Page 17 of Trapped with the Forbidden Duke
Lord Stockton turned red in anger. “Her—her brother was there!” he sputtered.
Lucien stalked forward, his glare cutting as he loomed over the Earl. “Make no mistake, Stockton, for this is only a bit of fun. I do not need to blackmail you to make my message clear. You, however, clearly needed to. But you crossed a smart lady, and now she has my protection. They both do. You will leave them alone, or what you did to my home will look like a small mess compared to the damage I will wreak on your comfortable life here.”
He pointedly looked around the room before he began to walk away.
But he was stopped by Lord Stockton’s voice. “This is not over!”
Lucien shot him a self-satisfied smile over his shoulder. “Oh, it very much is.”
Edwina gasped awake to yet another noise, except this time it was not raised voices.
No, this time it was one voice—a muffled scream, the type that she had grown used to.
“Another night terror,” she whispered to herself, quickly slipping out of bed.
She grabbed her robe from the foot of her bed, where she had discarded it before falling asleep, and rushed out of her room and down the hallway.
Her thoughts were not even on Lucien or what he might think, but on her brother, on his night terrors. When she finally reached his door, she was surprised to find that somebody had already beaten her to it.
“What is happening?” Lucien demanded as he stood in front of Nicholas’s door.
“Night terrors,” Edwina snapped, thankful that this part, at least, was not only caused by laudanum but also memories from the war. “You have never seen a man endure such things?”
Lucien shook his head.
Inside, the screams had tapered off, leaving Edwina only with the Duke to focus on. And to notice his shirtless state,andthe way his breeches hung loosely on his hips.
Her mouth ran dry at the sharply defined ridges of his abdomen, which vanished scandalously beneath the waistband of his breeches. A dark copper line of hair led from his navel to his breeches. For a moment, Edwina followed it with her eyes, imagining how much further that alluring trail of hair went.
In turn, she felt his gaze cut right through her, roving over her thin nightgown. The look he gave her was heated, pinning her in place. She did not care that he had caught her staring—shedidonly stare, and she swallowed at the sight of him so underdressed.
What would it be like to trail her lips over those deep-cut grooves and bite?—
“Lady Edwina.” The Duke’s voice cut through her thoughts, and she snapped to attention. He had his hand on the door handle. “When you have stopped ogling me, you might realize that Nicholas’s door is locked. Is this usual?”
Nervous, Edwina shook her head.
She moved to the door and knocked. “Nicholas?”
There was no answer, and her heart began to beat faster.
“Nicholas.”
Again, nothing, so she banged on the door, worrying.
“Nick!”
She rarely called her brother that—a slip of the tongue in a moment of sheer panic, from their younger years.
She slammed her palm on the door over and over to no avail.
“Move aside,” the Duke ordered, his gaze fixed on her.
“What?”
“Move aside. I’m going to break down the door.”
No sooner had Edwina moved—more out of shock at what the Duke intended to do than anything—than he slammed his boot into the door, breaking it down.
