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The duke’s watery gaze, scornful and contemptuous, swerved to Eden. He thrust his bony jaw forward and pounded his gnarled hands upon the chair’s arms.

“By God, you have bloody-damn nerve, Manchester.”

She cringed at the rancor radiating from his grace. This was a huge mistake. She turned to tell Lord Sterling as much again, but he halted her with a commanding look. Much more went on here than an uninvited guest’s imposition.

This was a battle between two stags, the old sickly animal not willing to relinquish his position, and the new determined that it be so.

Though his features remained impassive, she didn’t miss the spark of anger flashing in his lordship’s eyes.

“I’ll thank you to refrain from cursing with a lady present, Father.”

“Phsaw. Lady my arse.” His grace made a curt, sweeping gesture and leaned forward, his lips curled into a snarl. “You’ve so little respect for me and the duchy that you’ve brought your strumpet to this noble house?”

Something dangerous, almost sinister flexed across Lord Sterling’s face.

“Sir, you cross the mark. Miss Eden is my guest, and I insist she be treated with the respect due her.”

“I’ll just go.” Eden said as she removed his coat from her shoulders. “Home is not so very far.”

It only seemed so. In the dark. During a downpour. When she was already saturated and quaking with cold.

Nonetheless, she was determined to leave. A vile, palatable thing, the duke’s animosity stretched the distance across the entry, its tentacles coiling around her and squeezing the air from her lungs.

She turned to depart, but Lord Sterling’s firm hand on her elbow halted her.

“No. You shan’t. You will stay.”

A command. Not a request.

Unrelenting steeliness made each syllable clipped, but it was the flint-like resolve in his eyes, almost pewter gray with controlled ire, that he speared his sire that shushed her protest.

A test of wills.

If staying meant Lord Sterling won this round against his devilish father, then by Jupiter, Eden would stay.

“Wait.” The duke clawed at his rumpled neckcloth, his face an unhealthy pallor. “Demme. Is she . . .? No, by all that’s holy. You would not dare.”

The old man’s mouth worked, and for a moment, she thought he might be in the throes of an apoplectic fit.

She swallowed as every eye focused on her, and for the first time in a great while, humiliation and mortification sluiced through her, heating her cheeks. Head tilted at a proud angle, she didn’t flinch from his grace’s caustic scrutiny.

“That’s . . . That’s Andrew’s bastard.” Face contorted in disbelief and bony fingers clutching the chair arms, he trembled with rage. “You have the gall to bring Satan’s spawn here? Into my house? When you know how I feel about those . . . those maggots?”

“Father . . .” Holding himself rigid, his lordship strode to the duke. Towering over the shrunken man, he visibly fought to control his ire. “Make no mistake. Insult Miss Eden again, and I’ll leave Perygrim this very night. And I shall never return whilst you yet breathe.”

That took the wind out of the old man’s sails.

His grace collapsed into his chair, and mouth pressed into a pout, arranged his drooping blanket across his spindly thighs. The smile he formed as he raked Eden with his hostile gaze was nothing short of evil. Full of malicious satisfaction as well.

“Fornicate all you want with the drab then, but in a month Viscountess Bickford and her charming daughter arrive for a week-long house party at Perygrim. Lady Bickford assures me Gabriella will make an exceptional duchess. I expect you to honor my pledge that you’ll take her to wife. Do your duty to the dukedom by proposing before the party is over.”