Page 46 of My Ruthless Duke

Dorian paused, his hands untucking his shirt and quickly thinking better of it. “Debonaire?”

“Mmhm,” Cordelia agreed with a hum.

As if Dorian had not made his feelings toward the man perfectly clear on all fronts. At least, he had thought that he had. “What did he want?”

“Honestly, I do not have a proper answer for that question,” she started with a sigh, her eyes seeming to follow his movements as he loosened the fit of his clothes but did not wholly remove them. “He said the strangest things.”

“Such as?”

“Well,” she laughed humorlessly. “First, he tried to convince me that you murdered my father.”

Dorian’s shoulders seized. How was that possible? A cold sort of dread froze his lungs and threatened to stop his heart in his chest as she continued speaking.

“I told him that he was being ridiculous and threw him out, of course.” Cordelia shrugged one shoulder, smiling until she seemed to realize that he was not smiling back. He could not even blink as he stared at her. Here it was, the moment and opportunity; it was now or never. He had no idea how Debonaire knew or if he had merely been grasping at straws that happened to be factual. Whatever the reason was, he could not lie to her anymore.

“Dorian? What is the matter?”

“He is correct.”

“What?” Cordelia rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Dorian, that is not funny. You know how sensitive of a subject that is.”

Dorian nodded, his focus shifting to his hands as he took a seat on her bed close to where she was. “I am being perfectly serious.”

“No. You are not,” Cordelia insisted as she scooted away from him.

There it was, the wary look full of caution on her face that he had been dreading. Next would be the outright horror and demanding to never see nor hear from him ever again. He deserved it all.

“I am afraid that I am, Cordelia. I cannot lie to you any longer. I apologize for being dishonest with you about such things. I came here tonight to tell you the truth, to tell you that I have fallen in love with you,” Dorian said softly, feeling a touch rawer than he had expected to feel.

“What… what are you saying?”

“I am directly responsible for your father’s death, but I had no other choice. I am sorry that his passing caused you pain. Believe me, that was not the intention, but… let me explain,” Dorian continued. He struggled to speak directly and without too much inflection, but he found himself nearly choking up at the words coming out of his mouth.

“I cannot hear this.” Cordelia shook her head, her hands lifting to cover her ears. “I will not hear any of this!”

Dorian shifted, pressing a knee into the bed as he pulled her arms from her ears. “You can, and you must. I will only say this once, so please lend me your full attention. Then, if you wish never to see me… if you…” Dorian could not get the words out, he feared the outcome of this conversation far too much. “Just listen.”

Cordelia’s breath was sucked in so deeply that her chest heaved.

Dorian mustered his courage and started to speak. “Two years ago, I was leaving a pub in some back alleyway of London in the hours before dawn. I was on foot, staggering through the streets, hoping that the cold morning air and the long walk would help sober me up enough before I got home. I had not made it more than halfway home before the sounds of distress came screaming at me from another alleyway. A woman yelling for a man to get off of her, to leave her alone, punctuated by soft sobs…” Dorian trailed off as he noticed Cordelia shudder. “Well, I did what anyone would do—I ran to her aid. I might be a terrible man, but I will not stand by and allow a woman to be harmed if there is anything that I can do to stop it.”

Dorian paused, the memory of that night two years ago flashing so vividly in his head. No doubt, since it often was a focal point of his nightmares, that he was destined to keep reliving it. The poor barmaid was shoved up against the brick wall, her nails torn and bloody from the struggle as the man shoved her face against the wall. He had hiked her skirts up over her rear, exposing her tothe world as he worked on opening the front of his trousers when Dorian arrived.

He had seen red.

“The young woman was being accosted by your father. I did not know who he was at the time, but I ran into the alleyway, grabbed him by his shirt, and shoved him off her,” Dorian continued.

Her father’s mocking laughter still echoed in his mind. Dorian would not tell Cordelia how he offered for Dorian to wait his turn as Dorian pulled the woman’s skirts down where they ought to be and told her to run. That was when her father’s expression had soured. The moment Dorian had deprived the man of his alleged ‘prize’ something in him had snapped. He had charged at Dorian like he was more animal than man. Dorian had barely caught the glint of something metal flashing in the moonlight before the burning hot pain in his stomach.

Dorian cleared his throat carefully, giving himself a minute to speak. He dared a glance at Cordelia, and the tears ran freely down her cheeks as she kept her hands firmly clamped over her mouth to let him finish speaking.

“We fought, and he pulled a knife. I shoved him away from me… the marquess fell back into the wall and hit the corner of the brick.”

The sound of his skull hitting brick was one that he would never forget. The man had gone from a near-snarling rage to beingoff balance to sounding indignant, and then… nothing. The marquess’ eyes had unfocused as his fingers twitched, and he slid down the wall slowly, his eyes wholly unseeing by the time he hit the ground.

“I am ashamed of the fact that I ran instead of taking proper accountability for my actions. I should have… maybe then I could have arranged for better care for you and your mother from the beginning. But I disappeared instead, trying to keep as good of an eye on the pair of you as I could from a distance. When it all happened, I never imagined that he would have been a titled man, let alone a man with a family. When I learned who he was…”

Dorian shook his head and scrubbed his hands up and down his face. He had taken the cowardly way out, in his opinion. He had panicked and run. The woman had never come forward with what had almost happened to her, to his knowledge. Nobody else would have had any cause to know that he was even in that alleyway.