Three sisters, two wore diamonds and married titles. One wore mended wool and tallied the household debts. Society called Genevieve a lost cause and old maid meant for the shadows. They were wrong. The most ruthless man in England didn’t want the sparkling jewels. He wanted the rock.
Ink stained Genevieve’s middle finger, a permanent purplish bruise against her pale skin. She rubbed her thumb over it. Feeling the slight dry callus that had formed there over five grueling years of keeping the Croft family ledgers. Rain lashed against the parlor window rattling the loose glass in its lead casing with a sound like chattering teeth.
The room smelled of wet ash thanks to a chimney that drew poorly and the faint sour scent of damp wool from her own skirts. Genevieve dipped her quill, the feather stripped bare of its decorative plumes, and slashed a harsh line through a figure on the right hand column. Butcher 14 pounds 6 shillings, paid.
Finally. The relief was a hollow little thing quickly swallowed by the cavernous total glaring at her from the bottom of the page. 8,432 pounds. Her late father’s legacy. Beside the ledger sat two letters, both written on heavy cream-colored vellum that cost more than Genevieve’s weekly grocery allowance. One was from Arabella, now Lady Stanhope, complaining that the sea air in Brighton was ruining the curl of her hair.
The other was from Rosalind, the newly minted Viscountess Waverly, agonizing over whether to serve quail or pheasant at her upcoming dinner party. Genevieve had forged both those marriages. She had dressed her sisters in the last of their mother’s decent silk, coached them on when to laugh and when to lower their eyelashes, and paraded them through a grueling London season, while she wore faded muslin and stood entirely unnoticed near the potted ferns.
She had essentially sold them to the highest, least offensive bidders to keep the bailiffs from chaining the doors of Croft Manor. Arabella and Rosalind were safe. They were draped in jewels and insulated from the cold. Genevieve, at 28, was left with the butcher’s bills, the drafty house, and a reputation as a terrifyingly pragmatic spinster.
She cracked her neck, wincing at the sharp pop that echoed in the quiet room. Her shoulders ached with a dull, throbbing rhythm. She needed a cup of tea, though the tin held only the bitter, cheap dust the grocer sold for pennies. Before she could rise, the heavy crunch of gravel outside broke the monotonous rhythm of the rain.
Genevieve stood, her joints stiff, and walked to the window. Through the distorted, rain-streaked glass, she saw a carriage. Not a local squire’s modest gig, but a massive, lacquered beast pulled by four matching black geldings. The mud of their country road coated the wheels, but the crest on the door gleamed through the gloom.
A rearing stag. Her stomach tightened, a sour spike of adrenaline that tasted metallic at the back of her throat. Henry Cavendish, the Duke of Rothbury. He held the primary notes on her father’s gambling debts. He was not a man who sent polite letters. He was a man who devoured estates whole, carving up the land to fuel his factories and mills up north.
Society called him the Iron Duke, a man entirely devoid of sentiment who had clawed his family back from the brink of ruin through ruthless industry. Genevieve didn’t ring for Mrs. Higgins. The housekeeper was half-deaf and entirely too frail to deal with a duke. Instead, Genevieve wiped her ink-stained hands on her coarse apron, didn’t bother to check her hair in the mirror, and walked to the front hall.
The heavy brass knocker shaped like a gargoyle slammed down twice. The sound reverberated through the floorboards. Genevieve pulled open the heavy oak door. The damp wind immediately whipped her stray brown hairs across her face. The man standing on her threshold was immense. He blocked the gray light of the afternoon entirely, a solid wall of sodden wool, an imposing height.
He wasn’t classically handsome. His nose had a distinct bump in the bridge, as if it had been broken and set poorly, and his jaw was shadowed with the rough stubble of a long journey. Water dripped from the brim of his low-pulled hat, hitting the stone step with rhythmic ticks.
