Page 64 of Caught by the Forbidden Duke
This one he caught.
He closed his hand around his friend’s wrist mid-swing, more reflex than decision, and held it there, the two of them locked together with Lucien’s knuckles trembling an inch from his face.
“Hit me again if it helps,” Dominic said, steadier than he felt, which was something. “I’ll stand here as long as you need me to.”
“Don’t you dare be noble about this!” Lucien wrenched his arm free and shoved him back with both hands flat against his chest. “You compromised her in a garden.My sister! In agarden, likeshe was some opera girl you’d no further use for once the dance was done?—”
“Lucien, that is quiteenough.” Elinor had hold of his sleeve now, both hands, pulling without much visible effect.
“It is not enough until I say it’s enough!” He shook her off, then he came at Dominic again.
This time, Annabelle moved faster than either of them.
“Stop!”
She put herself directly between her brother and Dominic’s chest, one palm flat against Lucien’s coat, the other raised toward Dominic as if she meant to hold them both back by will alone.
“Stop.” Her voice cracked across the room, louder than Dominic had heard it in all the months he’d known her. “Look at him, Lucien. He isn’t fighting you…he hasn’t fought you once. What is the use in this?”
“Get out of the way, Annabelle.”
“No.”
Lucien’s color was high, his collar gone crooked, a vein standing at his temple that Dominic had genuinely never seen before.
“You.” His attention swung to his sister, and Dominic watched the fury in Lucien’s face curdle into grief. “I had to learn this from Lady Rosenhall. Lady Rosenhall, of all people!”
“I asked her not to send the letter.”
“That is not the same as telling me yourself.”
“I didn’t have time! She sent it before I could stop her, before I could write you myself.”
Lucien went quiet, and his shoulders came down by an inch. He looked at her hand still pressed against his coat, then at her face, and something in the set of his mouth gave way.
“You are a fool,” he said, gentler now. “Both of you. An absolute, matched pair of fools.”
Annabelle’s shoulders sank, and Dominic swore he could see her eyes glimmer with tears.
She doesn’t deserve his words.
His stomach sank. Then fury pumped through the blood in his veins. He was angry at Lucien. Yes, Dominic had done an abominable thing, but Annabelle… She didn’t deserve this.
“Lucien,” he gritted out in response, trying to soothe the anger in his blood.
Lucien glared at him.
“Lucien… Please,” Elinor came to stand at his side and put her hand through his arm.
The last of the fight went out of Lucien’s shoulders the way a tide goes out, slow and complete, leaving the sand changed once it’s gone.
Lucien looked at Dominic properly now, his jaw still working, but no further blows came. “You’ll see to a special license,” he said. “Today, if it can be managed. I’ll not have my sister standing about for banns to be read three Sundays running while half of London counts on its fingers.”
“I already have one.”
Lucien went still. He studied him, weighing this the way he weighed an estate ledger that had come out one column too clean. “Already.”
“Two days ago.” Dominic touched the corner of his mouth, and his fingers came away red. “I went to Doctors’ Commons the morning after I called at Fairmont House. I wasn’t waiting on your permission to do right by her.”
