Page 2 of Claiming his Cursed Duchess

They were dull. Empty.

“Michael, wake up!” Rosaline begged, shaking his shoulder.

When the lightning flashed again, Michael did not flinch. He did not blink. His chest did not rise or fall.

And, in the flash of lightning, Rosaline realized with horror that his hair was soaked, not with rain, but with blood.

Rosaline screamed—she could not help herself—and even as she did she thought she could hear her mother admonishing her that is was not ladylike to do so.

“Mother, are you hurt?” Rosaline asked through her tears, but the only answer was thunder.

“Mama?”

Rosaline felt her stomach twist and drop as if sinking into the earth below the carriage.

“Mama?” she whispered, looking at the unmoving form on her brother’s other side.

When the lightning flashed again, and Rosaline saw that she was truly alone, she wailed.

The blue of the eyes she shared with her family looked so dull in the absence of life. They looked so pale—their blood was so red.

And as Rosaline took another breath and wailed again, she felt the rain mix with her own blood, sheeting down her arms, down her neck, pouring from her face.

The world went fuzzy around her, then the calm, cool darkness enveloped her.

Chapter One

FIVE YEARS LATER

“My lord, won’t you join us?” A drunk reached up, seizing Adam’s coat sleeve and gesturing to the haphazard mess of cards and dice on his table.

“The night is young, and Lady Luck is calling,” he added.

Adam Fitzwilliam, the Duke of Oldstone, had slammed open the dark gambling den door, scanning the room, blue eyes dark with anger, taking stock of who and what lay before him.

He was not a regular here, but it was far from his first time on this particular errand.

He had taken a purposeful, menacing step inside, glaring into the eyes of anyone who dared to meet his gaze as he shut the door behind him with a snap, making a number of drunken gamblers flinch or bolt awake at their tables.

Ignoring the spasm of pain in his bad leg, Adam forced himself to walk tall and steadily, winding through the tables.

The silence he’d caused broke in his wake, giving way to whispers that the duke had returned to fetch his brother once more.

Adam kept his expression haughty and disgusted, as if he could not hear the rumors over the immorality of the den.

“Do. Not. Touch. Me,” he hissed at the drunk.

Adam seized the drunk by his wrist, his strong grip tightening until the man released him.

Eyes hard, Adam bent his arm back toward him as the man winced and cried out, dropping to his knees from his chair to avoid letting his arm snap.

“The night has passed, and it is morning now,” the duke added, his expression casual for a man exerting enough force to keep another on the floor with one hand.

“I will be addressed asYour Grace,” Adam’s voice was a growl, low in his throat hissing from between gritted teeth.

He kept up the pressure, forcing the man lower on the floor.

“AndIwill most certainlynotbe joiningyou.”