Perfume soured in the back of Bria’s throat as the carriage wheels crunched against gravel rolling away without her. Betrayal didn’t roar. It tasted like bitter tea and old copper. Her husband had taken another woman to the season’s greatest ball. He thought she would simply stay home. The Ormond mantel clock ticked.
It was a heavy ostentatious thing gilded and shaped like a mythological beast that seemed to sneer at the room. Bria hated it. She hated the rhythmic hollow clack clack it made slicing the agonizingly quiet evening into measurable slivers of humiliation. It was half past nine. Bria sat entirely rigid before her vanity.
The corset beneath her gown was laced tight enough to press her lower ribs into her lungs forcing her breaths into shallow rapid bursts that made her dizzy. Andres had chosen this gown for her. He had sent it to her chambers three days prior with a note penned in his slanted hurried script.
“Wear this to the Duke of Wellington’s gala. It suits your complexion.” It did not suit her complexion. It was a suffocating high-collared monstrosity of stiff puce silk. It was the color of a bruised plum designed explicitly to cover her broad swimmer’s shoulders, the smattering of unaristocratic freckles across her chest and the faint jagged white scar resting just above her collarbone, a souvenir from a childhood spent sneaking into her father’s coal-powered textile mills.
Andres abhorred the scar. He abhorred the freckles. He abhorred the very fact that her family’s fortune smelled of sulfur and sweat rather than old parchment and royal decrees. Behind her, Aimartha, her maid, stood as still as a marble statue. Martha’s hands hovered awkwardly near her apron pockets, her eyes fixed determinately on the peeling floral wallpaper just above Brea’s reflection in the glass.
The silence between them was thick, smelling faintly of the singed hair from the curling tongs and the chalky choking cloud of lavender talcum powder. “He is not coming, Martha.” Brea said. Her voice did not break. It was flat, carrying the low pragmatic timbre of a woman who had spent her youth haggling with mill foreman rather than practicing polite French giggles.
Martha swallowed loudly. “Perhaps his grace was delayed at his club, your grace. The traffic on Mayfair.” “The traffic on Mayfair is perfectly fine. The weather is dry.” Brea pressed two fingers against the center of her forehead, feeling the throbbing pulse of an impending headache. She lowered her hand and looked at the heavy diamond collar around her neck.
The stones caught the gaslight, fracturing it into cold, sharp prisms. Her father had bought this necklace. Her father’s coal money had bought this townhouse, the carriage, the horses, and the very title of duke that Andres paraded around town. A soft rap at the door shattered the quiet. The heavy mahogany door creaked open, revealing Thomas, the junior footman.
He looked young, perhaps no older than 17, and he was sweating profusely into his stiff starched collar. “Speak.” Brea commanded, turning her head slightly. Thomas kept his eyes glued to the toes of his polished boots. “A message from the stables, your grace. The duke’s carriage departed 20 minutes ago.” Brea’s stomach dropped.
It was not a flutter of heartbreak, but a sickening physical plummet like missing a step in the dark. Departed to the gala. Thomas shifted his weight, his Adam’s apple bobbing violently. “Yes, your grace.” The coachman said, “He said his grace sent word that he would not be returning to the townhouse. He instructed the carriage to collect Lady Diana Fitzroy on the way to the pavilion.
” The silence returned heavier this time, pressing against Brea’s eardrums until they rang. Lady Diana Fitzroy. The name tasted like ash. Diana was everything Brea was not, pale, delicate, possessing a lineage that stretched back to the Norman Conquest, and utterly, entirely destitute. Andres had courted Diana before his father’s gambling debts had forced him to look toward the industrial north for a wealthy bride.
Andres had not just abandoned her. He had chosen on the most highly publicized night of the social season to leave his rough-edged, newly moneyed wife locked away in the dark, preferring to proudly escort the polished, penniless woman he actually wanted. He had banked on Brea’s well-known social anxiety. He assumed she would cry, retreat to her bed, and blame a sudden migraine for her absence tomorrow morning.
Thomas backed out of the room, closing the door with a quiet click. Brea stared at her reflection. She looked absurd. The puce gown swallowed her up, making her look like a heavily upholstered armchair. The tight ringlets Martha had agonizingly curled into her hair looked artificial, sitting stiffly around her square jaw.
