Her Stepmother Planned to Make All of London Laugh Her Into Ruin — But the Cruel Scheme Backfired When the Reclusive, Scarred Duke Fell Hopelessly in Love With Her

PART 3

“Your stepmother,” Alistair said slowly, “is a remarkably imaginative woman.”

Norah’s fingers dug into the armrests. “She is a cruel woman, your grace. The imagination is merely a byproduct.”

Alistair looked at her — truly looked, this time. He did not see a blushing maiden caught in a misunderstanding. He saw the defensive posture, the cynical tilt of her chin, the way she met his gaze without a trace of tears.

“She writes here,” he said, his voice flat, “that you harbor a deep, consuming passion for me. That you have wept over my portrait. That she, as a devoted mother, could no longer bear to watch you pine.” He turned the page. “She begs me to take you in as a bride or a mistress. She seems entirely indifferent as to which, so long as she is rid of you.”

Norah closed her eyes for a brief second. The humiliation was a hot coal in her stomach. She forced them open, kept her voice steady.

“A portrait of you does not exist in her house, your grace. If it did, I am quite sure she would have used it to frighten the maids.”

A harsh, abrupt sound barked out of Alistair’s chest. It took Norah a moment to realize it was a laugh — rusty, as if he had not used it in years.

“So.” He looked down at the letter. “A joke.”

“Yes.”

“A performance.”

“Yes. She expected you to read this, fly into a rage, and cast me out into the storm. She expected me to walk back to town through the mud, ruined and humiliated.”

Norah swallowed hard. “She expected you to deliver the final blow of the jest, your grace. I am merely the prop.”

The silence stretched. The mantel clock ticked loudly. The fire popped.

Alistair pushed himself off the mantel, walked back to his desk, tossed the letter onto the polished wood, and leaned forward on his knuckles, staring across the room at her.

“And what did you expect, Miss Hawthorne?”

“I expected you to be a man of your reputation. I expected shouting. I did not expect a chair.”

His jaw tightened. He looked at the wet hem of her cloak, the mud on her cheap boots, the dark circles under her eyes.

“I am a man of my reputation,” he said softly. “But I do not suffer fools, and I do not perform on command for petty women hoping to entertain their tea circles.”

He reached over and pulled the heavy velvet bell cord by his desk.

“What are you doing?” Her heart kicked up a frightened rhythm.

“I am ringing for tea.” He settled back into his chair. “And then, Miss Hawthorne, we are going to write a letter of our own.”

When Bates returned with an enormous tray of roast beef, bread, and cheese, Alistair gestured toward the small table by the fire. “Eat.” Norah’s stomach cramped violently at the smell — she had not eaten since a bowl of watery porridge the day before. Pride demanded she refuse. Survival demanded she eat.

She built a small, polite plate.

“Do not be tedious,” Alistair said, not looking up from a new ledger. “Eat until you are full. The hounds get the scraps anyway, and they are far too fat as it is.”

It was the finest thing she had ever tasted.

He worked in silence for twenty minutes, granting her the dignity of ignoring her hunger. Only when she set her cup down did he close the ledger and lean back.

“Tell me about Lady Agatha.”

“There is nothing unique about her, your grace,” Norah said, her voice stronger now. “She married my father for his estate. He died before he could secure my portion. She kept me on because a servant you never have to pay is economically advantageous. I keep the accounts. I manage the household. She hates me because I look like my mother, and because I do not cry when she insults me.” She looked at the fire. “And the letter — I am four-and-twenty. My stepsisters are approaching their debuts. A spinster half-sister in the house is an eyesore. But to throw me out unprovoked would look badly to her society friends. She needed a scandal. She needed me to be the architect of my own ruin.”

“A clumsy strategy,” Alistair said dryly, turning the letter over in his hands. “She relies entirely on my supposed lack of control. If I do not throw you out into the rain, her whole narrative collapses.”

“You are famously uncooperative, your grace.”

His mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. Not a scowl either. “I am selectively cooperative, Miss Hawthorne. I merely reserve it for things that do not bore me to tears. Society bores me. Petty cruelty bores me.” He stood and drew up a second chair opposite hers, sitting heavily, stretching his ruined leg toward the hearth with a grimace he quickly hid. “You said you keep accounts for your father’s estate. Are you competent?”

Norah looked him in the eye. “I am precise. I caught three errors the estate manager made last quarter that would have cost us two hundred pounds. Agatha dismissed him and made me take over his duties without his salary. Naturally.”

Alistair leaned toward her, firelight catching the amber in his eyes like struck flint. “My estate manager resigned three days ago. He was stealing from me. I caught him, broke his nose, and threw him off the property. The ledgers on that desk are a disaster spanning three counties.”

Norah blinked. “Are you offering me a position, your grace?”

“I am offering you a stratagem of my own.” His voice dropped to a low, intense murmur. “Lady Agatha expects me to return you in disgrace. What if instead I do not return you at all? If I send you back, she wins. But if you stay at Rookwood — if I hire you as my estate manager, a position carried out behind closed doors — she cannot claim you were rejected.”

“She will claim I am your mistress,” Norah said bluntly. “The scandal will be worse.”

“Let her.” He was dismissive. “What do you care for the opinions of a society that has done nothing but watch you starve in the corner? Here you will have a salary — fifty pounds a quarter. A dry room. Three meals a day. The absolute solitude of my library. You will fix my ledgers. I will give you a sanctuary.” He paused, eyes narrowing as he watched her absorb it. “And as for Lady Agatha — I will write her a letter. I will thank her profusely for her generous gift. I will tell her I found you entirely satisfactory, and that you have decided to remain at Rookwood indefinitely. I will leave the exact nature of your stay entirely to her fevered imagination. Let her try to explain that to her tea circle.”

“That is all? A letter?”

“For now.” Something flat and unhurried moved behind his eyes — the look of a man who had learned patience in a place where impatience got men killed. “I keep a solicitor in London whose only occupation is discovering precisely what fools like your stepmother are made of. Debts. Enemies. The name of the man who really owns their carriage horses. It is dull work, and he is paid handsomely for it. I have never yet found a use for what he learns about a woman who has done nothing more than annoy me at a dinner party.” His mouth curved, humorless. “Lady Agatha has done considerably more than that.”

Norah stared at him. He was no prince charming. He was a cynical, injured, irritable man who needed an accountant, and yet here he sat in his dim, woodsmoke-scented study, offering her the tools to dismantle her stepmother’s trap from the inside out.

He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

“Fifty a quarter,” she repeated slowly. “And you must not touch my hounds. They bite strangers.”

“I do not like dogs anyway.”

Alistair looked at her. A genuine, reluctant smile broke across his scarred face, transforming him completely — the harsh lines dissolving, revealing the ghost of the vital man he had been before the war.

“I think, Miss Hawthorne,” he said softly, “that Lady Agatha has made a terrible miscalculation.”

“Do you have a pen, your grace?” Norah asked, meeting his gaze with a cold, bright spark in her eyes. “I believe we have a letter to write.”