Stolen by the Ruthless Duke (Stolen by the Duke #2)

Chapter 26

Chapter Twenty-Six

“ M axwell!”

Freddie chased after a sobbing Lucy as she barreled down the path towards Maxwell and Ophelia.

Ophelia was on her feet in an instant, as was Maxwell, his eyes falling on Freddie as they came to a stop.

“Do not look at me,” Freddie said quickly. “I am not the culprit.”

“He is not!” Lucy cried. “He is not. He speaks the truth.” Her breath came in short gasps. “I—He—I saw him?—”

At first, Maxwell’s thoughts went to his uncle, but that was impossible. The man was a ghost, long gone and buried. But terror widened his cousin’s eyes, and she clung to his hand. She trembled violently.

“Who did you see?”

When she did not answer, only pressed herself to his side, Maxwell looked to Freddie for answers.

“The late Duke had a friend, the Earl of Barrington. He is present at tonight’s ball. Lucy wished to greet Lady Kirkland after a slightly rough first meeting several days ago, but the Earl was there. He began to speak about the late Duke and showed his surprise at Lucy out in public again.”

“It was terrible,” Lucy whispered. “It was… It was like being back in that dining hall, facing my father… And he… the Earl… he spoke about him like nothing was wrong. As though he was not a monster.”

“Where is he now?” Maxwell demanded.

The Earl had misplaced his friendship. Maxwell had appealed to the Earl of Barrington when his uncle was still alive, hinted at his behavior, and the Earl had laughed it off.

Every duke gets rather power-hungry, Maxwell. Do not fret. Anthony will be fine soon.

But he had not been fine, and everything had gotten worse.

“He is in the ballroom,” Freddie said.

“I shall take Lucy home,” Maxwell said, looking at Ophelia, who was already shaking her head.

“Allow me to be with her,” she said gently. “You are her protector, yes, but perhaps she needs some… female company at the moment.”

Maxwell stiffened for a moment, reluctant to leave his cousin. But Lucy only nodded, shuddering as she sniffed.

“Fine,” he relented. “Freddie, you and I will go and speak with the Earl.”

“Indeed, we shall.”

“Please do not antagonize him,” Lucy begged. “Please, Cousin.”

“I shall not. I only wish to warn him off speaking about your father in your presence. Your appearances at events are not for him to comment on. He was well aware of your father’s behavior, and he still befriended him. I will make sure he will not approach you ever again.”

“Make sure she returns home safely,” Maxwell murmured to Ophelia moments before he strode away, leaving them both in the garden, the moonlight guiding their way back to the carriages.

Freddie and Maxwell’s figures retreated, growing near invisible as they ventured back towards the house.

Ophelia looped her arm through Lucy’s, her heart breaking for the way she trembled.

“Do you wish to remain by the lake or go home?” she asked.

“I do not wish to be anywhere near here a moment longer,” Lucy whispered, her eyes wide, fixed on the house. “I do not care that my father is dead. I only care that I am as far away as possible from any mention of him.”

“Then we shall get you back to Stormcliff Hall.”

Without letting herself worry that Maxwell might very well beat the Earl to a pulp for distressing his cousin, Ophelia led Lucy back through the gardens in a tense silence.

By the time they climbed into the carriage, Lucy was still shaking, but she slumped on the carriage bench, exhausted.

A haunted look crept into her eyes as she gazed out the window.

“Lucy, I think you are incredibly brave,” Ophelia told her, her voice quiet so she did not rattle her any further. “If you do not mind my sharing my own experience?—”

“I do not.”

Ophelia nodded. “When my stepmother made my life miserable—and she did very much —I completely withdrew from all social events. I could not face the ton. I could not face how everybody mentioned my father or my mother. Their deaths, asking how I felt. I could not comprehend that I was no longer attending on the arm of my father.

“He often told me stories of the balls where he danced with my mother. One time, during a garden party, it rained, but they kept dancing on the lawn. Another time, he told me about how my mother ate so many treats at a dinner party that she got ill and had to leave early. When those stories stopped due to his death, I could not endure anybody or anything.”

She leaned over, taking Lucy’s hands in her own. “Yet, here you are, braving the ton. Here you are, dancing with suitors, laughing with Freddie. You are finding your life beyond your grief, and that takes courage. More than you realize.”

“It is not only grief that haunts me,” Lucy murmured, her eyes growing dull as her voice shook. “It is the—the pain, the horrid abuse I endured at my father’s hand. It is walking into a ballroom knowing that either nobody knew about what I had endured or they did know and did nothing about it. I do not know what is worse. Either way, people choose to see my father as an admirable man. Sometimes, admirable men do bad things, do they not?”

“That is true.”

“That was not my father. He was a bad man who did terrible things. There were some mornings I could not even sit comfortably for the aches that sprawled across my body.” Her hands cupped her elbows, hugging herself. “Bruises would mar my skin, and my uncle, Maxwell’s father, would laugh and tell me they suited my complexion. My father was worse, emboldened by that. He told me that the purple bruises brought out the color of my eyes.”

Ophelia gasped, squeezing Lucy’s hands tighter.

“He did not relent, not for a moment. The abuse was constant, and I felt his eyes on me everywhere I went. I could not move, for he saw everything I did. He would corner me, and his hands would reach for me, and I would be trapped.” Lucy swallowed, her eyes welling with fresh tears.