She looked exactly like what Andres thought she was, an impostor playing dress-up. She waited for the tears. She waited for the crushing weight of a broken heart. Instead, she felt a profound, burning insult. It started in the balls of her feet and clawed its way up her spine. Andres didn’t love her. Fine.
She didn’t particularly love him either. Their marriage was a transaction, a title for a fortune, but there were rules to transactions. There was a basic professional courtesy required when two people signed a contract in blood and gold. He had taken her father’s money to save his dying estate, and in return, he was supposed to stand beside her, offer his arm, and shield her from the sneers of the ton.
He had taken the gold and left her to the wolves. “Martha,” Brea said, her voice dropping an octave. “Yes, your grace.” “Unlace me.” Martha blinked, her eyes darting to the clock. “Your grace, shall I prepare your nightgown?” “No.” Brea stood up. The heavy silk rustled a grating synthetic sound. “You are going to unlace this suffocating sack of bruised fruit, and then you are going to fetch my heavy traveling trunk from the attic.
” Martha stepped forward, her hands trembling slightly as she reached for the hooks at the back of the gown. “The trunk, ma’am? Are we returning to Yorkshire?” Brea let out a harsh, dry laugh that scraped her throat. “No, Martha. We are not running. Yorkshire is a retreat. I am not retreating.” The first hook popped open.
The sudden rush of oxygen into Brea’s lungs felt like a physical blow. She inhaled deeply, smelling the stale beeswax of the floorboards and the sharp tang of her own nervous perspiration. The fear was there, coiling in her gut like a cold serpent. The thought of walking into that ballroom alone, of facing the stares, the whispers behind feathered fans, the aristocratic sneers made her hands shake.
She curled them into fists, driving her blunt, unmanicured nails into her palms until the pain grounded her. She was terrified, but she was far too angry to let the terror win. The puce gown hit the floor with a heavy, ungraceful thud. Brea kicked it aside with a stockinged foot, relishing the slide of the offensive silk across the oak floorboards.
She stood in her chemise and loosened corset. The cool draft of the room raising goosebumps on her arms. “The trunk is here, your grace.” Martha panted, dragging the brass-bound leather chest through the doorway with the help of a older footman who immediately bowed and scrambled away. Brea dropped to her knees. The leather smelled of damp wool and her old life.
She popped the brass latches, throwing the heavy lid back. Inside were the clothes she had brought from the north, dresses her mother had commissioned before passing away, dresses Undress had taken one look at and deemed far too bold for polite society. She dug through the folded fabrics, tossing aside modest wool day dresses and simple linen skirts until her fingers brushed against something thick and heavy.
She pulled it out. It was velvet, a deep, rich, saturated emerald green. It had no ruffles. It had no lace. It lacked the complicated bustles and exaggerated panniers currently in vogue in London. It was cut simply designed to drape over the natural curves of the body with a wide open neckline that dipped dangerously low and sleeves that clung tightly to the arms.
It was the dress of a woman who took up space and did not apologize for it. “That one, your grace?” Woman. Martha asked softly, staring at the gown with a mixture of awe and apprehension. “It is.” “It does not have a high collar.” “Exactly.” Brea said. She stood holding the heavy velvet against her chest.
The fabric felt soft but substantial, like armor. Brush out these curls. I want my hair pinned up, but loosely. If my neck shows, let it show. The preparation took 20 minutes. The silence in the room shifted from oppressive to electric. Bria sat rigidly as Martha pulled the brush through the stiff curls, smoothing the dark, heavy strands into a sleek, simple twist at the nape of her neck.
Without the chalky powder, her skin looked flushed alive. When Bria finally stepped into the emerald gown, she looked at the mirror and recognized herself for the first time in 6 months. The green velvet made her hazel eyes look sharp and dangerous. The low neckline proudly displayed her broad collarbones, the dusting of freckles, and the jagged white scar.
The diamond collar, which had looked gaudy against the puce silk, now rested against her bare skin, looking like a glittering weapon. You look Martha swallowed hard. You look formidable, Your Grace. I look like a woman who owns the bank that holds their mortgages, Bria corrected quietly. She turned to the door. Tell Thomas to prepare the secondary carriage, the old black one.
