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 8

The carriage ride home did not carry the bruised silence of their last return. Henry sat beside her instead of across from her, and somewhere past Grosvenor Square he took her hand and laced their fingers together, anchoring it against his thigh, and said nothing at all. It was enough.

Fog had rolled off the Thames by the time they reached Summerton House. Franks met them at the door.

“Thank you, Franks. That will be all.”

“Very good, your grace. Welcome home, Duchess.”

He vanished, and the great hall fell quiet beneath a dozen portraits of previous Dukes — stern, miserable men who had almost certainly lived and died in polite distance from their own wives.

This was the point where they usually said good night — she to the west wing, he to his study. Henry did not let go of her hand.

He turned right, toward the study.

Beatrice followed without a word.

The room smelled of worn leather and old paper. Henry lit the lamp and leaned against the desk, arms folded, watching her stand in the middle of his sanctuary in the sapphires he had chosen.

“You did not want your sitting room.”

“I have stared at that floral rug for as long as one lifetime permits.” She trailed a gloved hand over a ledger. “Besides. Your desk is back in here. Who will check your arithmetic on the northern shipping margins? Your steward in York is still an idiot.”

Henry let out a rough, unpractised laugh.

He unbuttoned his waistcoat, dropped it over a chair, pulled his cravat free. “I survived thirty-four years without you checking my arithmetic, Beatrice.”

“And you were terribly bored.”

“I was.”

He crossed to her, drew off her gloves one at a time, and pulled her gently forward until she stood between his knees. His thumb traced her jaw, over the spot where the bruise had been.

“I told you I would burn London to the ground to protect you,” he said. “I meant it. I still mean it. But tonight, watching you dismantle Lady Jersey with a single sentence, I understood something.”

“What?”

“You do not need me to burn anything for you. You carry your own matches.”

Beatrice looked up into the grey of his eyes, and the cynicism that had defined her entire youth — the bedrock belief that she was a commodity to be tolerated — finally dissolved, and left nothing behind it.

She was not a commodity. She was a partner to a man who understood the exact weight of the world they lived in.