Chapter 7
“You do not stop, do you understand?” Damien commanded, placing the missive into the messenger’s hands.
They trembled as he held them out and took the sealed letter. The man’s head nodded vigorously.
“Yes, Your Grace,” he replied, the fear apparent in his voice. “I will get there by tonight. I promise you.”
“You had better,” Damien gritted out, taking a step back from looming over the much smaller man.
His rage was vibrating, hot and wild, just below the surface, threatening to break out.
After two months of searching, he had finally found Caroline.
He had assumed somewhere along the way that Caroline had hidden herself away in a village, but why she had chosen this miserable place was beyond him.
A place so rundown, so full of nasty people like that scoundrel he had wanted to kill the night before for touching Caroline.
He could understand that she might be frightened of him, but he did not realize that it would have driven her to believe that this was a better option than being by his side.
So even though he wanted to find the man from last night and feed him his own fingers for even touching Caroline, even though he wanted to find her landlord and wring his neck for taking advantage of a woman trying to survive in such a filthy cottage, Damien kept a tight fist over his temper, doing his best not to let it rage out of control.
He could not bear to make her unhappy, but it was slipping.
With every passing moment, the roaring urge to get Caroline away from this place was growing greater.
She did not belong there. She belonged back in his estate, where he could watch over her…
Where he could convince her to tell him what about her life had made it so easy for her to run away.
In his letter to his solicitor, he had expressed the need to make haste.
He had brought a substantial amount of funds with him—enough to cover the immediate needs of the orphanage and anything Caroline might want or need.
However, he required a much larger sum to pay for the deed of the orphanage and to construct a new building.
“Your Grace?” the messenger timidly asked. “Will there be anything else?”
Damien blinked, forced his mess of thoughts and anger to quiet themselves, and refocused on the man in front of him.
“Go, man,” he grunted, nodding toward the man’s horse.
With another vigorous nod and a quick bow, the messenger shot off the stoop of the messenger service. Damien took another deep, centering breath, then at a much calmer pace, left the shop’s front stoop and crossed the street to Caroline’s employer.
He was still several steps away when he heard shouting from inside, and what little restraint he had to hold his anger inside broke like a twig.
“You stupid, arrogant girl!” a woman raged as he wrapped his large fingers around the dainty door handle. “You think you can just come and go whenever you please? Work whenever you please? I pay you to do things the way I want them!”
Damien opened the door, and a small bell overhead tinkled. Even so, it was clear that the woman he saw screaming into Caroline’s face was having far too much enjoyment to notice. He, however, took notice of everything. The venom in the woman’s eyes, the glee glistening just behind it.
Caroline, however, had her head down, shoulders bowed, and was shaking her head. Whatever fighting spirit she had to argue with him, it was clear that it had vanished when it came to this woman. A thought that both intrigued and annoyed him.
“Please forgive me for being late, Mrs. Parks. I promise you I will stay after shop hours to make up for the time lost,” Caroline politely implored. “I finished the dress last night as you requested, and today the only thing I need to repair—”
“How dare you talk back to me! You useless—”
The woman was no doubt winding up toward another tirade, and that was something Damien simply could not abide. He cleared his throat and stepped between the two women, towering over Caroline’s employer with a warning look.
“Is this how you treat your customers?” he growled out. “You leave them standing on their own while you publicly berate your workers?”
The woman’s mouth gaped open and shut like a fish attempting to breathe out of water as her face went from red to pale white.
“Please. Leave it be,” Caroline whispered behind him, but he ignored it.
“I am waiting,” he barked into the woman’s face when she did not answer him a moment later.
The woman jumped and quickly bowed her head.
“Apologies, sir—”
“It is Your Grace,” Damien snarled.
Somehow, the woman’s face grew paler as her eyes widened with awareness.
“Your Grace!” she quickly stammered. “I... I did not know. Please accept my sincerest apologies. What an honor to have you visit our village. H-how can we help you?”
Damien straightened as he kept his glare trained on the trembling woman before him. Then, after a moment, he broke eye contact and made a show of taking a long look around the shop. He grimaced with dissatisfaction. It was a place that clearly did not cater to the wealthiest members of society.
