An Inconvenient Duke

by Anna Harrington

  He leaned back in his chair. Well. This was certainly a distraction. Of the very best kind.

  “Your Grace.” The flummoxed butler peered over her shoulder into the room in apology. “I asked her to wait in the drawing room to be announced, but she—”

  “Refused,” Danielle finished, that single word silencing the man in midsentence.

  Quashing a grin at her audacity, Marcus rose to his feet. He was happier to see her than he wanted to admit. Especially since he hadn’t laid eyes on her since he’d returned her home two days ago, that morning after Vauxhall.

  But he also didn’t want her anywhere near Charlton Place. He didn’t dare risk that Hartsham would find out how much she meant to him and use that against them.

  She came forward into the room with the butler following at her heels like a terrier.

  Marcus frowned. This was completely out of character for her. Something was wrong. “Danielle—”

  “How dare you go behind my back!”

  Definitely wrong.

  Calmly, Marcus gestured to the butler to leave them, but as the man retreated into the hallway and closed the double doors behind him, he sent Marcus a worried glance—perhaps fearing for Marcus’s safety. At the way both of her hands clenched into tiny fists at her sides, Marcus didn’t blame the man for being wary.

  “Are you all right?” he asked as he stepped around the desk to approach her.

  Her eyes blazed. “I thought we were working together.”

  “We are.” He removed her bonnet and tossed it onto one of the chairs in front of his desk, then took her shoulders in his hands. “Danielle,” he repeated pointedly, “are you all right?”

  “Yes, I am.” But before he could lean in to bring his mouth to hers and give her the kiss he longed for, she interjected, “But we’re not.”

  He flinched at her double meaning.

  Their lips were so close that hers brushed his with every word. “Not when you approach Hartsham by yourself.”

  So this was why she was here. The realization washed over him like ice water. He released her shoulders and stepped back.

  “You said I could trust you.” Emotion grated in her voice. She shook her head. “Lies, all of it.”

  He clenched his teeth. “That was not a lie.”

  “Well, it certainly wasn’t trust! I offered to speak to Beatrice, to learn more before we went after Hartsham. You absolutely refused to let me, said it was too dangerous—”

  “Because it was.”

  She arched a brow. “But not dangerous for you to approach Hartsham?”

  “That isn’t the same thing.”

  She folded her arms over her chest. “From where I’m standing, it’s exactly the same.”

  “From where I’m standing, not at all. For one thing,” he drawled, crossing the study to the cabinet in the corner where he kept his finest liquor, “the Home Office has given me its help.” He needed a stiff drink. Apparently, so did she.

  “Lovely.” The anger inside her was palpable. “However, you had my help from the very beginning, yet you met with Hartsham without even telling me.”

  “Because I couldn’t tell you.”

  She gave him a look of betrayal so dark that it shivered into him. “You kept this from me, after I told you everything about Nightingale, after I gave you Beatrice’s name—Dear God, Marcus!” Her voice lowered to an anguished whisper. “After I made love to you.”

  Frustration twisted in his gut. He fought back the urge to dash back to her, grab her into his arms, and prove to her right there on the rug in front of the fire how much she meant to him.

  “I never lied to you.” He passed over the cognac for whiskey, preferring something with bite for this conversation. “But I sure as hell don’t regret not telling you because it was the only way to ensure that you’d be safe.” He splashed the golden liquid into the glass. “So if you want to believe that I’ve betrayed you in that, then so be it. But I would do it again in a heartbeat.”

  She pulsed visibly with anger. “You had no right to keep this from me.”

  “To keep you from being killed like Elise? Every right.” He shoved the crystal stopper back onto the decanter. “And let’s be very clear about one thing.”

  He crossed the room to her, coming to a stop directly in front of her and driving his gaze into hers so there would be no misunderstanding about this.

  “Making love had absolutely nothing to do with Hartsham. We made love because we wanted to share that pleasure with each other. No other reason.”

  “I wish that were true.” Her face flushed scarlet, but she held her ground and didn’t turn away. “But the only reason we were together that night was because of Hartsham. You’ve only sought me out since your return to London because of Elise.”

  “Yes, I sought you out because of Elise. But that is not the only reason why I keep finding excuses to be in your presence.” He swirled the whiskey in the glass to keep his hands busy so that he wouldn’t reach for her. Although whether to shake sense into her or strip her bare, at that moment he couldn’t have said. “Once we’ve caught Hartsham, I very much plan on asking to formally court you.”

  Her mouth fell open in a surprised O, as round as her eyes.

  “Until then, however, you need to let me do what needs to be done to both find justice for Elise and to protect you.” He held out the glass to her as a peace offering. “And trust me.”

  Her hand shook as she accepted the glass and raised it silently to her lips.

  “I didn’t tell you that I’d sought out Hartsham because you can’t be anywhere near the trap we’re setting for him,” he explained.

  She wiped her whiskey-wet lips with the back of her hand. “What trap?”

