“Take Off the Wedding Dress,” the Duke Said Coldly. “This Marriage Is Just Revenge.” — But When His Fingers Touched Clara’s Bare Skin, His Carefully Planned Vengeance Became a Prison Neither of Them Could Escape.

 PART 4

By the second week of December, a fragile, deeply bizarre domestic rhythm had settled over the Westford townhouse.

They lived like two solitary boarders who happened to share a dining room. Arthur spent his days at his clubs or locked in his study, managing his vast estates with a punishing, obsessive focus. Clara spent hers navigating the treacherous waters of morning calls — taking tea with women who smiled to her face and cataloged the price of her lace the moment she turned her back.

She also bought the dog.

He was a wire-haired terrier mix she found shivering near Covent Garden, missing half of his left ear and possessing a bark that sounded like a rusty gate hinge. She named him Barnaby.

Arthur despised him immediately.

Barnaby, possessing the uncanny intuition of all street animals, recognized the true seat of power in the house and made it his life’s mission to sleep directly on Arthur’s leather boots.

It was a Tuesday afternoon when the fragile peace fractured.

Clara was in the morning room, attempting to read a remarkably dull novel, while Barnaby chewed on a discarded ribbon near the hearth. The rain lashed against the tall windows, blurring the gray London streets into a watercolor of mud and misery.

The heavy oak doors of the room did not open. They were shoved.

“I don’t care if she’s receiving!”

A voice slurred loudly from the corridor, followed by the sound of the butler — Higgins — making a muffled protest.

“She is my daughter, you insolent lackey.”

Clara froze. The book slipped from her lap, hitting the Persian rug with a soft thud. Barnaby’s ears perked up, a low growl rumbling in his throat.

Richard Ashford stepped into the room.

He was a man who had traded on his handsome face for fifty years, but the currency had finally run out. His clothes, once the height of Savile Row tailoring, hung loosely on his frame. The fabric was damp, smelling of cheap gin, wet wool, and the sour, unmistakable scent of desperation. His eyes were bloodshot, darting around the opulent room — calculating the worth of the silver candlesticks and the silk curtains — before finally landing on Clara.

“Father.”

Clara did not stand up. Her voice was flat, devoid of surprise or pleasure.

Higgins hovered in the doorway, looking entirely stricken. “Your Grace, I apologize. He forced his way.”

“It is fine, Higgins.” Clara’s voice was smooth, though her pulse was hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. “You may leave us. Please close the doors.”

The butler retreated, casting a weary look at Ashford before shutting them in.

“Well!” Ashford clapped his hands together, rubbing the palms briskly. He took a few steps into the room, leaving muddy footprints on the rug. “Look at you. The Duchess of Westford, sitting in a palace while your own flesh and blood is freezing in a rented room above a butcher’s shop in Cheapside.”

“You lost the lease on the house in Mayfair.”

“I was evicted.” He spat the word like poison. “That bastard husband of yours called in every remaining marker. He blacklisted me with every lender from here to Edinburgh. I cannot even get credit for a carriage ride.”

“Arthur was quite thorough,” Clara agreed.

She kept her hands folded in her lap so her father would not see them shaking. She had spent twenty-four years mitigating this man’s disasters, soothing his rages, cleaning up his messes. Old habits died screaming.

Ashford crossed the room and dropped into the armchair opposite her, leaning forward. The smell of alcohol was overpowering.

“You have to talk to him, Clara. You are in his bed now. You know how to manage men. Coax him. Tell him a few thousand is nothing to him — a drop in the ocean.”

Clara stared at him. The sheer, blinding audacity of it left her momentarily breathless.

“You sold me to a man who explicitly wants to destroy you. And you are asking me to beg him for an allowance?”

“I secured your future!” Ashford hissed, slamming a hand on the armrest. Barnaby barked sharply, scrambling backward. “You are a duchess. You have everything you ever wanted. Do you think you would have married half as well if I had not orchestrated this?”

“You did not orchestrate anything.” Her voice was soft. “You got caught in a trap of your own making, and you left me behind in the jaws.”

“Do not take that tone with me, you ungrateful little bitch.” His face flushed a mottled, ugly purple. He stood up, towering over her. “You are my daughter. You owe me. I want five thousand pounds by Friday, Clara, or I will start talking to the papers. I will tell them the Duke of Westford’s new bride is a barren, frigid piece of work who had to be bought because no decent man would have her.”

“You will do no such thing.”

The voice did not come from Clara. It came from the doorway.

Arthur stood there. He was still wearing his damp riding coat, his riding crop gripped loosely in one gloved hand. His expression was not angry. It was something far worse. It was the absolute, icy stillness of an apex predator that had just cornered its prey.

Ashford flinched, instinctively taking a step back from Clara. The bluster drained out of him instantly, replaced by a pathetic, cringing sycophancy.

“Your Grace. I was just paying my respects to the Duchess.”

Arthur walked slowly into the room. He did not look at Clara. His pale gray eyes were fixed entirely on her father.

“I bought your debts, Ashford.” Arthur’s voice dropped into a register that vibrated with menace. “I paid every debt you attached to her name. You owe nothing. You are nothing. If you ever set foot in my home again — if you ever speak to my wife in that tone again — I will not send you to debtor’s prison. I will simply have you beaten within an inch of your life and dropped in the Thames.”

Ashford’s mouth opened and closed like a dying fish. “You cannot. I am a —”

“A duke.” Arthur interrupted quietly. “I can do precisely whatever I please. Get out.”

Ashford looked at Clara — a last, desperate plea in his eyes. She looked away, staring firmly at the cold fireplace, swallowing hard.

Her father scrambled past Arthur, nearly tripping over his own feet in his haste to reach the door. The heavy oak slammed shut behind him.

The silence that followed was suffocating.

Clara sat perfectly still. She did not cry. She just felt hollowed out — scraped clean with a rusted knife.

Arthur turned to her. He looked at the mud on the rug, at the discarded book, and finally at Clara’s white, rigid face. He tossed his riding crop onto a side table.

“Are you all right?” The coldness was gone from his voice, replaced by a strange, gruff hesitation.

Clara looked up. “He asked for five thousand pounds.”

“I heard.”

“He would have settled for fifty.”

She let out a short, broken laugh that contained absolutely no humor. “He always starts high. It is his negotiating tactic.”

Arthur walked over. He did not sit in the chair Ashford had vacated. Instead, he crouched down in front of her, bringing himself to her eye level. It was an incredibly intimate, unguarded gesture for a man who wore his pride like armor.

Barnaby trotted over and tentatively sniffed Arthur’s wet knee.

For once, the duke did not shove the dog away.

“He will not come back, Clara.”

“No. He will not.”

Clara finally looked into his eyes. “You have your revenge, Arthur. You broke him completely today. I hope it brings you the peace you were looking for.”

She stood up, brushing past him, and walked out of the room before he could see the first tear fall.