Page 19 of The Haunted Duke

Not waiting for any of them to reply, Evander pulled the door shut with a harsh jerk and strode toward the carriage. Instead of getting in right away, though, he removed his hat, turned his face up to the darkening sky, and let the cold rain fall down on him, hoping its icy temperature would soothe the fire raging in his heart.

Chapter 6

“Ido apologize, but could we make haste?” Helena asked, staring nervously out of the shop’s large windows. The rain was already starting to come down. Small, even little droplets that at the moment were not so worrisome. Yet she knew a bigger storm was coming.

At her side, the modiste looked up at her and beamed.

“Perfection takes patience, Miss Robinson,” she sang cheerily.

Helena did her best to smile back, trying as always to be positive. Yet ever since meeting the Duke of Redgrave, such a task had seemed nearly impossible. He riled her in a way no one else ever had.

“Luckily for you, Miss, perfection is not far away,” the modiste went on, bowing her head to her work. “I just need to bring the hem up in the front a little bit, pin up your sleeves, maybe make a stitch or so in the waist…”

The modiste’s voice drowned out as Helena turned back to her troubling thoughts. The Duke had looked positively tortured when she had first walked out in her wedding dress, and she wondered why he had appeared so. Aggie had told her a little of what had happened to him the night before, that he had been abducted some years past, and that whispers among the staff spoke of torture, though no one seemed to know the particulars. However, that had been years ago. Could he still be hurting?

How could he not? Are you not still hurt by your father’s death?

Guilt and heartache speared into Helena’s chest. She needed to be more patient with him, she realized. More compassionate. Such emotions used to come so easily to her until her interaction with Lord Ingram a few weeks ago. Now, aside from Jeremy, she realized she had started to look at all men as if they were harboring some sort of evil intention.

“Do you need some water, Miss? You look pale,” Aggie spoke up.

Helena snapped out of her troubling thoughts and shook her head, even though she was burning up in her wedding dress. It was a beautiful design, there was no doubt about it, but as soon as she put it on, her heart began to race and her temperature spiked. She could not wait to get it off.

Should a dress and a wedding feel so wrong?

“No, just a distraction from my nerves,” Helena replied. “How did your errand go?”

Aggie smiled.

“The correspondence from the bakery and the stationery shop is picked up and waiting for you in the carriage,” she said with a hint of triumph. “Once you finish your fitting, His Grace said we may go back to the Winterbourne Estate.”

Relief poured through Helena as she nodded her head, then drew in a deep breath.

“Do try to hold still if you please, Miss,” the modiste murmured. “I do not wish to prick you.”

“Of course,” Helena said, willing herself to be still. “Apologies.”

The modiste looked up at her again, this time with a smirk and a raised brow.

“You may make it up to me with a bit of gossip, if you wish,” she replied.

“I beg your pardon?” Helena asked, her brow furrowing. “Gossip about what?”

“About the Duke of Redgrave, of course!” the modiste whispered excitedly. “This was he, was he not?”

Helena leaned back, appalled. However, the modiste was clearly not as skilled at reading expressions or body language as the Duke was, for the woman took it as permission to keep talking.

“Everyone in the country has heard about him. It is said that he has returned from the dead and is more beast than man. Not even the devil’s fire could burn him! That is what the scar on his face is from, according to the tales. He is supposed to have them all over his body! This is why he always wears gloves and such high cravats. Some say he was taken by wicked men trading in innocent women, and that he tried to stop them and paid dearly for it. Tortured for days on end. Others say the devil took him and he climbed up right from hell!”

Helena gaped at the way the modiste shared the gossip, and she could tell from the woman’s eagerness that she wanted those stories to be true. Disgust slid down into Helena’s belly, growing her distrust of people. But beneath the disgust, her chest ached. She thought of the Duke’s gloves, never once removed, not even to hand her down from the carriage. She thought of his cravat, pulled so high and tight despite the warmth of the day.

‘Paid dearly for it.’ She did not want to know what such words truly meant, yet she could not stop herself from wondering.

Just what happened to him?

“Pray, tell me how you know him, Miss,” the modiste urged. “Is he a friend of your family? Are you around him often? Does he truly have fangs, as they say? Do his eyes verily glow? Oh, I must know!”

Helena slowly shook her head, mortified.