  He took back the whiskey. “I’ve arranged for him to deliver a woman from the brothel to me, to Brandon Pearce’s town house. Once she’s there, Clayton Elliott will question her, and we’ll gather enough information for Home Office agents to search Hartsham’s properties for more evidence of blackmail, which will hopefully be enough to arrest him.” Staring down into the glass, he couldn’t look at her as he explained, “But Hartsham has to believe I’m in earnest about committing all kinds of debauched activities with this woman, the kind that he could use to blackmail me, or it won’t work. The presence of a society lady like yourself would undermine all of that.”

  Worse. If Hartsham had spies watching her or the house, he would know that she came here to speak to him—him, not Claudia, whom his men would have known was away for the afternoon. Her presence here was already enough to scuttle their plan and convince Hartsham that Marcus had lied to him, that he was being herded into a snare. If the earl realized it, he would slip away before they could capture him.

  Eagerness shone on her face. “I want to help with—”

  “Absolutely not. You are to stay away from Hartsham and Charlton Place until it’s all over, understand?” He cupped her face in his palm to punctuate his words as he added solemnly, “And I want you to stop working with Nightingale.”

  She smiled to reassure him, but he wasn’t at all put at ease when she said, “There’s no reason to pause the network’s activities. Nightingale won’t be in your way. Hartsham has nothing to do with us. Beatrice hasn’t been involved for months, and whomever Elise was helping, that was two years ago and—”

  He silenced her with a touch of his lips to hers. “Not pause,” he corrected, caressing her jaw with his thumb to ease the sting of what he was asking of her. “Stop it completely.”

  A haunting look of betrayal crossed her beautiful face. She repeated his words back to him, “Absolutely not.”

  She backed away from him, and he felt the growing distance opening like a chasm between them. But there was no help for it. He would keep her safe. At all costs. Including Nightingale.

  Not breaking eye cont
act, she gave a faint shake of her head. “I’m sorry, Marcus, but I won’t do that.”

  “Damnation, Danielle!” Frustration burned in his gut that she so adamantly kept putting herself into harm’s way. “Someone wants us dead, and we’re not certain that Hartsham is working by himself. He might very well have connections to Scepter. Your work with Nightingale is causing problems for him—for them—and they want to end it by putting you into the ground, the same way they ended my sister.” Her eyes glistened when he added hoarsely, “They’ll succeed, too, unless you stop.”

  The blood drained from her face, taking with it that beautiful flush in her cheeks. “What you’re asking me to do…I can’t,” she whispered. “I won’t do—”

  “Why?” he demanded. Concern swelled inside him so strongly that he pulsed with it, along with a growing sensation he wasn’t at all used to—helplessness. “Why are you so set on endangering yourself? You’re willing to sacrifice your reputation, your position—for God’s sake, your life—”

  “Because of Harriett!” she blurted out, the words coming in a tumbling, angry rush. “I’m doing this because of my aunt and all the women like her.”

  That stunned him, and he loosened his hold enough that she could pull her arm away and step back. She stared at him as if she couldn’t believe herself what she’d just admitted to him.

  He waited silently for an explanation, but then dreaded it when it finally came.

  “The viscount used to beat her.” The intensity of her whisper matched the fierceness of her cry only moments before. “Sometimes so badly that she couldn’t get out of bed.”

  Emotions warred inside him, disbelief at what she was saying yet an overwhelming need to trust her. He treaded carefully by countering gently, “I knew Viscount Bromley. He was a good man.”

  “They all are.” Bitterness dripped off her tongue. “In public. Around their friends and society acquaintances. Even in front of the servants. They never leave marks anywhere anyone might see, are always so careful to hide what they’ve done. Long-sleeved dresses and buttoned-up spencers can hide so very much…” She jabbed up her chin as the frustrated anger inside her grew visible. “Even if they make a mistake and in their anger strike a blow somewhere visible, the women will claim they were clumsy and knocked into a piece of furniture, tripped on a path, burned themselves while stirring up a fire…”

  As the words strangled in her throat, he saw her swelling tears, and he ached for her. “Danielle—”

  “That good man you knew beat Harriett to within an inch of her life.”

  When he froze at the harshness of that, she took the glass of whiskey from him and drank down a large swallow, one that left her coughing and the back of her hand pressed to her lips.

  She blinked hard to gather herself before she continued. “He’d been beating her for years, since shortly after they’d married, but she couldn’t leave him—she had no property or money of her own to live on,” she rasped out between her fingers, her hand still pressing at her lips. “All that transferred to the viscount. As it does with all women, in all marriages.” Her voice lowered to a rasping whisper, so intense that it twined around his spine with every word. “And the Church was culpable when they told her that her role as a wife was to be subjugated to her husband, to obey him in all things…when they told her that her husband wouldn’t beat her if she were a better wife.”

  Her hand shook so badly that the remaining whiskey splashed in the glass. She had to close both hands around it to keep it still.

  “Divorce was impossible,” she continued quietly. “It takes an act of Parliament, which means money and connections, and what woman has enough of either of those to secure one? Even then, a man can divorce his wife on grounds of adultery, but a wife has to prove not only adultery but also cruelty. What woman wants to bring even more shame and anguish upon herself by publicly admitting that her husband not only committed adultery but also beat her?” She raised the glass to her lips for a comforting swallow. “How does a woman even prove grounds for cruelty at all when English law gives a husband the right to beat his wife?”

