Page 20 of Duke of the Underworld (Regency Gods #2)

CHAPTER 20

P ersephone’s tears blurred her vision as she rushed down from the upper floors of Underworld, down past the level where Hugh kept his office, down past the place where she’d encountered Martin, the helpful manager who had escorted her up to her husband’s chambers. By the time she made it down to the gaming floor, she had to move more on instinct and sound than sight, as she was crying so much that she could focus on nothing more than stopping the heaving sobs.

As soon as she burst into the cool night air, however, she propped herself up against a wall and began weeping with abandon.

Once she let herself start, the tears became unstoppable, and soon she was gasping for breath, barely able to keep her feet as the feeling—it had to be grief, it just had to be—overcame her.

She’d gone to him. She’d told him how she felt. She’d given him everything.

And he’d sent her away anyway.

At least he took another shot at getting an heir on me first, she thought bitterly as she pressed her hands over her face.

While the idea of raising her child with Hugh while the babe’s father kept his distance was painful, it was far less distasteful to her than the concept of raising another man’s child—of taking another man to bed to even conceive that heir. She wanted to shudder at the very thought.

Another part of her wanted to stalk back upstairs and pop Hugh right in the eye for even suggesting it, but doing so would mean calming her tears, and that felt well beyond her current capabilities.

All she wanted to do now was sit here and cry.

“Oh, my dear lady! Whatever is the matter?”

When she heard the solicitous words—so at odds with the sly tone in which they were spoken—Persephone raised her face out of her hands and looked around her. The trio of men were all clearly gentleman—Persephone thought she even recognized one of them from her few forays into Society. Mr. Roherson? Robeson? Something along those lines.

Even so, the men felt alien to her understanding of the word gentleman , given the suggestive way that they now leered down at her, the way that they crowded her against the wall, the way the liquor she could clearly smell on them made their eyes glassy.

A jolt of alertness shot through Persephone’s body, her tears drying in an instant, as though something inside her recognized that this situation was precarious enough without the added vulnerability of weeping.

“I beg your pardon,” she said, her voice wavering only a little. “I was briefly overcome. I shall be going now, if you will excuse me.”

“No, my lady, I don’t think you will be.”

This came from the center of the three men, the biggest and burliest of them. He was nowhere near as wide or tall as Persephone’s husband, who would forevermore be her point of measurement for what constituted a large man, but he still had over a hand of height on Persephone, which he used to loom over her menacingly.

Though she felt shivery with fear, Persephone forced herself to raise her chin and look at him directly in the eye.

“I really must insist,” she said. “I have to go now.”

She moved forward assertively, hoping that bravado would get her through, but it was to no avail. The center man grabbed her arm and held her in place.

The man that Persephone thought she recognized balked at his.

“See here now, Vickers,” he said, censorious but not in a confident way. “You can’t just go about grabbing ladies.”

Vickers’ grip grew even tighter around her upper arm, his fingers biting into her muscles. It was a stark contrast to the feel of Hugh’s grip on her person; this hold not only hurt, but it caused her flesh to crawl with disgust, as well.

“Perhaps so,” Vickers drawled, though the suggestive way he looked up and down Persephone’s body indicated that he did not intend to listen to reason. “But then again, real ladies don’t go about lurking around the streets of Whitechapel, now do they? So I can only assume that she’s no real lady at all.”

Persephone’s instinct, one honed from a lifetime of being warned against the peril of losing one’s reputation, might normally have led her to keep her anonymity in a perilous situation. Scandal was the natural enemy of any gently bred lady, and she did not want to bring any attention upon her new family, nor upon herself.

But if one of the men had qualms about interfering with a lady, perhaps he would feel even more reluctant to bother a duchess. Maybe that would be enough to get her out of this situation.

Persephone drew back her shoulders.

“I am indeed a lady,” she told him, trying to sound imperious. “In fact, I am Her Grace, the Duchess of Nighthall. My husband will be most displeased to hear of any misfortune befalling me, and I am certain that he will express that displeasure most fervently. If you release me now, however, we can put this entire unsavory incident behind us.”