“Maxwell often protected me from him. He found ways to sneak me out of the servants’ entrances or lie for me when I snuck away on my horse. But every time I returned, my father would be waiting somewhere. Every day brought another horror, Ophelia. Some days, I feel as though more tears have created the foundation of that castle than anything else. Maxwell tried to save me.”

By killing him , Ophelia mused, her fear of her husband lessening just a bit more.

How could she fear a man who had used his strength to kill his cousin’s tormentor?

“Lucy, I am so sorry,” she said.

As Lucy swayed with the carriage’s movement, she leaned against the wall, her head cushioned by the padded velvet. “I still see his ghost in my dreams. I see the way his head was struck with the candelabra. I see the way he bled over the rug in the parlor. I see how, even in his last moments, he reached for me, as if to lay his hands on me one last time.”

She shuddered, but Ophelia caught something she said.

Struck with the candelabra .

Although she did not want to think too deeply about it, she had the sense that, given his penchant for boxing, her husband would have beaten his uncle bloody for everything he had done to Lucy.

So why would he use a weapon if he was more than capable of doing it himself? Lucy would have been no older than eight and ten. How many years had she endured her father’s abuse?

Ophelia felt her hands clenching.

When she pulled away, she saw how Lucy’s fingers curled around thin air, forming a small circle with her fingers and thumb.

No . No, it is not possible.

Because surely… Surely Lucy had not killed her father.

No, it had to have been Maxwell. Lucy herself had claimed that Maxwell had protected her, saved her from her father.

But what if he did, just not in the way I have thought? That the entire ton has thought?

Ophelia considered how Lucy had disappeared after her father’s death, conveniently slipping away to live with her aunt in France while Maxwell went away on business. Perhaps one of them had traveled to escape.

Just not the person everybody thought.

Gazing at Lucy, who was staring out the carriage window, Ophelia pieced it all together.

Lucy would not have had enough strength to kill Anthony Harding herself. She swung a candelabra at him instead. A fatal blow, delivered in the right place. Her fingers moved over her hands now, as if scrubbing them.

Ophelia reached out to pry her fingers away. Lucy started, a gasp catching in her throat, as if caught.

“Lucy,” Ophelia whispered, “you did what you had to do to survive. Do not ever feel guilty about such a thing.”

“Maxwell protected me,” Lucy told her. “He made it all go away.”

He did—just not in the way I thought.

He did so in the way he arranged for her to leave Stormcliff. Which meant that he had taken the blame, found a reason to travel, and used it as a reason to leave.

Ophelia’s heart cracked open.

A poor daughter, abused and tired, unable to take it any longer. Her cousin, who only wished for her to feel happiness, protecting her from a lifetime of damnation for saving herself.

“You are so strong, Lucy,” Ophelia told her. “You are stronger than many women. And I am sorry you had to endure everything that you did. A father should have held you when you cried, told you stories, and prepared you for your debut. He should have loved and protected you, not been the man you had to be protected from.

“Those bruises are in the past, Lucy. Whatever else he inflicted on you, it is in the past. That man cannot harm you ever again This is your time to heal—to grieve the little girl that you were and honor the stronger woman you have become.”

“Do you think the abuse makes me stronger?”

Ophelia shook her head. “No, for you should not have had to go through that to become strong. What makes you stronger is still being here to tell your story.”

Lucy gave her a watery smile, her breath hitching. “Thank you, Ophelia.”

“You know you can always speak with me.”

“I can.” Lucy nodded. “I have found a friend in you. Truly.”

Ophelia squeezed her hands again before leaning back.

Stormcliff Hall appeared on the horizon.

She had an idea. “What is the one thing you have always wished to destroy in your father’s castle?”

Lucy’s eyes lit up with vengeance. “There is a particular chair in the drawing room that my father loved. He often sat on it while he spewed his venom. Sometimes, he would have me sit in it, knowing that the ridges and edges of the chair would dig into the bruises and wounds. Maxwell did not know about that chair, for he was not always allowed entry when my father was in that room.”

“Then we shall destroy it,” Ophelia told her. “I shall help you reclaim part of yourself tonight that your abuse has taken from you. We shall destroy that chair, get rid of it—anything. I wish to see you victorious tonight, Lucy. Your father might haunt your nightmares, but he no longer haunts these halls, and you may fight his ghost tonight.”

Together, when the two emerged from the carriage, they went into the drawing room.

Lucy steeled herself as she looked at the chair, painfully dull in the shadowed room. But she saw haunted memories that Ophelia could not.

When the chair was ruined, and the maids had been sent to clean the debris away, Lucy walked with Ophelia to her chambers, flushed and smiling.

“Thank you, Ophelia.”

“Of course. Any time.”

“You are like the sister I never had.”

As she heard the words, Ophelia felt a pang of pain. The guilt, the shame, the torment of still not knowing where Bridget was…

“As are you,” she returned, trying to soothe her thoughts.

They bid each other good night with a promise to visit the village together the following day, and Ophelia retreated to her rooms.

She snuck into Maxwell’s rooms through the connecting door after being prepared for bed.

Patiently, she waited for her husband.