Stenfax looked at him. The normally impeccable butler was in his dressing gown and a crooked nightcap. He held a candle that gave his wrinkled face an eerie glow.
“Why are you in my room at three in the morning?” Stenfax asked, but he despite his calm tone, he was beginning to worry. There was no good reason he would be disturbed by his staff like this. Only tragic ones.
“You have a visitor, my lord,” Xavier said, and from his shifting, he was very uncomfortable giving this news.
“Who?” Stenfax said, his tone sharp at last.
“It’s the Duchess of Kirkford, my lord. And a maid.” The man shifted again. “And a small valise.”
“What?” Stenfax barked, throwing the covers off and grabbing for his robe.
“They—they arrived very suddenly and I put them in the parlor. They both seemed very upset and—” The servant cut himself off and Stenfax took a step toward him.
“And?”
“Her Grace has a nasty bruise on her eye, my lord.”
Stenfax tensed. He had left Vivien’s club hours before and Elise had been seemingly safe in the arms of Winstead. Now she was here and injured.
“She was hit,” he ground out past clenched teeth.
“It appears so,” Xavier said with a solemn nod.
Stenfax took a long breath, mostly so he wouldn’t scream out his anger and anguish at her pain. Then he looked at Xavier. “Send the maid to the servants’ quarters, make sure she’s comfortable there. And the valise may be taken up to a chamber for her ladyship. You choose, and leave the door open so I may escort her there later. I’ll be down in a moment to speak to Elise—Her Grace.”
“Yes, sir.” Xavier executed a sharp bow before he moved for the door.
“And Xavier?” Stenfax said, keeping him from departing.
“Yes?” the butler asked, turning back.
“The wine tonight was chilled. Do we still have any ice?”
“A little,” Xavier said. “Most has melted.”
“Gather what we have left in a cloth and give it to Her Grace. For her injury.”
Xavier nodded, and this time Stenfax let him leave the room. He paced the chamber for a moment, not because he didn’t want to rush down to meet Elise, but because he desperately did want to. He needed to be calm before he saw her. Whatever she’d been through that night, he wasn’t about to make it worse by panicking and blustering.
Except he wasn’t going to be calm. He knew it. He also knew something else, powerfully and clearly. He was in love with Elise. Still. Always. Forever.
And it was awful.
Elise sat in the chair by the fire, waiting for Lucien, as she had been directed to do by his butler Xavier a few moments before. Ruth had gone with the servant, valise in hand, and Elise had been alone ever since.
Alone was not a good place to be in her current mindset. She kept reliving those terrifying moments with Ambrose, the stark realization that he would rape her, and after she hurt his eye, that he might even do worse than that.
She also kept reliving his threats. Could he be right that Toby had a book of secrets? She wouldn’t put it past him. He’d loved to hold those kinds of things over people, for sport rather than gain. He had lived to control and hurt.
He had died doing the same, in a duel over a married woman who he hadn’t even cared about. He’d just wanted to get one over on her husband.
Which had also been his motivation for “taking her” from Stenfax. She had been a trophy during their marriage, nothing else. He brought her out when he wanted to show her off and ignored her when he didn’t.
She shivered at the cruelty of both the former Duke of Kirkford and the current. Luckily her thoughts were interrupted when Xavier returned to the parlor with a cloth in his hand.
“For your eye, Your Grace,” he said, not meeting her gaze as he handed over the item.
She took it and felt the coldness of ice folded within the soft layers of fabric. She lifted it with a blush and covered her throbbing eye.
