“If You Win This Match, I’ll Marry You,” the Duke Mocked—But When the Ruined Spinster Shattered the Apple at Seventy Yards and Demanded Fifteen Thousand Pounds Instead, He Refused to Let Her Walk Away

PART 1

Gunpowder masked the scent of desperation, choking the summer lawn.

July at Hollingsworth Park was a suffocating affair — the heat baking the manicured grass, the heavy wool of gentlemen’s shooting jackets, and, worst of all, the mothers. They circled Aldrich Perez, Duke of Westford, like vultures in pastel silk, armed with unmarried daughters and thinly veiled questions about his estate’s annual yield. At thirty, with a fortune that made even the Prince Regent flush with envy, Aldrich knew exactly what he was.

He was a bank vault with a title attached.

He lowered his heavy rifle and the scent of sulfur rose from the burnt powder. Fifty yards downrange, another glass bottle shattered into glittering dust against the stone wall.

“Splendid shot, your grace!” Lord Hollingsworth bellowed, red-faced with gin and heat. “Flawless. I doubt there’s a man in England who could match that grouping.”

Aldrich handed the warm rifle to a waiting loader. He didn’t smile.

“There isn’t a man at this party who could hit the broadside of a barn from the inside, Hollingsworth. You’ve invited a dozen dandies who flinch when a cork pops.”

A nervous ripple moved through the gallery beneath the striped awning. The men chuckled to hide their offense. The women tittered to show their appreciation of his wit. Aldrich felt his jaw tighten. Sycophants, all of them.

He reached for a glass of lemonade, his eyes scanning the crowd. That was when he saw her.

She wasn’t laughing. She wasn’t even looking at him.

She sat at the very edge of the awning, half obscured by the shadow of a massive oak. Her dress was an unfashionable gray, the muslin washed so many times it had lost its stiffness. She held no parasol. Her bare hands rested in her lap, and Aldrich noticed the fraying threads on the fingers of her gloves. At her feet, half-hidden beneath the hem of her skirt, sat a battered leather case — the kind a man carried his own gun in when he didn’t trust another man’s rack.

Boggy Somerset. He recognized her vaguely from the periphery of London ballrooms. A twenty-six-year-old spinster dragging a scandalous family name behind her — her father had gambled away the Somerset fortune before putting a pistol in his mouth five years ago. Now she chaperoned her younger, more foolish brother, Charles, who was currently sweating profusely near the gun racks, clearly hung over and avoiding Aldrich’s gaze.

“Tell me, Westford,” chirped Lady Hathage, stepping entirely too close. “Will you be joining the archery tournament tomorrow? The ladies would so love a chance to compete for your attentions.”

Aldrich looked at the eager, painted faces staring at him. A wave of profound exhaustion washed over him. They didn’t see a man. They saw a solution to their debts, a crown for their ambition.

He set his glass down. The ice clinked against the crystal.

“Archery is a child’s game, Lady Hathage. If society insists on treating marriage like a blood sport, we should at least use proper weapons.”

Silence fell over the lawn. Aldrich stepped to the gun rack, picked up a second rifle, and rested the heavy walnut stock against his thigh. He looked at the gallery, his cynical gaze finally landing directly on the gray-clad spinster in the back.

She was looking at him now. Her eyes were dark, flat, and completely devoid of the deference he was accustomed to. She looked at him the way a butcher evaluates a difficult cut of meat.

The utter lack of fear in her expression irritated him. It provoked him.

“Let us make it interesting,” Aldrich said, his voice carrying easily over the manicured grass. “Hollingsworth has offered fifty guineas for the best shot today. A pittance. I propose a new wager. If any gentleman here can outshoot me, I will clear his debts. Every last penny.”

Charles Somerset’s head snapped up. A desperate, hungry gleam appeared in the young man’s eyes — before he realized who he was up against and wilted back against the rack.

Aldrich smiled thinly.

“And to be strictly fair to the modern age — if any lady wishes to try her hand, the stakes remain proportional. If you win this match, I’ll marry you.”

The mock proposal hung in the humid air. The ladies gasped, scandalized by the crassness of the joke, though Aldrich could see the frantic calculations flashing in the eyes of the mothers.

He turned his back, expecting the matter to dissolve into polite murmurs. He reached for his powder horn.

“Make it sixty yards.”

The voice was low, carrying a raspy edge that cut straight through the summer heat.

Aldrich turned around. The crowd parted instantly. Boggy Somerset had stood up. She stepped out from the shade of the oak, and the midday sun caught the severe line of her jaw and the absolute stillness of her posture. She reached down, lifted the battered case at her feet, and carried it past Lady Hathage, past Lord Hollingsworth, straight to the firing line.

She didn’t look at him. She set the case on the trestle table and opened it. Inside, nested in worn felt, lay a long, heavy fowling piece — walnut stock gone dark with age, the brass lock dulled by years of oiling. She lifted it and tested its weight, her fingers brushing the lock with a practiced familiarity that had nothing to do with parlor games.

“Boggy, for God’s sake,” Charles hissed, grabbing her elbow. “Sit down. You’re embarrassing us. Put Father’s gun away.”

She didn’t even look at him. She merely twisted her arm, breaking his grip with a sharp, brutal efficiency.

“Go sit in the shade, Charles. You smell like cheap gin.”

Up close, Aldrich could see the faint smattering of freckles across her nose and the dark circles under her eyes. She looked exhausted. She looked starved.

But her hands, resting on the deadly weapon, did not shake.

“Sixty yards, your grace,” she repeated, deadpan. “Three targets, tiebreaker at seventy. Or does the Duke of Westford only wager against sycophants who are paid to lose?”

Aldrich stared at her. The arrogant smirk slid slowly from his face. A cold, sharp jolt of adrenaline hit the base of his spine.

This wasn’t a joke to her.

“Miss Somerset,” he said quietly, stepping closer so only she could hear. “Put the gun down. You will ruin what little reputation you have left.”

“My reputation doesn’t pay the butcher, your grace,” she replied, equally quiet.

She pulled back the hammer. The heavy mechanical click echoed across the silent lawn.

“Do we have a wager, or are you withdrawing?”

Aldrich looked into her gray eyes. There was no flirtation there. Only a grim, terrifying pragmatism. He had spent his whole life building walls to keep the world out, and this ruined spinster was threatening to blow them apart with a handful of lead and powder.

He stepped back and gave a stiff, formal bow.

“Load your weapon, Miss Somerset.”

The silence on the lawn was absolute. Not a single fan fluttered. Even the birds in the distant woods seemed to have stopped singing.

Boggy ignored the staring eyes. She measured the main charge by pinch rather than by horn, poured it down the muzzle, seated wad and shot, and drove the ramrod home in three quick, even strokes before priming the pan with a lighter pinch still. Aldrich watched her intently, his eyes narrowing.

It wasn’t the clumsy, overcautious handling of an amateur. It was muscle memory.

Where did a London spinster learn to load her dead father’s fowling piece like a poacher?

He didn’t know. Not yet.