And tell the driver we are going to the crystal pavilion. The walk down the grand staircase felt entirely different than it had an hour ago. The velvet swished around her ankles with a satisfying heavy whisper. When she reached the foyer, the staff stared. They had only ever seen the Duchess as a timid, slouching woman apologizing to the furniture when she bumped into it.
Tonight, she stood with her spine straight, her shoulders pulled back, the emerald fabric glowing under the chandeliers. The secondary carriage was waiting outside. It was not the gilded, crest-bearing coach Andress had taken. It was an older unmarked brougham her father had purchased years ago. The leather seats inside smelled musty like damp earth and old tobacco.
Bria climbed in the carriage swaying heavily under her weight. “To the pavilion, ma’am.” The driver called down through the speaking tube, his voice laced with disbelief. “And do not spare the horses.” Bria replied. The carriage lurched forward. The ride through the London streets was a visceral nightmare.
The cobblestones rattled Bria’s teeth. The gas lamps flickered through the rain-streaked windows casting long distorted shadows across the worn leather interior. The smell of the city, a choking mixture of coal smoke, rotting vegetables, and damp horse hair seeped through the floorboards. With every jolt of the wheels, Bria’s bravado wavered.
Her stomach churned violently. A cold sweat breaking out on the back of her neck. What was she doing? She was marching into a room filled with 400 of the most vicious, judgmental people in the country. They already whispered that she was a barbarian. Arriving alone, unescorted, wearing a dress that defied every current fashion rule with her husband actively parading another woman around the room.
It was social suicide. She pressed her damp palms against her thighs feeling the soft nap of the velvet. “You are Bria White.” She reminded herself rejecting the Myers name entirely in the safety of her mind. “You have stood in a room of striking millworkers and negotiated a peace. You have ridden half-wild stallions across the Yorkshire moors.
You will not be cowed by people whose greatest accomplishment is being born.” Yet the nausea remained. She was imperfect. She was terrified. Her hands were shaking so violently she had to clench them together in her lap. She felt a hysterical laugh bubbling up in her throat, tasting metallic and sharp. Andres wanted a delicate flower.
Tonight, he was going to get a thunderstorm. The carriage slowed the wheels, transitioning from the rough cobblestones of the street to the smooth crushed gravel of the Crystal Pavilion’s grand circular drive. The glow of a thousand wax candles spilled out from the massive glass windows, illuminating the night like misplaced dawn.
The carriage stopped. Brea closed her eyes, took one massive rib-expanding breath, and waited for the door to open. The air inside the Crystal Pavilion was intoxicating and suffocating all at once. It hit Brea like a physical wall the moment she stepped through the grand portico. It smelled of roasting meats, crushed white orchids, spilled champagne, and the overwhelming musk of hundreds of sweating bodies layered in expensive French perfumes.
Music swelled from the upper balconies, a heavy sweeping waltz played by a 40-piece orchestra. The sound was deafening, vibrating through the marble floor and up through the thin soles of Brea’s satin slippers. She handed her damp wool cloak to a stunned footman who fumbled it twice before managing to drape it over his arm.
Brea didn’t wait to be announced. She bypassed the slow-moving queue of late arrivals, her emerald velvet dress parting the sea of pastel silks and dark tailcoats like a sharp ship’s prow cutting through calm waters. She paused at the top of the grand staircase that swept down into the main ballroom. Okay. There were hundreds of people milling about.
Diamonds flashed under the immense chandeliers. Fans fluttered like trapped birds. The noise was a chaotic symphony of laughter, clinking crystal, and overlapping conversations. Brea scanned the room, her eyes narrowed. She didn’t have to search for long. Andras stood near the center of the room, positioned perfectly beneath the largest chandelier to ensure maximum visibility.
He looked immaculate in midnight blue velvet, his golden hair perfectly quaffed, a relaxed aristocratic smile plastered across his handsome face. He looked entirely at ease. He looked unburdened. And clinging to his arm, laughing up at him with her delicate porcelain face, was Lady Diana Fitzroy. Diana wore a gown of spun sugar pink, dripping with delicate lace and tiny pearl accents.
