Page 20 of Unbound Duchess

They all turned to see precisely that.

“I will pay more,” Benedict said hurriedly to Nigel. “I can get the funds to you by the morning.”

“No!” Ellen spoke up.

All three men turned their attention back to her. Ellen faltered for a moment under their intense gazes, but she drew strength as she remembered Deborah’s words.

“The auction house makes more money when a woman chooses to enter on her own, yes?” she asked, staring at Nigel.

He let out a grunt as he nodded.

Benedict paled further as he shook his head.

“I am speaking as a woman who chose to enter this auction, then,” she stated defiantly, tossing a hate-filled glance at Benedict. “I am choosing to give my bid completely to the house as long as you uphold this man’s purchase.”

“You cannot do that!” Benedict snarled.

“She can, and she did,” Nigel barked back.

“Do not make me get Stanhope involved in this,” Benedict cautioned as Nigel reached for Ellen. “He will take my side, and you will lose your job!”

Nigel chortled as he wrapped his hand around Ellen’s arm. “Doubt it.”

Nigel’s grip was nowhere near as brutal as Benedict’s, but it still stung as he pulled her away from Benedict and pushed her toward the duke. She stumbled at the last moment, but before she could even gasp in surprise, hard, muscular arms gently wrapped around her and placed her safely and firmly on her feet.

“No,” Benedict said, shaking his head, as he reached up to yank at his hair. “No. This is not how this was supposed to happen.”

“Not for you, anyway,” Ellen said bitterly.

Benedict’s cold eyes sparked with fury as he lunged for her. Ellen flinched and closed her eyes, mentally preparing herself for the fresh bruises he was no doubt about to give her. She felt nothing. She opened her eyes, and her mouth fell open as she found Benedict dangling wide-eyed and red-faced from the duke’s grip as he held her torturer up in the air by the neck.

“You do not touch her again.” The duke’s voice was cold and full of fury as he spoke the words in an eerily calm, low tone.

Benedict began to cough as he kept squirming in the duke’s grip. His now bloodshot eyes turned to Ellen, and that was when the duke gave him a violent shake.

“Do not even look at her,” he snarled.

“It is time to go,” a man said.

Ellen turned slowly from watching her cousin’s face turn purple, and found another man in a gray mask standing on the duke’s opposite side.

“Yes, it is,” Nigel agreed gruffly. “You got your woman. We got our money. Best you leave now. We don’t allow fighting in here.”

Still, the duke did not let go or look away from the man in his grip.

“Please,” Ellen whispered, tentatively reaching up and placing her hands gently on the duke’s biceps. “I want to go.”

“Never again.” The duke aimed his growling words at Benedict, then released him.

He fell to the floor in a coughing fit, clutching his throat as he tried to rasp out Ellen’s name. It was too late. The hand that had once been strangling her cousin was now wrapped firmly and gently around Ellen’s, and she was being led out of the auction by the Duke of Blackford.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“What have you done? This was not our plan!”

“It was necessary. I was not going to leave her.”

“We are supposed to be destroying this place, not funding it!”