He looked down at her, his eyes the color of old oxidized silver. They were cold, assessing, and stripped of any polite pretense. “I am looking for whoever is in charge of this decaying pile of stones,” he said. His voice was a low rumble, rougher than a gentleman’s ought to be, carrying the faint, gritty accent of the northern industrial towns he frequented.
Genevieve didn’t blink. She looked at his boots, which were currently depositing thick, clay-heavy mud onto her floor. She had spent 2 hours beating that runner on the clothesline out back. “You are tracking mud on the oak, your grace,” she said, her voice entirely flat. Rothbury paused. He blinked the thick, wet lashes lowering over his startling eyes.
He looked down at his boots, then back up at her. He seemed to register her for the first time, the drab, shapeless dress, the ink stains, the lack of a welcoming smile. “I have come to collect a debt of 8,000 lb,” he said, stepping fully into the hall and shutting the door behind him without waiting for an invitation.” The hallway instantly felt claustrophobic.
He smelled of rain, leather, and something uniquely harsh, like struck flint. “A bit of mud seems the least of your concerns, girl. Fetch your master.” Genevieve crossed her arms over her chest. The coarse wool of her sleeves scratched her forearms. “My father is dead. My brother died in the cradle. There is no master. There is only me, Miss Genevieve Croft.
” Rothbury froze in the process of pulling off a sodden leather glove. The wet leather peeled away with a squelching sound. He stared at her, his gaze traveling from the top of her messy bun down to the hem of her practical scuffed boots. It wasn’t a look of masculine appreciation. It was the look of an auditor assessing a broken piece of machinery.
“You,” he said softly. “Me,” she confirmed. “And unless you intend to stand in the draft and catch a chill that I cannot afford to treat, you had better come into the parlor. Wipe your feet on the mat first. It’s the hemp one to your left.” For a long, 10 second, she thought he might refuse.
His jaw locked a muscle, ticking violently near his ear. He was a man used to trembling deference to men bowing and women fluttering. Genevieve had no flutter left in her. She was entirely hollowed out by numbers and exhaustion. Slowly, deliberately, the Duke of Rothbury turned and scraped his boots against the rough hemp mat. The parlor fire was dying.
Genevieve knelt on the hearth ignoring the searing ache in her kneecaps and shoved a piece of damp peat into the grate. It hissed, spitting a plume of acrid smoke into the room. She coughed, waving the fumes away, and stood up to find Rothbur watching her from the center of the room. He hadn’t sat down. The spindly, faded silk chairs likely wouldn’t have held his weight anyway.
“I can offer you tea.” she said moving toward the side table. “It is entirely inferior and I have no sugar, but it is hot.” “I did not come for tea, Miss Croft.” “I am aware.” she replied pouring the dark, murky liquid into two chipped porcelain cups. The rattle of the China was startlingly loud in the quiet room. “You came for your 8,000 lb or more accurately, you came to foreclose on the matter because you know perfectly well I don’t have 8,000 lb lying beneath the floorboards.” She handed him a cup.
He didn’t take it by the handle. His large hand dwarfed the delicate China, his fingers wrapping around the bowl of the cup. The heat had to be scalding, but he didn’t even flinch. He looked down into the dark liquid, then up at her. “Your sisters married exceedingly well this season.
” Rothbury stated, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that seemed to settle in the floorboards. “Stanhope and Waverly both men of considerable means. Surely they could spare a fraction of their fortunes to save their childhood home.” Genevieve picked up her own cup letting the heat seep into her perpetually cold hands. “My sisters are young, beautiful, and ornamental.
I secured their marriages by assuring their husbands that the Croft family, while poor, was free of scandal and clinging dependents. I will not turn around and beg them for money before their honeymoon trunks are unpacked.” Eh, Rothbury narrowed his eyes. “Pride is an expensive luxury, Miss Croft. One you cannot afford.
” “It isn’t pride.” Genevieve snapped, a flash of genuine anger piercing her cynical veneer. She took a sip of the bitter tea. It tasted like ash on her tongue. “It is pragmatism. If I beg Stanhope for money, he will pay it, but he will hold it over Arabella’s head for the rest of her life.