She looked fragile. She looked like a woman who needed saving. Bria watched as Andras leaned down to whisper something in Diana’s ear. Diana covered her mouth with a delicate gloved hand, her eyes sparkling with amusement. A hard, bitter knot formed in Bria’s chest. The anger she felt earlier crystallized into something cold and terrifyingly calm.
She took a step down the marble stairs. She did not make a grand, silent entrance. There was no magical moment where the music abruptly stopped, or the crowd parted in synchronized awe. Reality was far more awkward and infinitely more humiliating. As she descended, a woman in a canary yellow dress turned her elbow, knocking into Bria’s arm.
The woman turned to snap an apology, saw Bria’s face noted the lack of an escort, took in the shockingly low-cut emerald dress, and froze. “Good heavens,” the woman breathed loud enough to be heard over the violins. The whisper started there. It did not explode. It rippled. It moved through the crowd like a draft from a suddenly opened window. Heads turned.
Eyes widened behind painted masks and feathered fans. A gentleman near the staircase was so distracted, he tipped his wine glass too far, spilling a dark red stain down the front of his neighbor’s white waistcoat. The ensuing curse drew more attention to the stairs. Bria kept walking, her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird.
Her right shoe pinched her heel terribly, and for a horrifying second, the toe of her slipper caught on the edge of a thick Persian rug. She stumbled. It was a slight, awkward lurch forward. A few cruel titters erupted from a nearby cluster of young lords. Heat flared in Bria’s cheeks, burning her skin. She didn’t freeze.
She didn’t look down. She dug her heel into the rug, righted her posture, and kept her eyes locked on Andris’s blond head. Her ungloved hands were damp with sweat. She casually wiped her palms against the heavy velvet of her skirt, a distinctly unladylike gesture that caused an elderly dowager nearby to gasp and clutch her pearls.
Andris was still laughing. He was entirely oblivious to the shifting atmosphere of the room. It was Diana who noticed first. The pink-clad woman turned her head, drawn by the sudden, unnatural parting of the crowd. Diana’s smile faltered. Her pale blue eyes widened, dropping to the emerald gown, the exposed scar, the heavy diamond collar, and finally locking onto Bria’s face.
Andris, feeling Diana stiffen, finally turned. Bria watched the exact moment her husband’s soul seemed to leave his body. The relaxed, arrogant smile vanished, replaced by a mask of sheer, unadulterated horror. The blood drained from his face so rapidly, Bria thought he might actually swoon. He let go of Diana’s arm as if the woman had suddenly caught fire.
Bria stopped exactly 3 ft away from them. The silence immediately surrounding them was absolute. The orchestra played on completely unaware of the domestic tragedy unfolding on the floor, but the nobles standing within a 10-ft radius had ceased all conversation leaning in with hungry predatory eyes. “Brea.” Andres choked out.
His voice was a thin strangled whisper. He looked frantically at the crowd, his eyes darting side to side as he registered the sheer number of people watching them. “What what in God’s name are you doing here?” “I am attending the gala, your grace.” Brea said. Her voice was not loud, but the natural deep resonance of it carried perfectly over the quiet.
“I received an invitation.” “You You were supposed to be indisposed.” Andres hissed stepping forward slightly trying to use his body to block her from the view of the nearest gossips. “The pew dress caught fire.” Brea lied smoothly not breaking eye contact. She let her gaze slide slowly deliberately from Andres’s pale face to the woman standing behind him.
Diana looked like a trapped rabbit. She attempted a weak trembling curtsy. “Y- Your grace, what a wonderful surprise.” Brea looked at Diana. She smelled the woman’s perfume something overly sweet like rotting jasmine. Brea didn’t feel hatred for Diana. She felt a weary cynical pity. Diana was just another pawn playing the only game society allowed her.
“Lady Diana.” Brea set her tone perfectly conversational. “I see you found my husband’s carriage comfortable. I do hope the upholstery didn’t crush that lovely fragile lace.” Diana flushed a mottled ugly red and took a step back her eyes darting to Andres for protection. Andres’s face morphed from panic to furious indignation.
He grabbed Brea by the elbow, his fingers digging bruisingly into her bare skin. “You are making a scene.” He hissed through clenched teeth, his breath smelling of expensive brandy and fear. “Go back to the carriage immediately. You are embarrassing me.” Brea looked down at the hand gripping her arm. She didn’t pull away. She leaned in, closing the distance between them until she could see the dilated, terrified pupils of his eyes.
