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Minx.
“Me?” Rune tore his look off of Elle to give one last glance into the library at the maps sitting on the tables. He closed the door and fell in step with her along the dimly lit corridor leading back to the ballroom. “You were the one that didn’t want to break for food.”
A teasing grin spread wide across her face. “Yes, but he doesn’t care to get irate with me—but he will happily be irate with you.”
“Then we both better lose mounds of coin to him at the whist tables, so I can return to his good graces.”
“Who said you were ever in his good graces?”
He laughed, sliding his hand along the small of her back and letting his fingers slip down to swat her backside.
She jumped forward, laughing, and Rune made an instantaneous plan to snatch her arm and drag her back into the shadows of the library.
Lord Kallen and his whist could wait.
“Eliana—here you are. I wondered where you disappeared to.” A man had rounded the corner in front of them, blocking their path back to the ballroom.
Rune and Elle both jerked to a stop and he could feel her stiffen next to him.
He glanced down at her. Her face had paled—how was it even possible in that miniscule second?
The man took a long step forward, setting himself in front of Elle. He was tall, though shorter than Rune, with dark pomaded hair and dark eyes that looked near to sinister in the dim light of the corridor. Thin, so much so his cheeks sunk slightly in. His stare bored into Elle without giving Rune the slightest glance. “I thought you would be alone—Kallen came back into the ballroom without you some time ago and you missed supper.”
A weak smile came to her face. “As you can see, I am not alone.”
“Who is your friend?” He didn’t bother to look at Rune.
Her whole body had gone rigid, almost shaking as she stood next to him, her bare upper arm brushing against the sleeve of his tailcoat. All of Rune’s muscles twitched to attention.
Elle looked at the man, not saying a word. She either didn’t want to introduce Rune, or she didn’t want Rune to know who the man was. He was guessing the latter.
Rune took a step forward and wedged himself slightly in front of her. “Rune Smith, and you are?”
“Heir presumptive to the Kallen estate, Howard Sangton.”
The man looked at him for the moment it took to spit out the words and then his lecherous look shifted back to Elle. Sangton’s eyes sank down to her neck, to the silk scarf she’d wrapped carefully about her neck to hide the bruises on her skin.
He smirked and his left hand lifted, stretching out to finger one of the delicate ends of her scarf.
She jerked into motion and her arm flew up, knocking his hand away, and then her fingers splayed toward the direction of the ballroom. “Please, Mr. Sangton, we are on our way to your uncle, as he specifically requested my presence at his whist table. I would hate to disappoint him.”
Sangton’s smirk pulled back into a sneer. “And we wouldn’t want my dear uncle to wait now, would we?”
Her forced smile quivered, then reset solidly on her lips. “No.” She stepped to her left and behind Rune. “So please, continue on to wherever you were going.”
Sangton’s head shifted to the side, the sneer distorting into disgust, and he moved past the two of them, his heels clicking on the large square stone pavers of the hall.
Rune turned to watch him retreat along the hallway, then disappear after turning to the left in the shadows.
Without waiting for her to move—to say a word—he spun fully to Elle and grabbed the outside of her shoulders, steering her backward and toward the library.
Her slippered feet stumbled along the way, but his clamp was so secure on her she remained upright until they were in the library. He kicked the door closed with his foot and released his grip on her.
“It’s him, isn’t it?”
She shuffled three steps backward, her hands up to calm. “Rune.”
He didn’t let her escape, swallowing the space between them, and he grabbed her upper arm, holding her in place. “Tell me the truth, Elle. He’s the one—the one that choked you.” The vicious rage in his words scared him for the intensity of it. But there was no controlling it.
