Duke Howard kissed her, and shock paralyzed her as he forced his tongue into her mouth. His tongue was slimy, his kiss slobbery. He groped her breast. The violation jolted her into action, and she stood swiftly. “What are you doing, your Grace? We are not wed yet.”
“I see how you want me. Wearing that.” His gaze flicked pointedly up and down her figure. “Let us not deny ourselves any longer.”
She took a couple of steps back, her nostrils flaring. “I confess that I’m uncomfortable with your directness. Perhaps we should rejoin the others.”
His eyes darkened with anger at her rejection, and he strode to her. He kissed her roughly again and without skill, his saliva painted lips feeling like a violation against her skin. Her lips were still against his onslaught as he tried to force her mouth open.
She turned her head from him, leaving his lips to land without purchase on her cheek.
She stood tall and raised her chin. “Are you quite finished?” she asked icily.
“Lady Elizabeth, I had no idea you were so cold,” he said, his thin lips peeling back from his teeth in a leer.
“You there,” he barked at his serving girl. The serving girl bowed her head and looked at her shoes in subservience.
His message could not be clearer—she would find no allies here.
Duke Howard grabbed Elizabeth by the hair and wrenched her face towards him, denying her an escape. She met his gaze unflinchingly—even as the pain in her scalp made her eyes water—and lifted her chin in challenge. “I think it is time for me to leave,” Elizabeth said loudly.
He tightened his grip on her hair and pushed her up against a wall.
Enough was enough.
Ignoring all rules of propriety, she smacked his cheek. The duke weathered the hit and grabbed her wrist in a vice-like grip. She struggled, but he held firm with surprising strength for his age. She tried to bang her head against the duke’s forehead or step on his foot, but he anticipated both, moving his feet where she could not reach them. She tried to scratch at him with her nails, and he pinned her arms to the wall. This was clearly not the first time Duke Howard had accosted a lady in private—an unsettling realization.
She opened her mouth to scream, and Duke Howard shook his head, “If you scream, if you shout, I will tell everyone that you gave yourself to me willingly tonight, and there will never be a chance of you finding another husband, there will be no amount of riches that will wipe the stain from your family name.”
In the split second it took her to figure out what to do, he leaned in and sniffed audibly, smelling her neck. “A nice perfume,” Duke Howard said. His nose grazed her neck, and she wrinkled her nose in disgust. A hand grazed her thigh, and she twisted free and slapped him again, her palm connecting loudly with his cheek, his jowl jostling from the impact.
Duke Howard’s expression darkened. “I will make you pay for that, dearest betrothed.”
Her nails scrabbled at his arms, his face, anything she could reach before he clenched his fingers around her wrist and imprisoned both once again.
She took a step towards the door and the grip on her wrists turned painful.
“Your Grace, let us return to the party. I would like to leave,” she said, her voice changing from firm to pleading.
She pleaded to whatever gods were listening to get her out of this mess. To send her father or her mother to check on her. For Charlotte to come find her, for anyone to sense that she was in distress.
But no one came.
She tried to wrench herself free, but to no avail.
He kneed between her legs, to try and pry them open. Panic gripped her senses, her terror freezing her in place.
Her temples started pounding.
Duke Howard smiled over her, seeming to enjoy her look of absolute terror. He licked her cheek, his tongue wet and slobbery, the act purely to show her that he could.
“Please … please, your Grace.” She screwed up her eyes and looked away. Her heart pounded in her chest and the pressure in her skull grew nearly unbearable.
Her last hope crumbled and broke.
Duke Howard leered above her with an awful smile as he realized the same thing she had. They were well and truly alone, and no one would breathe a wordof what happened here. No one would believe her, even if she did tell someone; Duke Howard was well regarded by all.
Her headache intensified, her temples aching sharply. She ignored it, and stared at the ceiling, beseeching any gods that were listening to do something, anything to get her out of this mess. A knee rubbed against the front of her thigh, and she wanted to cry.
Suddenly, a deep voice said from across the room, “I would step away if I were you.”
