Chapter 19

Julian came through the Louis XIV rose garden at a half-run.

Quinn was standing in the middle of it, pulling petals off a bloom. She'd always loved these roses. Then Holden had started using them as proof of his feelings, and they'd stopped being hers.

The arm that came around her was different from any arm that had ever held her in this garden.

"I found you," Julian said. His voice was pressed thin. "I finally found you."

He held her with his face against her hair and didn't move for a long time.

Quinn's eyes stung, unexpectedly.

"You took long enough," she managed. "I've had to look at his face for days—"

"I know. I'm sorry." He pulled back just enough to see her properly, checking. "The security here is — significant. I couldn't get through. If one of the household staff hadn't brought out evidence and contacted the authorities directly, I'd still be working on it."

Quinn thought of the round-faced maid with the steady eyes.

"Quinn."

She recognized Holden's voice the way you recognize the sound of an old injury. She felt Julian's arm settle differently around her — not tighter, but deliberate, like someone stepping between two things.

"You brought the police." Holden's voice was flat and careful, stripped of everything but the shape of the sentence. "So there's nothing I can do."

"I just want to know one thing." He was looking past Julian. "Who is he to you?"

Julian answered for himself. His spine was very straight. Something in the way he spoke suggested he'd been waiting a while for this particular conversation.

"Her husband."

Holden's face changed.

Julian reached into his inside jacket pocket and produced a folded document. He held it out.

Holden took it, unfolded it, stared at it.

Quinn watched his face go through several things in rapid succession.

"I did tell you," she said. "Don't call me by my first name anymore. It makes me sick."

The words landed with the quiet finality of something that had been building for years. She watched Holden take the impact of them — a physical thing, the way his shoulders came slightly in, the way he stepped back.

He looked ten years older than he had a moment ago.

"Go," he said. He was looking at the marriage certificate in his hands. "Just go."

Julian kept a residence in New York for when business required it. That was where they went.

Within twenty minutes of their arrival, he had called a medical team — four doctors who appeared at the door in under an hour, carrying enough equipment to run a small clinic.

Quinn looked at Julian.

"I know," she said. "Holden already made me do this."

Julian was unmoved. "Holden also had you chained to a wall. His version of concern and mine are not the same thing. Sit down."

She sat.

The doctors spent two hours being very thorough and eventually delivered their verdict: she was in excellent physical health, which they relayed with the visible relief of people who had been expecting something worse.

Julian made no effort to hide the breath he let out.

Quinn watched him, an unexpected pang of guilt moving through her. "I'll be more careful. I didn't intend—"

"It's not your fault." He rubbed his eyes. "I should have anticipated what he was capable of. I underestimated how completely out of his mind he was." A pause. "But Quinn—" He looked at her directly. "As your husband — I'm asking you. Please don't see Holden Blackwood again. Not because I'm jealous. Because he is genuinely unstable and every time you're in the same room as him you come out hurt."

"Is it because you're jealous?"

"...Slightly."

Quinn laughed before she could stop herself — a real one, short and startled.

Julian looked at her with something patient and helpless in his expression. He waited until she'd composed herself.

"The wedding's going to have to be pushed back," he said. "I need to stay in New York a little longer."

"What for?"

He glanced at her, mild and level. "To deal with Holden Blackwood. He put my wife in chains. That requires a response."