Page 110 of A Bluestocking for the Wicked Duke

“What are you doing Joane? This is ridiculous.”

Joane looked at her father. His right palm was on his chin now. He was trying to be calm but his reaction was enough to tell Joane she had dented his resolve.

“Please papa,” she cried out.

The Duke looked down, removing his eyes from Joane’s gaze. When he raised it back, there was a hard resolve in it.

“You have worked your claws into my daughter, deep and tight,” the Duke said to William.

“I would do the same for her too,” William answered.

The Duke smiled.

“I doubt that,” he replied.

He walked down the stairs, at the same slow pace he climbed up. He stopped two stairs from the base. His eyes still stared at William’s from above.

“I will give you a way out, an opportunity to redeem yourself.”

William smiled and looked at Joane. She didn’t reply the smile. She knew her father’s cunning ways. She knew he was going to give a condition that William could not attain or worse.

“This entire affair started when I beat you at a duel,” the Duke said.

Joane guessed where he was going.

“No. No, William do not accept,” she said to his ear.

William did not remove his gaze from her father’s mouth. His eyes were eager and a trace of a smile had returned to his expression. He had also guessed where the Duke was heading to.

“So let me give you another chance, William Marlow. We will have another duel. If you win, you have my blessing to marry my daughter. If I repeat the feat, you lose all right to associate yourself even in the loosest of terms with my daughter,” he said.

Her father was smiling now. Joane was incensed. This was why she was telling William to refuse; her father would always propose a malicious offer. She saw the hardness in William’s eyes.

He had been injured before; this is a chance for him to redeem himself. He will take it.

She turned William’s face to hers. She placed her palm on his cheeks and forced him to look into her eyes.

“William, you have to say no. My father is not giving you a way out, he is attempting to drill the final nails and seal the coffin,” she said.

“I lost unjustly the first time Joane. This time it won’t end that way. You have seen me fight, he cannot beat me,” William replied.

“You do not know this man,” she shouted but only loud enough that William would hear. “I do and will never give you an option he has not already blocked.”

William shook his head. Joane saw the injured pride come forward in William’s eyes. Her father had provided him his first loss using dirty tactics and he was eager to prove it. She looked up briefly to her father. He was smiling even broader now. He was enjoying this.

“Have you come to a decision, William? Or are you so faint of heart that you need to go home and think further about it? Be aware that this is your only chance,” the Duke said.

William tore his gaze away from Joane’s eyes. There was resoluteness in the set of his jaws.

“I do not need to think over this. I accept your challenge. You did not defeat me the first time. You cheated me. It will not repeat itself,” William said.

The Duke laughed.

This is what he always wanted.

“William, your first loss wasn’t a fluke. The truth is even at my old age, you are not as good as me. When will you see that?” the Duke replied.

Joane drew William’s arm down, arresting his attention.