Chapter 6

Chapter Six

" S o what did you discover?"

Iris looked up from her needlework to see her husband—she could never get used to that word!—standing in the doorway of her parlor, watching her. It had been several hours since she'd arrived home from her father's house. The Duke had been out, which had given her time to think. Although she didn't particularly like the direction of her thoughts.

Setting her needlework down, Iris stood up and curtsied. She knew she didn't need to, but she still felt a little flustered whenever the Duke walked into a room. He was so tall and handsome, and his icy imperiousness—the remoteness that part of her longed to conquer—only made him even more attractive.

"Good afternoon," she murmured, her throat very dry. "I didn't realize you were back."

"Don't waste my time with idle chit-chat," the Duke said, scowling as he walked further into the room. To her annoyance, the scowl only enhanced his chiseled jaw and aloof beauty. "Just cut to the chase. What did you learn from visiting your father?"

Settling herself back onto the sofa, Iris's annoyance loosened her tongue. "I'm well, thank you for asking," she scoffed.

The Duke stopped, scowling deeper, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion.

"I know ours is an unusual marriage," Iris continued, "and that you are used to doing things your own way, but in a normal marriage, a husband asks his wife how she is doing before jumping into practical discussions."

"What are you talking about?" The Duke snapped.

"I'm talking about a wife being treated with respect," Iris said, stiffening. She held his gaze. "Which I know is something that was demonstrated to you as a child. Our arrangement might be… unusual, but I expect nothing less than that in our marriage."

The Duke's expression turned thunderous, and Iris held her breath. She was sure he was about to start berating her. But then his face softened, and he bowed his head in acknowledgment.

"You're right, Duchess," he relented. "I should have enquired about your health before jumping into particulars. Especially considering how difficult it must have been for you to enter your father's house again."

"Thank you," Iris said primly. She tried not to look too pleased with herself, but she had to admit that it felt good to make the fearsome Duke of Eavestone apologize to her. Gesturing toward the sofa across from her, she said, "Won't you sit?"

The Duke sat on the sofa, and for a moment, they just looked at each other. In the soft afternoon light, he looked particularly handsome. His hair was disheveled from riding, and Iris couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to run her fingers through those chestnut locks.

"About my father," she forced herself to say, "I think he was suspicious at first, but I managed to talk him into opening up. It's about his mines. He thinks you have plans to sabotage them… or buy them back, I suppose."

There was a flicker of triumph in her husband's eyes. He leaned back on the sofa, folding his hands behind his head. "Yes, I thought as much."

"If you thought as much, why didn't you tell me?" Iris snapped, irritated. "It could have saved me going to ask him, which may have alerted him that I'm working with you now."

The Duke gave her a cool once-over before answering, "I didn't want to influence you, and I didn't want you to give away our plans with your reaction when you spoke to your father. But I had to be sure."

Iris crossed her arms. She wasn't at all pleased with this answer. "If we are going to be on the same side in this, then you need to trust me. And that means telling me the whole truth. Not keeping things from me because you think I can't keep a secret."

"We already covered this," the Duke said dismissively. "I don't trust you. That's just something you're going to have to earn."

"Well then, I don't trust you either," Iris retorted, her temper flaring. It was bad enough to hear that he didn't trust her, but to hear it while he looked so handsome that it made her toes curl—that was infuriating. "Nor do I understand why you need to go about trying to ruin my father and his associates. I understand the situation with the mines is sensitive, but I think you could come to an agreement with him that leaves you both satisfied. After all, your father did agree to sell him the land…"

"What?" The Duke stared at her. His face, which was usually so expressionless, had become twisted with anger. "Is that what he told you?"

"Well…" Iris bit her lip. It hadn't occurred to her that her father might have been lying. After all, there would surely be legal documents to back up all his claims. "Yes, that's what he told me."

"And you believed him?" The Duke looked incredulous. "After everything he's done to harm you and your sisters, you believed him?"

"What else am I supposed to believe?" Iris cried, throwing up her arms. "You tell me nothing!"

"Well then, let me tell you what your father won't." Her husband stood up, strode to the door, and wrenched it open before storming out.

