Griffin Stone:Duke Of Decadence

Griffin was no longer there for the older man to explain the situation to; he was already ascending the front steps two at a time in his rush to get to Bella’s side, throwing his hat aside as he hurried across the hallway to ascend the wide staircase just as hurriedly, all the time berating himself for having left Bella.

He should not have left her alone after all that she had so obviously suffered.

Nor should he have parted from her so angrily earlier, when he was the one who had been at fault for kissing her.

He was an unfeeling brute, who did not deserve—

‘Griffin!’

He had barely stepped inside the bedchamber, his heart having contracted the moment he took in the sight of Bella’s tear-stained face, when she jumped up suddenly from the bed to rush across the room and launch herself into his arms.

His own arms closed tightly about her as he held her slenderness securely against him, feeling as he did the terrible trembling of her body.

‘I am here now, Bella. I am here,’ he assured her softly as she continued to sob and cling to him.

Her face was buried against his chest. ‘It was... I was... It was so dark I could not see, only hear, and—’

‘You may leave us now, Mrs Harcourt.’ Griffin curtly dismissed the housekeeper; there was no need to add to the mystery of Bella’s presence at Stonehurst Park. ‘Perhaps you might have Pelham bring us up some tea in half an hour or so?’ he added, to take the sting out of his dismissal as he saw the housekeeper’s crestfallen expression.

‘Yes, Your Grace.’ She bobbed a curtsy before hurrying from the room, obviously as discomfited as Pelham by this upset.

‘You are safe now, Bella,’ Griffin assured her as he bent to swing her up in his arms and carry her across the bedchamber, where he sank down into the armchair, settling Bella on his knees as her body still shook uncontrollably.

She buried her face against the side of his throat. ‘That is not my name.’

Griffin stroked a soothing hand down the length of her spine even as he lightly brushed the tangle of dark hair from her face. ‘We have agreed it shall be for now.’

‘No,’ she sobbed emotionally. ‘I meant that it really is not my name.’ She raised her head and looked at him, eyes red, lashes damp, her cheeks flushed. ‘I believe my—my real name is—I heard someone in my dream call me Beatrix.’

She had spent a miserable morning in her bedchamber, pacing up and down as she’d tried to decide what she should do for the best. What was best for Griffin, not herself.

He was so obviously a man who preferred his own company.

A singular gentleman, who did not care to involve himself in the lives of others.

A wealthy and eligible duke, who had not remarried after his duchess died six years ago.

And she was responsible for disturbing the constancy of his life.

What Bella should do now was leave here. Remove herself from his home. Before news of a woman’s presence at Stonehurst Park became known, as it surely would be if she remained here for any length of time. The last thing she wanted was to blacken Griffin’s name.

Except she still had nowhere else to go, nor the means to get anywhere.

The tears of frustration she had cried had not helped to lessen the helplessness of Bella’s situation in the slightest.

Any more than her best efforts to try not to think of the way Griffin had kissed her earlier. Or that he had called her a witch for having tempted him.

It had been in that state of despair and emotional turmoil that Bella had finally fallen into an exhausted asleep.

The dreams had seemed harmless at first. Just images, really. Of a smiling, laughing young lady, with fashionably styled dark hair, dressed in a beautiful gown of gold silk as she’d twirled about the room with another lady, older, but so like the first that they had to be mother and daughter. A seated gentleman had looked on and smiled at the two of them indulgently.

Then had come the overwhelming sadness as that image had faded and she’d seen the young lady again, dressed in black this time, her face ravaged by grief.

And she’d known, without a doubt, that the young woman in the dream was herself, and that she stood at the graveside of the same man and woman who had looked so happy in the previous image. She’d known instinctively that the man and woman were her father and her mother.

That image had faded to be replaced by hands reaching for her in the darkness. A hand placed over her mouth. The warning not to scream, before something, a cloth of some kind, had been placed over her mouth and her eyes, and she’d been dragged kicking from her bed before something had hit her on the side of the head and she’d known no more.

She had tried then to wake herself from the terror she’d felt, but she had not succeeded, that terror only increasing as instead the next image had been of waking to the painful jolting of a travelling carriage as she’d lain huddled and bound on the hard floor, unable to see, speak or move.