“Embarrassing you?” She whispered back the words, vibrating with a deep, earthy menace. “You took my father’s money to pay off the debts that were going to send you to debtors prison, Andress. You live in a house my family bought. You eat food my family provides. And tonight you took the carriage I own to pick up a woman you couldn’t afford to marry while leaving me locked in a closet like an ugly secret.
” Andress swallowed, his grip loosening slightly as the reality of her words and the sheer, unapologetic steel in her eyes began to register. E- Brea smoothly pulled her arm from his grasp. She took a step back, raising her voice just enough to ensure the surrounding circle of aristocrats heard every single syllable.
“I am the Duchess of Hawkhurst.” Brea announced, her voice ringing clear over the fading notes of the waltz. “And if you are going to spend my fortune on Andress, the very least you can do is fetch me a glass of champagne. Um.” She turned her back to him, facing the crowd of staring, open-mouthed nobles.
She stood tall in her emerald velvet, perfectly imperfect, utterly unpolished, and terrifyingly real. “Well.” Brea projected her voice toward a group of frozen footmen carrying silver trays. “I- Is the hospitality here as poor as the manners, or is someone going to pour me a drink?” Champagne fizzed violently in the crystal flute, spilling a sticky pale line over Brea’s thumb as she snatched the glass from a trembling footman.
The liquid was sharp, highly acidic, and tasted faintly of green apples and yeast. She swallowed it in one entirely ungraceful gulp. It burned a path down her tight throat, settling in her empty stomach like a hot coal. Andras stood paralyzed. His jaw remained slack, his chest rising and falling in shallow panicked staccatos.
The midnight blue velvet of his coat suddenly looked less like regal attire and more like a costume he had stolen. Beside him, Diana Fitzroy was actively retreating. Her retreat was not bold. It was the desperate shuffling backward step of a prey animal hoping to blend into the wallpaper. She abandoned Andras’s side entirely.
Melting into a cluster of whispering countesses who immediately closed ranks around her, eager to interrogate the loser of the night’s spectacle. “Brea,” Andras said again. His voice lacked any of its usual booming aristocratic authority. It was a wet reedy sound. “Let us step into the library, please.” “I have no desire to read, Andras,” Brea replied flatly.
She placed the empty flute back onto the footman’s silver tray with a loud ringing clink. Her right foot throbbed fiercely where the pinched satin was rubbing a blister into her heel. Her lungs ached from the adrenaline pumping through her system, and beneath the heavy emerald velvet, a cold line of sweat traced down her spine.
She wanted nothing more than to curl into her massive feather-topped bed in Yorkshire and sleep for a week. But weakness here was blood in the water. The sea of faces surrounding them, powdered, painted, and utterly ruthless, waited for her to break. They wanted the newly minted, coal-dusted duchess to burst into tears and flee, proving once and for all that she did not belong in their manicured world. “You are creating a scandal.
” Andres hissed, stepping closer. He reached for her arm again, but his fingers hesitated, hovering an inch from her bare skin, intimidated by the rigid set of her shoulders. “Do you have any idea what they will write in the papers tomorrow?” “The humiliation, the humiliation is yours, your grace.” Bria cut in, her voice dropping to a low, guttural murmur, meant only for his ears.
“I am merely standing in a ballroom. You are the one who brought a mistress to a public gala paid for by your wife. If the papers write of a fool tomorrow, they will spell his name Myers.” A low, grating chuckle sounded from Bria’s left. The crowd parted instinctively, making way for a heavy, ancient woman leaning heavily on a silver-tipped cane.
It was Lady Agatha, the Dowager Countess of Whitmore. She was a woman who had outlived three husbands, four monarchs, and possessed a fortune large enough to buy and sell Andrasci’s heavily mortgaged estate before breakfast. Agatha smelled of ancient, heavy musk and peppermint lozenges. Agatha stopped in front of Bria, her milky, shrewd eyes scanning the emerald gown, the exposed collarbone, and finally the rigid, furious set of Bria’s jaw.
