After the Scandal Read Free

will stand here, and make sure he doesn’t move.” His Grace took a place on the other side of Rosing’s bleeding head, where he was at a more than respectful distance. If anyone should chance upon Claire and the Duke of Fenmore in the boathouse at the bottom of the garden, they would only be seen to be conversing politely. Albeit across the unconscious form of her would-be rapist.
    Yet tongues would wag even if she were seen to be only conversing politely with the Duke of Fenmore. The Duke of Fenmore did not converse politely with young ladies. He had never conversed politely with any young lady in all the time that Claire had observed him looming around the edges of ballrooms. He looked and he brooded and he judged, but he never conversed.
    And he looked so intent now, she felt the need to explain how she had gotten herself into such a god-awful predicament. “His father asked me to dance a couple of country dances with Lord Peter Rosing. That’s who he is, Lord Peter Rosing.” Her voice sounded thin and small. So unlike the girl she had been until three minutes ago. “His father said he’d be obliged if I would make myself agreeable by dancing with his son. So I did. And then he asked—Rosing—if I’d like to take a turn on the terrace.” To cool the roses in those beautiful cheeks, he had said with just the right amount of warm feeling when he had offered Claire his arm. “I thought he might try to steal a kiss.”
    The duke made an exceptionally unducal, rude sound of disgust. “Steal a kiss.” Fenmore’s gaze dropped to the inert man heaped on the floor. “Rosing was obviously intent upon larceny of an altogether grander design. As is his habit.”
    The duke’s tone was strangely vehement. As if it were some sort of a personal affront to the dukedom that Rosing had tried to rape her on Fenmore’s family’s property.
    There it was again, the awful, horrible, brutal word.
    “I said no to him. I said—” She could hear her voice try to scale the icy cold that was just now seeping into her bones.
    “I know,” he said shortly, though he did not look at her. “I heard you. And now, I reckon, so will he have done. And past bloody time. He has grown altogether too brazen.”
    In the strange fitful light that came from the wavering reflection of the moon off the water beneath the boathouse docks she took a closer look at the duke’s face. At the rage which was only barely concealed behind the off-putting veneer. “Why are you so angry?”
    “Ah.” His dark gaze flicked to hers only momentarily, before he looked away again. “I am not angry. I am outraged. Contrary to popular opinion, I happen to be a nice man. Rosing is not. ” He snapped the word off as if he could break it as easily as he had Rosing’s leg. “And you needed help.”
    Another ridiculous understatement. But she could only be grateful. “Yes. Yes, I did. Thank you.”
    He waved off her thanks with an elegant, economical gesture of his hand. “And you still need it. Your hair is coming down from its pins. You’ll want to restore yourself a bit before you return to the house. Or would you rather I brought your parents down here? I would have done—brought them, or sent them to find you—but I reckoned time was of the essence.”
    It had been. A few moments more and—
    The realization hit Claire like a shovel to the back of her head. Sick pain snaked its way around the dark edges of her skull—sharp pinpricks of light stabbed at the soft sides of her vision.
    Fenmore must have anticipated what had almost happened.
    “Did you know he was going to—” She stumbled over the detestable word—it was like an anchor, dragging her down, down, down. Drowning her in the doubt and shame.
    “To rape you? Yes. I did. Rosing is a rapist, Lady Claire. Behind those angelic looks lies a dark, twisted heart of rapine. He has made a rather execrable habit of it.”
    A habit . A hideous hive of an itch that had to be scratched.
    Lord Peter