Page 63 of Caught by the Forbidden Duke
“You were the one who came looking for me.”
Helena’s mouth pulled into something that wasn’t quite a smile, more an attempt at one for Annabelle’s benefit than her own. “We are a fine pair of fools, then, the two of us. At least we’ll have ruined ourselves together.”
Annabelle laughed, short and without much humor in it, but it was something, and Helena’s hand stayed wrapped around hers, warm, while the fire worked through a log. Newton’s purring started up beneath her other palm, low and constant, indifferent to the wreck of the evening around him.
For a few minutes, Annabelle let her head tip back against the cushion and watched the firelight move across the ceiling, and tried to imagine her brother’s face when he opened that letter.
She could not finish the thought before it became unbearable.
The knock at the front door came just past midnight, three sharp raps that carried clean through the closed parlor door.
Annabelle was on her feet before she had decided to stand. She heard the housekeeper’s voice in the hall, low and startled.
Then a man’s voice answered it.
Her eyes widened.
Next, the parlor door opened.
Dominic stood in the doorway with his hat still in his hand, his coat buttoned wrong by one hole.
Lady Rosenhall came down the stairs behind him at a pace that suggested she had not yet undressed for bed, her dressing gown belted over her evening clothes, her face unreadable in the low light.
“Your Grace.” Lady Rosenhall stopped two steps from the bottom, one hand on the rail. “What are you doing here?”
Dominic’s eyes went past her, to Annabelle standing in the parlor doorway with Newton’s hair still on the sleeve of her gown. “Marry me, Annabelle. I should have said so in the garden, and I did not, because I was a coward.” He looked at Lady Rosenhall again. “When Lucien returns, I will speak with him myself, about the license, the settlements, whatever arrangements he requires of me. I will not have him hear from anyone but me about what is owed to his sister.”
“He will hear it from my letter before he hears it from you, Your Grace. It is already on its way to Fairmont Hall.” Lady Rosenhall’s hand came off the rail, and something in her shoulders loosened that had been set rigid since the garden. “Butthis is well done. Better late than never said at all, and I will own I had begun to think you incapable of it.” She came the rest of the way down the stairs. “I will have the housekeeper bring tea, and we can discuss what is to be settled before the hour grows any later.”
“That won’t be necessary tonight.” Dominic’s gaze had not moved from Annabelle. “I’ll call properly tomorrow, with my solicitor, and do this as it ought to be done.”
He inclined his head to Lady Rosenhall, the same short bow he’d given her in the garden, and then he looked at Annabelle once more.
She looked back at him and waited to feel something like relief, the way she had imagined relief might feel in the carriage on the ride home, turning the word ruin over and over until it had no shape left. Instead, she found only his eyes on hers, without anything behind them she could name.
“Goodnight, Lady Annabelle,” he said, and the title in his mouth sounded wrong, formal, a door closing somewhere she hadn’t seen swing open.
He left before she could answer.
Chapter Nineteen
“You miserable son of a?—”
The door didn’t open so much as detonate against the wall, the inkstand on Dominic’s desk ringing with the impact, and Lucien was across the room before the latch had finished rattling.
The fist caught Dominic high on the cheekbone before he’d fully risen from his chair, knocking him back a step into the desk’s corner.
Papers slid to the floor. He tasted copper almost at once, sharp at the side of his mouth.
He had expected this. Had turned it over more times than the matter deserved in the days since the letter went to Fairmont, weighing what shape Lucien’s fury would take when it finally arrived on his doorstep. He had settled, each time, on the sameconclusion: that absorbing the first punch without answering it was a far better outcome for both of them.
Better than the version of this conversation that ended with pistols at dawn. Better than the version with one of them not walking away from a field outside town.
So he didn’t raise his hands. He let his weight settle back onto his heels and looked at his friend, and said nothing.
“Lucien!” Annabelle’s voice came from the corridor, and behind it, Elinor’s, both women crossing the threshold at a run.
The second blow landed before either of them reached him, glancing off his jaw and turning his head hard to the side. His vision whited at the edges, and when it cleared, Lucien’s fist was already drawing back for a third.