“Well,” Agatha rasped, her voice like grinding stones, “you certainly don’t look like a bruised plum anymore, girl. I told Andras that high-collared monstrosity he bought you was a tragedy. You have a merchant’s shoulders. You ought to show them.” Bria blinked momentarily, derailed by the blunt assessment.
She dipped her chin in a shallow, respectful nod. “Thank you, Lady Agatha. I find velvet much more, fortifying.” Agatha slammed the tip of her cane into the marble floor. The sharp crack echoed loudly. “Fortifying?” The old woman repeated, a vicious grin stretching her wrinkled cheeks. “Yes, iron and coal. That’s what built this miserable country, Andras.
” She turned her milky gaze on the trembling Duke. “Not lace and poetry. You would do well to remember whose signature keeps your creditors from changing the locks on your front door.” Andras flushed a deep, ugly crimson. His hands balled into fists at his sides, but he did not dare speak back to the dowager.
To cross Agatha was to invite complete social annihilation. “Now,” Agatha said, turning back to Brea and offering a frail, heavily ringed arm. “I require a seat. And I require gossip that doesn’t involve the Prince Regent’s gout. Escort me to the card room, Duchess. Let your husband stand here and look like a scolded schoolboy. It suits him.
” Brea did not hesitate. She looped her arm through the older woman’s. The dowager was surprisingly heavy, leaning her considerable weight against Brea’s side. As they walked, the crowd scrambled out of their way. The whispers continued, but the tone had shifted. The derision was gone, replaced by a cautious, hungry respect.
Brea had not just survived the humiliation, she had weaponized it, and in doing so, had earned the public backing of the ton’s most feared matriarch. Behind her, Andras stood completely alone under the chandelier. The golden boy of Mayfair entirely abandoned. For the next 2 hours, Brea sat in the stuffy, smoke-filled card room.
She did not play whist. She simply sat beside Lady Agatha, sipping a second glass of champagne that tasted slightly better than the first, and answered blunt, invasive questions about her father’s mills with equally blunt, unapologetic answers. She let her northern accent bleed through, dropping the carefully practiced breathy vowels her tutor had forced upon her.
Her head pounded, her feet screamed, but she sat straight, breathing in the smell of roasting wax candles and expensive cigar smoke, cementing her place in a world she despised. Exhaustion settled into Bria’s bones like wet sand the moment she stepped out of the crystal pavilion. The night air was jarringly damp, smelling of ozone and wet pavement.
A light drizzle had begun to fall, coating the crushed gravel in a dark, reflective sheen. The footman draped her damp wool cloak over her shoulders. It felt absurdly heavy after the unrestrictive velvet. She stood under the portico waiting for her father’s old black broam to be brought around. The carriage wheels crunched into view, but before the driver could bring the horses to a complete halt, a figure pushed past the line of waiting footmen.
Andreas grabbed the carriage door handle before Bria could reach it. He looked awful. The perfect coiffure was disheveled, damp from the misty rain. The smell of brandy on his breath was overpowering now, mixed with the sharp, sour tang of nervous sweat. “I am riding with you,” Andreas demanded.
His voice was ragged, stripping away the polite veneer he usually maintained. “You have your own carriage,” Bria said, her voice completely devoid of emotion. “The one holding Lady Diana’s discarded hairpins, I presume.” “Diana took a hackney cab home an hour ago,” Andreas spat, his face twisting into an ugly sneer. Because you thoroughly ruined her reputation.
Are you satisfied? I’m tired, Bria corrected. She stepped up into the carriage, her pinched heel giving a sharp throb of agony. She sat on the worn leather bench, refusing to move over. Andres climbed in after her, forcing himself onto the opposite bench. The space immediately felt too small. His long legs bumped against the heavy velvet of her skirt.
He slammed the door shut and the carriage lurched forward, plunging them into the rhythmic jolting darkness of the London streets. The silence stretched between them, thick and volatile. [clears throat] The street lamps flickered past the wet windows, casting Andres’s face in sharp alternating flashes of yellow light and deep shadow.
He looked furious, but beneath the fury, Bria saw the frantic shifting eyes of a cornered animal. You had no right, Andres finally erupted, slamming a fist against the padded leather wall of the cab. You had absolutely no right to speak to me that way in front of the Whitmores, to drag my finances into the public square. Bria rested her head against the damp glass of the window.