He will remind her every day that her family is a burden. I did not spend five years grooming them for escape just to tie the rope back around their ankles. Rothbury took a slow, deliberate sip of his tea. He didn’t grimace at the taste. He simply swallowed it and set the cup down on the scarred mahogany table. “So,” he said, stepping closer.
The sheer mass of him cast a shadow over her desk. “You sacrificed them to the aristocracy and kept the ruins for yourself, a martyr.” “A manager,” she corrected coldly. She walked past him acutely aware of the heat radiating from his large frame and moved to her desk. She flipped open the heavy leather ledger.
The scent of old paper and iron gall ink rose in the air between them. “I know why you bought my father’s debts, your grace. It wasn’t for this house. This house is crumbling, the roof leaks, and the foundation is sinking. You want the timber rights to the northern woods. You need oak for your new shipbuilding venture in Liverpool.
” Rothbury’s expression didn’t change, but a profound, heavy silence fell over the room. The only sound was the rain slapping against the glass. When he finally spoke, his tone was completely altered. The dismissal was gone. “You are uncommonly well informed for a country spinster.” “I read the financial papers instead of the society pages,” Genevieve said, running a finger down the column of her ledger.
“The northern woods are entailed to the estate. As long as a Croft holds the lease on this manor, the timber cannot be felled for commercial profit without a crown writ. Which I can easily obtain once I foreclose and seize the property,” he countered smoothly. “Perhaps.” “Perhaps,” Genevieve said, looking up at him.
Her heart was beating a frantic, erratic rhythm against her ribs, but her voice was steady. “But a foreclosure through the courts will take 18 months. The local magistrate hates you, foreclosed on his cousin last year. He will drag out the proceedings. Your shipyards need that timber by spring, or you lose the naval contracts you just outbid the French for.” Rothbury stepped closer.
He was so close now, she could see the individual threads of his damp wool coat, smell the faint masculine scent of bergamot beneath the smell of the rain. His silver eyes were burning with a sudden intense focus. It wasn’t desire, it was the thrill of the hunt, the sudden realization that the prey had teeth.
“What are you offering, Miss Croft?” he murmured, his voice dangerously soft. “A partnership,” she said, closing the ledger with a solid thud. “A, I retain the manor and 20 acres. I sign over the stewardship of the northern woods to you, directly bypassing the court entirely. I know the legal loophole that allows a landholding female to lease mineral and timber rights without a male co-signer.
You get your wood by winter, I get my house free and clear.” Rothbury stared at her. He looked at her unpowdered hair, her harsh, ink-stained hands resting flat on the leather book, the rigid unyielding line of her spine. For the first time since he had stepped into a ruined home, the corner of his mouth twitched.
It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was a crack in the iron. “You are a remarkably difficult woman,” he noted, the rough edge of his northern accent bleeding through. Genevieve didn’t smile back. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind a bone-deep exhaustion. She wanted him out of her house. She wanted to sleep.
“I am a desperate woman, Your Grace. We make the best negotiators.” He reached out. Genevieve braced herself, but he only picked up the quill she had discarded on the desk. He rolled the stripped feather between his thick, calloused fingers, testing the sharp point of the nib against his thumb. A partnership. He echoed, testing the word on his tongue as if it had a strange texture.
He dropped the quill back onto the desk. I do not partner with strangers, Ms. Croft. If you want this deal, you will have to prove you can handle the logistics of the timber harvest. I won’t have my operation slowed down by a woman who faints at the sight of a mudslide. I don’t faint, Genevieve said flatly.
We shall see, Rothberry replied. He turned toward the door, his wet boots heavy on the floorboards. I will be staying at the village inn. Expect me at dawn tomorrow. Wear boots. He didn’t wait for her response. He walked out, letting himself out the front door. The heavy slam echoed through the empty house, leaving Genevieve alone in the cold parlor, staring at the empty teacup and a terrifying, fragile spark of hope.
