Twice Tempted by a Rogue (Stud Club #2)(90)

As she glared at him, red waves of anger swam before Meredith’s eyes. She could only manage one word. “Where?”

“Someplace private. Someplace safe.”

“We only went out for a walk,” Cora said, sniffing earnestly. “But the mist came up, and Gi … and Mr. Myles said we ought to wait it out. That it wasn’t safe to go home.” Her grip tightened over Meredith’s hand. “Ma’am, I swear to you. It weren’t my intention. We only went out for a walk, and once the mist came up …”

“It wasn’t safe to come home. I know.” Meredith swallowed hard and turned to Gideon, confronting his unrepentant gaze. “It wasn’t safe for you, who’ve called this moor home for more years than this girl’s been alive, to walk home. But it was safe for everyone else in the village to go searching valley, tor, river, and bog for her? Someone could have been killed.”

He shrugged and turned his gaze.

“Don’t you look away from me.” With a final squeeze, she released Cora’s hands. Trembling with fury, she planted both hands on the tabletop and slowly rose to her feet. “Did you touch her?”

Cora bent her head to the table and wept.

Meredith firmed her chin and stared at Gideon until he met her gaze. “I asked you a question. Did you touch her?”

“It’s not your business, Meredith.”

“The hell it isn’t.” She kicked the chair out from between them and stepped closer. “Answer me.”

“I didn’t do anything she didn’t want me to do.”

She didn’t even remember reaching back with her hand and letting it fly, she just heard the smart slap of her palm against Gideon’s unshaven face. “You bastard. She’s a girl.”

“She’s not a girl, she’s a—”

“Don’t you say it. Don’t you call her that.”

Before she could strike him again, he caught her wrist in a fierce grip. “Believe me, you have no idea what I was going to say.” Releasing her, he raked her with a look of pure contempt. “What? It’s all right for you, but not me? You’re allowed to get tarted up and run away with Ashworth for a week’s worth of high-class fornication, but I’m not allowed to—”

Gideon never saw it coming. One minute he was standing before Meredith, all but calling her a whore, and the next moment, Rhys had him smashed against the wall. And because it evidently wasn’t enough to do it once, Rhys grabbed him by fistfuls of shirt, pulled him off the wall, and smashed him against it again.

All around the tavern, bodies launched from chairs and pasted themselves to the edges of the room.

Holding Gideon pinned to the wall with one arm, Rhys hauled back with the other and swung. At the last second, Gideon managed to twist in his grip, so that the punch glanced off his shoulder and hit the wall—rather than snapping his neck instantaneously. He put a forearm to Rhys’s throat and wedged a boot in the larger man’s gut, levering him away. With his other arm, he reached for the pistol at his side.

Rhys beat him to it. “No guns,” he said, whipping the pistol from Gideon’s waistband and flinging it aside. “Just fists.”

The pistol skittered across the flagstones, coming to rest at Cora’s feet.

Gideon gave Rhys a swift kick to the knee—the wounded left knee he always favored. The kick sent Rhys reeling back a pace, giving Gideon an instant to breathe, react.

Attack.

Lunging to the side, he grabbed a candlestick from the mantel.

“No!” Meredith cried.

Gideon’s fingers closed around the heavy pipe of brass just as Rhys pulled back for another punch. They both swung at the same time. Rhys’s fist connected with Gideon’s jaw first, altering the angle of the candlestick’s descent, but not its velocity. The club came down on Rhys’s back with a dull thud. Both men roared with pain, separating for a moment.

But not for long.

With an inarticulate battle cry, Gideon swung again.

Rhys dodged, and the candlestick hit a table instead, crunching straight through the tabletop. As Gideon struggled to withdraw the weapon from a bird’s nest of splinters, Rhys picked up a stool and swung it hard. The stool smashed to kindling over Gideon’s head.

“You bastard!” Relinquishing his grip on the candlestick, Gideon lowered his shoulder and charged Rhys with full force.

Though Rhys was the larger man, he was caught off-balance. He reeled backward when Gideon struck, and together they plowed the distance of the room, landing against the bar with a crash of glass and splintering wood.

Meredith’s hands flew to her mouth. Good Lord. They would destroy the whole tavern.

If Rhys felt a single one of Gideon’s punches to his chest and gut, he didn’t show it. Instead he fisted his hands in Gideon’s shirt and hauled him up and left, swinging him bodily onto the counter and dropping him flat on his back. Within seconds, Rhys had scrambled atop him, straddling Gideon’s thighs to hold him down as he dealt blow after punishing blow.

“Stop this!” Meredith cried. “Rhys, Gideon. For the love of God, stop!”

Neither one of them heeded her pleas.

Gideon’s hands shot up to grasp Rhys’s throat. He locked his elbows, pushing up until Rhys’s head smashed into the rows of hanging glassware. As they struggled, little bits of glass rained down on them both, followed by red trickles of blood. Whose blood, Meredith couldn’t be sure.