Iris watched him go, feeling a mix of anger, fear, and doubt. As much as she was on his side in taking down her father, it was hard not to feel a small thread of doubt after listening to her father's story. As terrible as her father was, the Duke's reputation was almost as bad, and she couldn't trust that he was as much of a victim as he said he was.

Within a few minutes, he returned holding several sheets of paper. He handed her the papers, and she began to read them.

The first was a letter from the former Duke of Eavestone to the Viscount. The tone was angry but calm, explaining again that he would not part with the land, that he didn't know how Lord Carfield had heard about his plans to start a mine, but that he would not sell the land for anything. There were other documents as well. More correspondence between the late Duke and his solicitor outlining that he did not want to sell the land to Lord Carfield, and making it unequivocal that the idea of the mine had, in fact, been his.

Iris was aghast, although it was nothing compared to the feeling that rose within her when she got to the last document. It was a bill of sale of the land from her husband to her father, signed by them both. Even more shockingly, it was witnessed and signed by her mother.

She looked up, her mouth open. "You knew my mother?" she whispered.

"Of course not." The Duke snorted.

"But… she witnessed you signing this."

"She lied," he growled. "I never signed that document. Your father forged it, including my signature, and your mother signed it. I was a lad of fifteen, grief-stricken and without anyone to protect me. It was easy to take advantage of me. I swore that I hadn't signed this, but with your mother as a witness, it was two against one. Your father argued that it was my grief talking, that I regretted betraying my father's wishes and selling, and that's why I denied it. He was powerful and convincing, and I was just a boy, sick with the loss of my parents, and I couldn't do anything to prove my innocence."

"Even though your solicitors had these letters proving my father had been trying to buy the mine? Couldn't they see that he'd go to any lengths, even forgery, to get them?"

"They couldn't prove it," the Duke said bitterly. He shook his head, then seemed to suddenly become tired, because he sat back down on the sofa across from her. He ran a hand through his hair. "And… your mother was very persuasive. Everyone knew her honor was unimpeachable. My solicitor believed her, and I think he thought I was rather unstable. Bertram saw me right after my parents' death, you see, when the management of the estate passed to me, and he knew how hard I'd taken their deaths. To him, your parents' story seemed plausible."

He looked away. The pain on his face made Iris's heart ache, and a new determination to help him surged through her.

"Bertram?" she repeated slowly. "As in August Bertram, Esquire?"

The Duke looked back at her, startled. "You know him?"

"He's a close friend of my father's," she breathed. "He comes over for dinner regularly."

The Duke's jaw tightened. "Of course… They were working together the whole time. I should have realized."

Iris, meanwhile, was looking back over the bill of sale. "There's another thing…" she said slowly. "This was never notarized. Without the notary's signature, it might not be legally binding."

The Duke took the paper from her and scanned the document. Slowly, he set it down, his eyes wide. "You're right. How did I not notice that?"

"It's not always easy to see things clearly when we're the ones who have been harmed."

The Duke's expression hardened, and he nodded.

Iris leaned forward until she could reach across the tea table and place a hand on his knee. As she did, she thought she felt him shiver.

"I'm so sorry. I didn't know any of this. But we're going to make my father pay for what he did to you. We can speak to a new solicitor, get his opinion on the legality of a bill of sale that hasn't been notarized." She quelled the nerves inside of her—the nerves that told her she had no right to tell a man this handsome and powerful what she needed—and looked him in the eyes. "But in order to do this, we need to be a team. And that means being honest with each other. Agreed?"

Slowly, the Duke of Eavestone, the most feared man in England, nodded. "Agreed," he murmured. "From now on, we're a team. In fact, if we are to be a team, I'd like us to be on more equal terms. I'd like you to call me Phineas. "

Iris blinked, taken aback by the intimacy of his request. "I will try," she said slowly. "But it may take some time to get used to. You may… call me Iris if you wish."

"I do wish," he confirmed, surprising her further. His voice was husky, and she felt her cheeks flush.

"Phineas," she murmured, testing it out.

The word tasted sweet on her lips, and immediately, she shuddered. She'd never known a name could make her stomach ache with longing like that, that it could make her want to touch his cheek and feel his breath on her neck.

