Page 7 of A Bride for the Forbidden Duke (Forbidden Lords #2)

Chapter Seven

“ N —No,” she begged. “No, Lord Barwicke?—”

She exhaled sharply, frightened, and batted her fists against him. But he grabbed her wrists and pinned them painfully around the column’s width. She cried out, struggling.

Lord Barwicke’s face was close to hers—too close, close enough that she could smell the cigars and sour wine on his breath. Her stomach turned just as he used his own body to keep her pinned while his hand traveled down to her dress’s hemline, a cruel glint to his eyes.

“Your mother begged for me to touch her,” he sneered. “Perhaps for her, it had been too long since a man deemed her worthy of being touched. How shall you fare, I wonder, Veronica?”

His hand was inches away from slipping up her dress, and Veronica gasped through her panic, still struggling.

But the older man went rigid, and a second later, he was shoved off Veronica, toppling aside, stumbling to reclaim his balance.

“What in the heavens—” Barwicke gasped in confusion.

And in the space he left, Veronica’s eyes widened to see the Duke of Westley, his eyes shadowed by the dark hour as he pulled his arm back.

As soon as Lord Barwicke regained composure, the Duke slammed his fist square in the lord’s jaw, sending him reeling.

Veronica sobbed her relief, yanking her dress back into place, feeling dirty from where the lord had tried to pull it up.

Lord Barwicke stumbled again, grabbing onto the column that Veronica had been pinned against, and she hurried out of the way. Without thinking, she moved closer to the Duke.

“Stay away from her,” the Duke growled, stepping towards Lord Barwicke, his fist clenched at his sides.

He didn’t care for his bruised knuckles, it seemed, but the older lord clutched his face, snarling.

“This is between Veronica and me, Your Grace,” Lord Barwicke spat. “Do leave and return back to your women, or are there not enough for you at tonight’s ball?”

“Leave her alone,” the Duke snapped back, much to Veronica’s shock.

She went to stop them both, not wanting to be caught in this altercation, panicking at the thought of anybody overhearing the commotion and coming outside, even to her rescue.

Unchaperoned with two fighting men? Her heart withered in her chest.

But the Duke stepped in front of her, rising to his full height, and she could only look at his powerful shoulders and smell the scent of smoke wafting around him, as if he had been in one of the rooms where the gentlemen went to smoke.

“Stay away,” the Duke repeated.

But Lord Barwicke’s eyes met Veronica’s as she stepped aside the Duke, feeling helpless, and wondering at her chances were of running from both of them.

“Veronica, darling, I am dear friends with your mother. You know this. You need me. Do tell His Grace to leave us be, so we can continue our discussion.”

“A discussion,” the Duke said in a low snarl, “does not involve putting your hands up a lady’s dress against her will.”

Veronica was trembling, wishing she could collapse against the column to catch her breath, to let her legs give out, but she did not want to draw near to the Lord. Because that was exactly what he had almost done, hadn’t he? He had almost… almost…

Her breath punched out of her in harsh gasps. The Duke spared her a glance over her shoulder, looking for all the world like he was angry at her .

Lord Barwicke stepped towards her, but the Duke slammed his fist right back into his face once again, sending him to the floor, cowering.

“How dare you!” Lord Barwicke yelled. “I could ruin you , Westley!”

“I would dare you to try, Lord Barwicke, but a man who does what you resort to only proves that he has no backbone to do anything at all.”

“Veronica, ask him to leave!” the lord insisted. “Ask him! You need my money, do you not?”

But she was silent, paralyzed, and her tongue had gotten lost, along with her sanity and calm. And she could only watch wide-eyed as the lord seethed at her.

“You will regret this deeply, Veronica,” he hissed, “when your mother is crying and when you no longer have any pretty gowns for the next ball. When your weakling coward of a brother does not show up to fund your fancy life, you will regret this.”

“ Leave , Barwicke,” the Duke ordered, his voice raising enough that Veronica flinched back.

“I shall not ?—”

The Duke took a threatening step forward, and Lord Barwicke scrambled back, hitting the column before pushing off. His eyes found Veronica’s in the dark, spittle flying from his mouth. “This is not over, Lady Veronica. Far from it.”

Lord Barwicke stormed away, leaving Veronica and the Duke gazing at one another. There was too much tension between them but also lingering in the air, and she despised it. She did not know what to do.

