Trouble in paradise, Nick thought, just as his mind registered what his eyes were trying to tell him: Leah!

He was on his feet, bellowing, pelting across the grass and turning all heads. Anger that Leah should be handled roughly right in public warred with gut-clenching fear that Nick wouldn’t reach her in time.

The men trying to drag Leah with them stepped up their pace, but hearing Nick’s voice, she began to resist more strenuously. He reached her just at the gate nearest the street and hooked a massive arm around the neck of her closest assailant.

He would not do murder while Leah looked on, but it was a near thing.

“Don’t make me break your bloody neck,” Nick hissed, heaving the man away from Leah, leaving her only one escort to wrestle with. Nick clipped the second man in the jaw and sent him crashing to the walk, then turned on a third man—a simian specimen who’d come lumbering forth from the trees—trying to hustle Leah toward an unmarked town coach.

“Not bloody likely,” Nick muttered just as the idiot backhanded Leah and attempted to toss her over his shoulder. Nick grabbed the brute by his shirt and walloped him in turn—right off his feet. Two more men came racing up from the coach, and Nick went into a crouch, fists raised, body slightly turned to present a smaller target.

“Leah,” Nick growled, “get behind me and start screaming.”

She scrambled to comply, emitting a series of ear-piercing shrieks. The reinforcements slowed their charge, eyed Nick and the shrieking woman behind him, and stopped dead in their tracks.

“You get Ollie,” the larger of the two said, “I’ll get Sykes and hope that big bastard don’t give chase.”

The big bastard couldn’t give chase, since he knew damned good and well Leah would be left undefended. As their attackers scrambled off and disappeared into the town coach, dragging their injured with them, Nick turned to wrap his arms around Leah.

“You’re safe,” he said, though his own heart continued to pound. “I’ve got you. You’re safe, Leah. They’re gone.”

She was weeping and shaking too hard to even clutch Nick’s handkerchief securely, so he scooped her up and carried her to a bench in the shade. “They tried to take the lady’s purse,” Nick explained to the milling onlookers, “and were threatening her person. She’d appreciate some privacy.”

It took a few minutes, but the crowd dispersed, leaving Leah sitting beside Nick, pale and weepy. He kept an arm around her shoulders, despite their public location, because he was haunted by the same thought Leah no doubt was: What if he hadn’t been there?

What if he’d said one more farewell this morning to his father?

Lingered over a pot of tea, hoping the clouds would lift?

Heeded Ethan’s suggestion that they grab luncheon before parting?

“God’s hairy toes.” Nick wrapped his arm more tightly around her. “I’m taking you home with me.” This merited him only a shaky nod of assent. “I’d like to carry you, but you’ll feel better if you can walk. We’ll take it as slowly as you need to.”

Nick stayed glued to her side, her left hand in his left, his right arm anchored snugly around her shoulders.

“Nick?” Crying had left her voice husky.

He bent his head to hear her, even as he kept them moving. “Lovey?”

“Th… thank you.” A shudder passed through her, and right in the middle of the walk, Nick stopped and wrapped both arms around her again, resting his chin on the top of her head. He held her tight. She clung to him too, until he felt her breathing calm and her tremors cease.

“I’m all right now,” Leah murmured against his sternum.

“I am not,” Nick said, but he resumed their promenade nonetheless and felt marginally better when they’d gained the busy streets and left the open spaces of the park behind them. As he escorted Leah the several blocks to his town house, his nerves did calm somewhat, coalescing into unshakable resolve.

She would marry him, and she would be safe in his care. There was no other acceptable outcome. None.

And threading through that resolve, in the aftermath of battle, was an incongruous arousal. Possessiveness played a part, as did animal excitement, but Nick’s reasoning mind could barely wrestle into submission the tightening in his groin, the heat under his skin, and the urge to lay Leah down and cover her body with his own.

When he’d closed the door of his home solidly behind them, Nick was in no condition for Leah to plaster herself against his chest, grab him by the back of the head, and drag his mouth down to hers.

“For the love of God, Nick,” she groaned against his mouth. “Please… just…”

He gathered her close, bent his body over hers, and fused his mouth to hers. She tightened the grip of her fingers in his hair, and Nick felt her breasts straining against his chest. Simmering lust exploded into the full-blown need to spend as Nick sent his tongue plunging into Leah’s mouth.

“Not here,” he muttered against her lips. “Not…” Then he realized what he’d just said. Not here, not anywhere, for the love of God. He groaned and gentled the kiss, though the shift in intensity took torturous seconds to register with Leah. When she drew back to rest her forehead on Nick’s chest, her breath was heaving in and out, and her hands were shaking again.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. His arms settled around her gently, and he angled his body slightly away from hers, so the evidence of his arousal wasn’t as apparent.

“I’m not,” Nick countered, rueful humor in those two words. “I believe we experienced the same impulse that sends soldiers pillaging through conquered cities after a battle.” He stroked his hand slowly over her hair, willing them both to calm, to find some peace and sanity. It was absolute hell to be so close to her, but it would be worse to let her go.

“If you will steady me,” Nick teased gently, “I think I could get as far as the family parlor.”

She nodded, keeping an arm around his waist even as his arm stayed across her shoulders. A startled footman met them outside the parlor, and Nick quietly ordered tea and a late lunch and asked that the running footman be sent to him, as well as a groom.

Nick dealt with the groom first, scribbling a note and directing him to make all haste to Willowbrook, the Marquis of Heathgate’s estate. As the groom decamped on his appointed task, another knock sounded on the door.

Nick sent the runner off to the fashionable address of investigator Benjamin Hazlit, and from there to the houses of Lady Della, Darius Lindsey, and Trenton Lindsey, specific messages memorized for each. The tea tray arrived shortly thereafter, followed by a cart laden with food, and all the while, Nick stayed seated at Leah’s hip.

“Drink, lamb,” Nick urged, putting a cup of tea in her hands and wrapping her cold fingers around it. “And blessed, benighted Jesus, we need ice for your jaw.” He rose and went to the door, bellowing for shaved ice, arnica, and a towel.

“You have ice?” Leah marveled, though to Nick it was a curiously mundane thing to focus on.

“It’s not yet May. Of course we have ice. I have Jennings’s warehouse deliver it. Drink your tea, to settle my nerves if nothing else.”

Leah sipped obediently, her expression disturbingly blank.

“Talk to me, lovey,” Nick said, putting all the reassurance he could into his voice. “Say anything. Tell me about your journey from Kent, what you had for breakfast, what you were doing in the park so much before the appointed hour.”

He reached over and stroked her back in slow, rhythmic circles. She might not have been aware of his touch for all she seemed to heed it, but touching her soothed Nick.

Leah cocked her head. “It wasn’t before the appointed hour. You sent a note telling me when to meet you there.”

“Did you see the note?” Nick asked, his hand going still between her shoulder blades.