He responded to his name by leaning toward her, until his face was only inches away from her. For one wild moment, she thought he was going to kiss her. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't think. All she could feel was the pounding sensation of need coursing through her body.

Then he coughed and leaned back, and the spell was broken. "Right, well, I will leave you to your sewing," he said awkwardly, and before she could say another word, he stood up and exited the room, leaving her feeling more confused and flustered than she ever had in her life.

A week later, Phineas and his new wife sat down together to write a letter to Lord Carfield. They'd decided to wait a few days so that it would be more realistic for Iris to have discovered something incriminating about her husband.

"Write that a solicitor called William Barstow visited me," Phineas dictated as Iris sat at the writing desk in the room downstairs with his parents' portrait, which she had turned into her private parlor. "Tell him you aren't sure if that's relevant, but that I wouldn't let you meet him or serve him tea, and that we were locked up for several hours together. After he left, I was in particularly fine spirits."

Iris paused her writing to raise an eyebrow at him. "You? In fine spirits? Well, now he'll know I'm lying."

Phineas was so caught off guard by her coy, teasing tone that he almost laughed. Almost. Instead, he gave her a hard stare, until she rolled her eyes and giggled.

"I'll say you were less surly than usual and even had a slight spring in your step," she offered, smiling to herself as she turned back to the letter. "That sounds more like you."

"I'm not surly all the time," Phineas protested.

Even as he spoke, however, he could hear the surliness in his voice. Iris looked at him and laughed again.

Briefly, Phineas felt the corners of his mouth twitch, and he wondered if he was about to smile. The sight of his wife laughing and smiling did lift his spirits a bit. And hearing her tease him made him want to be in on the joke, to laugh with her, even tease her back.

But he wasn't sure how, so he kept silent. The feelings his wife elicited in him were strange, indeed. They made him feel like an uncertain fifteen-year-old again, unsure of how to act or what he even wanted.

So far, she still hadn't called him by his Christian name, but he felt certain that soon, she would. He had similarly held off on calling her Iris, determined that she should take this next step before him. What surprised him was how much he wanted her to, how much he longed to deepen the familiarity between them.

"Who is this William Barstow, anyway?" she asked as she scratched lines across the paper.

"He negotiates business acquisitions," Phineas replied, glad for the change of topic. "It's a purposeful misdirection. Your father will think my plan is to buy him out."

"I see…" She paused, then started a new paragraph.

"What are you saying there?" he asked.

"I'm asking my father if he might allow my sisters to come visit me. Now that I've decided not to visit him anymore, I'd like to see them here. I'm just telling him that I miss them very dearly. Not that it will do any good. If anything, it'll make him deny my request, just to make me suffer."

She sighed, then put the finishing touches on the letter. She sanded the ink, then waved the paper back and forth in the air to dry the ink.

"Although I'm also reminding him that the girls' happiness is paramount to me, so hopefully he'll remember I'm only spying on you out of love for them, and I might not continue if he denies me access to them."

It was clever, Phineas thought, as he watched her reread the letter. She was very clever. And striking. Her features were sharp in a way most women's weren't, and he found them startlingly beautiful. When she read, the lines of her face seemed to sharpen even more, and he admired how formidable she appeared. It reminded him of someone he'd once been close to…

He frowned, trying to remember. Too clever…

Then Phinease felt his stomach drop. He'd realized exactly who she reminded him of—her father. He'd just realized that she looked exactly like her father when she was thinking hard. Although she had none of Lord Carfield's coloring, the way her mind worked when she was scheming and the look in her eyes when she was focused was uncannily similar to the Viscount's.

It disturbed Phineas greatly to see his old enemy whenever he looked at his wife's face. Immediately, warning bells went off in his head. It was as if he had woken him up from a spell.

Taking a step back, he stared at Iris's profile. He'd almost forgotten that the smart, stubborn, sweet woman in front of him wasn't just his wife, but Lord Carfield's daughter.

She's still your enemy .

No matter how much she might tease him, or force him to open up about his past, he still couldn't trust her. And he'd be smart to remember that if he wanted to get his revenge.