His eyes narrowed dangerously in the dim light, and he suddenly looked far less like a gentleman of leisure and far more like the ruthless killer she’d thought him in Newgate.

“Yes, you are.”

Benedict took a deep, steadying breath and tried to banish the jolt of primitive possessiveness that had seized him when he’d stepped through the trees and discovered Georgie in the arms of another man.

A split second later, when he’d realized she was being assaulted, fury had overwhelmed his jealousy. He’d actually reached over his shoulder for his rifle, a move so instinctive he did it without conscious thought. He’d cursed when he realized he wasn’t carrying his Baker. He’d spent years with it never far from his hand; he felt naked without its familiar weight.

But since going around armed to the teeth was frowned upon in polite society, he’d had to settle for carrying a foppish swordstick. It could skewer Georgie’s lecherous cousin quite effectively, but Ben had been tempted to simply rip the bastard limb from limb instead. He would have been outraged at finding any woman being mistreated, but somehow the fact that it was Georgie, his woman, increased his fury tenfold. How dare that bastard touch her?

Her disheveled appearance only made him more furious. Her cousin’s assault had dislodged the combs from her hair—it spilled in haphazard disarray over her shoulders—and her fichu was ripped where it had been pulled from her bodice. Benedict cast a scathing, dismissive glance at the knife she still held in one small fist.

“That little thing might have been enough to scare your cousin, but it won’t deter anyone with more experience with a blade.”

His stomach clenched as he imagined her coming up against one of the murderous scum he regularly encountered in his line of work. Men like Hammond and Silas. Smugglers, cutthroats, murderers, thieves. They’d have gutted her like a fish and never even paused for breath. God. The thought of her coming up against one of those back-alley bastards was enough to make him want to retch.

She needed to be protected from all that ugliness. From that harsh, dirty portion of the world. She might have caught a glimpse of it in her business dealings, but she hadn’t seen humanity at its worst, as he had. She hadn’t seen the ferocity, the barbarism, the depths men desperate to survive were capable of. The terrifying ease with which a human life could be snuffed out. He wanted to lock her away in her ivory tower, somewhere safe and as lavishly appointed as her money could afford.

Her dismissive shrug only increased his irritation. Did she truly not know the danger she’d been in? Long years of warfare had shown him just how vicious and bestial a man could become. Murder and rape were daily occurrences in the backstreets of this city.