The vibration rattled her teeth, but it felt grounding. Your finances have been public knowledge since your father gambled away your estate in Baden-Baden, Andres. I merely reminded everyone who holds the deed. You are my wife, he shouted, leaning forward, his hands gripping his knees. You are supposed to honor me.
You are supposed to obey the bounds of decency. I am the Duke of Hawkherst. You are a ledger entry, Bria said. The words left her mouth quietly, but they hit the cramped space like a physical blow. Andres flinched, falling back against his seat. Bria turned her head slowly, fixing her hazel eyes on him.
She felt no anger [clears throat] anymore. The fiery burning rage that had propelled her down the stairs of the Crystal Pavilion had burned out leaving nothing but cold, hard ash. She looked at the man she had married, the handsome face, the aristocratic lineage, the complete and utter lack of character. “Let us stop pretending Undress.
” Bria continued, her voice steady, carrying the cadence of her father negotiating a coal shipment. “This marriage was never a romance. It was a transaction. My father wanted a coronet to legitimize his money and you needed a fortune to save your skin. I accepted the arrangement because I believed there would be a partnership based on mutual respect.
You would provide the social protection and I would provide the capital.” Undress swallowed loudly. The fight was visibly draining out of him replaced by a creeping dread. “Bria, I am speaking.” She interrupted, her tone cracking like a whip in the small carriage. “You broke the contract tonight. You attempted to use my wealth to fund your continued bachelorhood while humiliating me to elevate your mistress.
You thought I was weak because I am quiet. You thought I was ignorant because I do not care for your mother’s lace.” She leaned forward, her emerald dress rustling loudly. She pointed a single, blunt-nailed finger at his chest. “Here are the new terms.” Bria said. “You will never under any circumstances disrespect me in public again.
You will appear at every social function I require you to attend and you will stand at my side. You will sever all public ties with Diana Fitzroy. If you wish to take a discreet lover, you will do so quietly in the dark where it does not embarrass my family name.” Undress’s mouth opened and closed. “And if I refuse?” He whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of outrage and fear.
“If I refuse your terms.” Bria smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. It did not reach her eyes. My father’s solicitors hold the mortgages on Hawkherst Manor, the Mayfair townhouse, and the hunting lodge in Kent. Bria listed smoothly. If you refuse, I will cut your allowance to zero.
I will foreclose on the properties. I will throw you out into the street with nothing but the midnight blue velvet on your back, and I will let the creditors tear you to pieces. The carriage hit a deep rut in the road, jostling them violently. Andres grabbed the leather hand strap, his knuckles turning white. He stared at her as if she had suddenly grown a second head.
He was looking for the timid, awkward girl who apologized to the furniture. She was entirely gone. You You would ruin the dukedom, he breathed, genuinely horrified. You would destroy your own title. I survived 20 years without a title, Bria stated flatly. I can survive the rest of my life without one. I do not need Hawkherst.
You do. She sat back against the squabs, pulling her heavy wool cloak tighter around her shoulders. The damp cold was finally seeping through the velvet, making her shiver slightly. The carriage slowed as it approached the townhouse, the horses’ hooves striking the familiar cobblestones of their street.
Do we have an understanding, Andres de Foix? So formal for us four. She asked, her eyes already slipping closed as the sheer weight of her exhaustion threatened to pull her under. Andres looked out the window at the looming dark silhouette of the townhouse, the house her money had saved. The silence stretched for a long, agonizing minute.
The smell of his expensive brandy was entirely suffocated by the heavy damp scent of the rain. Yes, he whispered to the glass. It was a concession of complete, utter defeat. And Bria nodded at once. The carriage jolted to a stop. The footman opened the door, letting in the biting chill of the early morning. Bria stepped out into the rain, ignoring Andres entirely.
She did not wait for him. She walked up the marble steps of her house, her back straight, her heels clicking sharply against the stone, ready to take off the heavy velvet armor and sleep. The ballroom fell silent. The balance of power permanently shifted by one woman’s refusal to shrink. What did you think of Bria’s bold entrance? Should she forgive Andres’ betrayal? Or is this just the beginning of her revenge? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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