Persephone thought this was a rather good speech, all things told.

So did the third fellow, the one who had previously spoken up in her defense—albeit in a disappointingly halfhearted manner.

His protest now was not notably better.

“Vickers,” he moaned piteously.

“Oh, shut up, Robeson.” Persephone might have felt more pleased at being correct if Vickers hadn’t yanked her arm at the same time he snapped at his companion.

“I don’t know, Vickers,” said the third man, the one who was only now speaking for the first time. He was shorter than the other two and had the mean look of a bully—but the kind who only picked fights he knew he would win. “That’s the Dark Duke. It’s just not good sense to mess with any woman of his.”

Yes, Persephone thought. Think better of this .

Her mind was strangely clear, almost detached from the physical signs of terror that she recognized in her body. Her hands were trembling, and her breaths were coming quick and anxious. Yet she observed these sensations as though they were happening to someone else. All her focus remained on seeking an opportunity for escape.

Vickers scoffed, dragging Persephone closer to him. He smelled rank, of old alcohol and food that was very heavy on onions. Persephone wondered if he would release her if she vomited all over him, then decided that the risk that he would grow more violent was too great.

“Please,” Vickers said. “Do you really think a duchess would be skulking about in the streets like a common whore? She may be dressed too fine of clothing for your average harlot, but that’s not duchess’ garb, either.”

The calm presence lurking in the back of Persephone’s mind observed that if she got murdered because her dress was too ugly, she was going to be furious .

“I guess that seems right,” said the second man.

“It’s not right,” she insisted. “I am the duchess. If you go inside and ask for Martin, the floor manager, he’ll tell you. Or my husband is in there. You can confirm my story.”

“It couldn’t hurt to check,” Robeson said, wringing his hands.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Vickers told him. “I don’t know what her game is; she should be trying harder to please us in hopes to get a bit of coin, though I can’t say that I’m inclined to pay for my privileges after all this trouble. Here’s what I do know for certain, however. She is not the Duchess of Nighthall. She. Is. Lying.”

“No,” said a quietly menacing voice from the shadows. “I can assure you that she is not.”

As one, Persephone and the three men turned their faces in the direction of the new voice. The shadows moved, shifted, and all at once there was a flurry of movement.

And then all hell broke loose.

Hugh was going to murder the lot of them.

It hadn’t taken him long to realize that he needed to go after Persephone. For a moment or two, he’d been too poleaxed by his own misery and wretchedness to realize it. He’d turned her away. She had come to him, pleaded for him to come home not only for the girls’ sake, but for her own, too. And he knew how hard that was for Persephone, to ask for something for herself. He knew her well enough to recognize that.

He was making the right decision, he told himself. He was. He was .

Then why was there this inescapable feeling in his chest telling him with every thump of his heart that this was a mistake.

Wrong, wrong, wrong . The feeling became one with the thrum of blood through his body. It took only moments for it to wash through all of him.

He couldn’t let her leave like this.

As he grabbed his coat and threw it over his shoulders, he told himself that this sense of wrongness was pragmatic, too. He was merely worried about leaving her alone in such a dangerous quarter of London. Just because he was following her now didn’t mean that anything else was going to change.

He had to secure the fall of his breeches before he stepped out of the apartments. The action was a brutally stark reminder of how far things had fallen in the past few minutes alone. He could still taste her pleasure on his tongue and yet she’d fled him like he was a monster.

Maybe it was for the best that she finally understood that.

On the way down toward the club, he encountered Martin, who was watching over things with a knowledgeable eye.

“Have you seen my wife?” Hugh asked.

Martin cast his friend a glance over his shoulder. “Not since I sent her up to your rooms,” he said without a hint of shame.

Of course it had been Martin who had shown her the way to Hugh. Of bloody course.

“You do realize that I was staying here because I didn’t wish to speak with her,” Hugh pointed out. He had been denying this before, he knew, but the time for subterfuge was past.

Martin shrugged. “Aye, I did, but I thought that was a mistake, so I did what I thought was best.”

“One of these days, I really am going to fire you,” Hugh grumbled.

