She Walked Away Silently After Broken Engagement — Minutes Later, Duke’s Royal Carriage Came After..

Chapter 7

The journey to Derbyshire was a nightmare wrapped in snow. A blizzard had swept in from the north, burying the roads in two feet of white silence. The train took them as far as the station, but the last twenty miles to Blackwood Keep had to be undertaken by carriage.

Maximilian’s personal carriage was a fortress on wheels — steel plates in the doors, reinforced axles, a new innovation called bulletproof glass that had been imported from Germany at enormous expense. They traveled with four outriders, armed guards on horseback, their breath pluming in the frozen air. But even with all this protection, Genevieve could feel the tension radiating from the man sitting across from her.

He had been brooding for hours, reviewing documents he was not reading, checking his revolver every ten minutes. His jaw was set, his eyes were hard, and he had not spoken a word since they left the train station.

“You cannot protect against everything, Maximilian,” she said, watching the white landscape blur past the window.

He looked up, his gray eyes sharp. “I can try.”

“Who are they?” she asked. “The people sending the threats. It is not just political, is it?”

He sighed, rubbing his temples. The exhaustion in his face made him look older than his thirty-two years. “No. It is a syndicate. The Iron Circle. Wartime profiteers. They want England to enter a conflict with Prussia to drive up the price of steel and munitions. I have been blocking their contracts, exposing their bribes. I am costing them millions.”

“And Thomas War?” she asked quietly.

He looked surprised. “What about him?”

“Thomas needed money. He was desperate. Is it possible—”

His eyes narrowed. “He is too incompetent to be a mastermind. But he could be a pawn. A useful idiot to leak my movements.”

The carriage hit a patch of ice, skidding slightly before the driver corrected. Genevieve gripped the edge of her seat, her heart lurching. Maximilian’s hand went to his revolver, his eyes scanning the white landscape outside.

“Tell me about your parents,” she said, desperate to break the tension.

He looked at her sharply. “Why?”

“Because I want to understand you. Because you mentioned them on the day we met — that love destroyed them. I want to know what that means.”

He was silent for a long moment. Then, slowly, he spoke. “My mother was a woman who loved too deeply. She loved my father with a passion that consumed her entirely. When he died — a hunting accident, they said — she did not survive him. Not in body, but in spirit. She walked through the next twenty years as a ghost, waiting to join him. She did not see me. She did not see anything. She was already gone.”

“And your father?”

“He loved her too. But he loved his secrets more. He was involved in things — political things, dangerous things — that he never told her about. When he died, she discovered that she had not known him at all. The man she loved had been a stranger. It broke her.”

He looked out the window, his reflection ghostly in the glass. “I decided then that I would never love anyone enough to destroy them. Love is a poison, Genevieve. It seeps into you slowly, and by the time you realize you have been poisoned, it is too late.”

She wanted to reach for him. She wanted to cross the space between them and take his hand and tell him that he was wrong, that love was not a poison, that it was the only thing that made life worth living. But before she could speak, the world exploded.

The carriage lurched violently, throwing her sideways. A boom echoed through the valley — not thunder, but dynamite. The vehicle tipped, skidding across the ice, the world tilting into chaos. She heard Maximilian shout her name, felt his body cover hers as debris rained down around them. Glass shattered. Wood splintered. The horses screamed.

Then silence.

She was lying on what had been the side wall of the carriage. Snow was falling through the broken windows. She could hear gunfire — sharp, rhythmic cracks that sounded like a hunter’s rifle.

“Genevieve.” Maximilian’s voice was in her ear, urgent and low. “Can you move?”

She nodded, though her whole body was trembling. He was already in motion, kicking open the door that now faced the sky, pulling her up with him.

“Stay down,” he commanded, his revolver in his hand. “They blew the bridge. We are trapped.”

He looked at her, and she saw blood running down his forehead from a gash above his eye. “Under the seat. There is a compartment. A Winchester rifle. Do you know how to use it?”

“My father took me hunting,” she stammered, her heart hammering. “But birds — not people.”

“Treat them like wolves,” he said grimly. “Because that is what they are.”

He climbed out of the carriage, and she heard him shouting orders to the surviving guards, heard the crack of his revolver, heard the screams of wounded horses. She scrambled for the rifle, her fingers numb with cold and fear. She found it. Checked the chamber. Loaded.

She peered over the rim of the carriage door. The scene before her was a nightmare. Two of their guards were down, their bodies dark against the white snow. Four men on horseback were circling, scarves wrapped around their faces. Maximilian was pinned down behind a fallen log, returning fire.

One of the riders broke away, galloping toward the carriage. Toward her. He held a torch, the flame streaming behind him like a banner. They were going to burn her alive.

She did not think. She did not weigh the moral implications. She did not calculate the cost of a human life. She simply saw the man who was coming to kill her husband, and she acted.

She rested the barrel on the carriage door, took a breath, and squeezed the trigger.

The recoil slammed into her shoulder. The rider jerked backward, the torch spinning from his hand, his body falling from the saddle into the snow. The flame hissed out, leaving a trail of smoke.

The gunshot echoed through the valley, and the attacking horses reared, their riders struggling to control them. They had not expected the Duchess to fight back.

“Good shot!” Maximilian’s voice rang out, fierce and proud.

He broke cover, running at the attackers instead of away from them. She watched him move through the snow like a demon, firing with terrifying precision. Two more men fell. The last one, seeing the tide turn, wheeled his horse and fled into the woods.

Silence fell, broken only by the wind and the heavy breathing of the survivors.

Genevieve climbed out of the wreckage, dropping the rifle in the snow. She ran toward Maximilian, her torn dress trailing behind her, her hands black with soot. He was leaning against a tree, reloading his revolver. When he saw her, the weapon clattered to the ground.

He grabbed her, pulling her into his chest so hard it knocked the breath from her lungs. He buried his face in her neck, and she felt him shaking. The Iron Duke was shaking.

“I thought—” His voice cracked. “When the carriage tipped — I thought I had killed you.”

“I am alive,” she said, clutching his coat. “We are alive.”

He pulled back, framing her face in his hands. He looked at the soot on her cheek, the fierce determination in her eyes. “You shot a man.”

“He was going to burn you.”

He stared at her. In that moment, the last wall between them crumbled. He did not see a business partner. He did not see a contract. He saw the only person in the world who was his equal.

“Genevieve,” he whispered.

He kissed her. It was not the polite peck of their wedding day. It was desperate, hungry, fueled by adrenaline and fear and the raw, undeniable truth they had both been running from. It tasted of blood and snow and survival.

She melted into him, wrapping her arms around his neck, pulling him closer. When they broke apart, breathless, the snow was falling harder.

“We have to move,” he said, his voice rough. “The horses are gone. It is three miles to the keeper’s lodge. Can you walk?”

She looked at her ruined silk shoes, then at the man who held her as if she were the most precious thing on earth.

“I walked away from my engagement in the rain,” she said, a small, tired smile touching her lips. “I can walk through snow for my husband.”

He smiled — a real, unguarded smile that made him look ten years younger. He took off his heavy greatcoat and draped it over her shoulders.

“Then let us go home, Duchess.”