Chapter 4
“I...” Iris swallowed hard. “I should not have said that.”
The duke’s eyes were on her lips, and she could not stop gnawing at them nervously. His expression was unreadable.
“It was just a rumor,” she said, the words tumbling out faster, as though she could outpace her own foolishness. “They say… they say you killed your brother. But it was careless of me to repeat such talk because I do not believe it.”
One of his brows lifted, a minute flex above the savage yet beautiful line of the scar.
“You do not believe it, and yet you accuse me of being a murderer,” he said sarcastically.
“What else could I say to someone as insufferable as you?” she muttered under her breath, then forced herself to meet his gaze. “You are arrogant and appallingly rude, and you are a brute who just barged in without—”
“Thank you,” he cut her off dryly.
“Let me finish.” He looked pleasantly surprised at her. “But you cannot be the kind of man who kills his own brother.”
She waited for a response but got none.
It struck her then how little she knew of men. Her own brief acquaintance with the viscount and her father’s gentle melancholy had taught her something about bluster and diffidence. But none of them had prepared her for a man who stood like the duke before her.
“However, you should believe the rumors.” his voice dropped dangerously low.
A deadly silence stretched, and she realized that she was holding her breath.
“Because I did kill my brother,” His Grace said with an unreadable expression.
Iris’s spine went cold. The little hairs at the back of her neck rose as she searched his face, desperately, for some sign of jest, some betrayal of irony, but there was none.
“How can you say that so lightly?”
His Grace tipped his head slightly until his scar caught the light. “How did you think I got this?” he asked.
She stared at the jagged mark. Images she did not want flew through her mind. If she were in danger, she should call for help, but Iris stood still and gazed up at the duke. Her stomach lurched. She knew nothing about him, yet she felt intrigued rather than scared.
“Your Grace—”
“I have decided,” he said, as if they had been discussing nothing more consequential than the arrangement of chairs, “that I will reside in this house in a room that you prefer. For now.”
He stalked out of her chamber, leaving her confused and flustered. Iris followed him and watched as he strolled down the corridor with the carelessness of a man who had never truly been denied anything.
“For now? What did you mean by that?” she asked nervously.
The duke turned his head slightly, considering her. “You will need to move, eventually.”
His words struck her, and all Iris could do was laugh, but the duke looked at her with a darkness behind his eyes. Iris backed away from him slowly.
“And in case you have not yet understood, Little Blossom,” he said. “You will move because I am the heir and this is my house. Under the law and under the title. You have no choice but to obey me.”
He reached for the chamber door not far from hers; it was Hentley’s chamber. Iris opened her mouth to protest, but the duke shut the doors between them with a soft, ruthless finality until she heard the latch click.
“Damn him!” she hissed under her breath.
Iris stared at the painted wood and tried to calm her frantic pulse.
He has locked me out of a room in my own house.
For a heartbeat, the absurdity of it was so complete she could only stand and gape. Then fury rose.
She lifted her hand and pounded on the door. “You cannot do this! Do you hear me? You cannot simply arrive and take everything!”
Silence.
“Open the door,” she snapped. “At once.”
She did not even hear the discreet creak of a floorboard to suggest he had moved.
“I know you can hear me.”
The house was old, and sound traveled through it like gossip. She imagined him standing just beyond, perhaps with that infuriating curve at his mouth, enjoying her rage as he had enjoyed her mortification in that wicked red room.
“This is not the end of this,” she threatened, leaning close so every word struck through the wood between them. “My brother-in-law is the Duke of Brentmere. And he will help me untangle this ridiculous situation!”
For a moment, only the thudding of her own blood filled her ears. Then his voice came, muffled but clear, through the panel.
“Good,” he said. “Then you had better start packing.”
She frowned.
“Because once you step outside this house, Little Blossom,” he went on conversationally as though they were discussing the weather, “you will not be able to return.”
Iris stared at the door as if it had grown teeth.
He could not mean it. This was more than a house to her, and he would never understand that.
This was proof that she was not useless and not a burden to be shifted from one benevolent relation to another.
Every cracked tile and threadbare curtain had become part of the fragile fortress she had built for herself out of duty and stubbornness.
