Page 106 of Ravished By the Beastly Duke

“Certainly, an intruder would have harmed me or tied me up when he saw me,” he murmured to himself.

He looked from the hall to the staircase, and he wondered for a moment how he had ended up in his bed when the last thing he had remembered was passing out in the hall.

“Your Grace,” a voice said.

William whipped around sharply only to see his butler.

“Arnold,” he breathed. “You must tell me. Do you know what happened yesterday?”

If anyone knew what occurred the previous day, it would certainly be the butler.

“Your Grace, your guests are waiting for you in the drawing room.”

Guests?

William was taken aback. Even though the details of the previous night were still quite confusing to him, he could not remember having a guest.

He quickly headed for the drawing room, and it was then that it hit him.

The intruder he had thought he had seen was, in fact, a guest. And suddenly, he remembered the face he had seen right before everything went dark.

“Eveline!” he muttered, his heart leaping with excitement as he opened the door to the drawing room, glad to be reuniting with his wife.

He could not have been more disappointed when, instead of his beautiful wife, he saw three men sitting inside.

“Finally, the sleeping beast has awoken,” Theo drawled. “I was beginning to wonder if he was alive.”

Magnus, on the other hand, looked rather disturbed. “William, what have you done to yourself?”

William was dumbfounded for a moment.

“Have you lost your tongue when you lost your mind, William?” Theo asked.

William had a million questions.

“What are you all doing here?” he finally managed to utter.

“Stopping you from making a rather rash decision that you would regret for the rest of your life,” Edwin said, rising to his feet.

Now William had even more questions.

“How did you know where I was?” he asked.

“You can thank me for that,” Theo quipped.

“I do not quite understand.”

“Why don’t you come in and take a seat?” Magnus suggested, leading William to a chair at the center of the room.

“Well, I decided to pay you and your wife another visit, so I was surprised to learn that you and your wife had left the estate at different times,” Theo revealed.

The reminder that Eveline had left his home in tears compounded William’s headache, and he could barely keep his eyes open. He sighed as he rubbed his temples, willing the throbbing headache away.

“I could sense immediately that something was amiss, and upon further questioning, your gardener told me that you have left for Bath after an altercation with your wife.”

“How did he know about the altercation?” William asked.

“You might find it surprising that nobody quite knows what happens in an estate like the servants,” Edwin said.

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