Page 22 of Stolen By the Cruel Duke
Nothing happened in the tonwithout word getting out, especially at the clubs where all the gentlemen spent their days. If he had been paying attention to anything other than his quest for revenge, he would have known her father and Lord Redfield had been hatching this plan…
Violet, however, was shaking her head. “Dukes are powerful, but they’re not omnipotent. He cannot keep me here against Father’s will. He isn’t my guardian. The law is on Father’s side.”
All three of them were silent for a moment. Iris was thinking hard. If the Duke couldn’t help them, if it was hopeless… then she would have to take matters into her own hands. Standing up, she began to pace back and forth in front of the sofas.
“We could send you abroad,” she suggested. “It would cause a scandal, and ruin Rosalie’s chances of marrying well, so you’d probably have to go with her, Rose. To France, perhaps. Or America. Somewhere Father won’t find you…”
Violet stared at her incredulously. “You mean for me to be on the run for the rest of my life? And for Rose to forfeit her chances at a happy, normal life?”
“What chance does she really have, with Father arranging a match for her?” Iris argued.
“I can’t do that to Rose,” Violet said, and something in her eyes seemed to harden. “I am not so selfish as to ruin both your lives just because I do not care for my father’s choice of bridegroom. No… I think I’ll have to go through with it.”
“You can’t!” Iris shouted, and Rosalie nodded in agreement. “I won’t allow it!”
“I’ll be no different from the countless women before me who were married off to men they disliked,” Violet said softly. She reached out and took Iris’s hand, stilling her. “I’ll be no different from you, marrying a man you hardly knew.”
Iris sank down to her knees so that she was crouching in front of her sister, looking up at her. “Please,” she murmured, “don’t give up. Not yet.”
“There will be no giving up,” came a deep male voice from behind them.
All three sisters turned to see Phineas striding into the room, a thunderous look on his face.
Nor was it the only noticeable thing on his face. His left eye was badly bruised, and there was a cut on his eyebrow. His hair was mussed, his cravat had come undone, and the rest of his clothes were decidedly rumpled. He looked as if he had gotten into some kind of altercation.
Gasping, Iris jumped to her feet. “Phineas—Duke!” she cried, hurrying over to him. “What happened to you? Are you well?”
She wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do when she got to him, but Phineas decided for her. When she reached him, he took her hands in his and pressed them against his chest. His eyes burned with something she’d never seen before as he gazed down at her.
“I am well,” he replied, his voice gruff but soft. “And I assure you, everything will be well with Miss Violet as well.”
“What do you mean?” Iris asked, unable to look away from the intensity of his stare.
“I mean that she won’t be marrying Lord Redfield.”
Iris’s mouth fell open, and behind her, she heard her sisters gasp.
“Do you really mean it, Your Grace?” Violet asked uncertainly.
Turning around, Iris saw that her sister had stood up. Violet looked very pale and wobbly, but she was looking at Phineas with hope in her eyes.
“I do,” the Duke said gravely. “You have my word on that.”
He touched Iris’s shoulder, and she turned back to him, unable to hold back the smile on her face and the tears in her eyes.
“What did you do?” she whispered. “How did you make this happen?”
“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “The matter is settled. But there are two things I need you to know, Iris.” It was the first time he had used her first name, and it made her breath catch in her throat. “First of all, I always keep my promises. And secondly, I will always protect you and your loved ones. Even if I had not promised to protect your sisters, I still would, simply because you are my wife. The circumstances of how our marriage came about do not matter. Now that you are my wife, now that you are the Duchess of Eavestone, I will always safeguard you and the people you love. Do you understand?”
Iris couldn’t speak. Her throat was clogged with tears, and anyway, there was nothing she could say to articulate how she felt.
Her whole life, she had seen marriage as a life sentence of misery. That’s what her parents’ marriage had demonstrated to her. Never before had she thought that it could be safety, security, or peace. So she simply nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks as a new feeling filled her. She couldn’t quite describe what it was, but it felt as if her heart were soaring.
Chapter Nine
“Well, I rather think you shouldn’t go home tonight,” Phineas said, staring pointedly at the bruise forming around James’s right eye. “The Bow Street Runners might come by to question where you were tonight, and you can hardly answer them looking like you just got into a scrape on the street.”
“Ididjust get into a scrape on the street,” James reminded him, frowning sulkily as he sank into the sofa.
