Her Brother Traded Her to an Aging Duke to Pay His Gambling Debts — But on Their Wedding Night, He Handed His Terrified Bride a Key, £40,000, and the One Thing Her Brother Had Taken From Her: A Choice.

PART 6

The silence in the room was absolute, broken only by the ragged sound of Thomas breathing in the next room.

Reginald stared at her. He saw the absolute, terrifying conviction in her dark eyes. He realized, with a sickening drop in his stomach, that she was not bluffing. She was nineteen, but she possessed a cold, ruthless pragmatism that he, in his twenty-eight years of pampered existence, could not even fathom.

“You are a monster,” Agatha whispered, horrified.

“I am a duchess,” Josephine corrected flatly. “Get out of my house.”

Reginald swallowed hard. He looked at the closed door, then back at Josephine’s unyielding face. Without a word, he turned on his heel and walked out. Agatha shot one last venomous look at Josephine before gathering her damp skirts and hurrying after her son.

Josephine stood perfectly still until the sound of their carriage wheels faded down the gravel drive. Only then did her shoulders drop. Her hands began to shake. She leaned against the doorframe, sucking in a long, trembling breath.

A weak, dry rasp came from the bed chamber.

Josephine hurried into the room. Thomas was awake — his eyes bloodshot, his face gray and shining with sweat. But he was looking at her. He had heard.

He moved his hand slightly on the heavy quilt. Josephine sat on the edge of the mattress and took it. His skin was paper-thin and burning with fever, but his grip was surprisingly firm.

“My barricade,” he rasped.

“Rest, Thomas,” Josephine said quietly, holding his hand in both of hers. “The vultures are gone. I have the gates.”

The fever broke three days later, just as the bleak Yorkshire dawn bled gray light through the heavy drapes. It did not vanish in a dramatic sweep, but receded slowly, leaving Thomas Ashborne hollowed out and gasping, stranded on the shore of the living.

Josephine was asleep in the hard wooden chair beside the bed when she woke to the sound of dry, rhythmic tapping. Thomas was weakly striking his silver ring against the wooden side table.

“Water,” he rasped. It was a terrible sound, dry as old parchment.

She poured a glass and slipped an arm behind his shoulders, lifting him just enough to drink without choking. He weighed nothing. The broad, imposing Duke of Clydesdale had been whittled down to sharp bone and loose skin in a matter of weeks.

He drank slowly, then fell back against the pillows. His pale blue eyes tracked her face. They were clear.

“You look,” Thomas managed, his voice barely a whisper, “like hell, Josie.”

A short, breathless laugh escaped her lips. It sounded like a sob, though she was determined not to cry.

“I am entirely well. I cannot say the same for you. You are a terrible patient.”

“Did they come?”

The question was sharp despite his weakness.

“Reginald and your sister,” Josephine confirmed, smoothing the heavy blankets over his chest. “Two days ago. They demanded the keys to the office and the master ledgers.” She paused. “And I told them that if they crossed the threshold, I would freeze the coal shipments and bleed the estate dry before Reginald could inherit anything worth having. They left.”

Thomas was quiet for a long time. The clock ticked, marking the slow return of normalcy.

When he finally opened his eyes, he did not look at her with the calculating approval of an employer. He looked at her with a profound, heavy sorrow.

“They will never forgive you,” he said quietly. “I made you a target. I wanted a barricade, and I built it out of a nineteen-year-old girl. It was a selfish thing to do.”

Josephine sat back in the chair. She laced her fingers together in her lap.

“Do you think my brother was less selfish, Thomas? Do you think the creditors who would have dragged me into the alleys were kinder? You gave me £40,000 and the keys to my own bedroom. You gave me a fortress. I am simply defending it.”

Recovery was a brutal, ugly process. March brought a vicious, driving sleet that kept the moors frozen, matching the slow, agonizing pace of Thomas’s rehabilitation. He refused a nurse. He allowed only Josephine and his valet to assist him. He was a proud man, and the humiliation of his failing body was a bitter pill he swallowed in silence.

By April he could sit in the armchair by the fire for a few hours a day. By May he could walk the length of the corridor with his cane, though it left him breathless and gray.

The dynamic between them shifted — a subtle tectonic movement. The vast distance across the dining table was abandoned. Josephine took to eating her meals on a small table drawn up next to his armchair in the sitting room. They discussed the price of grain. They debated the London coal tariffs. They did not speak of affection or romance.

They spoke the language of ledgers, yields, and survival. It was an intimacy built entirely on mutual respect.

One afternoon in late May, a letter arrived bearing the seal of a cheap London tavern. Josephine recognized the jagged, frantic handwriting immediately.

She stood by the window in the study, the bright spring sunlight feeling strangely intrusive. She broke the seal.

Josie — The Duke must be dead by now, or close to it. The papers say he has not been seen in town for months. I am in a desperate way. They took my coat. They took my boots. Send a draft for £500 to the address below, or I will come to Yorkshire myself and make a scandal. I am your flesh and blood. — Charles.

She read it twice. The familiar, sickening knot of anxiety tightened in her stomach. The ghost of the terrified girl in the green silk dress whispered in her ear.

“Who is it from?”

She turned. Thomas was standing in the doorway, leaning heavily on his cane. He had walked down the grand staircase himself for the first time in months. He looked at the crumpled paper in her fist.

He knew exactly what it was.

“Charles,” she said. Her voice was hollow.

Thomas limped slowly into the room. He did not ask to read it. “What does he want?”

“£500. And if I do not pay, he threatens to come here to make a scandal.”

“I could have Mrs. Higgins instruct the gatekeeper to turn him away. I could have the footman throw him off the property.”

Thomas reached out and took the letter from her hand. He did not look at it. He simply tossed it onto the glowing coals in the grate. The cheap paper curled, blackened, and flared into bright orange flame.

“You do not pay blackmailers, Josie. It only tells them you have something to hide.” He watched the paper turn to ash. “Let him come. Let him make a scandal. You are the Duchess of Clydesdale. He is a beggar in the street. You are made of iron now. Do not let him convince you that you are still glass.”

Josephine watched the last ember of the letter die. The knot in her stomach slowly uncoiled.

She looked at the old man beside her. He was frail, broken, living on borrowed time. But he had taught her how to stand.

“Thank you,” she whispered.