“The Duke Is Gay and Impotent,” Her Stepsister Mocked When Clara Was Forced to Marry Him—But His Wedding-Night Confession Revealed Why She Had Really Been Chosen

PART 6

Mrs. Gable left within the hour, the copied pages sewn into the lining of her cloak, riding out into the gathering wind toward the village with instructions to place them directly into the magistrate’s hands and no one else’s.

The storm broke two nights later, dark clouds swallowing the moon until the Keep sat wrapped in blackness, broken only by lightning. Clara had grown watchful in the days since the stable — flinching at hoofbeats, counting the staff at every meal — and that evening, an uneasy feeling settled deep in her chest the moment supper ended.

The pounding came at the great doors just past nine, hooves and shouting rising over the crash of thunder. Mrs. Gable — returned from the village that afternoon, her errand long since done — rushed in pale-faced. “Your grace. Men at the gate. Mr. Hastings says he’ll not leave without the girl.”

Anthony’s face turned to stone. “Jane. Where is she?”

“Here.” Jane appeared in the doorway, trembling but standing tall.

Anthony moved instantly between his sister and the doors. Clara stepped forward as well, refusing to be shielded away like something fragile.

The great doors burst open. Silas Hastings strode inside, rain dripping from his coat, flanked by two rough-looking men. He was older than Anthony, thin-faced, cold-eyed.

“There you are,” Silas said, locking eyes on Jane. “Come now, girl. The trust review is a fortnight off yet. Until then, my word as guardian still stands.”

“She is going nowhere with you,” Anthony said.

“You cannot stop what the law allows me, nephew.”

“The law that lets you control a trust you’ve been bleeding dry for three years,” Clara said, stepping forward, “using forged signatures on documents you never expected anyone to examine closely.”

Silas’s sneer flickered — but only for a moment. “You understand nothing, girl.”

“I understand ledgers quite well, Mr. Hastings. And letters. This afternoon I found the true accounts — and a letter, in your own hand, naming a price already paid for Dr. Whitfield’s discretion. The same arrangement you used once before. Copies are already in the magistrate’s hands, carried to the village two days ago, long before you thought to watch the roads.”

She meant it to sound like a bluff, calm and absolute. It was, in fact, entirely true — and that was the only reason it worked as well as it did.

Silas’s confidence didn’t break so much as calculate. “Two days ago,” he repeated slowly. “Before the storm closed the low road.” His eyes narrowed. “No rider’s crossed that ford since Tuesday.”

“She didn’t take the ford,” Mrs. Gable said from the stairs, iron in her voice. “I know a shorter way through the north fields. Always have. Your men were watching the wrong road, Mr. Hastings.”

For one long, terrible moment, Silas said nothing at all — and Clara watched something in his face give way entirely, not to defeat, but to something far more dangerous: the calm of a man who has just realized he has nothing left to lose by finishing what he started.

“Then it hardly matters what I do here tonight,” he said quietly. He looked at Clara, and the contempt in his face had curdled into something colder. “You were never meant to last long enough to read that letter, girl. A pity. You might have made a tolerable duchess, kept quiet, kept comfortable, and none the wiser.”

“Your brother’s first wife,” Anthony said, very slowly, “died of a fever, Silas. Or so I was always told.”

Silas didn’t answer that. He didn’t need to. The silence answered for him.

“Take her,” he said to his men, and pointed — not at Jane.

At Clara.

Anthony moved before the words had finished leaving his uncle’s mouth, but the two men were already crossing the hall, and the next several seconds dissolved into shouting and grasping hands and Jane screaming for someone to stop. One man seized Clara’s arm hard enough to bruise; she drove her elbow back into him exactly the way she’d once seen a stable boy fell a man twice his size, and twisted free long enough for Anthony’s fist to catch the second man square across the jaw.

It was Silas himself who moved fastest — a pistol drawn from beneath his rain-soaked coat, leveled not at Anthony but at Clara, his hand shaking with something closer to panic now than resolve.

“One more step,” he said, “and this ends exactly the way I planned it to end from the beginning. An unfortunate accident. No one left standing close enough to say otherwise.”

The great hall went utterly still, thunder cracking somewhere far off, every eye on the small unsteady distance between a loaded pistol and Clara’s chest.