Ash hated always being right.

He positioned himself between the men and Emma, keeping one hand on her back and clutching his walking stick with the other. “Well?” he goaded. “Get to it, already. Tell me what it is you want, so that I can tell you to get stuffed, and we can all carry on with our lives. I’ve a full schedule this evening.”

“Toss over the purse, guv. Watches and rings, too.”

“Get stuffed. There, now. See how easy that was?” He slid his arm around Emma’s shoulders. “We’ll be going.”

The second man held up a knife. “Hold there. I wouldn’t try anything clever.”

“I should hope you wouldn’t,” Ash replied dryly. “You’d no doubt injure yourself in the attempt.”

The man with the knife feinted, jabbing it in the direction of Ash’s ribs. “Shut it. And give up your coins and baubles, unless you fancy bleedin’ to death in front o’ your bit of skirt.”

His bit of skirt?

“Not to worry, miss.” The first man chuckled, winding a length of rope around one of his hands and pulling it tight with the other. “We’ll be glad to take you off the gentleman’s ’ands.”

A savage growl rose in Ash’s throat. “Like the devil you will.” Brandishing his walking stick like a sword, he sliced the air in a wide arc, forcing the footpads back. “Touch her and you will pay with your lives, you diseased, maggoty curs.”

He’d gone beyond anger, sailed straight past rage, and crashed into a place of primal fury, where blood ran in colors he hadn’t known to exist.

The blade glinted in the gathering dark. Its owner lunged, but Ash stepped to the side, pushing Emma back with his free arm. With a vicious strike, he sent the blackguard to his knees. The knife tumbled into the grass.

Whirling around, he raised his walking stick again, preparing to deal the other cutpurse a backhand blow, hard enough to crush bone.

Before he could swing, a gust of wind dislodged his hat.

In unison, the thieves recoiled.

“Sweet Jesus,” one of them whispered.

“Christ ’ave mercy,” the other said, scrambling backward on his hands and feet. “’Tis the Devil, to be sure.”

Ash stilled, fuming with a wrath that burned his lungs and holding his stick poised for violence. However, violence no longer appeared necessary. After a tense silence, he lowered the stick. “Begone.”

Neither of them dared to move.

“Begone!” he roared. “Slink home like the craven whoresons you are, or I swear to you, you will beg for the Devil to take your souls.”

They scrambled and fled. No victory had ever been so hollow.

On returning to London, Ash had harbored a small hope that he might not look quite so monstrous as his few interactions had led him to believe. Maybe Annabelle was just Annabelle—shallow and prizing appearances above all else. Perhaps his former friends truly had been too busy to visit more than once, and the majority of his servants really had needed to visit far-flung relations who’d suddenly taken ill.

Maybe—just maybe—the scars weren’t that bad.

He’d been deluding himself. That much was now clear. His appearance was every bit as repulsive as he’d feared, if not worse. Those were hardened criminals he’d sent scurrying like rats into the gutter. And he expected a quick-witted, lovely young woman to rejoice at his offer of marriage?

Everyone would revile him. No woman with any sense would have him. When he turned, Emma would be gone. He was certain of it.

He knew nothing.

She was still there, wielding a tree branch in both hands as she stared after the retreating brigands. His cloak had slipped from her shoulders. Her breaths made angry clouds of vapor in the cold air.

At length, she dropped the branch, then moved to retrieve his hat from where it had landed a few feet distant. “Are you unharmed?”

Ash stared at her in bewilderment. Her question didn’t make sense. None of this made any sense.

She’d not only not run, she’d prepared to defend him—absurd as that was. He didn’t know what to do with her, and he didn’t have the faintest notion what to do with himself. He couldn’t help but feel . . .

He couldn’t help but feel. All manner of emotions, and all of them at once.

To begin, he was vaguely insulted by the suggestion that he might need help from a wisp of a girl. That led to a growing desire to possess her, to show her just who protected whom in this exchange. And then, beneath everything, there was some quiet, unnameable emotion that made him want to lay down his pride, rest his head in her lap, and weep.

That third was, of course, unthinkable. Never going to happen. Nevertheless, the decision was made. She’d sealed her own fate.

If she meant to escape him, she’d missed her chance.

He’d be damned if he’d let her get away now.

Emma sensed the change in him. The stony set of his jaw. The furious rise and fall of his breath. No blue remained in his eyes—only a cold, glittering black.

He’d been intense from the first, but now he was . . . so intensely intense, she couldn’t find a word to properly describe it. But she felt it. Oh, she felt it to her toes. Each hair on her body lifted at the root; her every nerve jumped to attention.

Her body knew something would happen.

Her mind had no idea what it would be—except that it would involve the unleashing of formidable power.

“Your hat,” she said. As if it might need explaining that the hat-shaped object in her hand was indeed a hat and not, say, a joint of mutton.

He took the hat.

He took his cloak from where it had fallen to the spongy turf.

And then he took her.

He didn’t offer his arm, as gentlemanly custom would dictate. He gripped her by the elbow instead, herding her toward the street. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“I’m not,” she muttered.

Not that Emma was happy they’d been set upon by thieves. That had been terrifying, and she had no desire to ever experience it again. However, now, with the benefit of knowing they’d escaped unscathed, she could revisit the memory and feel a thrill at his instinctive move to guard her and the outraged precision with which he’d dispatched the two men.

No one had ever protected her that way.

Whatever attraction she’d felt toward him beforehand—and she had felt an attraction, no matter how unwillingly—was increased a hundredfold.

“I’m the one who should apologize,” she said. “It was all my fault. We would not have ended here in the park if—”

“If I’d paid the slightest attention. The fault was mine.” He led her out of the park without further conversation. At the nearest crossing, he hailed a hackney cab. “You’re going home. My carriage will come for you tomorrow. Have your things ready.”

The air vacated her lungs. “Wait. What are you saying?”

“From there, you’ll go to a hotel. Mivart’s, I think.”

Mivart’s. The finest, most luxurious hotel in Mayfair. Emma had visited it once, to hem a gown for a visiting Austrian baroness. She had never imagined she would stay in such a place.

“I’ll send for you once the solicitors have finished the contracts.” The duke opened the hackney’s door and stuffed Emma into it. “We’ll be married at Ashbury House.”

“But . . . but . . .”

He gave directions to the hackney driver, then moved to close the door and shut her inside. “On second thought, don’t pack your belongings. I’ll buy you new. I’ve no use for moldy potatoes.”

She thrust her boot into the door opening before he could close it. “Wait.”

He stared at her. “What?”

Excellent question. Emma didn’t have the faintest idea what. Only that this was all happening so fast. Too fast. Her life had been set spinning, and she didn’t want to make it stop—but she needed some sort of handle to grasp.

“I . . . I insist on bringing a cat.”

He made a noise of unmitigated disgust. “A cat.”

“Yes, a cat. My cat.”

Emma, you idiot. You don’t even have a cat.

She would find one, she decided. If she meant to enter a marriage with no promise of affection and inhabit that vast, elegant house, she needed at least one ally. What better than a fuzzy, wide-eyed kitten?

“For a bride of convenience, you are proving to be a great deal of trouble.” He tucked her foot into the hackney, then leveled a finger at her before closing the door. “This cat of yours had better be well-behaved.”