She Kissed a Stranger Before the Entire Ballroom to Stop a Bullet—Three Days Later, England’s Richest Duke Appeared at Her Door Holding Her Last Three Shillings and a Marriage Contract She Could Not Refuse

 PART 8

“Henry!”

Her voice cut through the fog like a blade. Henry’s head jerked toward her. The pistol wavered a fraction of an inch. Beatrice ran across the space between them — pushing past the stunned seconds, her heavy skirts dragging in the mud — and grabbed Henry’s arm. The muscle beneath his coat was locked like iron.

“Stop!” She was gasping for breath. She put herself between him and the kneeling, sobbing Finchley. “Put it down!”

Henry stared at her. His eyes were black, hollow pits. The violence in him was barely leashed, vibrating through his arm.

“Get back in the carriage, Beatrice. This is men’s business.”

“This is my business.” She stepped closer, forcing the barrel of his gun toward the ground. “He threatened me. Which makes him mine to deal with. Put the gun down. Now.”

“If he lives, he talks. I will not have Clara’s future destroyed because of my mistake.”

“He will not talk.”

Beatrice turned and walked toward Finchley. The man was weeping openly, kneeling in the mud, a pathetic ruin of a nobleman. She stopped two feet away, looking down at him with absolute, unyielding disgust.

“Lord Finchley. You owe the Keilder estate twelve thousand pounds.”

Finchley nodded frantically, tears cutting tracks through the grime on his face. “Yes, yes, I do. I will pay it. I swear it.”

“You cannot pay it. We own your townhouse. We own the mortgage on your country estate. As of this morning, my husband’s solicitors have frozen your accounts at the Bank of England.” She had not confirmed the last part with Henry, but she knew how he operated. She bluffed with the precision of a seasoned gambler. “You are not a gentleman. You are a beggar.”

Finchley stared at her, horrified.

“If you breathe a word of my name or my husband’s name in any club, drawing room, or street corner, we will not shoot you. We will call the debt. You will be stripped of your property by noon. You will be thrown into the Fleet Prison by evening. You will rot in a damp cell until the typhus takes you, and society will forget your name before your body is cold.”

She leaned in closer.

“A bullet is a quick death, my lord. Poverty is a slow one. Which do you prefer?”

Finchley scrambled backward in the mud, shaking his head violently. “Nothing. I will say nothing. I swear on my life. I will leave London today. I swear it.”

Beatrice stared at him for a long moment. Then she straightened her spine. “See that you do.”

She turned her back on him and walked back to Henry. He was still standing there, the pistol lowered, watching her with an expression she had never seen before. It was not the cold calculation of the Duke. It was not the exhausted vulnerability of the man in the study. It was sheer, unadulterated awe.

“Give the pistol to your second,” she ordered.

Henry silently handed the gun to his estate manager. He looked at her mud-stained skirts, her disheveled hair, the fierce protective fury still burning in her eyes. Without a word, he unbuttoned his heavy ruined greatcoat, took it off, and wrapped it around her shoulders.

The coat smelled of gunpowder and damp wool and him.

He did not offer his arm. He took her hand, lacing his fingers through hers tightly, and walked her back to the carriage.

The ride back to Keilder House was entirely silent.

Beatrice stared at her lap, shivering despite the heavy coat wrapped around her. The reality of what she had just done was crashing down on her. She had disrupted a duel. She had threatened a peer of the realm. She had acted not like a lady but like a mob enforcer.

“I apologize,” she said finally, her voice raspy. “I overstepped. I humiliated you in front of your men.”

Henry turned his head slowly. He looked at her. “You think you humiliated me?”

“I took the weapon out of your hand.”

“You took a murder charge out of my hand.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, bringing his face closer to hers. “If I had killed him, I would have had to flee to the continent. I would have left you alone to face the scandal. You did not humiliate me, Beatrice. You saved me again.”

“Why did you run out there?”

“Because you were going to do something stupid.”

“That does not answer the question.” His eyes searched hers, demanding the truth. “Never lie to me. You are practical. You are ruthless. If I had died, you would have inherited a massive widow’s portion. Clara would be secure forever. You could have sat in the carriage and let the problem solve itself.”

He was right. The cold logic of her survival demanded she let him fight.

“I could not,” she whispered.

“Why?”

“Because I do not want the widow’s portion.” The emotional dam finally broke. Tears she refused to shed burned the back of her throat. “I do not want the money, and I do not want the title if you are dead in a field. I spent five years trying to survive. I married you to survive. But I cannot sit in a box and watch you throw your life away over a bruised ego.”

Henry went perfectly still. “Are you saying you want me — not the title?”

Beatrice swallowed the lump in her throat. “It does not matter. We made a bargain.”

“Damn the bargain.”

Henry crossed the small space between them. He did not sit beside her. He knelt on the floor of the moving carriage, crowding her, forcing her to look down at him. He took her face in his hands. His palms were rough, his fingers warm against her cold skin.

“Beatrice, look at me.”

She forced her eyes to meet his.

“I did not offer you a contract because I needed an heir. I lied. I could have found fifty women willing to marry me for the title. I offered it to you because I could not stop thinking about the woman who dragged a stranger into the dark and kissed him to save his life. I bought you because it was the only way I knew how to keep you.”