The door slammed open. As Serena stiffened in his arms, a harsh, angry voice smashed through his idyll.
“You unmitigated bloody bastard!”
***
Paralyzed with horror, Serena stared over Giles’s shoulder to where Paul filled the doorway, large, furious, and undoubtedly hurt.
The vivid heaven of Giles’s kiss had flung her a thousand miles from considerations of sin, propriety or scandal. But as she read the stark betrayal on Paul’s face, acrid shame set her belly heaving and made her skin break out in goosebumps.
“Stop…” she muttered to Giles, who still crushed her against the wall where, devil curse her recklessness, he’d been within inches of taking her.
Like a doxy at a tavern.
And in her father’s house, with her family celebrating Christmas only a room away.
“Serena, it’s all right,” Giles whispered.
“No, it’s not,” she grated, pushing him with agitated hands that seconds ago had clutched him to her.
“Get away from her, you sodding mongrel,” Paul snarled, barging into the room and crashing into a delicate gilt table, overturning it.
“Keep your blasted voice down.” With agonizing slowness, Giles straightened away from her and turned to face Paul. “Do you want every man and his dog in here?”
“You dare to lecture me on decorum?” Paul roared.
Giles stood squarely in front of Serena, blocking her view of Paul. Which right now was a relief, however cowardly that made her.
Self-disgust stabbed her, when she glanced down and noticed her sagging bodice for the first time. She realized Giles was giving her a chance to cover herself. With shaking hands, she tugged her dress into place. More shame, sharp as broken glass.
She couldn’t even blame Giles for what had happened. Every step of the way, she’d been his willing partner. Nausea churned in her stomach. She felt cheap and foolish and used.
“Paul…” Clutching her dress to preserve her frail modesty, Serena stepped out from behind Giles.
Unfortunately her intervention made things worse. Paul’s attention focused on her rumpled dress, and incandescent anger flooded his face. The bright blue eyes went as black as coal.
“You swine, Hallam. What the hell have you done to her?” He surged forward and slammed his substantial fist into Giles’s face.
Serena cried out as Giles staggered under the force of the blow.
“Paul, how could you?” She grabbed for Giles. As he fought for balance, his arm was as hard as rock under her hand. She braced for him to reciprocate with violence, but he didn’t move.
“You had every right to do that,” Giles said stiffly, a muscle working in his lean cheek.
Paul regarded him with lacerating contempt. “Fight me, you cur.”
“We can’t brawl in Lady Talbot’s library.” Giles moved away from Serena. “Have some sense, man.”
“Then meet me at dawn on the field of honor.”
“Over my dead body,” said Serena’s mother from the doorway.
Serena sucked in a relieved breath. She had no chance of soothing Paul’s outrage. Her mother, however, might bring some sense into this chaos.
“Lady Talbot, this isn’t your concern,” Paul said coldly, glaring at Giles.
Her lips flattening, Serena’s mother stepped inside and shut the library door. She cast a disapproving glance at the overturned table. “If you’re going to bellow your head off like a charging elephant, when I have a house full of people, it does indeed concern me.”
“I don’t mean to cause trouble…” Paul began, only to receive a blistering look for his pains.