“My betrothed is in need of new dresses,” he said stiffly. “Though it appears you are severely lacking in an inventory that would be worthy of her beauty.”
“Oh, Your Grace, if I may, you would be pleasantly surprised by what we can create here,” the woman replied.
As if understanding just how much money she could stand to make from him, the woman’s stuttering ceased, and her voice grew more confident as she waved a hand in Caroline’s direction.
“I have a very talented seamstress, and she can show you some of the better inventory from my storeroom. My usual clientele cannot afford such finery, so I do not display it, but I believe we could create something lovely for your betrothed.”
Smirking, Damien turned around and looked at Caroline. Her beautiful, full lips remained parted in apparent shock, but her oak brown eyes sparkled with fury at his intervention.
“What do you think, my love?” he asked, and his smirk grew into a devilish grin as he heard the woman behind him gasp. “Should we acquire your new wardrobe here? Or take our business elsewhere?”
“I… Your… Your betrothed…”
Damien whirled back to the stammering woman.
“Perhaps if you had taken a moment to stop your berating of her, you would have learned that I am the reason she was late. You see, she just accepted my proposal, and we simply had to take a minute to celebrate,” he said, his deep voice coming out smooth and laced with condescension.
Amusement tunneled through him as the woman’s face went from ghostly pale to pink, to a deep shade of purple. Her eyes flicked from him to Caroline, then back to him, as if she was struggling to accept the grave error she had just made.
“I... I did not know,” the woman whispered, taking a step back from them both. “Forgive me, I did not know.”
“Even so, why would you speak to her like that?” Damien asked, cocking his head to the side as he scrutinized the woman. “Do you feel pleasure in making someone feel so lowly?”
“Do you?” Caroline murmured, and he could not help but chuckle.
Instead of answering her, though, he stepped to her side. He nearly put his hand on her lower back, but then the rules she had given flashed in his mind, and instead, he clasped his hands behind his own back.
“My betrothed and I are leaving in two days,” he informed the woman, his face once more falling into a blank mask. “Can you put together a couple of dresses in that time, or do we need to take our money elsewhere?”
“I can do it, Your Grace,” the woman answered quickly, clutching her hands tightly before her. “Caroline... I mean, Miss Mason, would you please pick out your fabrics?”
“She will sit as a customer should, and you will bring them for her to choose from,” Damien commanded, narrowing his eyes at her.
“Of course, of course,” the woman said, nodding vehemently. “Please, take a seat, both of you, and I shall gather some choices.”
Damien turned his back to her dismissively almost at once and took a seat, but Caroline remained rooted in place until her employer all but ran to the back. The moment she was gone, Caroline whirled on him with a disapproving look, shaking her pretty head in disbelief.
“Was that completely necessary?” she asked, meeting his eye level now that he was seated. “You frightened that poor woman!”
“Oh, you mean the same way she was trying to frighten you?” he retorted, crossing one of his long legs over the other as he got comfortable. “She is used to being the most frightening person in the room; it did her some good to see that she will not always be.”
“She is my employer, and I was late!” Caroline insisted. “She had every right to be angry.”
“She was your employer,” Damien corrected with bite in his tone. “As of this moment, you are her customer, not her employee. And even if she is angry, she is not justified in treating you like that.”
He took another look around the paltry shop and snickered.
“Perhaps we should purchase this place, and she could be your employee. Would that not be amusing?”
Caroline shook her head, looking at him with those big brown eyes as if he had gone mad.
“No, it would not!” she whispered vehemently. “What is wrong with you? This is a civilized world! You cannot speak to people like that, and you certainly cannot buy every business that offends your senses! This is a person’s livelihood!”
“You were her livelihood,” Damien corrected, sweeping a hand around the shop. “Tell me, which of these dresses on display was made by your hands and not hers?”
Satisfaction rolled through Damien’s veins as her cheeks flushed a light bashful pink.
“Well?” he urged.
Caroline flicked her eyes toward the dresses.
“All... all of them,” she muttered.
“And has she even picked up a needle and thread since she employed you?” he asked.
Caroline gave him a tired look as her eyes came back to him, then sighed.
“No,” she sighed.