He Introduced His Rich New Bride at the Ball—Then the Coldest Duke in England Crossed the Room, Ignored Him, and Asked the Woman He Betrayed to Dance

PART 6

It happened three months into the marriage, at the Duke of Devonshire’s summer masquerade — the one event Christian could not avoid, a sprawling affair held in a glass conservatory thick with the smell of orchids and too many candles.

Christian had been cornered near the smoking room by a knot of politicians. Beatrice, wearing a black lace domino mask and crushed silver silk, stepped out onto the terrace to escape the heat.

She was standing at the stone balustrade, looking over the manicured lawns, when she heard uneven footsteps behind her.

“You look entirely miserable, Beatrice.”

She didn’t need to turn to recognise the slight slur, the patronising lilt that always tried to mask his own insecurity.

“Arthur.” She turned. He leaned in the doorway, a half-empty glass of brandy in hand, older than she remembered — the boyish charm now strained thin over a foundation of resentment and cheap wine.

“Mr. Pendleton. You’re intoxicated. I suggest you find your wife before you embarrass her further.”

He scoffed, stumbling a step onto the terrace. “My wife is currently complaining about her feet to anyone who’ll listen. She’s a child, Beatrice. A child who thinks money solves everything.”

“Then you should have no complaints. That was precisely the transaction you negotiated.”

He flinched, brandy sloshing. He came closer, his eyes raking over her gown, the diamonds at her throat. “Look at you. The Duchess of Westfall. You sold yourself for a title.” He lowered his voice, straining for the intimacy they used to share. “He’s cold, Beatrice. Devoid of feeling. I’ve seen the way he leaves you alone in a room. I know you. You need warmth. You need love. You’re dying inside that stone house.”

He reached out and grabbed her forearm — not gently. Desperate. Possessive.

Beatrice looked down at his hand, then up into his flushed, pathetic face.

“Remove your hand, Arthur,” she said softly, “before I have it severed from your wrist.”

“Beatrice, I’m trying to tell you I made a mistake. Clara’s father has locked the capital away. I have nothing. If we could just—”

“If we could what?” she snapped, the words cracking like a whip. “Have an affair? You think I’d risk a dukedom to skulk in the shadows with a man who couldn’t even break my heart to my face? A man who let a newspaper tell me I was discarded?”

His face twisted. “You loved me,” he hissed, grip tightening painfully. “You threw yourself at the first man with a title who offered to pay your debts because you were desperate.”

“Release my wife.”

The voice didn’t come from the doorway. It came from the shadows at the edge of the terrace.

Arthur froze. His hand fell away from her arm as if her sleeve had caught fire.

Christian stepped into the moonlight. He didn’t walk — he stalked, a terrifying, predatory silence, his frame blocking the light spilling from the conservatory. His slate eyes were locked entirely on Arthur.

Arthur stumbled backward, the brandy glass slipping from his fingers and shattering against the stone. “Y-Your Grace. I was merely—”

“If you finish that sentence with a lie, Pendleton, I will throw you over this balustrade and tell the magistrate you slipped.”

His voice wasn’t raised. It was low and lethal, and it did not sound like a bluff. Arthur was visibly shaking now, every ounce of his bravado gone. He looked at Beatrice — a silent, desperate plea for rescue.

Beatrice stepped forward, placing herself in Christian’s line of sight — not to protect Arthur, but because she recognised the dangerous, coiled tension in her husband’s shoulders.

“He isn’t worth the scandal, Christian,” she said quietly. “He was just leaving.”

Christian’s eyes snapped to hers. The rage in them was breathtaking — possessive, raw, entirely uncalculated. He noticed the faint red marks already forming on her forearm. A muscle leapt in his jaw.

“Get out of my sight, Pendleton,” he said, not looking away from her. “If I see you within ten feet of my wife again, I will ruin you. I will buy your debts. I will seize your assets. And I will ensure you spend the rest of your miserable life rotting in a debtor’s prison. Walk away.”

Arthur didn’t need telling twice. He turned and fled back into the crowd like a frightened animal.

Silence fell over the terrace, broken only by the faint strains of the orchestra. Christian stood perfectly still, chest heaving. Then he closed the distance and gently traced the marks on her arm, his touch so careful it made her breath catch.

“I should have broken his jaw at the Pembroke ball,” he muttered, voice thick with bitter regret.