Morning broke like a bruised plum, all purple clouds and freezing, watery light. Genevieve stood by the decaying stone pillars of the stable yard, her breath pluming white in the frigid air. She wore her oldest wool police, a garment so severely mended it felt stiff as armor, and a pair of leather boots that had belonged to a stable boy three years gone.
They pinched her toes terribly. She ignored the dull throb in her feet, focusing instead on the thick roll of parchment tucked tightly under her arm. Rothberry arrived exactly at dawn. He rode a massive iron gray stallion that looked just as foul-tempered as its master. He didn’t bother with a carriage this time. He swung down from the saddle with a heavy thud, his long wool coat sweeping the frosty dirt.
He looked at her, his silver eyes dragging over her drab, utilitarian silhouette. There was no mockery in his expression today, only a brutal, calculating assessment. “You are punctual.” He murmured, tying the stallion’s reins to an iron ring on the wall. “I implore your grace.” Genevieve corrected, her voice flat, the cold stinging her cheeks.
“Ah, poverty dictates a very strict schedule.” “The woods are 3 miles north.” “We walk. The carriage path washed out two winters ago, and I have no horses left to saddle.” Rothbury simply nodded. He didn’t complain about the mud, nor did he offer his arm. Genevieve was profoundly grateful for both. They walked in silence.
The land around Croft Manor was stark, stripped of the lush, manicured beauty that defined the estates of her newly married sisters. Here, the earth was rocky, choked with gorse and bracken that grabbed at Genevieve’s skirts like skeletal fingers. The wind, howling off the moors, smelled of decay and wet limestone.
Genevieve set a punishing pace. Her lungs burned, the freezing air scraping down her throat, but she refused to slow down. She wanted to prove to this northern industrialist that she was not some fragile parlor ornament who would faint at the sight of a ledger or a muddy boot. She could hear his heavy, measured footsteps right behind her. He didn’t breathe heavily.
He moved with the effortless, contained power of a draft horse. When they finally reached the tree line, the atmosphere shifted. The northern woods were ancient, a dense, suffocating canopy of massive oaks and towering pines that blocked out the gray morning light. The air here was still thick with the scent of damp earth, rotting leaves, and the sharp, medicinal tang of pine needles.
Genevieve unrolled her parchment, leaning it against the rough, mossy bark of a nearby oak. Her fingers were stiff, the knuckles red and cracked from the cold. “This is the boundary,” she said, tracing a line on the map with a gloved finger. “70 acres of old-growth oak. Also, the Crown requires a replanting ratio of 1:3, but we can bypass that if we selectively log the eastern ridge rather than clear-cutting.
” Rothbury stepped beside [clears throat] her. He was so large he seemed to absorb all the ambient heat in the damp forest. He didn’t look at the map. He looked at her hands. “Take off your gloves,” he ordered. Genevieve frowned, her chin jerking up. “I beg your pardon.” “Take [clears throat] off your gloves, Miss Croft.
” His voice was a low rumble, carrying the unquestionable weight of a man used to absolute obedience. A spike of irritation pierced her cold-numbed fatigue. She yanked the worn woolen gloves from her hands and shoved them into her pockets. Her bare hands were pale, stained with faint traces of yesterday’s ink. The skin over her knuckles chapped raw by the harsh soap she used for laundry.
Rothbury reached out. He didn’t ask for permission. He caught her right hand in his. Genevieve flinched. His hand was massive, his palm rougher than sandpaper, heavily calloused from years of manual labor before his family’s factories had made him a duke. His touch was shockingly hot against her freezing skin.
He turned her hand over, examining the smooth, raised callus on her middle finger where her quill rested, and the tiny pale scars on her thumb from a careless sewing needle. He traced the rough skin of her palm with his thumb. The sensation was electric, a sharp, terrifying jolt of awareness that shot straight up Genevieve’s arm. “You do the washing,” he noted, his voice dropping a fraction of an octave.
