I Discovered the Duke Was an Impostor — And Became His Accomplice
Part 2
I looked back at him, my mind struggling to process the scene.
If he knew I had read the letter, why hadn’t he destroyed it while I was unconscious?
You fainted, he said softly, resting his forearms on his thighs.
You hit your cheek on the floor.
You’re not him, I rasped, the words tearing out of my mouth before I could stop them.
He flinched, a minuscule tightening of the skin around his eyes.
He didn’t yell or deny it, just looked down at his own calloused hands.
No, he said, the word dropping onto the floor between us like a heavy stone.
You’re Brian, I whispered, trying to superimpose the man I had known over the impostor kneeling in the dust.
I was, he said, his dark, exhausted eyes meeting mine.
Brian died in the mud at Waterloo, too.
You stole a title, I pushed myself up slightly, wincing as the room tilted.
You forged his will and stole his entire life.
His life was over, his voice cracked like a whip, echoing off the vaulted ceiling.
My father hated me, he said, the words spilling out like a ruptured vein.
Craig was the golden boy, but he was weak, and when he took the shot, I held him.
Our cousin Tyler was next in line, a gambling addict who would have sold the land and left two hundred families to starve in the cold.
People see what they expect to see, Megan, so I gave them a man returning from war.
But it’s a lie, and every morning I wake up and put on a dead man’s skin.
I realized then that this man had spent a decade holding up the sky for peasant families who didn’t even know his real name.
The magistrate pays a five-pound reward for information leading to the arrest of a felon, I said softly.
Then what do you want, Miss Robinson?
I looked around the miserable, freezing archive and told him I wanted a fire in my bedchamber, proper food, and a tripled salary.
You owe these people a master, and I need a living.
We are both liars in this house now.
Three days later, I was sitting at a mahogany writing desk in the corner of his main study, teaching a peasant how to be a peer.
I was drilling him on the invisible rules of aristocratic society, preparing him for the vicious world he had stolen.
But as the heavy oak doors of the study unexpectedly swung open, I realized our greatest threat had just arrived—what would happen when the vicious cousin he was hiding from finally came to collect his due?
Part 3
Three days later, the archive in the cellar was locked.
Megan now sat at a mahogany writing desk in the corner of the duke’s main study.
The room was aggressively warm, smelling of beeswax, burning oak, and the faint citrus tang of black tea.
The heavy velvet curtains were drawn back, letting the weak grey November light spill across the wool rug.
It was a staggering upgrade.
Yet, Megan found her stomach churning constantly.
She watched him.
It was a compulsion she couldn’t break.
Brian sat at the massive desk in the center of the room reviewing lease agreements for the tenant farms.
He was wearing spectacles, thin wire-rimmed things that perched awkwardly on the bridge of his slightly crooked nose.
He looked ridiculous in them, like a bear trying to thread a needle.
She noticed the details now.
The damning, terrifying details.
When he signed his name, the estate, he had to slow down.
His right shoulder tensed, and his grip on the silver fountain pen became white-knuckled.
He was painting the letters, not writing them.
When he spoke to the servants, he was too polite.
He said, “Thank you.” to the footman, a habit the real Craig born to privilege would never have developed.
It was maddening.
Every second of the day was a performance, and Megan was the only one in the audience who knew the actors didn’t know their lines.
She dipped her quill in ink, transcribing a letter when the heavy oak door of the study swung open without a knock.
Megan jumped her pen, leaving a jagged black scar across the page.
Brian didn’t flinch.
He slowly laid his pen down, removed his spectacles, and looked up.
The muscles in his jaw tightened so intensely that Megan thought she heard his teeth grind.
“Tyler.”
Brian said.
His voice dropped an octave, slipping seamlessly into the aristocratic bored drawl he used in public.
It was a terrifyingly good imitation.
A man stepped into the room.
He brought the smell of the damp outside with him mixed with stale wine, wet wool, and cheap overpowering lavender cologne.
Lord Tyler Henderson was a man going to seed.
