Chapter 39

She shook her head, lancing his heart, which was already feeling like a pincushion for a legion of spear-wielding gladiators. “No. I won’t let her go, Nathan. I won’t. ”

He had to swallow down more arguments like jagged glass, because she broke into those painful sobs again. Her tense body sparked with energy, ready to fight to the death in a battle she knew she’d lose, because she thought she had nothing but the fight left to her.

Damn it. He pulled her back into him, struggled with her, then firmly mashed her against his chest until she went limp, cried there. Suppressing a sigh, he stroked her hair, kept stroking until she hiccupped a few times, settled down.

The plain truth of it was she was brilliant. And young, so very young. Ella was a twenty-six-year-old woman who’d been treated like worthless chattel by her insidious mother all her life. All that intelligence and baggage rolled together, the trauma of losing a child all by herself…. He knew she had strength— Lord and Lady, in