The Devil She Knows by Diane Whiteside

callously of Hal’s little girls.
    Yet he locked down his anger, as if he tamped down his steamboat’s boilers against an explosion, and took up station by the library door. A single fulminating glare warned his brother-in-law to hasten before he forgot their bargain and took action first.
    â€œD’you think so, Townsend, my lad?” William inquired, sliding into a dark croon better suited for Dublin’s back alleys than Manhattan’s fancy mansions. “Or will people be talking for days about how your daughter cowered from her husband?”
    â€œIn God’s holy church, too, no less,” Richard contributed.
    â€œAye, a terrible thing that. Sure to increase the gossip,” William mourned, eyeing his enemy’s distorted appearance in the wineglass’s facets. The grotesque countenance was probably an accurate rendition of the selfishness inside.
    â€œRidiculous!” The New Yorker slapped his hand down onto the table. “Did you see how many people came? She was simply overwhelmed by the occasion and started to feel faint.” His voice rose, shedding its usual warm patina like a snake discarding its skin to escape predators. His eyes darted around the room and, for the first time, hunted for escape routes.
    â€œI saw a girl jerk herself away from a man, like a filly fleeing a cruel spur.” Even Hal’s shortest syllable contained a deadly warning.
    â€œNonsense.” Townsend stormed onto his feet, his watch chain rattling across his over-fed gut. “Today was a great moment for the entire family. Portia will tell you the same, once I speak to her.”
    â€œAs soon as you tell her exactly what to say?” William asked, rage ripping hot and wild through his blood. Did the bastard consider his daughter an obedient doll, useful only for his ambitions?
    â€œOf course! No matter what befalls her, Portia will do what I command. She knows better than to argue with me.” His jaw jutted out, belligerent as the fire irons warding the hearth from the room.
    â€œYou son of a bitch.” William punched his brother-in-law on the jaw and Townsend’s eyes rolled back into his head. He crumpled onto the carpet into a disheveled heap, like the shattered ruins of a false god.
    Satisfaction spilled into William’s belly, touching the few edges left unoccupied by his terror for Portia. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, her skin couldn’t have been any tighter over her jaw when she left for her wedding night than if she’d sat next to a cougar.
    â€œGood blow,” Hal commented from beside William’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t have been as polite.”
    The ambitious easterner stirred. He clambered onto his knees and glared at them, his tiny eyes malevolent in the fireplace’s baleful glow. “You had no right to do that. Girls were meant to be obedient, not to be heard!”
    â€œThis is for sending my granddaughter away to the other side of the ocean and separating her from her brothers.” Richard lashed out with his foot in a blow to make any veteran saloon fighter proud. The kick sent Townsend onto his back with a loud “oof!”
    William watched grimly, wishing it had been that bastard, St. Arles. Blessed Mother Mary, how he prayed Lowell would find a way to help Portia.
    â€œCome on, let’s get him up,” he ordered, hating the necessity to be civilized. “We need to find out if there’s any way we can ease Portia out of that brute’s clutches.”
    Hal helped him haul Townsend’s flabby, elephantine weight upright. William brusquely cuffed him across the face, unwilling to waste time with extra words. The fool swayed in their iron grip, his eyes bleary.
    â€œLazy asshole.” William slapped him again. “Listen to me.”
    Townsend blinked and tried to jerk away. Richard shoved him back into place.
    â€œYou’re a pitiful excuse for a father but you’re the only one Portia