiennes took a step backward, out of the moonlight, nudging Ella behind him again. He was watching her uncle closely. His hands had relaxed, but Ella didn’t make the mistake of thinking that the viscount was no longer in danger.

“Uncle, perhaps you should go to bed,” she suggested.

He visibly shivered. “Got ‘nother question for you,” he said, peering into the shadows where Ella stood sheltered by Fiennes’s bulk. “Did you know?”

“About Fulvia? I was as surprised as you were,” Ella assured him. “I knew Fulvia had visited the theater several times, but I had no idea she’d come to know an actor well enough for him to ask her to marry him.”

“I suspect she asked him,” Fiennes said. “Very Romeo and Juliet.”

“Not that,” the viscount said hollowly. “The other.”

“Careful,” Fiennes murmured, just as Ella figured out what her uncle was talking about: his wife.

His wife and the baby.

“I know nothing,” she stated.

The viscount’s head swung up, eyes narrowed. Ella felt a streak of fear and edged closer to Fiennes. Glancing down, she saw that his right hand had curled into a fist again.

“How could you fucking know nothing?” The words scraped against the air. “You’re the housekeeper, nose in everything, changing the bloody sheets.”

Ella was gratefully conscious of Fiennes’s towering body. “I didn’t—I never went into the viscountess’s bedchamber,” she said, stopping when Fiennes shook his head.

To her horror, her uncle pulled a gleaming pistol from his breast pocket and began turning it over in his hands, mumbling curses under his breath.

“Damn it to hell,” Fiennes breathed. He put Ella squarely behind him. “I thought that coat wasn’t hanging properly.” He said over his shoulder, “I’m going to move toward the door, Ella. I want you to stay behind me.”

“I can’t!” Ella whispered. “What about Starlight, Josephina, and the babies?” She wouldn’t put it past her uncle to use Starlight for target practice. He’d shot out a mirror in the drawing room once, in a fit of rage.

And Josephina had bitten him.

Fiennes said something savage under his breath. The hatbox was on the opposite side of the room.

Eyes fixed on the viscount, Fiennes stepped to the side, his right arm extended to make certain that Ella came with him.

“Cuckolded,” the viscount groaned. He swung his head up. Fiennes stopped moving. “I’ve thought about killing her. There’s no court in the land that wouldn’t excuse me, a lord. My wife is no more than a trollop.”

“You would be tried by the House of Lords,” Fiennes remarked. “That would be unpleasant. The child will still be your heir, if male.”

“Aye, that’s the rub,” the viscount mumbled, looking back down at his weapon.

Fiennes slid to the side again. They were almost at the chimney now. Starlight leapt forward, hair standing up on her back. Ella crouched down before the hat box. Josephina was wide awake, her eyes shining.