“I keep a house of 30 rooms with one half-deaf housekeeper and a scullery maid.” Genevieve snapped trying to pull her hand away. His grip tightened, not hurting her, but entirely immovable. “I do whatever is necessary to keep the roof from caving in. Your sisters wore silk and imported lace.” He said his silver eyes rising from her hand to lock onto her face.
“Waverly boasted at Whites that his bride brought a trousseau fit for a princess. They needed the illusion of wealth to secure their futures. I am not an illusion, your grace. I am the machinery.” She glared at him, her chest heaving slightly. The smell of wet wool and his bergamot soap suddenly overwhelming.
“Now release my hand or I will take this map and leave you to navigate this forest alone. There are bogs on the western edge that will swallow a man whole.” Rothbury released her slowly, his thumb dragging across her knuckles one last time. The absence of his heat left her skin stinging. “Show me the eastern ridge.
” He said stepping back, the mask of the Iron Duke sliding perfectly back into place. For the next 4 hours, they waited through freezing mud and tangled underbrush. Genevieve showed him the timber, rattling off the estimated board feet of the massive oaks with brutal, mathematical precision. She didn’t stumble.
She didn’t complain when the hem of her dress soaked through, dragging heavy and freezing against her calves. She caught him watching her several times, not her face, but the rigid line of her spine, the competent, efficient way she moved through the hostile terrain. It wasn’t the gaze of a man looking at a woman. It was the gaze of a predator who had suddenly realized he had walked into another predator’s territory.
The air between them grew taut, humming with a strange combative energy that felt dangerously close to respect. The walk back to the manor nearly broke her. The adrenaline of the morning had burned away, leaving a hollow aching void in her muscles. Her feet were numb blocks of ice, the oversized boots chafing her heels bloody with every agonizing step.
By the time the crumbling stone facade of Croft Manor came into view, Genevieve was operating entirely on spite. She would not limp in front of him. They entered through the kitchen door to avoid tracking the worst of the forest mud through the main hall. The kitchen was empty, smelling faintly of old onions and cold ash.
“Wait in the parlor,” Genevieve instructed, her voice raspy, holding onto the edge of the wooden scrub table to steady herself. “I will fetch the contract. Sit down,” Rothbury said. She blinked, turning her head. He was standing by the cold hearth, shedding his heavy coat. Beneath it, he wore a dark waistcoat and a linen shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal thick forearms, corded with muscle and dusted with dark hair.
He looked completely out of place in her dilapidated kitchen, too large, too vital, too inherently dangerous. “I need to draft the terms. I said sit down, Genevieve.” He used her Christian name. It cracked like a whip in the quiet room. Genevieve stared at him, too exhausted to muster her usual sharp retort. Her knees gave out and she sank onto a hard wooden stool by the fire grate.
Rothbury didn’t look at her. He crouched by the hearth, striking a flint with brutal efficiency. Within seconds, a flame caught the dry kindling left from the morning. He fed it coal from the scuttle, building the fire until a fierce welcome heat began to radiate into the freezing room. Genevieve watched him her mind sluggish.
Dukes did not build fires. They commanded them. Yet Henry Cavendish moved with the practiced economic motions of a man who had survived winters far colder than this one without a servant in sight. When the fire was roaring, he didn’t stand up. He stayed on his knees and turned toward her. Genevieve’s breath hitched. He was too close.
The firelight cast harsh shadows across the bump in his broken nose and the sharp unforgiving line of his jaw. Without a word, he reached for her right foot. Panic flared in her chest. “What are you doing? Stop. Your boots are entirely the wrong size.” He interrupted, his voice a low commanding rumble.
His large hands gripped her calf, holding her leg steady as she tried to pull away. The heat of his palms seeped straight through her sodden wool stockings. “You’ve been bleeding since the first mile.” “It does not concern you.” She hissed, her face burning with a sudden humiliating flush. She hated being vulnerable.