“Are you all right?” The Duke’s low voice sent a lick of warmth through her.

Veronica nodded, clasping her hands before her. She couldn’t stop trembling, and her hands shook, so she squeezed them tighter to hide it.

He looked down at his bruised knuckles, grimacing.

Finally, Veronica moved to the column, letting herself collapse against it, sighing. Tears burned her eyes, but she held them back, refusing to fall prey to her own emotions.

The Duke spoke again. His voice was still clipped, hard, but the words were inquisitive. “What did that vermin mean when he said about a deal with your mother?”

Considering he himself had taunted her with the rumors in his study, the Duke seemed to be in the dark. Veronica could not meet his gaze when she admitted the truth. The very truth that the gossip sheet did not tell anyone about.

“I… My mother…” she broke off, gasping back more tears. “Due to my brother’s disappearance over the last year, my mother and I have been left without enough money to survive, really. I have no dowry, no gowns. Our food is… minimal, and my mother began to sell off some items in our house. One of the buyers was Lord Barwicke.

“He offered quite a different exchange. My mother has been…” Veronica struggled for words. “She has been offering herself in exchange for Lord Barwicke’s financial help. He has been giving us monthly allowances. Mine is rather small, but it is something. This dress was bought with his money which is no doubt why he felt entitled to touch it.”

“He tried to touch you ,” the Duke growled.

His gaze turned dark, furious, as he stared at her, shaking his head. “Why did you not include this when you came to my home?”

“Because you could not wait to see me out of the door!” Veronica cried. “You taunted me about what the gossip sheet said regarding my mother and me. Would you have truly listened? I was already over your designated five minutes, was I not?”

At that, he did not even look ashamed. Still, he looked livid—both at her and Lord Barwicke for very different reasons.

“How would I have known your offer of help would remain if I had told you the truth?” she whispered. “You have been nothing but unkind to me, and now—now you have offered to help me at the worst possible time!”

The Duke strode towards her, his mouth sneering in anger. “Should I have left you out here with him, then? Would you have rather Lord Barwicke assaulted you?”

The word and implication dropped into her stomach as heavy as a stone.

She glared up at him, once again marveling at their height difference. “I am sure I would have stopped him without angering him much. Now, thanks to your interference, he shall rage about it to everyone, I am sure, and my family will be ruined even further. No doubt he will twist his attempts into… into…”

She trailed off, shuddering.

“Into something that I wanted. And I shall never find a husband because men like you cannot control your temper, and men like Barwicke cannot be honorable. I have no doubt that if my brother does not return home, then whoever the next Grantham heir is, he will have my mother and me on the streets of Dalton Square before we can greet him.”

Her words were matter-of-fact but her tears were falling fast. She could not hold them back any longer.

“I shall be ruined,” she whispered, more to herself than him.

Her entire being was wilting, going limp, and all she wanted was to collapse into her mother’s arms. But her mother was not there—the Duke of Westley was, and he had gone horribly, horribly silent.

His shoulders were tense, and she took the moment to attempt to compose herself.

Inhale, exhale—of all people, do not let the Duke see you fall apart.

And then the Duke’s voice broke the silence. “I will marry you.”

The words fell from his lips, hanging in the air for a moment. “I am sorry?” Veronica asked. A disbelieving laugh exhaled from her. “You would be so cruel, Your Grace? Do not… do not toy with me.”

The Duke’s eyes lifted to hers. “I will marry you.”

His voice was hard, serious. He was unkind, but he was not a liar. Was he? She hardly knew this man. But…

“I will marry you, Lady Veronica, and I will ensure that Barwicke stays away from you and Lady Grantham.”

“What—”

“And you will live with me, in Turner Hall as the Duchess of Westley until they find Robert.” He paused. “Or his corpse at least.”

Veronica winced, but her head spun with the thought of herself becoming a duchess. Surely not her… not her in her simple gown with her almost non-existent dowry.

“I—Your Grace, I—I have no dowry.”

“I do not care for your dowry.”

She opened and closed her mouth, unsure of what to say to that.

His face was a mask of stoicism. “I do not need to get paid to marry you.”

“Then what do you get out of this?” Veronica could not help but ask.

“It is none of your business,” he said, his words cutting through the air. “You shall live as my duchess and when the matter is cleared, we shall live separately.”

