I Agreed To Be A Duke’s Fake Shield — Then I Insulted His Mother To Her Face

Part 1

The waltz was never invented for romance.

It was engineered to disguise brutal interrogations under the polite cover of a string quartet.

I knew this fact intimately as I stood pressed against the flocked wallpaper of the Abernathy ballroom.

The heavy, damp heat of the room felt like a physical weight pressing down on my bare shoulders.

I was suffocating slowly beneath the overpowering scent of crushed lilies and sheer desperation.

If I inhaled too deeply, the unforgiving whalebone stays of my mended corset pinched a nerve under my ribs.

It was a sharp, radiating ache I had endured silently since eight o’clock that evening.

It was now approaching midnight, and the air tasted foul, thick with burnt beeswax and the stale sweat of three hundred aristocrats.

I was twenty-six years old, wearing a dark plum dress that my mother had optimistically called dignified, though we both knew it was simply durable enough to hide stains.

In the ruthless arithmetic of the London marriage mart, my lack of a dowry made me practically a ghost.

Men did not look at me; their gazes slid right through me to land on the giggling, wealthy nineteen-year-olds draped in pale muslins nearby.

I did not mind the invisibility.

Being entirely unseen meant I did not have to pretend to be charmed by men with the intellectual depth of soup spoons.

I could simply stand in my shadowed alcove, nursing a glass of warm, flat lemonade, and watch the terrifying machinery of society grind its gears.

I lifted a gloved hand to wipe a humiliating bead of sweat from the back of my neck.

The room was a miserable swamp of heavy wool, velvet, and layers of silk, all trapping the heat of too many bodies.

Across the room, the frantic shuffling of the crowd parted in a messy, deferential wave.

Craig Penhaligon, the Duke of Rothbury, was moving through the hall like a warship parting a fleet of dinghies.

He was far too large to be considered traditionally handsome, his shoulders straining the seams of his impeccably tailored black evening coat.

His heavy jaw was shadowed by a perpetual stubble that suggested he had shaved at dawn and simply given up by noon.

He looked like a man who worked with his hands, violently forced into a crisp silk cravat.

And he looked utterly furious.

He was being aggressively flanked by a panicked society matron on his left, while his mother, the terrifying Dowager Duchess Brenda Penhaligon, directed him from the right with subtle, silent shifts of her ebony cane.

Craig had been dragged back from a quiet life in the country to play the prized bull in the ring.

His late father had left the estate drowning in debt, and his mother was actively hunting for a compliant heiress to balance the ledgers.

He stopped dead in the center of the room.

His dark, tired, thoroughly annoyed eyes scanned the crowd before snagging directly on my shadowed alcove.

My breath hitched, and the warm lemonade sloshed dangerously close to the rim of my glass.

He abruptly turned his back on his panicked hostess, his heavy boots making dull, solid thuds against the polished oak floorboards.

He marched straight toward me, ignoring the startled footmen and the murmuring lords.

Up close, he was even larger, smelling of rain on heavy wool, sharp starch, and a faint, bitter trace of tobacco.

He stopped directly in front of me, his chest rising and falling heavily beneath the white linen of his shirt.

Without a word of greeting, he thrust his hand out toward me.

It was encased in a white kid glove, but the sheer size of his knuckles beneath the thin leather was intimidating.

He did not ask; he simply commanded me to dance with him.

I stared at his hand, acutely aware that his mother had locked her cold, pale eyes onto us from across the room.

Next to the Dowager stood Lady Caroline, a girl possessing a massive shipping fortune and an eternally vacant smile.

Craig leaned down, his voice dropping to a harsh, gravelly whisper that vibrated against my ribs.

He warned me that if I did not take his hand in the next ten seconds, his mother would force him to dance with Caroline, and the papers would have them married by Tuesday.

He was not asking for a favor; he was demanding a service because dancing with me was so entirely non-threatening it would stall his mother without causing a scandal.

I should have refused, but sheer, unadulterated annoyance radiated from him, making him the most genuine thing I had encountered all season.

With a tight, thin sigh, I abandoned my lemonade on a passing tray and placed my gloved fingers in his palm.

I softly promised to kick him if he stepped on my bruised plum gown.

The corner of his mouth twitched in a microscopic break of his rigid expression, acknowledging the threat before towing me out of the alcove.

He pulled me into the harsh, glaring center of the ballroom just as the orchestra struck the opening chords.

The floor was sticky with spilled sweet wine, my cheap leather slippers making pathetic tearing sounds as I struggled to match his aggressive, marching cadence.

He placed his massive right hand on my waist, the oppressive heat of his palm bleeding straight through the thick silk.

We stood far too close, entirely ignoring the respectable distance dictated by the waltz.

When I complained about his grip, he countered that holding me loosely would convince his mother he was bored, prompting an immediate interception.

We spun sharply, a sudden jolt of panic and heat shooting through my chest as my breasts brushed the stiff lapels of his coat.

It was not desire, but the sheer shock of his physical mass pressing against me.

I muttered that the dance meant absolutely nothing, deliberately stepping a half-inch forward to catch his polished boot with my heel.

He did not flinch, but merely pulled me impossibly closer, his hot breath brushing my temple.

He told me to convey that sentiment to his mother, who was currently watching us with eyes that suggested she wanted me quietly poisoned.

When the music crashed to a halt, the casual, almost unconscious stroke of his thumb against my hip bone sent pure electricity down my spine.

He dropped his arm abruptly, the cold air rushing in to sever the connection before escorting me back to the edge of the room.

The social temperature had violently shifted, the murmurs of the crowd breaking out like small fires behind painted silk fans.

The Dowager Duchess blocked our path, leaning on her silver-handled cane with a gravitational pull that demanded absolute submission.

She cataloged every flaw of my cheap gown in three seconds, dismissing me entirely as she reminded her son of his obligations to Lady Caroline.

When she paused to let a deliberate insult hang in the air regarding his choice of amusement, a hot flush of anger burned away my anxiety.

I removed my hand from his arm and informed the Dowager that the Duke was merely performing his civic duty by guiding a fainting woman to safety.

I executed a flawless, mocking curtsy, thanked him for the charity, and pushed my way back into the suffocating crowd.

I reached the edge of the hallway, desperate for cold air, only to feel a heavy, uncompromising hand close around my elbow.

Craig had abandoned his mother in the middle of the room, ignoring the slack-jawed shock of the onlookers.

He informed me that he was not quite finished being charitable, his grip feeling less like a gentleman’s touch and more like a shackle.

He dragged me toward the grand staircase, forcing me out the heavy mahogany doors and into the biting chill of the London night.

The sudden drop in temperature hit me like a physical blow, violent shivers racking my frame as the damp wind cut through my thin silk.

Without a word, he stripped off his dark evening coat and threw the heavy, heat-retaining wool around my trembling shoulders.

He ignored my protests, clamping a hand over the collar to hold it shut around my throat.

He stated bluntly that he could not have his only tactical advantage dying of pneumonia in the street.

He shoved me into his massive black carriage, following instantly and pulling the door shut with a solid, echoing thud that severed us from the world.

We rode in pitch-black silence, the air thick with the smell of rich leather and coal dust.

He knew everything about my father’s disastrous mining investments and the eviction notice hanging over my head.

He leaned into the shadows of the carriage and told me he wasn’t asking for my virtue—he was buying my brass to ruin my own reputation.