She hated that he could see the pathetic reality of her poverty, the oversized boots, the bloody heels. Rothbury ignored her. He unlaced the heavy leather boot with deft fingers, slipping it off her foot. The cold air hit her soaked stocking, making her shiver violently. He tossed the boot aside. It hit the stone floor with a heavy wet smack.
He did the same with the left, his hands startlingly gentle despite their rough callous texture. Genevieve sat frozen. The most powerful man in England, a duke who crushed steel barons and banking houses, was kneeling on her dirty kitchen floor holding her freezing muddy feet. He didn’t look at her in disgust. He peeled the wet wool stockings away, exposing her pale icy skin and the raw bleeding blisters on her heels.
“You are a fool,” he said softly, staring at the wounds. “I am surviving,” she whispered, her voice trembling slightly, not from the cold, but from the sudden, terrifying intimacy of the moment. The smell of the coal smoke mingled with his bergamot scent, anchoring her in the heavy silence. “Ino, you survived,” he corrected, looking up at her.
His silver eyes were entirely stripped of their usual armor. They were stark, burning with a raw, terrifying intensity. “You sold your sisters into safety and locked yourself in a dying house with an 8,000 lb chain around your neck. Someone had to pay the price. Why you?” he demanded, his thumbs pressing into the arches of her feet, massaging the frozen, cramped muscles.
The pleasure of it was so sharp, it felt like pain. Genevieve gasped, her hands gripping the edge of the wooden stool until her knuckles turned white. “Because I am the eldest,” she said, a solitary, traitorous tear breaking free and tracking hotly down her freezing cheek. She hated herself for crying. “Because Arabella is soft and Rosalind is afraid of the dark.
Because my father looked at me on his deathbed and knew I was the only one hard enough to hold the ruins together.” Rothbury’s hand stopped moving. He stared up at her, watching the tear cut a clean path through the faint smudge of dirt on her cheek. The muscle in his jaw flexed violently. “You are hard,” he agreed, his voice dropping to a rough, gravelly whisper.
“You are iron, Genevieve. I recognized it the moment you opened the door yesterday. You looked at me not like a lord, but like a problem to be solved.” He shifted his grip, moving his hands up to cup her bare ankles. His thumbs stroked the fragile bones there. I do not want your timber. He said the words heavy and deliberate.
Genevieve’s heart slammed against her ribs. Confusion tangled with a sudden wild rush of adrenaline. You need the oak for the Liverpool ships. I can buy oak from the Russians. I can buy oak from the Americans. He leaned closer, the heat of his large body radiating against her shivering frame. I bought your father’s debts because I wanted the estate.
And when I walked in yesterday, I realized I didn’t give a damn about the estate either. Genevieve stopped breathing. She stared down into the eyes of a man who [clears throat] owned half of the north, a man entirely devoid of sentiment, who was currently kneeling in the soot of her kitchen. What do you want, your grace? She whispered the title feeling absurd on her tongue. Rothbury didn’t smile.
The intensity in his face was absolute, stripping away every defense she had built over five grueling years. I want the woman who forged two viscountesses out of thin air and kept the wolves from the door with nothing but a ledger and a spine of steel. He ran his thumbs over her ankle bones one last time, a brand of ownership that made her shiver.
I want you, Genevieve, and I am entirely done negotiating. Genevieve jerked her feet back, sending a sickening spike of agony up her calves. She ignored it, dragging her blistered heels against the stool’s rough wooden rung. She stared at him, her chest heaving, mind frantically parsing the sheer absurdity of his statement.
The silence in the kitchen was absolute, broken only by the violent crackle of the damp peat. You are mad, she said, her voice a harsh, breathless scrape that hurt her dry throat. Rothbury did not move. His hands rested on his thick thighs. The firelight threw the broken lines of his face into sharp relief. I am entirely lucid, Genevieve.
You want me. She spat the words. A convenient impoverished spinster you can install in a quiet townhouse while you conduct your ruthless business in the north, a cheap investment. I want a wife. The word dropped between them like an iron anvil. Genevieve let out a hysterical laugh. She gripped the splintered edge of the table and forced herself to stand.
