Champagne tastes of stale apples when you are twenty-five and officially a spinster. Bella Halloway toasted the ballroom doors and swore she would marry the next man through them — and the Duke of Westford walked in with coal dust under his nails, just as her reckless promise began spreading across the ballroom.

PART 7

She dismounted, tied her horse to a post, and walked into the deafening roar of the pump house.

The heat was immediate and suffocating. Steam hissed from iron pipes thick as winter fog.

Through the haze she saw him.

Augustus had stripped off his coat and waistcoat. His linen shirt was unbuttoned halfway down his chest, plastered to his skin with sweat and black dust. He was standing over a massive schematic spread across a wooden crate, arguing violently with two engineers.

He did not look like a duke. He looked like a warlord.

“I told you to reinforce the eastern tunnel on Tuesday,” he roared over the sound of the pumps. “The timber is rotting. If that seam gives, I’ll bury you both before the rock does. Get the new beams down there by noon, or don’t bother coming to work tomorrow.”

The engineers scrambled away, looking terrified.

Augustus turned, wiping a streak of black grease across his forehead with the back of his massive hand. He froze when he saw her.

Bella stood amid the hissing steam, perfectly composed, the hem of her dark wool skirt already thick with coal dust.

He closed the distance between them in four long strides, grabbing her by the elbow and hauling her out of the pump house into the slightly clearer air of the yard.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded. His voice was rougher than she had ever heard it, stripped of whatever thin veneer of civility he usually maintained.

“Managing my estate.” Bella pulled her arm from his grip. “I have balanced the household accounts. I needed to see where the money comes from.”

“It comes from dirt, Bella. It is not a place for you.”

“I am not a porcelain doll.” A sudden spike of anger cut through her rigid control. “You married me because I am practical. You married me to be a partner. How can I be your partner if you hide me away in that stone fortress while you work yourself into an early grave down here?”

Augustus stared at her. The anger in his dark eyes shifted, settling into something heavier. He looked at her immaculate posture, her sharp jawline, and the smudge of soot that had already landed on her cheek.

“You want to see where the money comes from?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t argue. He turned and walked toward the main shaft. Bella followed.

They stood at the edge of the pit. A massive iron cage hung suspended over a hole that plunged into absolute, terrifying darkness. The smell of rotten eggs and damp earth billowed up from the abyss.

“Seven hundred feet straight down,” Augustus said, his voice barely audible over the clatter of the chains. “The men work in tunnels three feet high. Sometimes they are waist-deep in freezing water. The roof could cave in. The gas could ignite. Every piece of silver on your dining table is bought with their sweat and my grandfather’s greed.”

He looked at her, waiting for the disgust. Waiting for the delicate aristocrat to recoil.

Bella looked down into the black hole. She felt a wave of profound vertigo, but she locked her knees and kept her spine straight.

“Then we must ensure they are paid well,” she said simply. “And that the timber in the eastern tunnel is replaced by noon.”

Augustus let out a breath that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. It was a harsh, scraping sound.

“You are a terrifying woman, Bella.”

“I am a realist,” she corrected. “You have dirt on your face, your grace.”

Augustus pulled a filthy handkerchief from his pocket and dragged it across his forehead, succeeding only in smearing the grease further.

“Go back to the house, Bella. The air here will ruin your lungs. I will be home for dinner.”

“Seven o’clock,” she told him. “Do not be late. The new cook makes an excellent roast, and I will not have it ruined.”

She turned and walked back to her horse. She didn’t look back — but she could feel the heavy, oppressive weight of his gaze following her all the way to the gates.

The house was quiet. It was the deep, isolating quiet of the moors, broken only by the wind rattling the narrow windowpanes.

Bella sat at the vanity in her bedchamber. The room was warm for the first time in a decade, a roaring fire casting long dancing shadows across the faded tapestries. She had dismissed her maid an hour ago.

She wore a simple white linen nightgown, devoid of the lace and ribbons a bride might normally wear. She brushed her hair with slow, methodical strokes, counting the bristles to keep her mind from spinning.

It was their eighth night in Yorkshire.

A heavy knock sounded at the door.

Bella set the brush down. The wooden handle clicked sharply against the glass top of the vanity.

“Come in.”

The door opened. Augustus stepped inside.

He had bathed. The smell of sulfur and smoke was gone, replaced by the sharp, clean scent of lye soap and fresh linen. He wore a dark dressing gown over his trousers, his bare chest visible in the V of the collar. Without his heavy coats, she could see the sheer, terrifying density of his muscles.

He looked too large for the room — like a bear forced into a cage.

He closed the door. The heavy click of the latch sounded like a gate falling.

Augustus did not approach the bed. He stood by the door, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his dressing gown.

“You are entirely too practical, Bella,” he said quietly.

“I don’t understand.”

“You didn’t lock the door. You did not pretend to be asleep. Most women in your position would have found an excuse.”

“We made a bargain.” Bella stood up, turning to face him. Her heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs, but she kept her chin level. “I do not renege on my debts.”

Augustus’s jaw clenched. “This is not a debt collection.”

He crossed the room in three strides. He stopped inches from her. The heat radiating from his skin was overwhelming.

“I warned you in London,” he murmured, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. “I am not a gentleman. I have spent my life breaking rocks and fighting in the mud. I don’t know how to be soft.”

“I have had soft men flutter around me for four seasons,” Bella said, looking up into his flat, dark eyes. “They were cowards, all of them. I prefer the rock.”