The Lady Malvoro closed her hands on the chair that had stood by her beside, whirled around, and brought it crashing down on the head of her unwelcome visitor. The man cried out once - a mixture of surprise and pain - and stumbled. Immediately, the Lady hiked up her skirt and kicked him twice in rapid succession: once in the groin and once in the knee already bent from the blow to his head.
Mouth gaping wide in agony, hands clutched to his privates, the man fell on his face. He gagged, attempted to speak, then gagged again. One hand reached out towards the Lady, but she had already moved out of range... towards the fireplace.
"My Lady..." the maid in the corner of the room whispered, eyes wide with shock. She started to move towards the Lady, hands ready to seize and restrain. "You - you can't just...!"
The Lady Malvoro whirled on her and batted her hands away with the fireside poker. The maid cried out once, then ran for the door, clutching her now broken and bleeding hands to her chest.
The Lady ignored her servant's unpermitted departure and strode back to her unwanted guest. He was trying to stand up, but that would not do.
'Crack!'
The man cried out, and covered the bleeding wound on his scalp with both arms.
'Crack!'
Another cry, and the man tried to crawl away from her.
'Crack! Crack! Crack!'
As if by magic, bleeding wounds appeared on the man's body, deep gouges beneath torn cloth. Far deeper than one would expect the Lady Malvoro's slender arms capable of making, even with the aid of a poker. He cried out at every blow, tried to crawl away, but the Lady Malvoro doggedly followed, her cheeks flushed, red eyes hell-bright and teeth bared as she struck him again and again and again - until he suddenly swept out an arm and caught her legs.
A wrench, a twist, and the Lady Malvoro crashed to the carpet. She scrambled to get away, but now it was the man's turn to doggedly pursue. A heavy hand, callused and scarred from swordplay, seized her ankle and he started to pull, to squeeze, the Lady's delicate bones grinding together...
The metal heel of a gentleman's cane came down on his knuckles, shattering them. A hand gloved in black leather seized the Lady Malvoro beneath the armpit and smoothly drew her to her feet.
"Gelaud," the Lady Malvoro gasped, startled to find her husband standing not an inch away from her. His presence overwhelmed her, the way it always did; the strength and the fury fled, and she found herself trembling like a bird before the aura of power and control surrounding him.
"My Lady," the Baron Malvoro said, his voice calm, controlled and precise. Black eyes that gave away nothing stared into hers. "Are you alright?"
Those same eyes glanced at the man rolling around in agony on the floor of her bedchamber. "Who is this?"
'He didn't know!' it flashed through the Lady Malvoro's mind. Of course not; how could he have known? Gelaud had never met her unwanted guest.
"He broke in here," she said, the lie coming smoothly, easily. One lie to pay for them all. "Gelaud... my Lord Baron... my Love. He wanted to... to... I was defending my honour."
The Baron Malvoro looked at the man lying sprawled on the floor of his wife's private chamber, his blood ruining its subtle arabesques. Then he turned to his bride, his black eyes meeting her crimson eyes. She trembled when their gazes met, then trembled even more strongly at the cold smile that creased his lips. Behind red velvet and ivory skin, her heart thundered.
"Remember, my lady," he said, the voice that could declaim spells with authority or hide in silence now purring as though he were a great cat. "We employ people to deal with such nuisances as these."
He walked over to the bedside table and took up one of the bells she had never touched; an iron bell with a single ring of gold. One shake of it brought two men running, men wearing the livery of the House Malvoro, but clearly not butlers or footmen. They looked more like retired soldiers, judging by the scars on their hands and their faces.
"M'Lud?" one of them rumbled.
"Take this one out back," Baron Malvoro said, with a casual gesture at the man on the carpet. "Beat him to within an inch of his life; strip him; roll him through the pigpen a few times. Then put him in the coal-cart and dump him somewhere in the alleys east of the river for the human vermin to find."
"s'Foul weather out, M'Lud," the man said, tugging his forelock. "Cold as a witch's womb. 'E might not make it there alive if we drub 'im."
"Then dump him in the woods, for the wolves to find," the Baron replied, shrugging. "I'm not picky."
The man on the carpet opened his mouth to speak, only for it to be filled with a heavy boot and his teeth to go flying. While he was still gagging with pain, the two servants grabbed him by the ankles and hauled him out of the Lady Malvoro's bedchamber. As his screams faded into the distance, the Baron glided over to his lady, pausing only to kick an errant tooth from his path, and pressed a kiss on her unresisting hand.
"Come to my chamber, my love," the Baron murmured in her ear. "You should not be alone on such a cold night."