Page 102 of The Duchess Trap
The note inside was short. One line, written in a neat, deliberate hand.
Meddle in my business again, and the next fire will be yours.
For a long moment, he simply stared at it. The room seemed to narrow around him, sound dropping away until all he could hear was his own pulse. Then came the anger—sharp andimmediate, rising from somewhere deep. His jaw locked. The paper crumpled in his fist.
Felton.
There was no question in his mind. The timing, the audacity, the tone. He could almost hear the man’s calm, taunting voice behind the words, too sure of himself. Felton had always been reckless, but this was something else entirely.
“Your Grace?”
He hadn’t noticed his butler still standing there. “It is…nothing,” Duncan said, his voice low. “Go. Tell the staff they’re dismissed until tomorrow. I’ll not be disturbed.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Duncan cast one look of longing upstairs. A fleeting thought of joining his wife in her bedchambers crossed his mind, but then he dismissed such a notion. He stalked toward his study instead. When the door shut, the silence that followed was absolute. He crossed the room in three long strides and tossed the note onto the desk, watching it land beside the silver inkstand.
For a moment, he just stood there. His reflection caught in the dark window—tall, soot-streaked, still in the same coat he’d worn at Brightwater. The man who looked back at him might as well have been a stranger.
Quieter, colder fury came next, the kind that didn’t shout. It simply settled in his bones, steady and certain. He knew what Felton was after: control. Intimidation. And it might have worked, once, before Catherine. Before he’d watched her walk through flame for someone she loved.
Felton’s mistake is simple. He does not know that I am willing to burn for her.
A soft knock broke the thought.
“Duncan?” Her voice.
He was startled by the intrusion. He had assumed that Catherine had gone straight to bed. “Come in.”
The door opened, and there she was, pale in the lamplight, wrapped in one of her thinner night robes, the faintest trace of fatigue softening her features. She had washed the soot from her face and braided her hair loosely over one shoulder, though a few strands had already escaped. She looked fragile. Human. Real.
“Are you all right?” she asked. Her voice was gentle, but he caught the edge of worry beneath it. “While I was preparing for bed, Alice said the butler gave you a message.”
He straightened instinctively, the mask slipping into place before he’d even thought to do it. “A minor matter,” he said. “Nothing that requires your concern.”
Her brow furrowed. “You look pale.”
“I’m tired.”
“So am I,” she murmured. “But exhaustion doesn’t usually make one grip their desk hard enough to splinter the wood.”
He glanced down. She was right. His knuckles were white, the skin stretched tight. Slowly, he loosened his hold. “Old habit.”
She stepped closer. The lamplight caught the faint bruise on her shoulder, the one that made his stomach knot every time he looked at it. He had tried not to think about how close she’d come to being crushed. Tried not to remember the sound of the beam cracking, the way she’d shielded that boy with her body instead of moving to save herself.
“Duncan,” she said softly. “Talk to me.”
He forced a breath. “There’s nothing to talk about. The orphanage will be rebuilt. The investigation will begin tomorrow…or rather later today. Everything’s under control.”
She tilted her head, studying him the way she always did, with that infuriating tenderness that made him feel transparent. “That’s not what I asked.”
He met her gaze.
“I’ve got some things to attend to before morning,” he said instead. “You should rest.”
Her lips parted as if she wanted to argue, but she caught herself. “Very well,” she said quietly.
When she turned to leave, he almost called her back. The words lodged in his throat. He wanted her near, wanted to feel her hand against his, to let the warmth of her chase away the cold settling in his chest. But he couldn’t risk the distraction. Not tonight.
