Trapped with the Forbidden Duke (Forbidden Lords #5)

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

“ O ne week?” Edwina asked, cocking her head at the imposing duke in her entrance hall—the imposing duke who she did not particularly want to know the full extent of their troubles.

Staring at her coolly, the Duke only nodded his head.

How could she hide Nicholas’s state from him for a week?

Her heart pounded.

How can I stop them from killing one another when they have enough bad blood between them ?

How could they endure being around one another? Nicholas would not agree to it, but why would the Duke of Stormhold offer?

“Why would you want to be around a man you see as a traitor?” she asked.

“I do not,” the Duke answered. “Do not mistake me, I am only here to help, not to be around him. He had several chances to speak with me.”

Although there was an air of nonchalance about him, she could see the tightness around his eyes. She tried to think of every time Nicholas had pushed her out of his room, lost in a fit of paranoia and rage, claiming that he deserved to be alone, that he was hopeless, ruining her and their parents’ legacy.

She had to imagine that permanently—a best friend shoved out the door, never to know why . At least she had a reason for all the cruel words she’d endured while her brother either came down from a high, needed another one, or was on one.

“And—what of everyone’s opinions? You might not care about how you are viewed?—”

“I assure you that I do.”

“But we will be the talk of the ton. I do not want that.”

“ We do not have to be,” the Duke insisted. “ I can be. I will simply claim that I’m rekindling my friendship with Lord Montgomery. Everybody knows about our lack of contact over the last couple of years, so it will not be hard to convince them.”

“But they will speak about us being together. In this house. I am unmarried.”

“And a seductress,” he teased, only for her face to positively flush at the reminder of her shame. “What will the scandal sheets say?”

She glowered at him. “I am serious.”

“As am I. I will direct the narrative away from you and focus on Nicholas and myself for their entertainment.”

“You can do that?” she asked.

“I am a duke, My Lady. Of course, I can,” he responded matter-of-factly.

“And Lord Stockton? What of him?”

“Let me handle him.” His teasing smirk suddenly disappeared.

Edwina still was not sure that it was a good idea, and she knew the Duke would see that. Pointedly, he took in their surroundings.

“Of course, if Jane does not finish her chores, you could always clean the drawing room yourself, draw your baths, tend your gardens,” he added drily, knowing that she could not afford to refuse his help.

Not when it concerned Nicholas’s debts, too. Of course, she could not reveal that whole story.

“Do not shame me,” she muttered. “I have done my best to support my brother.”

As if he sensed her humiliation in accepting his help, the Duke took a step towards her, but she stepped back.

“It is not a weakness to accept help, Lady Edwina. Especially when your brother should have supported you from the start. He should not have left you to deal with all of this.”

At that, her head snapped up, her eyes narrowing. “He is doing everything he can to get better.”

“Better?” the Duke echoed. “He is healed from his injuries, is he not?”

She cringed at her slip-up. “Better—better at handling the estate, of course.”

Without wasting another moment, she turned on her heel, wondering how she would survive a week of this. This careful stepping around truths, his teasing, her shame. And, of course, hiding her brother’s addiction from his friend, who had known what he was like before and would certainly notice the changes.

She walked down the hallway, her head held high.

“Where is the Earl, anyway?” the Duke called after her, but she ignored him, both out of spite and simply for the reason that she did not know.

Her brother was likely high on laudanum, trying to drown his guilt over what she had to do that night before she was saved by the Duke.

As soon as she rounded the corner, out of sight, she slumped against the wall, closing her eyes.

One week . I have survived worse.

Edwina flew down the stairs, her heart in her throat, roused by shouting from the breakfast room.

She heard a grunt and the skidding of boots across the floor, and she ran faster.

“You have no right, Stormhold! No right to come into my residence and interfere in my family’s affairs!”

Edwina bit back an unladylike curse as she dashed around a corner and heard the Duke’s response.

“Your family’s affairs? Ah, the ones you have so conveniently neglected while your sister bears the brunt of everything you have destroyed? While she is burdened with your consequences? Heavens, look at you! You look as though you have barely slept for a week?—”

“ You know nothing of what I have been through .” Nicholas’s roar rippled down the hall.

There was another scuffle.

