A torn silk gown makes almost no sound in a hall packed with four hundred aristocrats. But the silence that followed Beatrice Somerset’s ruin was suffocating — and while her enemies smiled, high in the gallery, the Duke of Westmire was already rising from his chair and making his way toward her.

PART 3

He was not calculating the dress. He was calculating the debt.

“In your father’s name: twelve thousand to the bank. Twenty thousand to various gaming hells in Mayfair. Ten thousand to a private money lender out of Cheapside who is losing his patience.” Arthur Pendleton delivered the numbers like a weather report — no judgment, no pity, no expression at all in the intermittent flash of the street lamps. “Forty-two thousand pounds. Net.”

Beatrice stopped breathing. She gripped the edge of the velvet seat. She had known it was bad. She had not known it was forty-two thousand. That number was not a debt. That was a death sentence, drawn up in triplicate and mailed to every creditor in London.

“How do you know that?”

“I am on the King’s privy council. I know what the tide brings in before the water reaches the shore.” He leaned back, crossing his arms. “Your estate in Sussex is mortgaged three times over. Your servants have not been paid since August. And you were sent to the bride selection because if you did not secure a husband willing to buy your father’s paper by the end of the month, the Cheapside lender intended to take your remaining property — and, in all likelihood, your father’s kneecaps.”

The shame of the gown was eclipsed instantly. He had stripped her bare just as thoroughly as Arabella Croft had — but with a ledger instead of a heel.

“If you have brought me into this carriage to mock me, your grace, you are wasting your breath.” Her chin came up, cold and sharp. “I know exactly what my father is. I know exactly what I am worth. I went into that room to sell myself to the highest bidder to keep a roof over my mother’s head. I failed. You have had your entertainment. You may drop me at the next corner.”

Arthur did not blink.

“I have no interest in mocking you. I have an interest in hiring you.”

“Hiring me.”

“The King requires me to marry. It is a matter of optics. The Crown needs stability in the northern counties, and a bachelor duke is considered a political liability.” The phrase carried a profound, world-weary irritation. “I am bombarded daily by mothers shoving their giggling, vapid daughters into my path. They want titles. They want London townhouses. They want me to attend poetry readings.”

He leaned forward, and the shadows caught the jagged scar above his eye.

“I spend eight months of the year in Yorkshire. The winters are brutal. The estate is a working coal and wool enterprise, not a pleasure garden. I need a woman who can run a household of two hundred staff, audit a ledger, and not fall to pieces when the mud ruins her slippers.”

He paused.

“I watched you walk into a room of four hundred predators while your clothes were literally falling off your body — and you did not weep. You did not break. You anchored your heels and you kept walking.”

Beatrice swallowed hard. The carriage hit a bump. Arthur did not move.

“I am offering you a contract, Miss Somerset. I will clear your father’s debts by noon tomorrow. All forty-two thousand. I will settle an additional sum on your mother, to ensure she lives comfortably in Bath — far from your father’s influence. In exchange, you will take my name. You will manage my northern estates. You will act as my proxy in social matters when required. And you will ensure the King’s vultures leave me in peace.”

Her mind raced. This was not a proposal. It was a business acquisition — a ruthless, pragmatic, entirely sentimental-free takeover of everything she had.

“And my father? If you clear his debts, he will simply accrue more.”

“No, he will not.” The temperature in the carriage dropped ten degrees. “Part of the settlement stipulates that Lord Somerset will be relocated to a minor holding I own in the Scottish Highlands. The nearest gaming table is a three-day ride through hostile terrain. He will receive a small allowance, managed by my solicitor. If he attempts to return to London, he will be cut off entirely.”

He had thought of everything. He had neatly, brutally dismantled the trap her life had become — and offered her a door out.

“Why me? You could buy any competent woman.”

“Because you have no illusions.” He said it simply, like a fact he had verified and set down. “You do not want romance. You want survival. We understand each other perfectly.”

She looked down at her hands, still clutching the oversized lapels of his coat — his coat, drenched in his cedarwood and cold-rain smell, the coat that had covered her ruin in front of four hundred people. She was trembling again, but not from fear. It was the shock of sudden, violent salvation.

“I require control over the household accounts. I will not beg a steward for pin money.”

Arthur’s mouth twitched. It was the closest thing to a smile she had seen from him.

“Agreed.”

“And I will not be paraded around London as your charity case.”

“You will be the Duchess of Westmire. Anyone who looks at you with anything less than absolute deference will find themselves financially ruined before breakfast.”

“Are we agreed, Beatrice?”

He used her Christian name. It was not intimacy. It was the seal on a bargain.

Beatrice Somerset took a slow, deep breath. Outside, the wet windows of Pall Mall slid past, carrying them away from the palace and the wreckage of her social standing. She had walked into that ballroom waiting for her ruin. She had walked out draped in the coat of the most dangerous man in England.

“Draw up the papers, your grace.”