“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 8

The hours crawled by like a slow, bleeding wound.

Boggy did not sleep. She paced the length of the drawing room while the fire died in the grate, leaving a chill in the massive stone walls. And somewhere in the dark small hours, she realized, with a profound and terrifying clarity, that she was not afraid of losing High Cross. She was not afraid of the creditors.

She was afraid of losing Aldrich.

She had spent her life viewing men as liabilities — creatures who gambled away safety, or demanded obedience in exchange for bread. Aldrich had demanded nothing. He had given her the keys to his estate, respected her mind, and now he was walking into a slum to fight a battle that wasn’t his, simply because she had been threatened.

The heavy front doors groaned open just before sunrise. Boggy ran.

Aldrich was shrugging out of his greatcoat. He looked exhausted; there was a smear of dried mud on his cheek and his knuckles were bruised. But his eyes were clear. He looked up and saw her standing at the base of the stairs, shivering in her dressing gown.

“It is done,” Aldrich said quietly, handing his coat to a sleepy footman. “Croft has been arrested for extortion and transported to a holding cell. The debt is voided. He will be on a ship to a penal colony by the end of the month.”

Boggy couldn’t speak. The iron band that had been wrapped around her chest for five years finally, irrevocably, snapped.

Her knees gave out.

She didn’t hit the floor. Aldrich crossed the distance in three massive strides, catching her before she fell, hauling her against his chest, his arms wrapping around her with a desperate, crushing strength. He smelled of cold air, gunpowder, and horses.

It was the best thing she had ever inhaled.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured into her hair as a single ragged sob tore from her throat. “I’ve got you, Boggy.”

He picked her up, ignoring her weak protests, and carried her up the sweeping marble staircase. He didn’t take her to her wing. He took her to his own chambers. The fire was roaring in the grate. He set her gently on the edge of the heavy mahogany bed, and knelt before her, his large hands resting on her knees.

“Charles is sleeping in the guest wing,” Aldrich said, his voice a low, steady rumble. “He is safe.”

“You are safe.”

Boggy looked down at him, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

“Why did you do it, Aldrich? It was three thousand pounds. It was a scandal. You could have walked away.”

Aldrich looked up at her, stripping away the very last remnants of his cynical armor.

“Because I was a dead man before you walked onto that shooting green,” he confessed, his thumbs tracing the line of her calves over the silk of her robe. “I had money and a title and absolutely nothing to live for. I proposed that wager out of arrogance. But you — you stood there with nothing but a rusted gun and sheer, terrifying will, and you forced me to wake up.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small velvet box. He popped it open. Inside was a diamond ring, brilliantly cut, shimmering in the firelight.

“I forced a ring on your finger in a cold church because I was too proud to admit you had bested me,” Aldrich said quietly. “I made it a transaction. I was wrong.”

He took her left hand, brushing his thumb over the heavy plain gold band he had given her on their wedding day.

“I do not want a transaction anymore, Boggy. I do not want a ledger. I want my wife.”

He looked deeply into her gray eyes.

“But I will not cage you. If you want out — if you want your freedom, whatever it costs, whatever doors I have to force open in Parliament to get it for you — I will spend every guinea I have and call in every favor I am owed. You will never have to worry about money again. But if you stay, you stay as my equal in everything.”

Boggy stared at the diamond. It was beautiful, but it was just a stone. She looked at the man kneeling in front of her — a duke who had dirtied his hands in a slum to protect her brother, a man who had cleared his table so she wouldn’t feel ashamed of her hunger.

She reached down, took the velvet box from his hand, and set it on the nightstand.

“I don’t need another ring, Aldrich,” she whispered.

She reached for the collar of his shirt, her fingers sliding over his bruised knuckles, and pulled him up. Aldrich followed the motion, rising from his knees and pressing her back against the heavy pillows.

“I won the match,” she said, her voice dropping to a low, fierce whisper against his lips. “I’m keeping my prize.”

Aldrich let out a ragged breath — the sound of years of loneliness washing away. He kissed her, not with the cold obligation of a contract, but with the desperate, bruising heat of a man who had finally found something worth fighting for. Boggy kissed him back, her hands tangling in his hair, anchoring him to her — and when he finally drew back, breathless, his forehead resting against hers in the firelight, he found he had no clever answer left for her. Only her name, said like it mattered.

“Boggy.”

“I’m here,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”