Martin shrugged again and turned back toward the milling crowd below as Hugh turned toward the back stairs. If Martin hadn’t seen her, that was the only direction she could have gone. He checked rooms as he went, moving quickly. The staff would have taken a moment to summon a carriage to return her home, and, if they had any sense, they would have directed her somewhere safe to wait for her conveyance.

His study, however, was empty, as was the small library.

Hugh descended another level. He was starting to get a very bad feeling. The voice that proclaimed that this was wrong, all wrong was growing increasingly loud. His inspection of relevant rooms grew more cursory as he rushed along the corridor on the ground floor.

Surely, she wouldn’t have left the club on her own, would she have?

The question felt idiotic the moment he thought it. Of course Persephone would have left. She never asked anyone for help for herself.

Except for him. And he’d told her no.

His pace quickened, his anxiety mounting. He burst out the back door to the club, glancing wildly from side to side as he searched the dark, narrow alleyway.

And then he heard it. His wife’s voice, determined and a little shaky.

“I am the duchess. If you go inside and ask for Martin, the floor manager, he’ll tell you. Or my husband is in there. You can confirm my story.”

Hugh spun on his heel as he headed in that direction, the rumble of masculine voices becoming words as he approached.

“…trying harder to please us in hopes to get a bit of coin, though I can’t say that I’m inclined to pay for my privileges after all this trouble. Here’s what I do know for certain, however. She is not the Duchess of Nighthall. She. Is. Lying.”

Everything in Hugh turned to ice. There was a man menacing his wife. Insulting her.

He grew closer still and saw the most infuriating bit of all.

This man was touching her . Touching Hugh’s wife, his Persephone.

He was hurting her.

“No,” Hugh told the bastard, hoping that his words foreshadowed the world of pain he intended to bring down upon him. “I can assure you that she is not.”

Hugh saw them all look toward him, but he had eyes for Persephone only, her gaze wide and bright and full of hope. It gutted him, that hope. He’d failed her so terribly, had let her find herself in this situation, and still, when he arrived, she felt hope .

His agony added extra force to the blow he cracked across the ringleader’s jaw.

The man dropped Persephone at once, though the way he stumbled knocked her off balance. She fell backward into the brick wall with a cry, sliding down to the muck-strewn ground. Hugh positioned himself so that he was standing over her, blocking her from any further threats. She was safe with a wall at her back.

He would be the wall at her front for as long as she needed him.

As the first man reeled from Hugh’s punch, the second of his cronies took a step closer, fists raised. Hugh lashed out his right leg with a kick that caught the man on his upper thigh, slamming into the muscle and causing the bruiser to crumple to the ground. By this point, the ringleader had recovered enough to land a wild punch that Hugh was only able to half-dodge. It landed on his shoulder instead of on his jaw.

When he staggered back a few inches, he heard Persephone give an alarmed little whimper. Hugh forged forward again. He didn’t care if he had to throw himself against a rock wall; he would be the tides, coming again and again until he wore down any adversary with his tenacity alone.

Well, his tenacity and his fists.

The third man had fled as soon as Hugh arrived. This only added to Hugh’s fury, which was already at heretofore unseen measures. They deserved punishment, all of them. He would make sure it was distributed once he learned the man’s identity.

He wouldn’t rest until they all paid for their sins.

The two men in front of him, however—them, he would deal with now.

They were squaring up, still apparently certain that they were going to win this. That it was a fight.

In truth, it was punishment.

“I’m going to kill you,” he told them calmly. “You laid hands on my wife. And now, I am going to kill you for that.”

The bruiser faltered, mid-step.

“You’re the Dark Duke,” he said. There was a mingling of awe and fear in his voice. Hugh intended to wipe the first part of that away until the man felt naught but terror.

“I don’t give a damn who you are,” the ringleader spat. He was clearly the kind of man that let his pride dictate his actions. “You attacked us. That is unacceptable.”

“You,” Hugh growled, “laid hands on my wife .”

The ringleader scoffed, then hocked a bloody gob of spit onto the ground.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t let your wife traipse about like a whore, then,” he sneered.