Edwina could see the door to the breakfast room.

“I know exactly what you have been through, Nicholas. War did not break you. Your inability to deal with the reality of returning did.”

Edwina all but skidded into the breakfast room right as Nicholas’s arm swung in an arc. Only for his fist to be caught in mid-air by the Duke.

“What is going on here?” she demanded.

At her voice, both men sprung apart. The Duke released her brother’s fist, and both of them straightened their jackets.

Nicholas looked the worse for wear, with dark circles beneath his eyes and unkempt dark hair. The piece of hay stuck to the back of it helped her guess where he had hidden out all night. She could only hope that it had been the almost empty stables.

She could only hope that his appearance was merely the consequence of a sleepless night—in contrast to that of the perfectly groomed Duke of Stormhold.

“Nothing,” the Duke answered coolly. “Your brother and I are merely getting reacquainted. Is that not right, Montgomery?”

“You had better get reacquainted with words, not fists,” Edwina scoffed before her brother could answer, stepping further into the breakfast room. “Do you both wish to be like thugs?”

Neither answered, until Nicholas turned a deep scowl on her that looked worse, ghastlier, with his pale face and bruised, heavy-lidded eyes.

It only turned her stomach further that he had left to deal with such turmoil alone. It was not uncommon, but it still tugged at her.

“I need an explanation for this ,” he hissed, jabbing a finger in the Duke’s direction. “You have brought a man into our home. Do you know what that tells me, Sister?”

“It tells you nothing,” she snapped. “It tells you that we need support.”

“It tells me that your honor may have been compromised, for how can you be comfortable with having a man sleeping beneath our roof?”

Edwina’s face reddened as she opened her mouth to say that the Duke was not a stranger and that her honor was perfectly intact, as it had always been.

But the Duke spoke first.

“Watch how you speak to your sister.”

“Oh, do not get involved, Lucien. Back off . You are adept at that.”

Lucien .

His name reverberated through Edwina, momentarily distracting her.

When she blinked, Nicholas had lunged for the Duke again, but she darted forward, stepping between the two of them. It was as if their anger stopped at the limit of not hurting her, for they both stepped back. Yet, their angry eyes were still trained on one another.

“Nicholas,” she snapped, looking up at her brother. “It is either the Duke or poverty.” Then, she rounded on the Duke. “And if you are both done with proving who can act like a more bullheaded fool, then perhaps you would care to help me figure out how to save this house?”

“I have already started,” the Duke answered smartly. “Perhaps you can convince your brother over there to be useful for once. Or, rather, again. Tell me, Nicholas, does it sting to have wasted so much potential? To lose so much of that hard-earned honor?”

Nicholas tensed, and Edwina readied herself to step between them once more.

Her brother staggered backward, gritting his teeth. “I do not need this.”

Without another word, he stormed out of the breakfast room. Moments later, the sound of the front door slamming shut rang out, and her heart, as it always did whenever he left in a foul mood, sank.

She wondered what state he would come back in—and when . He was prone to staying out for hours, sometimes even a day or two.

And with the Duke present, Nicholas risked a lot if that was what he chose to do to deal with his high emotions.

Edwina turned to the Duke. “What do you think you are doing, provoking him like that?” she hissed.

The Duke only looked her up and down before answering, “No man has the right to speak to you the way he did, questioning your honor. Least of all family.”

She blinked, surprised by his protectiveness. But then she quickly schooled her features.

“And I will not stand by while you treat him as though he is some… some criminal.”

As the Duke stepped closer to her, she was once again captivated by his emerald-green eyes.

“If Nicholas does not change, you will lose everything. Is that what you want?”

The question hung in the air, but Edwina did not answer, for he already knew her response. Instead, she imagined herself as the sort of woman who might get lost in the eyes of the Duke of Stormhold. The sort of woman who could seduce rather than hold back. The sort of woman who would not refuse to admit any attraction, who would refuse to be anything other than the good lady her mother had taught her to be.

Yet, she could not look away, and she found herself gravitating closer to him, following the shape of his lips with her eyes as if that alone would help her know how they felt.

No . She pulled herself back from that edge. He was there to help her, nothing more.

Edwina glowered at the Duke before she stalked out of the room, leaving him to his business.