Her legs trembled violently, the bare soles of her feet shrinking from the freezing stone floor. But she refused to look down at him. She would not be intimidated in her decaying kitchen. A wife. She crossed her arms. The duke needs an heir and he has decided the desperate woman in the crumbling manor is the most cost-effective vessel.
You think I will be so overwhelmed by the sheer magnanimous grace of your rescue that I will let you dictate the rest of my life? You want a captive who knows her place. Rothbury rose unfolding his massive frame until he towered over her. The kitchen instantly shrank as he stepped forward, heavy boots crunching against soot-stained floorboards.
I do not want gratitude. He rumbled, silver eyes flashing. And I do not want a woman who cowers. If I wanted blind obedience, I would have picked a simpering debutante. I want you. He reached into his waistcoat, pulling out a thick sheaf of heavy cream vellum. It was securely sealed with dark red wax bearing the crest of a London banking house.
Your father’s vowels. Rothbury said flatly. 8,432 pounds. He didn’t offer them to her. He simply tossed the entire bundle directly into the roaring fire. Genevieve lunged forward, a feral sound tearing from her throat. Five years of freezing winters, ink-stained fingers, and unrelenting terror burning.
She reached blindly for the cast iron grate, desperately conditioned to save the very thing drowning her. Rothbury caught her waist, hauling her back against his solid chest. His arms wrapped around her, his grip tight enough to bruise, but safe enough to anchor. “Let it burn, Genevieve.” He ordered. “Stop!” She thrashed. “My house, the ledger.
The house is dying.” He turned her roughly within his arms, absorbing the desperate blow she struck against his shoulder. “You are done bleeding for ghosts. The ledger is closed.” Genevieve stared over his shoulder. The thick red wax melted, the heavy parchment curling black, the precise ink figures disappearing into ash.
The terrifying sum that had defined her every waking moment was reduced to nothing. A cavernous panic cracked open inside her. Without the crushing weight of her family’s ruin, who was she? Just a tired spinster with ruined hands and no purpose. “I have nothing else.” She whispered, knees buckling.
Rothbury didn’t let her fall. He tightened his grip, anchoring her flush against him. The overwhelming heat of his body seeped through her coarse wool dress, thawing the ice in her marrow. “You have a mind that outmaneuvered two viscounts and a magistrate.” He said fiercely. “You have hands that kept an estate running on spite.
You are going to manage my northern mills. You will tear into my London accountants because they are skimming profits and you are the only person vicious enough to find the discrepancy.” Genevieve blinked, her cold cheek pressed against his warm linen shirt. The scent of bergamot, leather, and wood smoke grounded her. “You want me to audit your factories?” She asked in disbelief.
“I want you to rule them.” He corrected, his large hand cupping the back of her neck. “Beside me.” “As the Duchess of Rothbury.” Genevieve leaned back to look at him. There was no poetic romance in his face, only a brutal certainty. He saw the ink stains, the bitter pragmatism, and he didn’t want to fix her.
He wanted to weaponize her. She reached up her trembling fingers grabbing his lapels. It wasn’t a delicate surrender. It was a fierce anchor. “Uh, I require my own study.” she demanded. “And I will absolutely not tolerate cheap ink.” Rothbury’s mouth curved into a devastating smile. He leaned down, breath hot against her lips.
“You shall have the finest ink in England, my fierce girl.” he murmured. He kissed her. It wasn’t a gentle probing thing. It was heavy, consuming, and desperately hot. Genevieve kissed him back with 5 years of starved energy, pulling him closer until the oppressive cold disappeared. She tasted of salty tears.
He tasted of harsh smoke and iron. It was a messy collision of two cynical people who had finally found an equal weight to lean against. The fire crackled, reducing the last remnants of the debts to gray powders. Genevieve closed her eyes, letting the Iron Duke hold her up, realizing she didn’t have to carry the ruins alone anymore.
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