Duke of Desire (Maiden Lane #12)(72)

“Someone …” She gasped, beginning to tremble as she realized just how close to falling she had been. “Someone pushed me.”

His head instantly came up, and he searched the crowd. “Who?”

“I … I didn’t see.”

His attention snapped back to her. “We need to leave.”

She could only nod shakily. “Y-yes.”

He took her elbow and began ushering her down the stairs.

The murmured gossip behind them didn’t stop.

If anything, with Raphael right there, it became louder.

At the bottom of the steps ladies waiting for their wraps stared and whispered behind fans.

Gentlemen frowned and shook their heads or tutted.

Matrons hurriedly ushered their unmarried daughters away.

Raphael never changed his expression. He looked forward, cold and aloof, a slight sneer on his twisted lip.

If she’d not known him, not spent days talking with him and sharing her body with him, she might have believed the gossip.

Oh, but she didn’t.

Not even for a minute.

What was more, she knew now what these horrid rumors were doing to her husband. Beneath his frozen mask he must be aching inside.

They finally made the entryway, which wasn’t as crowded as it had been before. Raphael barked an order to one of the footmen waiting by the door and then helped Iris into her wrap as they waited for the carriage to be pulled around.

His hand was a vise on her upper arm and Iris knew she would have bruises later, but she didn’t want to say anything.

They waited in silence, Iris leaning against his comforting strength.

When the carriage finally arrived, after what seemed like hours, he marched her toward it.

She just had time to see Ubertino in the driver’s seat before Raphael bundled her inside.

Iris sat and watched her husband as the carriage lurched into motion. He sat so stiffly and he wouldn’t meet her eyes. He was withdrawing into himself, icing over, almost as if he thought she would believe that …

Something poked her in the hip.

She shifted absently and felt a sharp jab.

What …?

She put her hand down to feel her skirts. Perhaps a wire in her panniers had broken. Her hand touched something metal, and hot pain sliced across her last two fingers.

“Oh!”

Raphael looked up, his gray eyes narrowed. “What is it?”

“Something in my skirt cut me,” she said.

He moved swiftly across the carriage. “Let me see.”

She raised her hands.

Gingerly he sifted through her voluminous skirts and then paused. Iris felt a tug and then he was holding a long thin knife in his hand. The light from the carriage lantern glinted off the blade.

She tried to make sense of what she was seeing. “What …?”

He turned to her and the light shone off his eyes as sharply as it had the blade. “Someone tried to kill you in there. When you nearly fell down the stairs. That was an attack. Somehow they missed and the knife was caught in your panniers.” He shook his head. “But the fall most likely would’ve killed you in any case.”

“Except you were there.” She felt steadier now, even though the shove had obviously not been an accident. “You saved me, Raphael.”

“I wasn’t there when whoever it was tried to stab you.” His eyes were frozen. “Had the knife gone through, you’d be dead. There would be nothing I could do about it.”

Iris opened her right hand. The last two fingers were daubed with what looked like black liquid in the lamplight.

It was one thing to be aware that an enemy wanted to kill you, but it was something entirely more visceral—more immediate—to see that death had nearly claimed you.

“What is that?” Raphael growled. He took her hand and pulled it closer to the light.

Now the blood was clearly red.

He stared at the blood on her fingers for a moment and then picked her up bodily to place her in his lap, his strong arms wrapped around her. He pulled off his neckcloth and wrapped it around her hand.

She didn’t even think to protest, simply laid her head against his chest. “I wasn’t stabbed. I didn’t fall down the stairs. I’m safe.” She could hear his heartbeat, slow and strong, beneath her cheek. “I’m safe with you.”

His arms tightened around her as if in answer.

That was how they rode the rest of the way back to Chartres House.

Even when the carriage stopped and the door was pulled open to show Ubertino’s face, Raphael didn’t let go.

He looked at the Corsican. “They’ve tried to kill my wife.”

The smile on Ubertino’s face was wiped away. His eyes narrowed, and suddenly Iris could see this man as a pirate on the Barbary Coast. “I will set guards. On my life, this will not happen again, Your Grace.”

Raphael nodded.

Then he gently set Iris down on the carriage seat, stepped from the carriage, waited for her to stand, and then swept her up in his arms again.

She might’ve given an unladylike squeak.

He mounted the front steps.

She cleared her throat. “I can walk.”

The door opened and Murdock’s eyes widened.

Raphael ignored the butler. “No, you can’t.”

He strode past two footmen, through the entry hall, and up the grand staircase, all without even breathing hard.