Page 82 of An Offer By the Beastly Duke

“You forged it,” she whispered, her voice trembling with rising horror.

“Very good,” Charles purred, stepping forward. “I always did admire your intellect. I always knew my brother was too simple to have a wife like you.”

Nicholas grabbed her hand with a terrifyingly tight grip. Penelope instinctively shifted her weight, pulling her son subtly but firmly behind the protective barrier of her green silk skirts.

“You bribed a servant,” she spat.

Charles smiled faintly, a hollow, mocking sound leaving his throat. “Everyone has a price, dear Duchess. A few gold sovereigns can buy an immense amount of loyalty from a frightened stable boy.”

“Leave,” Penelope said, forcing her voice to remain steady, though her knees felt like water. “Malcolm will be back from the tenant cottages at any moment. If he finds you here, he will tear you apart.”

“I do not think I shall leave just yet,” Charles said smoothly.

Above them, the rain intensified into a deafening roar, hammering against the glass roof like thousands of frantic knuckles.

Hector stepped forward, his thick hackles rising completely erect against his spine. He bared his teeth, letting out a growl that was low, deep, and vibrating with pure canine aggression.

Charles’s eyes flicked toward the massive hound with sharp, aristocratic annoyance. “Control that wretched beast, Penelope, or I will have it shot.”

“Hector, heel,” Penelope said quietly, her heart breaking with terror.

The dog stayed directly near Nicholas’s legs, his dark eyes fixed unblinkingly on the intruder, his throat still rumbling with a low, protective growl.

Charles began walking down the narrow central path, his muddy boots clicking rhythmically against the stone.

“You look exceptionally lovely as a duchess, Penelope,” he murmured, his gaze tracing over her form with a sickening, possessive intensity. “Though I must confess, as much as your new, grand title suits my tastes far less, there is an exquisite thought of you writhing beneath that scarred brute. A woman stooping so low, when she could have a far easier choice. A choice that has been right there this whole time.”

“Stop it.”

“I warned you in London what would happen if you crossed me.”

“You threatened my son, Charles! You are a monster.”

“I offered you a perfectly civilized choice. You could have been mine.”

Nicholas pressed harder against her side, his small body shaking. Charles stopped a few paces away, looking down at the boy with open, unadulterated irritation.

“The bastard boy should have been sent away to a strict boarding school years ago. He clings to your skirts like a pathetic little girl.”

“Do not dare speak about my son that way!”

“Why not?” Charles laughed, a sharp, ugly sound.

Nicholas stiffened violently behind her. Penelope felt the sharp, agonizing contraction of her son’s heart through his small hand.

A sudden, blinding fury flashed through Penelope so violently that her hands shook. The fear evaporated, replaced by the lethal instincts of a mother protecting her cub. “You vile, disgusting creature,” she hissed.

Charles laughed softly, a low, breathy sound that made her skin crawl. “Ah. There she is. There is the fiery girl I remember the day I was introduced to you on the eve of your wedding to my late brother.”

He took two predatory steps closer. Penelope immediately backed Nicholas farther into the shadows behind her, her arm extended like a shield.

“You are trembling,” Charles observed, his eyes sliding slowly, greasily over her pale face, her exposed throat, and the heavy curve of her body beneath the dark green silk. “Are you cold?”

Revulsion, thick and suffocating, crawled over her skin like insects. “You never had any claim on me, Charles. Not then, and certainly not now.”

“I could have given you everything you ever desired in London! Wealth, society, a proper gentleman’s bed.”

“You tried to blackmail me into your bed using my son’s legitimacy!”