"What did he do?" he murmured. "He said something about if his words didn't put me in my place, he would find something that would. And then he slapped me." Bram abruptly regretted not making use of the knife he'd carried in his boot to the Hampton soiree. He could understand Cosgrove desiring her and wanting to control her. But to strike her... Bram was accustomed to being angry; he'd spent most of the past ten years in varying states of it. What he felt as he listened to Rosamund, though, to the shake of her words and the despair in her voice, was deeper and hotter than anything he'd ever experienced. Plainly and simply, it was fury. White-hot, blood-boiling fury. "Hope that he enjoyed hitting you, Rosamund," he said in a low voice, "because he will never touch you again."