Page 98 of Claiming his Cursed Duchess

Was that a compliment?

“I am returning to Oldstone for a few days. I needed some time away.”

“Ah, the perils of marriage,” he said with a smirk, suddenly looking more like himself. “I trust the duke is well?”

His lip curled as he said the word ‘duke’ and Rosaline stiffened in her chair, eyeing the door, wishing he would leave.

“When I last saw him, yes.”

“This is the problem with titles, you see,” Claridge said, stretching out his feet toward the fire. “Succession is a game of luck if oneinheritsa dukedom.”

Rosaline’s hand tightened around her glass.

“Take your brother for example. Only twenty-one, God rest his soul, when he inherited the title of the Earl of Claridge. What boy would possibly know what to do with such responsibility?I,on the other hand, was well aware of my duties when it passed to me, and Iexcelat running the estate. If I should have been born to it, I would have mastered it very quickly.”

Rosaline shifted in her seat, placing her brandy on the table between them, no longer in any mood to spend time with the man.

“Thank you, uncle, for this visit, but I am growing tired.”

“Hah! You do not agree, I take it?”

“That a man who has treated me with contempt all his life has done a better job of running the earldom than my beloved brother would have? No, Uncle. I do not agree with you.”

She winced as his glass slammed down on the surface of the table. There was an ominous crack from the wood, as though he had splintered the thing.

Claridge stood, draining his glass and standing over her, his eyes bright with a fiery rage, the intensity of which was rare, even for him.

“No one wants anything to do with your family, least of all a wretched little creature like you! You, who ruined all of my plans, my hopes—my aspirations! You will never amount to anything, that much has been made clear by your ridiculous decision to run from the only man who gives you any power.”

“I am stronger than you think,” she spat, standing up holding her head high before him.

I am a duchess. He does not have the right to speak to me that way. He never did.

She let out a shriek of alarm as Claridge threw his glass violently into the fire, pieces shattering everywhere, shards of it glimmering and skipping across the floor to her feet.

In the next instant, he was upon her, his thick fingers gripping her arm to the point of pain, his face inches from her, brandy-soaked breath wafting across her mouth, making bile rise in her throat.

“You and your husband will pay for what you have done to me,” he snapped. “For making me crawl for the dregs of his favor—you, the upstart little shrew I have had to live with, who I clothed and fed. What thanks did I get? None!”

He threw her violently to the floor, taking her by surprise as her foot caught the train of her dress and pulled her down with a hard thud. She landed awkwardly, her elbow beneath her back.

Rosaline gasped as she looked up to find her uncle holding the bottle of brandy aloft, his face flickering in the firelight, shadows dancing across it.

She scrambled to her feet, pulling herself up and away from him, but he had the advantage.

As she tried to make it to the window, the bottle struck the side of her head, and the world tilted as she collapsed back to the floor.

When she came to there was the sound of splashing liquid from somewhere, and when she turned, her eyes widened in horror at the picture before her.

Her uncle was emptying the bottle of brandy across the whole room, a demonic expression on his face.

Finally, he threw it down as he stepped back to the doorway and raised aloft a lighted match.

Their eyes met in a horrible moment of stillness.

“Let us see if that curse of yours saves you now, niece,” he said triumphantly, and as Rosaline cried out in terror, he opened his fingers and dropped the match to the brandy-soaked floor.

Chapter Thirty-Two