Page 7 of Weave me a Rope
After that speech, he released her mouth and then let go of her entirely. Cordelia kept silent. For the moment. He was right about the consequences of screaming, but they wouldn’t stop her if it became necessary.
“That’s a good girl,” the duke said, approvingly.
Cordelia ignored the provocation of the patronizing remark. “I suppose this is about your stupid wager.”
The duke raised his eyebrows. “You know about the wager?”
“You won’t win it this way, you know. The conditions called for a seduction. What you have in mind is a rape.”
His eyebrows shot higher. “What sort of maiden are you?” he demanded. “You should not even know that word.”
Stupid man.“An educated one, obviously. My point remains.”
He shifted restlessly but rallied. “If I say it is a seduction, who will know any different? You are hardly going to talk, and the men at the clubs won’t doubt the word of a duke.”
It was Cordelia’s turn to raise her eyebrows. “Why would I not talk? What have I to lose? I am leaving your circles anyway, and being ruined in the eyes of your world will not stop me from helping my uncle run his business and, if I choose, finding a husband in my own world. After all, money does much to paper over scandal.”
The duke frowned in thought, narrowing his eyes, then shook his head as if to clear it. “Enough. I am going to swive you now. Relax and you might even enjoy it.” He took a step forward and Cordelia stepped back, further into the shadows of a tree where, she hoped, she would not be noticed reaching through the slit in her side seam to the pocket she wore under her gown.
“Don’t be foolish,” the duke scolded, his diction still perfect though he wove slightly where he stood and the fumes of brandy were so strong, she fancied they, rather than her fear, accounted for her light-headedness.
He took another step, and she backed away again, fetching up against the trunk of a tree. The duke chuckled. “That will do nicely,” he said, and pressed up against her, using his body to trap her as his hands grasped her face to hold it still for his mouth.
Cordelia brought her hand out from her skirt and stabbed the duke in his thigh.
He screamed and fell back, ripping the knife from her hand.
Chapter Four
It was nogood. Spen had tried to follow his father’s decree and find a wife among the suitable young ladies on offer this Season, but his heart had other ideas. His heart had it right. No one was more suitable for Spen the man than Cordelia. As for Spen the prospective marquess, Cordelia was clever, competent, and capable. She would be an excellent marchioness, whatever his father and aunt might think.
Somehow, he was going to have to persuade them to accept Cordelia as his bride, for Spen could marry no one else. That is, if Cordelia would have him.
He was late to tonight’s ball, for he had rejected several cravats as insufficiently elegant for the occasion, changed his waistcoat at least three times and then reverted to the first one, and realized halfway to the ball that he had, after all his fussing, left the token he had purchased that day. He hurried home and collected it from his desk, where he had left it.
It was a ring featuring two clasped hands, one in gold and one in silver. He hoped to replace it with something more valuable when he had his father’s permission and that of her uncle, but he wanted to give her something this evening when he declared his love and asked her to marry him. The friendship ring, as the jeweler called it, had been both within reach of his allowance and meaningful, for hers were the hands he wished to clasp for the rest of his life.
He could not see her anywhere in the ballroom. She must be out on the terrace in the garden with her aunt and her friend Regina. It was a large garden. When he did not see her on the terrace, he began methodically searching the paths.
He found her aunt in a like pursuit, very distressed and close to tears. “She was right behind me,” she kept saying. “I cannot understand what happened. I was only a few paces further ahead, but Miss Faversham was explaining the pattern for her shawl, and I lost sight of her. Only for a moment. This is all my fault. She was right behind me. Oh dear, what can have happened to her?”
Spen’s vague sense of concern sharpened and coalesced into fear. “This way,” he said, leading Mrs. Walters into a path that struck off into the farther reaches of the garden.
Surely Richport would not attack her? It was only a bet, after all. That said, Richport’s name was still showing in the betting books under the wager when everyone else had struck theirs off.
As the path turned to run beside the wall at the bottom of the garden, he heard voices and then a scream, followed by a man’s voice, bellowing. At the first sound of the scream, Spen threw himself off the path and into the foliage, tracking straight in the direction of the commotion. He was almost upon the source of the noise before his brain had processed that the screamer was also male, and by then he could understand the words in the bellow.
Someone was accusing a woman, in the most vulgar of terms, of assaulting him. Spen hurled himself through the last bush in his way, bursting into a clearing where Cordelia stood at bay against a tree, a small lady’s pistol in her hand. The Duke of Richport was struggling from the ground, bent over at an odd angle, and spewing invectively.
Spen rushed to Cordelia, and she moved into his sheltering arm but did not take her eyes off Richport or lower the gun.
“That hellion stabbed me and threatened to shoot me!” the duke accused.
Sure enough, even in the half-light of dusk, Spen could see the handle of a knife protruding from Richport’s thigh. “You’ll need a doctor for that,” he said.
“I’ll have the bitch arrested,” Richport threatened, his words slurring a little. He was obviously drunk, which might have helped with the pain, at that. “She’ll hang for stabbing a duke.”
“I understand your point,” Spen said, tightening his arm around Cordelia. “Whoever did this should at least be thoroughly questioned, and then given a public trial to find out if there are any mitigating circumstances. I am sure the scandal sheets will be grateful to ferret out every detail of what led to your defeat at the hands of a woman. Once we get you some medical help, we will send out some servants to search the grounds and see if they can find any clues to show where the woman who knifed you has gone.”
