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 6

“Your stepmother uses your scar and your lack of dowry as leverage to keep you subservient,” Henry continued. “What leverage do you have against her?”

Beatrice blinked, thrown by the sudden pivot.

“I sew Cesily’s gowns. I manage the household accounts because Agatha cannot do basic arithmetic. I fix the things they break.”

“Utterly useless.” He stated it flatly. “That is not leverage. That is servitude. You are making yourself essential to their comfort, not dangerous to their survival.”

“I have no money, your grace. No connections, and nowhere else to go. And no dowry to make marriage anything but a mathematical impossibility.”

She looked at him, her dark eyes flashing with sudden bitter anger.

“I am not a duke. I cannot buy my way out of my cage. So forgive me if my strategy for survival lacks your ruthless elegance.”

“I am not asking you to buy your way out.” His voice dropped, soft and intent, and the ambient noise of the park faded into the background. “I am asking what you actually want. If you could walk out of that townhouse tomorrow with £1,000 in your pocket — where would you go?”

Beatrice stared at him.

No one had ever asked her what she wanted. Not once in twenty-four years.

“I would go to the coast,” she said — the words spilling out before she could censor them, the bitterness draining away, replaced by a quiet, fierce longing. “I would rent a small house in Cornwall, somewhere loud, where the ocean drowns out everything else. I would read maps of places I will never see. And I would never sew another piece of pink silk as long as I live.”

Henry held her gaze for a long moment. He didn’t laugh. He didn’t call her desires quaint or ridiculous. He cataloged them, filing the information away behind his dark eyes.

“Cornwall is wet,” he noted at last, leaning back. “But the cliffs are tolerable. We will have to find you a house with a proper southern exposure.”

“We?”

Henry ignored the question. He rapped his knuckles against the carriage roof.

“Enough of this circus. Take us back to Mayfair.”

The fallout at the Holley townhouse did not come immediately. It simmered for exactly six hours — before detonating in the form of a thick cream-colored envelope delivered by a footman in royal blue livery.

Beatrice was in the kitchen, eating a cold piece of toast, when Hodges found her.

“For you, miss.” The butler held the silver tray out as if the letter resting upon it might suddenly burst into flames.

The wax seal bore the crest of the Duchess of Summerton. The Summerton ball was the undisputed pinnacle of the season — invitations fought over with vicious desperation. Agatha had spent three months trying to secure one for Cesily, going so far as to bribe the Summerton carriage driver for a moment of the Duchess’s time. To no avail.

Beatrice broke the seal.

The Duchess of Summerton requests the pleasure of Miss Beatrice Holley’s company on Friday the twelfth of May.

There was no mention of Agatha. No mention of Cesily. An explicit, targeted invitation.

And enclosed within the folded vellum, a small handwritten note on Duke of Calverton stationery:

I will send the carriage at nine. Wear something that doesn’t look like a bruise.

“What is it?” Agatha demanded, bursting into the kitchen, hair half-pinned, eyes wide with frantic greed. She snatched the heavy vellum from Beatrice’s hand before she could fold it, read the formal invitation, and her face cycled through shock, outrage, and finally a terrifying, calculating glee.

“Summerton.” She clutched the paper to her chest. “He secured an invitation to Summerton for you.”

For the first time in Beatrice’s memory, Agatha’s gaze was stripped of its usual disgust. Suddenly she was not a liability. She was a golden goose.

“The invitation is for me alone.” Beatrice retrieved the small note and slid it into her pocket.

“Don’t be absurd. It is an oversight. I will write to the Duchess’s secretary immediately and correct the error. Cesily must wear the ivory muslin. You — ” Agatha waved a hand vaguely — “will wear your gray. It doesn’t matter what you wear. You will simply introduce Cesily to the Duke, and then fade into the corners where you belong.”

Beatrice looked at her stepmother. At the frantic, desperate ambition twisting her features.

She thought of Henry’s voice in the carriage. What leverage do you have against her?

“No.”

The single syllable dropped into the kitchen like a stone into a silent well. The scullery maid stopped scrubbing the floor. Hodges froze by the door.

“What did you say to me?”

“I said no.” Her voice was steady. She didn’t raise it. She didn’t need to. “I am not taking Cesily. You are not coming. I am going to the ball alone. And if you attempt to lock me in my room or hide my shoes, I will simply inform the Duke of Calverton why I missed his engagement. I imagine he will be deeply displeased with you.”

Agatha’s mouth opened and closed. She took a step forward, raising her hand as if to strike — and stopped. The threat of Calverton’s wrath was a physical barrier she dared not cross.

“You ungrateful, wretched creature.” Her voice trembled with fury. “You think you have won? He is playing with you. He will ruin you. And when he tosses you aside, I will leave you in the streets.”

“Then I will enjoy the music while it lasts.”

Beatrice turned her back on her stepmother and walked out of the kitchen. She had three days. She had no money, no lady’s maid, and absolutely nothing to wear.

She went straight to the attic.