“He’s a coward, Christian. He cannot hurt me.” She looked up at him. The mask he wore for society had slipped completely, leaving a man who looked entirely undone. “Why are you so angry?”

“Because he put his hands on you,” he said instantly.

“And that gives you the right to threaten murder?”

“No.” His jaw tightened. “It gives me the responsibility to stop him — and the unbearable knowledge that I was not there before he hurt you.”

“I am your wife, yes,” she said, though her voice had lost its earlier edge. “And I’m capable of managing a drunk.”

“I know.” He dropped his hand and stepped back, dragging his fingers through his hair, ruining its severe lines. He stared out into the dark gardens, wrestling with something heavier than Arthur Pendleton. “That is not the whole of it, Beatrice. The transaction,” he began, voice rough. “The logical arrangement. The business deal.”

“Yes.” Her heart began beating a frantic rhythm.

He turned back to her, moonlight catching the hard angles of his face. “It was a lie.”

The terrace seemed to tilt beneath her.

“What do you mean, a lie?”

“I told you I chose you because you were logical. A pragmatic candidate to run my life.” He let out a harsh, self-deprecating breath. “I lied, Beatrice. I did not choose you at the Pembroke ball.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Three months before the ball,” he said, voice dropping into the quiet night, “I was riding through Hyde Park. Early. Barely dawn. Raining. I saw a woman on a bench near the Serpentine, wearing a faded pelisse, soaked through, holding a crumpled copy of the morning post. I watched her read it. Watched her tear the paper into exactly four pieces, drop them into a puddle, and stand up.” He paused. “She didn’t weep. She didn’t collapse. She squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and walked away with more dignity than the King of England.”

Beatrice’s breath stopped. The morning Arthur’s engagement was announced.

“I asked my man of business to find out who you were,” he continued, stepping closer, his voice dropping to a raw whisper. “I learned about the debts. About Pendleton. For three months, I watched you survive in a society waiting for you to break. I watched you refuse to yield.”

“You — you watched me.”

“I couldn’t look away.” The truth finally tore its way out of him. “I have spent my entire life surrounded by people who fold at the first sign of pressure. You were made of steel. When I saw Pendleton walk into that ballroom with his new bride — when I saw him crossing the floor to gloat — I didn’t intervene to derail Lady Jersey. I intervened because the thought of that mediocre coward causing you another second of pain made me want to burn the room to the ground.”

Beatrice was trembling. The cold, impenetrable Duke of Westfall — the man who claimed to feel nothing, who claimed to want only a manager for his estates — had just confessed to watching her for three months before he ever spoke a word to her.

“Then why did you propose a business arrangement?” she asked, voice cracking. “Why tell me you were incapable of romance? Why make it a transaction?”

He took both her hands in his, warm and anchoring. “Because if I had come to your house and told you I admired you, you would have thrown me out. You had just been destroyed by a man who promised you love. You didn’t trust romance. You didn’t trust affection. But you trusted logic. You trusted a ledger.” His thumb smoothed over her knuckles. “So I gave you a ledger. I bought your father’s debts. I secured your mother. I gave you a title to protect you from the wolves. I made it a transaction because it was the only currency you would accept from me.”

Beatrice pulled her hands free.

“You studied my grief,” she said slowly, each word deliberate, “arranged my rescue, and walked into my parlour already knowing which terms I could not refuse. Do not call that honesty, Christian.”

He didn’t flinch away from it. “No. It was not honesty. It was cowardice dressed as strategy.”

“You let me believe I was choosing. The entire time, you had already decided for both of us.”

“I know what I did.” His voice was low, stripped of every defence he usually wore in public. “I told myself it was mercy — that I was sparing you a courtship you had no reason to trust. But mercy that hides its own hand is still a kind of theft, Beatrice. I took the choice from you long before I ever asked for it back on that dance floor. I have no defence for that. I only have the truth, now, finally, with nothing left to gain from telling it.”

Beatrice stared at him. He had not offered her pity; he had offered the only language she had still trusted. And beneath that mercy lay a manipulation complete enough that she could not, in this moment, decide whether to kiss him or strike him.

A single tear, the first in six months, spilled over her lashes.

Christian’s face tightened, but he didn’t reach for it this time. “I won’t ask you to forgive it tonight. If the arrangement is intolerable now that you know the truth, I will step back. You can have the house, the accounts, everything. You never have to see me again.”