Page 77 of An Innocent Bride for the Duke

“I have no idea what you are talking about and I have no need to escape,” Louisa threw back at him, her heart thumping like a bass drum. “My aunt has told me that you are not welcome at Rosemere. Please leave.”

Lord Ashbourne frowned at this refusal.

“Lady Louisa, the Duke of Northwick is a rake who goes through women as other men go through shirts and socks. He is not only a shameless libertine who dishonors the beds of respectable women, but the murderer of his own father. It is a travesty that he even stands beside a woman as pure and innocent as you.”

“How dare you talk of him like that!” Louisa snapped, hiding her fear as anger. “You are not fit to speak his name. Even addressing me here is an insult.”

“You have learned some bad habits, Lady Louisa,” he retorted, his smile now vanishing, as he urged his horse forward towards her and then dismounted. “Willfulness and disobedience are not to be tolerated in a lady. I expect my future wife to respect my word absolutely, or she must be taught to do so.”

“I am not your future wife! You are nothing to me!” replied Louisa, pressing back against Thunder, and then moving around to the horse’s other side, as Lord Ashbourne continued to approach, as though the animal could protect her.

“I chose you, Lady Louisa, from all the ladies of the ton,” the blond man said in a low and terrifying voice. “I watched and I waited and I dreamed of the day when I should take you home to Ashbourne. You cannot undo all that now.”

“I chose Benedict, not you!” Louisa shot back. “I don’t even know you. You’re mad…”

“Women don’t choose their men,” Lord Ashbourne laughed derisively. “They don’t know how. Men choose women and train them to their will. You are mine, whether you like it or not. You belong to me.”

Reaching out he tried to seize her, but Louisa managed to keep Thunder between them, the poor horse now growing quite agitated.

“I belong to no one but myself. I shall give myself to a man of my own choosing. That will never be you!”

“That’s what you say now,” responded Lord Ashbourne with an evil chuckle. “You will sing a different song soon enough, however.”

When he lunged towards her this time, Louisa was ready, stooping to the ground and throwing a handful of dirt in his face.

“Get away from me, you pig!” she screamed.

As he drew himself up this time, Lord Ashbourne’s face was a mask of absolute rage and more terrible than any monster Louisa had ever seen in story books as a child or in her nightmares.

“Lady Louisa,” he growled.

“This is your last chance, Ashbourne,” Louisa said with desperate bravado. “If you leave now, you may get away before my husband tracks you down. When he does…”

“Northwick is not your husband!” raged the almost inhuman figure. “Or are you saying that he has defiled you? If he has, I shall break every bone in his body before I gut him…”

“Benedict is ten times the man you are!” Louisa yelled. “You are nothing beside him. Nothing!”

After this outburst, her assailant dropped his voice very low again, but was no less frightening for it. From somewhere in the stables the rustling noise was now absolutely frenzied, accompanied by a strange grunting too but Louisa could make no more sense of that than of Lord Ashbourne’s insane behavior.

“Come with me now, Lady Louisa, and I promise that your discipline at my hands will not be too severe, considering the extreme provocation. If you do not come willingly…”

To Louisa’s horror and disbelief, the man now produced a pistol from under his cloak and cocked it in her direction.

“Do not make me do it,” he warned her, “I do not want to harm you, Lady Louisa, but I would rather have you dead than in Northwick’s bed.”

Louisa met Lord Ashbourne’s glittering, inhuman eyes before she gave him her reply.

“I would rather be dead than ever go to yours!”

Chapter Thirty-One

“Louisa!”

Benedict was halfway to the stables when he heard the shot. Already walking very fast after hearing Lady Gordons’ garbled story of the message from the stables and Louisa’s precipitate departure, he now dropped the canvas bag and burst into a run.

It was Ashbourne’s doing in some way. Benedict knew it, although he did not know how.

Would anyone at Rosemere come to assist? The music might have drowned out the sound of the shot, or the guests might only think the fireworks were starting early. He could rely on nothing but himself.