Lord Thomas Reed slapped the Duchess of Summerton in a velvet alcove, certain no one would ever know — until the door behind her opened. Her husband had heard what Thomas said. But when the Duke saw the red mark on her cheek, it was not the anger in his eyes that chilled her. It was the question he asked Thomas: “How long do you think I was standing outside that door?”

PART 4

Summerton House was a fortress of limestone and mahogany. Tonight it felt like a sanctuary.

The heavy front doors swung open before the carriage had fully stopped. The butler, Mr. Franks, stood in the entryway with his professional greeting already forming.

It died on his lips the moment Henry led Beatrice into the light of the chandelier.

Franks’s eyes widened, then locked onto the angry purple-red mark dominating the Duchess’s left cheek. Something moved behind the old man’s face — grief, maybe, or fury — and was immediately disciplined back into stillness.

“Franks. A basin of cold water, a clean cloth, and a block of ice from the kitchens. Bring it to the Duchess’s private sitting room. Speak to no one else of this.”

“At once, your grace.”

Henry did not let go of her. He walked her up the grand staircase, past the closed door of his own study, down the west wing to her private suite. He sat her on the chaise by the unlit fireplace.

“Stay.”

He lit the fire himself.

Beatrice watched him do it. Dukes did not light fires. Dukes rang bells.

Franks returned with the tray and was dismissed with a low murmur. Henry shed his coat, untied his cravat, unbuttoned his collar, and looked entirely out of place in a room of pale silk and feminine drapery.

Beatrice had never felt safer in her life.

He broke a chunk from the ice block and wrapped it in linen. He wet a second cloth and sat on the edge of the chaise.

“This will be uncomfortable.”

“I know.”

He pressed the damp cloth to the cut on her lip. Beatrice flinched at the sting and pulled back an inch. Henry froze instantly, dropping his hand.

“I am sorry.”

“No. It’s fine. It just surprised me.”

He watched her a moment, then finished cleaning the blood away, and lifted the ice pack to her cheekbone. She let out a long, shaking breath and her shoulders finally dropped.

“You never answered me,” she said, eyes closed against the cold. “In the carriage.”

“No.”

“You’re not going to.”

“I am trying to find the honest version,” Henry said. “The dishonest one is easier and I don’t want to give it to you.”

He held the ice steady.

“I hate the Carmichael balls. I always have. Tonight I told myself I would go regardless, because you were wearing the emeralds, and I wanted — for reasons I did not examine too closely — to see you in them. I arrived near half past nine. I did not go into the ballroom.”

“Where did you go?”

“The corridors. I walked them. More than once. I was, if I am honest, working up the nerve to walk into a room I despise for a wife who did not ask me to come.”

Beatrice opened her eyes.

“Ours was a practical arrangement,” Henry went on. His tone was steady; his thumb was not — it brushed nervously at the fabric of the chaise. “I required a duchess. You required security. We agreed to polite distance. I believed I was honoring that agreement by leaving you to your own devices.”

“But when I walked into that room tonight, and I saw that insect raise his hand to you — the arrangement ceased to exist.”

Beatrice did not move.

“You are not a contract to me.” His voice was quiet and absolute. “You are my wife. And I will burn London to the ground before I let anyone lay a finger on you again.”

Something inside her chest gave way.

She had built those walls carefully. Twelve months of careful, cynical masonry — the bitter certainty that polite apathy was the best a woman in her position could hope for. She reached up and wrapped her hand over his where he held the ice against her face.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Henry did not smile. But the hard lines around his mouth softened, and he turned his hand slightly, threading his fingers through hers.

“Keep the ice on it. I will sit with you.”

And he did, long after the fire had burned down to embers.

She woke in her own bed to a hard grey London morning, the memory of the night rushing back ahead of her eyes opening.

“Don’t move too quickly.”

Henry sat in the wing chair by the window, changed into dark trousers and a plain white shirt, a cup of coffee balanced on his knee. He looked like a man who had not slept.

He crossed to the bed with a small hand mirror and held it out, face down.

“You should see it. It is worse than last night.”

Beatrice took a breath and turned it over. The left side of her face was a mottled tapestry — deep plum bleeding into greenish-yellow near the eye, her lower lip split and swollen.

She laid the mirror face down and laughed, a bitter, startled sound.

“I shan’t be attending Lady Jersey’s garden party on Thursday.”

“I sent a rider to the docks this morning,” Henry said, as casually as if discussing the weather. “Lord Thomas Reed has taken passage to Calais. He is gone.”

“His family will ask questions.”

“Let them. His father is already aware of Thomas’s gambling. I ensured a very convincing ledger of his debts was delivered to his club this morning. The narrative is set. He fled his creditors.”

Beatrice looked up sharply. “You forged his gambling debts.”

“I am a duke with considerable resources, Beatrice. I can do a great many things before breakfast.”

A knock sounded. “Your grace?” came the muffled voice of Sarah, her maid. “I have your morning tea.”

Beatrice reached for the blanket, panicked. She was not ready to explain this to the staff.

Henry crossed to the door and opened it just wide enough to block the view.

“Leave the tray, Sarah. The Duchess has caught a severe chill and will remain in her chambers, undisturbed. I will tend to her myself.”

He locked the door, poured her tea — the right milk, one lump of sugar, the way she took it, which she had never once told him — and sat back down.

“A severe chill,” Beatrice noted.

“It buys us a fortnight of seclusion without raising an eyebrow. By then the bruising will fade to something powder can cover.”

She watched him drink his cold coffee, and understood that something had shifted permanently. He was not looking at her the way a man looks at a solved problem.

“I have spent the last year staying out of your way,” he said, following her gaze. “I thought that was the kindest thing I could offer a woman thrust into this marriage. I was wrong. My absence left you unprotected in a room full of jackals. It will not happen again.”

“Henry, you don’t have to —”

“I want to,” he interrupted softly. “If you will allow it.”

Beatrice looked at him — past the title, past the year of silence — and saw the man who had driven another man into a fireplace by the throat, who had washed her blood away with his own hands, who had forged documents before sunrise not to protect his name but to protect her from a whispering city.

She set the teacup down, pushed the quilts aside, and stood, aching, anyway.

She crossed to him.

“I don’t want polite distance anymore,” she said, laying her cynicism down on the floor between them. “I want my husband.”

Henry closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. When he opened them, the last of the Duke of Summerton’s cold composure was gone. He drew her gently onto his lap, careful of her face, and buried his face in the crook of her neck.

For the first time since the day they had promised each other nothing at all, they were finally married.