Iris’s throat tightened as rage and fear pressed hard against her ribs.
“You are monstrous,” she whispered.
The only answer was the faint scrape moving within as though he had already dismissed her and begun to acquaint himself with the room. An absurd, helpless sound rose in her chest.
Iris paced the corridor, then stopped, bent, and slid her fingers under the strap of her shoe, tugging it off swiftly, and hurling it at the door with all the force she could muster. The satisfying crack of leather against painted wood reverberated down the corridor.
“You keep warning me,” she flung her words at him, breathlessly, “but you never actually do anything!”
There was a beat of silence on the other side. Then the latch turned, and the door opened deceptively calmly.
His Grace stood at the entrance, filling the frame. Her shoe lay at his booted feet, and his gaze traveled slowly from the discarded slipper up to her flushed face. Iris had the sudden wild thought that if she bolted now, he would catch her before she took two steps.
So she did not move.
“You think I do not do anything,” he said softly.
His voice chilled her.
He stepped out, closing the door behind him. The corridor seemed to shrink around her as he completely erased the distance between them.
Before she could suck in a breath to scream, he caught both her wrists and covered her mouth.
His hands were large. For an instant, she was too shocked to resist. Then his grip tightened, and he pulled her arms above her head in one smooth, controlled motion, gently but firmly pushing her body with his until her spine met the wall.
The impact was not hard, but it knocked the air from her lungs.
Iris mumbled against his palm as her heart slammed wildly. Her body pressed willingly against his, and her skin grew feverish under his weight. The duke slowly removed his hand from her mouth.
“How dare you? Release me, at once!” she rasped.
He was so close to her that her breasts rubbed against his hard chest until she felt her nipples press against fabric, longing for his touch.
There was nowhere for her to go. One of his thighs slid between hers, the rough fabric of his trousers pressed against her skirts, and she could feel the heat of him.
“No,” he murmured in her ear. “I do not think I will.”
Iris’s breath shuddered as he kept her wrists gathered in one hand.
The position arched her slightly away from the wall, drawing her unwillingly closer to his chest. His other hand came up, bracing against the panel beside her head.
The flex of his arm tightened the fabric over the breadth of his shoulders.
“You shiver, and yet you do not seem afraid,” he whispered as he eyed her entire body.
Iris lifted her chin defiantly. “I am not afraid of you.”
“You have been testing me from the time we met,” he suddenly growled, and his breath touched the shell of her ear, causing her skin to prickle with desire.
“And I have indulged you,” he went on. “Because you are… interesting. And that hidden fury of yours amuses me. But there are limits, Little Blossom.”
Her fingers curled uselessly against his palm, and she tried to wriggle out of his grasp.
“What are you going to do to me?” Hurt me?” she asked him bravely, but the scarred duke simply chuckled.
“If I had plans to do anything to you, Little Blossom, it would be the opposite of hurting you.”
Panic flared, then twisted into something far more confusing as her body reacted with infuriating betrayal to the nearness of him. Heat pooled low in her belly and spiraled outward.
“Make that pretty head of yours understand,” he continued, “that I am the master of this house now. Not you. Not your late husband. Me.”
Iris shuddered.
“I do not care to spend my days arguing with a menace,” his tone darkened, “when I could be enjoying more… pleasant distractions. So, I want to be left alone. Do you understand?”
She forced herself to meet his dark gaze, though her cheeks burned and her pulse hammered so loudly she half-feared he could hear it.
“We shall see about that,” she said daringly.
For a moment, neither of them moved. Then His Grace chuckled and loosened his fingers. Iris’s wrists slipped free, but the skin felt hot. She immediately brought her hands around to her front, rubbing one thumb over the faint red marks his grip had left. She was still highly aware of his nearness.
“You are an interesting woman.” He shook his head and disappeared back into her chamber.
Shutting the door in her face one more time.
“Bugger,” she cussed him under her breath.
Iris straightened and gathered what remained of her dignity around her like a cloak.
One day, I will do more than throw a shoe.
She did not look back or retrieve her slipper. With each unbalanced step, the press of the scarred duke’s taut body against hers seemed to intensify in memory, rather than fade. Iris knew that she would have another restless night thinking about him and the fact that he had called her pretty.