"
With a scream of rage Stephen pushed him off, then flew at him, fists
reeling. So great was his fury that he knocked the larger man down
and, pinning him there, began to pummel him with half-blocked punches
to the face.
Then he felt a sharp pain at the base of his skull, and falling
forward, knew no more.
Twenty-Four
The first night that Michael spent alone was indescribable. To have
held the treasure of his heart so near, after both had suffered so
much, only to be forced to turn her over to the most feared and hated
man of the district, and a name of ill repute since childhood.....
There was no reconciling himself to the facts.
That she was his daughter might afford her the narrowest margin of
protection. But who could say what an English Lord---his noble birth a
sham, at that---might do when confronted by the threat of an
illegitimate child?
And the son, Stephen Purceville. Both Mary and his mother had doctored
their accounts of him, knowing Michael's fiery temper of old. But he
was wise enough, with the passing years, to know when he was being
shielded from the truth.
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