Page 53 of My Ruthless Duke
Slowly, she ascended the stairs, which got darker and quieter as she went.
Something is wrong here.
Then there it was—something soft was calling to her. It almost sounded like her name before the sound was so sharply cut off.
“Who is there?”
She moved blindly, looking in every open room that she passed and feeling very much like she was simply grasping at straws. If her cousin was indeed here alone, she was going to feel quite foolish and not have a single word of explanation to offer him.
But there, at the end of the hallway behind the library door, came a crashing sound. Not enough to have been a bookcase falling, but very close. She gathered up her heavy, soaked skirts and hurried toward the origin of the sound as her heartbeat started to climb anxiously up into her throat.
She pushed open the door slowly, but apart from the moonlight coming in from the very far windows, the library seemed otherwise wrapped in shadows. “Is everything all right?” She tried again. “Matthew?”
The door closed behind her with a soft click, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the low lighting. She could not breathe. Why was she so scared? Adrenaline started to course through her as she moved, eyes straining around the cornersuntil she crossed to the open seating area in the center of the library and promptly tripped over something very large and very solid.
Cordelia crashed into the floor and hit her elbow heavily at just the right angle to make her see stars burst along her clenched eyelids. Pulling her legs back toward herself, she caught a better glimpse of what she had tripped over—a prone male form. She crawled closer, ignoring the pain in her arm, and started to roll the man onto his back—and gasped.Dorian! He was unconscious, it seemed, with a swollen knot on his forehead and a bleeding cut in the same area. Her fingers probed against the tender skin gingerly.
“Oh no… what happened?” She whispered, hoping that somehow her cold hands would soothe the pain enough to rouse him… but nothing changed.
“Leave him,” a dark voice said, startling her.
Cordelia whipped around, straining for the source just as Matthew leaned forward in one of the chairs, showing just enough of his sinister seeming face in the moonlight to frighten her. She had never seen him make that face before.
Keeping herself between Matthew and Dorian’s unconscious body, she tried to summon whatever strength and courage she had left, even if her teeth chattered with cold when she spoke. “What have you done? Why is he here? What did you do to him?”
“Nothing more than what society ought to do with unruly mutts like him. Animals like that do not deserve land and titles, and theycertainlydo not deserve wives like yourself, Cordelia. Do you truly not understand how far beneath you he is? I should have never allowed you to marry him,” Matthew said pityingly.
Cordelia could not believe what she was hearing. “Allow me? I was not aware that you had any influence on my choices!”
Matthew smirked in a way that made her skin crawl. “You were always meant to belong to me, Cordelia. It might take some time for you to come around to the truth, but you were meant to be with me.”
Cordelia turned and started to shake her husband; she needed him to wake up, and she needed him to be awakenow. Her hands fumbled with the bindings on his hands behind him, untying him as best as she could. “Have you lost your mind, Matthew? Do you think that I could ever be with a person so cruel to another?”
Matthew laughed mockingly. “How can you say that? Your husband is a murderer!”
“You do not knowanythingabout him!” Cordelia nearly shouted back at him.
Matthew shrugged. “I know the end result, that is all that matters. Just as I know that he would never have been enough to deserve you, not like I do.”
“How did you even find out about all this?”
“You would be surprised by how much you can find out at this pub with a few shillings. I knew that there was something off about your duke and this sham of a marriage the moment he said that he knew your father.”
“Since you found out that he was involved in my father’s death, then you must know the whole story. Dorian acted out on instinct to protect the barmaid. My father’s death was practically an accident.”
Matthew let out a scoff. “I care little for a nameless barmaid. What I wanted and managed to prove is that your swine of a husband killed a man, your own father, and hid the evidence.”
Cordelia’s eyes narrowed. “The only thing that you have proven is that you are insane. I hate you.”
Matthew rose from his chair and started advancing toward her. “It is such a fine line between love and hate, is it not? You will come to forgive me; you have forgivenhim. And if not, then you can take the rest of our lives learning how to live with it, to accept that your rightful place is by my side.”
“I will do no such thing!”
“You do not have a choice,” Matthew sneered, his hand jerking out as if to grab her, but a flurry of movement behind her stopped his hand. Blood dripped down Dorian’s face; the ragethat had contorted his features had opened the cut on his forehead once more. Dorian squeezed Matthew’s arm so tightly that even in the low lighting, Cordelia could see his face pale. He winced and tried to thrash away from Dorian, but it was of no use.
“Take your hands off my wife,” Dorian seethed, speaking through his clenched teeth.
Matthew tried to speak, tried to snarl in rage as Cordelia scrambled away quickly from the two men.