"I will not, /by thunder/, talk in private," he said, striding a few paces into the room. "The whole world needs to know what you are, woman, and the whole world will hear it from me, starting with these people.
What the devil – "
Stephen had taken one step closer. Paget was not a small man. He was of slightly above-average height, in fact, and he was not puny of build.
But Stephen took hold of his cloak at the neck and of his shirt beneath it and lifted the man onto his toes with one hand. He moved his head forward until there was a scant three inches of space between his nose and Paget's.
He did not raise his voice.
"You will not talk at all in my home, Paget," he said, "except with my permission. And you will not use language that is offensive to the ears of ladies even when that permission is granted."
His knuckles were pressing lightly but deliberately against the man's windpipe so that his face turned slightly purple. /"Ladies?"/ Paget said. "The only female I see before me, Merton, is no lady."
Stephen's frayed temper snapped. He slammed Paget back against the wall two feet behind him, his hand still at the man's throat. His free hand, closed into a fist, was poised at shoulder height.
Paget's hat tipped to an impossible angle and tumbled to the floor.
"Perhaps," Stephen said, "my ears have deceived me, Paget. But assuming they have not, I will hear your apology."
"Apology be damned," Wesley Young's voice said from just behind Stephen's shoulder, quaking with fury. "Let me at him, Merton. No one talks to my sister that way and gets away with it."
"You had better apologize, Paget," Elliott's cool voice said from the other side, "and then do as Lady Paget has suggested. There are guests expected here soon, and no one wants them to find you with a bloodied nose. Least of all you, I would imagine. Take your discussion to a private room. Lady Paget's brother and her betrothed will be happy to accompany you, I am sure."
"I do apologize for my language to the /ladies/ in the room," Paget said from between his teeth, and Stephen was obliged to lower his fist and release his hold on the man's clothing though his meaning had been insolently clear. The apology did not include Cassandra.
Paget straightened his cloak and turned his glare on her.
"In a different time and place," he said, "you would have been burned at the stake as a witch long ago, woman, before you could do any real harm.
I would have enjoyed watching and stoking the fire."
Stephen's fist bounced his head off the wall, and blood spurted from his nose.
"Bravo, Stephen," Vanessa said.
Paget drew a handkerchief from a pocket somewhere inside his cloak and dabbed at his nose before glancing at the scarlet blood.
"I suppose, Merton," he said, "she has persuaded you and every other man in London – and even some of the ladies – that she did /not/ murder my father in cold blood. And I suppose she has you convinced that the same thing will not happen to you when she has tired of you and wants to be free to find herself a new victim. And I suppose you fully support her outrageous claim to my father's money and all the jewels he lavished upon her before she shot him through the heart? She is the very devil, but she is clever."
"No, don't, Stephen," Margaret said. "Don't hit him again. Violence brings a moment's satisfaction but no real solution to any problem."
A woman's logic.
"No, don't, Wes," Cassandra said.
Stephen did not take his eyes off Paget's face.
"And I suppose," he said, his voice soft, "you have persuaded yourself through a lifetime of self-deception that your father was not an intermittent drinker and a vicious abuser when he had been drinking? I suppose you think that violence perpetrated against women is not strictly speaking violence if it is against a wife. Wives must be disciplined and husbands have a legal right to administer that discipline. Even when that violence causes a woman to lose the child she is carrying."
"Oh, Stephen," Katherine said, her voice high-pitched and half strangled.
"My father very rarely drank," Paget said, looking about him with fury and contempt. "He drank far less often than most men. I will not have his memory besmirched by the lies this woman has told you, Merton. When he did drink, he could be rough, it is true, but only when the person concerned deserved punishment. This woman had every man in the neighborhood fawning over her. There is no knowing what she – "
"And your mother too?" Stephen asked softly. "Was your mother as deserving of punishment? Even the last one?"
He was overreaching himself. He was angry and had not given himself time to consider his words.
But Paget had blanched. He mopped up a few more trickles of blood from his reddened nose.
"What has she told you of my mother?" he asked.
"Even if Cassie killed Paget," Wesley Young said, "I would support her.
I would /applaud/ her. That bastard deserved to die. And I will apologize to the ladies, but I will not withdraw the word. However, she did /not/ kill him."
"What has she told you of my mother?" Paget asked again, just as if Young had not spoken.
"Only what rumor whispered," Stephen said with a sigh. "We all know how unreliable rumor can be. But what my betrothed suffered for nine years at the hands of her husband, your father, is not rumor. And what is more, Paget, you know it. And you know that /if/ she killed him, she did so to save her own life or the life of someone else endangered by his violence. You probably even know that she did /not/ kill him. But it has been convenient to you to pretend that you /do/ believe it and that at any time you can have her arrested and punished for the crime. You have been enriched by the belief and by the way you have bullied her into believing in your power."
"My mother died when she fell from her horse," Paget said. "She tried to jump a fence that was too high for her."
Stephen nodded. Time was marching onward. What time /was/ it?
"Bruce," Cassandra said, and Stephen turned his head to look at her. "If you have anything else to say to me, you must come and talk to me tomorrow. I live on Portman Street."
"I know," Paget said. "I just came from there."
"I did not kill your father," she said. "I cannot prove that I did not, and you cannot prove that I did. His death was ruled a tragic accident, and so it was. I have no wish to intrude further upon your life. I have no wish at all to live at the dower house or even in the town house. I want merely what is mine so that I can live my own life and never see you or trouble you ever again. You might as well give in to my lawyer's very reasonable demands. You can have no defense against them."
His temper was up again. He pointed a finger at her and drew breath to speak. But someone else had appeared in the doorway. For one horrible moment Stephen thought it was an early guest, though not so very early at that. But it was William Belmont.
"Lord," he said, his eyes passing over the people gathered just inside the doors. "I got home half an hour ago and Mary told me you had called, Bruce – and that she had told you that Cassie was here. Mary usually has a bit more sense than to give away information like that, especially when you are the one who gave her the boot a month ago. You have a bloody nose, I see. Courtesy of Merton, I suppose? Or of Young?"
"I have nothing to say to /you/," Paget said, his brows snapping together.
"Well, I have something to say to /you/," Belmont said, looking about again. "And since it looks as if you did not do the sensible thing and ask to speak privately to Cassie when you got here, then I have something to say to everyone present."
"No, don't, William," Cassandra said.
"But I will," he said. "He was my father, Cassie, as well as your husband. He was Bruce's father too, and he ought to know the truth. So ought everyone who is preparing to welcome you into their family as Merton's bride. Cassie did not shoot our father, Bruce. Neither did I, though I /was/ there, you know, and got my hand on his wrist to wrestle the gun from him. He had started to cuff Mary around because I had told him earlier in the day, before he started drinking, that I had married her and that Belinda was mine. Cassie and then Miss Haytor had been drawn by Mary's screams, and then I came into the house and was drawn by his raised voice coming from the library. He had his pistol pointed at Cassie. But when I went for him and tried to take the gun, he turned it quite deliberately and pointed it at his own heart and pulled the trigger."