Hugh’s memory of what happened next was never quite clear. All he knew was the need for violence, the hunger to destroy these men. Every blow they landed upon him was meaningless; he scarcely felt them. Instead, he just struck and struck and struck until the bruiser had the good sense to stay down. When the ringleader stopped fighting back, his body limp where Hugh had him by the collar, Hugh kept hitting him anyway.

“Hugh.”

He drew back his fist again. His knuckles were split, his hand coated in a mixture of his blood and that of his downed enemies.

But it wasn’t enough. How could it be enough? They’d scared his wife.

“Hugh.”

He regarded the unconscious man dispassionately. He knew his name. Vickers. He would ruin him. His good name would be nothing by the time Hugh was done with him.

“Hugh, stop.”

He wasn’t going to stop. He wouldn’t stop until they knew that there was no woman on this earth more protected than Persephone Blackwood. He would make himself a villain—more of one, that was—as much as he needed to be so that anyone who dared to so much as look at her thought twice. So that anyone who even let a negative thought cross their minds about her flinched away because they knew the retribution that would be brought to their doors should they ever, ever cause her a moment of distress.

“Hugh, it’s all right. You stopped him. It’s all right.”

Persephone’s hand landed on his arm. He froze as if ropes were pulling him taut, instead of the light touch of her fingers against him.

As he came back to himself, he realized that he was resistant to turn and face her. He feared the censure in her eyes, the fear and hatred that had to be there.

He’d spent so long trying to put distance between them, trying to get her understand that he was wrong , that he hadn’t fully embraced how brutal it would feel when she finally saw the truth.

But she was hurt, and he had to know how badly. He had to take care of her.

“Persephone,” he said. His voice sounded gravelly, like he’d been shouting. Perhaps he had been. “Where are you injured?”

When she looked at him, it wasn’t with hatred, nor with fear. Instead, it was bafflement—a look that he’d seen many times on her face and knew quite well how to decipher.

“Me?” she asked. “No, I’m fine; just scrapes. But you?—”

He didn’t let her finish. If she had scrapes, they would have touched the filth of the alley. They could get infected; she could die, wither away right before his eyes and die . Or she could have worse hurts than she recognized. After all, sometimes the rush of a confrontation masked ills. Hadn’t he seen enough drunkards stumble away from a brawl, laughing despite their clear injuries, only to later succumb to the pain?

He would not accept such a thing for his Persephone.

Instead, he hoisted her up into his arms, ignoring her squawk of protest.

“Put me down, Hugh! You’re going to injure yourself.”

He snorted at that. She was light as a feather in his arms, despite her luscious curves. He could carry her forever. Maybe he would. She couldn’t find herself in any more trouble if he was carrying her.

It was probably impractical, but he was resourceful. He’d figure it out.

One of the members of his staff had finally come outside, summoned by the commotion. It was too bloody late, of course, but the man could still have his use.

“Get my carriage at once,” Hugh called out to the man.

“Of course, Yer Grace. Right away, Your Grace,” the man stammered before taking off at a dead run.

Perhaps it was misdirected, but Hugh felt a faint flicker of satisfaction that someone, at least, feared him at an appropriate level.

His wife, however, was not one such person. That caused a complicated miasma of feelings in him, ones he was too occupied, at present, to dissect.

“Hugh Blackwood!” she scolded. He was going to explore that stern tone of hers later. He loved making her submit, teasing her until that saucy edge went out of her, but he had liked it when she took control of matters between them, too.

When he allowed her to do so, that was.

“Hugh, put me down!” she said.

“No.”

“Hugh! I am fine. ”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” he growled at her as he strode toward his approaching carriage. He placed her gently inside, then joined her after urging the driver to make all due haste back to Lethe House.

He didn’t release her, not once for the whole drive, no matter how much she squirmed and complained.

“Stop that,” he told her more than once. “You’re liable to injure yourself worse.”

“This wouldn’t be a problem if you would just let me go .”

But he couldn’t. He simply couldn’t.

He could not release her until he knew she was well.

He feared that he wouldn’t be able to let her go after that, either.