Page 47 of Bad Duke

“I know it’s fast and crazy, everyone goes at their own pace, and Alex has kind of picked me up and swept me along with his, but I’ve never felt happier,” I admit, just wishing Jamie could be here to make everything complete.

“Well, I think it’s very romantic, and I can’t wait to see your wedding dress. You are going to ruffle some feathers when everyone finds out you’ve used that French designer instead of Pandora.”

“Can you keep a secret?” I check the door’s closed before I lean in.

“It’s not a French designer. A girl I used to work with has a sister who owns a bridal shop in Camden.”

“No way!” She laughs.

“I’ll tell everyone where I got it once the wedding is over, but until then…” I pull an imaginary zip across my mouth.

“It must be nice though, getting dressed up and going to all the high-class events. You looked incredible at the opening of that theatre.” Leah has a dreamy look on her face.

“I was sick seven times during that performance.” I laugh when I look back to that night three weeks ago. Alex spent half the night holding my hair back while I threw up in the ladies’ room. He'd told me I was doing him a favour and that he hated classical music, but I’ve seen his running playlist and I know that's not true.

“You hid it well,” she tells me, getting up and going back to work.

“Well, I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to.” I’ve made my final dress fitting as close to the wedding as possible, just in case I start to show. I don’t want people to know until after the wedding, because Alex was right, people are judgy.

“Well, let them judge because in three weeks…you are going to be a duchess,” she reminds me.

ALEX

I stand outside Nicolas Talbot’s quaint, little cottage and watch as he places a saucer of water on the doorstep. Who’d have thought that a rapist would have the heart to be so thoughtful?

The man may still have his title but he has no fortune, he gambled all that away, and when he came to me and asked me to help him keep the one thing he still had in his life that was good, I agreed to help him.

In fact, Nicolas was the first hard lesson I learned as a man of my own right, it’s almost poetic that tonight I will be his last.

I pull on my black, leather gloves as I walk up his path and when I knock on the door it takes him a while before he opens it. When he does the scared look on his face assures me that he knows why I’m here.

“I heard you visited my club today.” I overpower him when I step inside and back him up.

“Who told you?” he asks feebly as I continue to take up his space and force him back into the bookcase behind him.

“The young girl who you raped today told me because your threats didn’t scare her. If you wanted to air out some grievances with me, Nic, you should have come to me, direct. I’m a big boy, I can take it.” I tilt my head and watch him get frustrated.

“You destroyed my life.” He spits at me.

“You destroyed your own life. You gambled away everything your family allowed you to inherit. You fucked another man’s wife, and then you stole from me.”

“I didn’t steal from you, I borrowed. You gave me that money willingly,” he reminds me.

“I don’t recall ever getting that money back, Nicolas.” I frown back at him. “The way I remember it, you came to me and told me your little girl was dying. You said the only doctor who could save her was in America and you needed the money to go private.” I watch his eyes drop to the floor. “Now, you’d already lost everything your wife and little girl had. I wasn’t going to see you lose her too.” I remind him how the story goes, how back then I still had a heart and the kindness of my mother inside it.

“You lost your finger because you lied to me, you took my money and you went to Vegas so you wouldn’t be here when the bailiffs came to take away everything you owned. You spent the money I gave you on gambling and whores. You lost your family because you left your wife to explain to your daughter why they were being kicked out of their home, to get your dick sucked.”

He sneers at me as he listens to my words, and when I take out the knife I have tucked in my belt his eyes widen when I hold the blade in front of his face.

“Tonight, you’re going to lose your life because I already gave you a second chance.” I pin the cunt’s forehead to the bookshelf and force the blade under his rib cage into his lung. He screams in agony and I twist the handle and make him sing a little louder.

“She looked like her, didn’t she?” He chokes and splatters blood all over my face. “The whore, she looked like that girl you're marrying, didn't she?” I pull the knife from his body and let him slump to the floor, and he looks up at me with a snigger. “You’ll know how it feels soon,” he tells me as if he knows something, and I crouch down and grab the front of his shirt.

“What the fuck do you mean by that?” I shake him, but he’s fighting too hard for breath to answer me.

“Nicolas.” I shake him harder as the consciousness starts to go from his eyes.

“What are you talking about, what do you know?” He flops in my arms when his life is over and I take the knife I’m holding and plunge it into his body over and over, screaming and yelling at the fucker to wake up and tell me what he knows. I saw something sinister behind his eyes, he knew something.

---