Hidden away for a scarred hand, Beatrice Holley spent her season in dark rooms counting trade routes — until the most ruthless duke in England found her reading maps, and refused to leave her hidden. “I owe your stepmother a call,” he said. He kept his word.

PART 5

“I am calculating how many weeks of starvation rations I am going to endure because of this stunt.” Beatrice turned her head to glare at him properly. “What did you think you were accomplishing back there? Did you feel a sudden charitable urge to rescue a spinster for the morning? Because I assure you, your grace, the consequences of your charity will be exacted the moment I return.”

“I didn’t do it out of charity.”

The faint trace of amusement vanished from his face.

“I did it because I wanted to speak with you again. And your drawing room was suffocating.”

“So you dragged me out for all of London to see. By noon, every gossip in Mayfair will know the Duke of Calverton paraded Agatha Holley’s ruined stepdaughter through the park.”

“Let them talk.”

“It is easy for you to dismiss it.” Her voice rose; the protective numbness she relied on was fracturing. “You are insulated by a title and more money than God. They cannot touch you. But they will annihilate me. They will laugh at me. They will assume I am your latest, most pathetic amusement.”

Henry leaned forward. The sudden movement closed the distance between them, his sheer size dominating the carriage interior.

“Do you think I care what a pack of shallow, desperate social climbers think?” His voice was low and harsh. “I have spent ten years watching people tear each other apart for scraps of status. Last night, in that dark, miserable room, you were the first person who looked at me without mentally calculating my worth. You looked at a map. You argued with me. You didn’t cower.”

“I’m cowering now,” she admitted, her breath catching slightly.

“No, you aren’t. You are preparing for war. You have been preparing for war every day of your life in that house. I saw the way your stepmother looked at you. I heard what she said.” His dark eyes locked onto hers. “I am not making you a target, Beatrice. You were already a target. I am simply pulling you out of the firing line by making myself your shield.”

She let out a bitter, breathy laugh.

“Why? You don’t know me.”

“I know you have a mind that works faster than anyone else I have spoken to this season. I know you hide a burned scar behind cheap leather because they told you it makes you ugly — when it simply makes you a survivor.”

He reached across the space between them. He didn’t touch her, but his hand hovered mere inches from her gloved fingers.

“And I know that when I held you in the dark last night, you stopped trembling.”

Beatrice stared at his hand. Her chest felt tight, the air trapped in her lungs. No one had ever spoken to her like this. No one had ever looked at the broken pieces of her life and treated them as facts rather than tragedies.

“They will destroy Cesily’s chances because of this,” she said quietly — searching for an excuse, a reason to push him away before she did something incredibly stupid, like believe him.

“Cesily’s chances are none of my concern.” He settled back against the leather seat as the carriage turned through the grand iron gates of Hyde Park. “My concern is solely for the woman sitting opposite me. Now, Miss Holley — look out the window. There are at least thirty people staring at us. Let us give them something to whisper about.”

Hyde Park at the height of the season was a theater of cruelty masquerading as a leisure activity. Carriages crawled along the dusty paths in a slow, agonizing circle, forcing their occupants into a gauntlet of hypercritical gazes. Reputations were forged and slaughtered here between three and five every afternoon. To ride in an open carriage was to willingly step onto the auction block.

As Henry’s massive black barouche joined the procession, a visible ripple of shock tore through the promenade. Heads snapped around. Parasols were lowered. Conversations died, only to resurrect seconds later in furious, venomous whispers.

The Duke of Calverton — notoriously reclusive, universally feared — was driving in the park. And he was not alone.

Beatrice sat rigid against the plush leather, feeling every pair of eyes lock onto her plain gray day dress, her severe hair, the thick leather glove. The collective judgment of the ton pressed down on her like a physical weight, suffocating and absolute. Her instinct — honed by a decade of Agatha’s vicious training — was to shrink: fold her shoulders inward, bow her head, make herself as small as humanly possible.

She took a short, jagged breath, and looked down at her lap.

“Look up, Miss Holley.”

His voice was quiet, but it cut through the murmurs of the passing carriages. He had not moved from his relaxed posture, lounging against the cushions, ignoring the gasps and stares with practiced indifference.

“I am trying to minimize the damage,” she muttered, keeping her chin tucked. “If I do not look at them, perhaps they will assume I am your new, exceptionally plain secretary.”

“They will assume nothing. They will know exactly who you are by dinner time.” He countered. “And if you look at the floorboards, they will smell blood in the water. They only attack those who invite the slaughter.”

“Look up.”

She clenched her jaw. Slowly, she lifted her head, forcing her shoulders back. The afternoon sun hit her face, warm and blinding — as if the entire blazing sky had been waiting for her to meet it.

Directly across from them, a pale yellow carriage pulled parallel. Inside sat the Dowager Viscountess of Alsbury — a woman whose tongue had ruined more lives than the French artillery. Her eyes raked over Beatrice, lingering pointedly on the cheap wool of her dress, on the scarred ruin hidden beneath her glove. A nasty, triumphant little smirk touched the older woman’s painted lips. She opened her mouth, ready to deliver a loud, cutting remark meant to echo across the park.

Before she could draw breath, Henry shifted.

He didn’t yell. He didn’t issue a threat. He simply turned his head and leveled a stare at the Dowager Viscountess. It was a look entirely devoid of humanity — the cold, flat gaze of an apex predator evaluating a very small, very annoying rodent.

The smirk vanished. The color drained from the Dowager’s face, leaving her rouge standing out in garish red circles. She snapped her mouth shut, snapped her parasol open, and viciously ordered her driver to whip the horses forward, fleeing the line.

Beatrice exhaled a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

“Fascinating,” Henry murmured, watching the yellow carriage speed away. “She’s usually much braver. It seems her son’s mounting gambling debts have tempered her arrogance.”

“You know her son’s debts?”

“I own the bank that holds his promissory notes.” He turned his gaze back to her. “Power, Miss Holley, is not in the title. It is in the leverage.”