The Duke Married A Merchant’s Daughter To Save His Estate, Then Invited His “Uneducated” Wife To Dinner As A Joke — But When Europe’s Sharpest Ambassador Rose To Greet Her, He Realized He’d Married Far Above His Own Understanding
PART 7
Miles away, in the gilded drawing room of the Prime Minister’s residence, Beatrice was fighting a very different kind of war.
Lady Albright’s salon was exactly the velvet-lined snake pit Beatrice had expected. Twenty women in pastel silks sipped tea from porcelain so thin the light shone through it. When Beatrice arrived in a tailored dark plum dress with zero lace and zero apology, the room went quiet. They seated her in the center — a subtle isolation tactic — and for the better part of an hour peppered her with questions designed to expose her lack of pedigree.
“And tell me, your grace.” Lady Albright smiled, a razor-thin expression that never reached her eyes. “Is it true you grew up without a governess? However did you learn the pianoforte?”
“I don’t play the pianoforte,” Beatrice said, sipping her tea.
A collective, quiet gasp rippled through the room. “How dreadful,” a young viscountess whispered behind her fan. “What do you do to entertain guests?”
“I find that competent conversation usually suffices.” Beatrice’s voice stayed calm. “But if they’re desperate for noise, I suppose I could read them a cargo manifest. The rhythm is quite soothing.”
A few of the older women bristled at the sarcasm. Lady Albright set her teacup down with a sharp clatter. “You have a very unique perspective, Duchess, but society requires certain refinements. It’s not all ledgers and ships. We are the cultural heartbeat of the empire. My husband, for instance, just secured this magnificent silk from the Orient.” She gestured to the elaborate draping of her own gown. “It represents the reach and elegance of British influence.”
Beatrice looked at the silk and recognized the weave at once.
“It’s beautiful, Lady Albright.” Her voice stayed smooth, pleasant. “Woven in Lyon, actually. Not the Orient. Smuggled through Dutch ports to avoid the blockade. A risky purchase.”
The room went dead silent.
Lady Albright’s smile vanished. “I beg your pardon.”
“The thread count and the dye give it away.” Beatrice set her teacup down, unhurried. “The French use a specific copper mordant for that shade of blue. It’s highly illegal for a British peer to purchase under the current embargo. The fines are crippling. If the exchequer found out, they would likely seize your husband’s country estate to cover the penalty.”
Lady Albright looked as though she’d been slapped. The other women shrank into their chairs, suddenly terrified their own dresses might be examined next.
Beatrice picked up her tea again, gray eyes moving slowly around the room, taking in every ounce of fear and vanity and utter uselessness gathered there.
“But I’m sure your husband’s tailor simply made an error in the paperwork,” she said softly, offering Lady Albright a terrifying, gracious smile. “And I have no interest in other people’s ledgers, unless, of course, they force me to open them.”
The message was received. The wolves tucked their tails. For the rest of the afternoon, conversation shifted safely to the weather, and no one dared ask Beatrice about her upbringing again.
Arthur returned to Westford just as the sun dipped below the London skyline, casting long, bruised shadows across the lawn. He bypassed the drawing room, his study, his own chambers, and walked straight to the conservatory.
Beatrice was still there — out of her salon dress, back in practical navy wool, a smudge of ink on her chin, arguing quietly with the estate manager over a stack of receipts. Arthur approached the table. The manager took one look at the Duke’s face and bowed himself out of the room without a word.
Beatrice didn’t look up immediately. She finished totaling a column of figures. “The salon was exactly as tedious as I predicted. Lady Albright will likely burn her favorite blue dress tonight out of sheer paranoia.”
Arthur reached into his coat and pulled out a folded parchment stamped with the red wax seal of the Custom House. He tossed it onto the map of the Baltic Sea, over the shipping lane she’d been measuring that morning.
Beatrice stopped writing. She picked up the parchment, broke the seal, and scanned the dense legal text. When she reached the bottom, where Collector Cole had hurriedly scrawled his signature releasing the wool, she stopped. Read it again. Looked up at Arthur.
For the first time since he’d met her, Beatrice Cromwell looked genuinely surprised.
“It’s done,” Arthur said quietly. He didn’t gloat. He didn’t ask for praise.
“How?”
“I spoke with Collector Cole. I reminded him his brother’s turnpike Act relies on friendly votes when it reaches committee in the Lords. I suggested his goodwill at the docks would ensure mine in Parliament.”
Beatrice stared at him. The gray of her eyes seemed to lighten, catching the last of the fading sunlight.
“You blackmailed a crown official.”
“I negotiated.” The ghost of a smile touched the corner of his mouth. “Isn’t that what you call it?”
She set the paper down and looked at him a long, silent moment — the mud on his boots, the tension in his shoulders, not the passive boredom of aristocratic life but the active adrenaline of a man who had fought a fight and won. She walked to a side table, poured two glasses of whiskey from a crystal decanter, and handed him one.
“To negotiation,” she said softly.
Arthur took the glass. Their fingers brushed — her skin warm, the calluses on her palm a stark contrast to the crystal in his hand. He drank. The whiskey burned bright in his chest.
“Thomas was here this afternoon,” Beatrice said, turning back to the map. The warmth in the room cooled instantly.
Arthur’s jaw tightened. “What did he want?”
“He didn’t ask for me.” Her voice stayed even, clinical. “He sat in the drawing room with three of your friends. They drank your brandy. I was in the adjacent library. I heard him.” She paused. “He’s telling people you’ve lost your mind. He claims the French ambassador only bowed to me out of pity, to mock you. He’s telling the younger lords you’re completely destitute, heavily emasculated, and that you’ll bankrupt the estate within the year — leaving him nothing but the ruins to inherit whenever the title finally passes to him.”
Arthur stared into his glass. A month ago, the thought of Thomas mocking him would have sent him into a spiral of defensive rage — likely lashing out at Beatrice for making him look weak in the first place. Now he only felt a cold, calculated disgust settle over him.
Thomas wasn’t a friend. He was a parasite — a tick feeding on the corpse of the Westford name, waiting patiently for Arthur to finally expire so he could inherit the title and the house. And Arthur had let him. He’d poured the man’s drinks and laughed at his jokes because it was easier than facing his own failure.
He set his glass down on the table. The clink was definitive.
“How much does Thomas owe the estate?”
Beatrice looked at him. The corner of her mouth twitched into a sharp, predatory smile. She reached under a stack of maps and produced a small black ledger.
“I audited your family’s private accounts last week.” She flipped through the pages. “Between his gambling debts your father covered, the loans you’ve provided him over the last five years, and his permanent residence in the London townhouse, which you pay the upkeep for — Thomas owes the Westford estate roughly twelve thousand pounds.”
Arthur nodded slowly. Twelve thousand pounds was a fortune. Enough to buy a minor barony. Certainly enough to ruin a man with no income of his own.
“Draw up the papers, Beatrice.” He looked her dead in the eyes.
“What papers?” she asked, though she already knew.
“The collections. Itemize every bottle of brandy, every tailored coat, every shilling he’s bled from this house.” His voice dropped into a low, dangerous register. “We are calling in his debts. All of them. Tomorrow morning.”
Beatrice’s smile broke fully then. It was terrifying. It was beautiful.
“I’ll have the ink ready,” she promised.