  “There are no laws that make that legal,” he interjected quietly. “Those men are not protected in the courts.”

  “There are no laws that make it illegal either.” Her hand clenched the glass so tightly that her fingers turned white. “Show me a man anywhere in England who was sentenced to gaol for beating his wife. I dare you to, because I know you can’t.”

  She set the glass onto the desk, then buried her shaking hands in her skirt. It ripped his heart in two that she wouldn’t let herself reach for him and the comfort he could give her. That he knew she would push him away if he tried.

  “Husbands are seldom arrested for wife beating, and if they are, then the judges always find in favor of the husband. They rule that it’s the husband’s right as a male guardian to beat a woman in his care if she deserves it.” A bitter laugh at the brutal absurdity of that fell from her lips. “If she deserves it…as if any living creature deserves to be abused! As if women are nothing more than animals to be beaten into submission, until they either die or their spirit breaks completely. Good God! How do we continue to let this happen?” She gestured in frustration at him. “We wage war against French tyrants but let Englishmen reign unchecked within our own houses!”

  Her slender shoulders sank under an invisible weight, as if the mere thought of why she was doing all this was enough in itself to defeat her.

  “Not just wives but daughters, sisters, aunts… So many women! We have no idea how many are suffering in silence and fear. Harriett was one. I suspect that Beatrice is another.” She met his somber gaze, admitting, “I could be one, if I make the same mistake and choose the wrong man to marry. One who hides what he’s really like or who changes after we’re wed.”

  He slowly approached her and tilted up her chin with his fingers. The sight of glistening unshed tears of anger and frustration—and pain—stabbed into him.

  “Is that why you haven’t married yet,” he asked gently, “because you’re afraid you’ll marry a man who will abuse you?”

  “No. But that’s always a risk, though, isn’t it, in a world where men possess all the power and strength, where women have only what men grant them? Every woman who isn’t a fool fears that even just a little when she walks down the aisle. How could she not?”

  He held his face inscrutable as he murmured, “The man who marries you would never do that.”

  She squeezed shut her eyes. “Oh, how I wish I could believe that!”

  “You can,” he assured her, every word a promise. “Because that man is going to be me.”

  * * *

  Her eyes flew open, and his determined expression nearly undid her. Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak—all she could do was gape at him while the world rose and plunged around her. He couldn’t have actually said…

  “Pardon?”

  Chuckling at her reaction, he slipped his arms around her waist to tug her against him. His pulse pounded so furiously that she could feel it throbbing into her until she couldn’t tell where his heartbeat ended and hers began.

  “I love you.” He said that as simply as if he were commenting upon the weather, completely unaware of the twisting emotions those words sparked inside her. His lips brushed against her temple. “Marry me, Danielle.”

  Her hands tightened on his shoulders as she struggled to find her voice to answer. Since she was a girl, she’d dreamt of hearing those words from him, let herself fantasize about what it would be like to have his love—

  She’d not divulged the truth a few moments ago. He was the reason she’d not yet married. How could she pledge her life to another when she’d already fallen in love with him? But not once in all those years of fantasizing about this moment had she ever imagined this much pain and confusion. Because she knew the truth. He wanted more than m
arriage. He also wanted the end of Nightingale.

  The ultimatum he was unwittingly giving her sliced through her chest like a blade and into her heart that even now pounded with foolish desire to agree, to accept his love, to be his wife…

  She summoned every bit of her strength as she stepped out of his arms and whispered the soft challenge, “If you loved me, you wouldn’t ask me to give up Nightingale.” She blinked hard and fast. Damn those tears! “You would help me with it instead.”

  His face darkened, his jaw clenched hard. “I will not help you into an early grave. For God’s sake, Danielle.”

  He started to reach for her, but she stepped back, remaining out of his reach. If he touched her, she wouldn’t have the resolve to resist.

  “How many women have you risked your reputation and your life to rescue?” When she began to protest that she hadn’t put herself at risk, he cut her off. “How many?”

  She proudly raised her chin. “Ninety-seven.”

  “And for every one of them you’ve rescued, there are more—ten, one hundred, one thousand—women you can’t save. What about those women? Why not work to change the lives of all of them, not just the handful you’re able to help?” This time when he reached for her, he clasped her arms in his hands so she couldn’t retreat. “You can do more for those women by working to save all of them than you ever can risking your life to save one at a time. By speaking out and telling their stories. By using the network to hound MPs and peers to change the laws—to change England for all of them.”

  When he slipped his arm around her, the embrace was bittersweet, because what he was suggesting would be the end of all her work. The end of actively helping women escape danger. A slow death by Parliamentary committee.

  “There are women who live in fear of being killed every day,” she said, aghast at his suggestion, “and you’re asking me to take part in petticoat politics?”

  “I’m asking you,” he corrected slowly and pointedly, reaching up to caress her cheek, “to save yourself by working to save all of them.”