“People will notice.”

“And you shall still be safe, will you not?”

Heaven help her, Veronica felt ungrateful for thinking, I wished for a love match, because this also helped her honor what her mother wished for: for Veronica to find a man who would be able to provide for them. She ought to be grateful, to fall at his feet in gratitude, but she could not past her own confusion.

“I must know,” she insisted. “Unless you are just like Lord Barwicke. For how different can you be?—”

“Do not ,” he growled, stepping closer to her, “compare me to that filth ever again.”

But Veronica did not balk. She hadn’t in his study, and she wouldn’t now, either. She stared at him until he relented.

Something like… like guilt flashed through his face. His brows pinched, and his mouth tightened in a wince.

Was it possible she had hit a nerve the day in his study and that he did feel responsible for Robert’s disappearance? Was he offering this out of guilt?

“Fine,” he hissed. “By marrying you, I get to escape all the marriage-minded mamas who only see me as a commodity for their daughter. Marrying you gets me off the market, so to speak.”

His lips quirked into a self-deprecating smile, but it was a knowing one, and she knew that this arrangement would save them both—Veronica from Lord Barwicke, and her lack of other suitors tonight, and the Duke from being the suitor everybody wanted. For she had seen how the ladies and their mamas had watched him, noting his every move. She recalled his name in the gossip sheets alongside hers, calling him terrible things, insulting anecdotes, and standing in the garden, she could understand why he might be so icy towards everybody.

They had already set him up for harsh judgment.

But perhaps he has acted in ways to deserve that, she thought.

“Is that all?” Veronica asked, cocking her head. “That is the only reason you are offering to marry me.”

“It is not an offer,” he told her. “It is a done deal.”

I wish you would not speak as though I am the worst person to marry and to do this is exhausting you greatly , she wished she could say.

His shoulders were tense, and he shook his head, turning to leave.

“Wait!” she called, making him pause. “All right. I agree to your offer. I shall marry you.”

She said it even as her heart broke, aching for a loving marriage. But sometimes ladies were not so fortunate, and she had to consider herself fortunate that the Duke of Westley was not Lord Barwicke or an aged, lecherous gentleman.

“I am only doing this for my mother,” Veronica told him firmly. “And if it weren’t for her, I would never marry a man like you.”

He glanced at her over his shoulder, half turning to her. “Good.”

For a moment, Veronica did not, and could not, look away. He didn’t, either, and his eyes dropped to her lips. It was only then that she realized she had gotten closer to him in her bid for him to wait.

The Duke’s eyes stayed on her mouth, and it sent a tingle of desire through her. She shivered, and it was as if that reaction snapped him out of his vacancy.

“I will be in touch,” he said and walked away, towards the light spilling out of Fernwell House up ahead.

Veronica collapsed against the column, letting herself well and truly wilt.

When Veronica walked back into the ballroom, she was immediately swept up by her mother, whose eyes were red with tears.

Veronica was alarmed until her mother grasped her face.

“Darling! Where have you been? I have been worrying myself into a frenzy looking for you!”

“I…” Veronica began before realizing she had no idea how to convey anything that had happened in the last hour. “I was catching my breath in the garden.”

“I had envisioned every conceivable horrid scenario!” Judith cried.

Around them, the ball still buzzed with life, and dancers skipped around one another, weaving in and out of pairs. Hopeful courtships bloomed on the floor, and by the beverage stand, and in the midst of it all, was Evelina, her face flushed pink, and her excitement palpable even from Veronica’s distance.

“Mama, I am quite well,” Veronica assured her mother. “I am just fine. Everything will be all right from now on.”

She held her mother’s hands. Her beautiful mother, who had not deserved any of what she had suffered through. “ We are going to be all right from now on.”

“But—but I do not understand.” Judith frowned. “Veronica, what has happened?”

Veronica caught the Duke weaving his way through the crowd, escaping up the staircase and ignoring the calls of the feathered-decorated ladies behind him. She smiled, at peace with what had happened outside. She was still confused herself, but all that mattered would be seeing her mother happy and well and safe.

Thankfully, it seemed as though Lord Barwicke had disappeared from the ball altogether.

A large blessing, Veronica thought.

She linked her arm through her mother’s, guiding her over to the stand where treats of all kinds had been set up. “Do not worry yourself. Let us enjoy the remainder of our evening.”