He was perhaps 40, but a lifetime of heavy drinking and gambling had left him bloated.
His skin was pasty, hanging loosely around his jowls, and his pale blue eyes were entirely too sharp, darting around the room like a rat looking for a hole in the baseboards.
“Craig, my dear cousin.”
Tyler boomed, stepping forward and opening his arms.
He didn’t wait for an invitation.
He walked straight to the decanter of brandy on the side table and poured himself a heavy glass.
“Ghastly weather out there.
The roads from town are pure soup.
You didn’t write to say you were coming, Brian said evenly.
He remained seated behind his desk.
A surprise visit.
It’s been too long.
We are family after all.
Tyler took a long swallow of the brandy, smacking his lips.
He turned and finally noticed Megan sitting rigidly in the corner.
His eyes dragged over her, a slow insolent appraisal that made her skin crawl.
And who is this?
You’ve replaced old the old archivist with someone entirely more decorative.
miss Robinson is my archivist, Brian said.
His tone was casual, but Megan saw his hand flatten against the desk, the fingernails pressing hard into the wood.
She is currently transcribing the estate history.
You were saying, Tyler.
To what do I owe the pleasure?
Tyler turned back to the desk, leaning against the edge of it, invading Brian’s space.
I find myself in a bit of a temporary bind, Craig.
A misunderstanding with a gentleman at the club’s.
A matter of honor, you understand.
I need an advance on my quarterly allowance.
Megan kept her eyes on her ledger, pretending to write.
But she listened to the silence stretch.
I paid your gambling debts in August, Tyler, Brian said quietly. £3,000.
And I am eternally grateful.
Tyler smiled a thin, wet expression.
But surely the the estate coffers aren’t running dry.
You’ve been quite the miser since you returned from the war.
Never go to town, never host a season.
Just sitting up here in the mud, playing the country squire.
Tyler leaned closer, his voice dropping slightly.
Sometimes, Craig, I look at you and I wonder where the boy I knew went.
You used to be so full of life, so easily led.
Now, you’re a brick wall.
It’s almost as if you’re a different person entirely.
The scratch of Megan’s quill stopped dead.
She looked up.
Tyler was staring at Brian, a mocking, probing gleam in his eye.
He didn’t know.
He couldn’t know.
But he was circling, sensing a weakness in the animal in front of him.
Brian didn’t blink.
He held Tyler’s gaze with dead, terrifying calm.
War changes men, Tyler.
I suggest you learn to live with the man I am now.
The answer is no.
There will be no advance.
Tyler’s smile vanished.
The jovial, drunken facade cracked, revealing something small and vicious underneath.
You are very rigid with the family money, Craig, considering how closely it tied to my own future.
Your future depends on my generosity.
Brian corrected his voice, a low, lethal rumble.
Do not push it.
Tyler stood up slowly.
He swirled the remaining brandy in his glass.
Of course, but memory is a funny thing.
It binds us, reminds us of who we really are.
Tell me, Craig.
Tyler tilted his head.
Do you remember the summer of 2009?
At the old mill, when we took your father’s roan gelding out without permission.
The air in the study turned to ice.
Megan saw Brian’s chest stop moving.
He had stopped breathing.
He didn’t know.
Brian wouldn’t know the story.
Brian, the bastard brother, would have been mucking out the stalls while the golden boy, Craig, and his cousin played by the mill.
“The old mill,” Brian repeated, stalling.
His voice was perfectly steady, but Megan saw a bead of sweat break out at his hairline.
“Yes,” Tyler pressed, taking a step closer.
His eyes narrowed.
“You fell off, landed right in the muck.
Do you remember what you broke, Craig?
You cried for hours.
Do you remember?”
Brian stared at him.
The silence stretched tight as a piano wire.
The seconds ticked by heavily on the grandfather clock in the corner.
Brian was drowning, and Tyler was standing on his chest.
Megan shoved her chair backward.
It scraped violently against the hardwood floor, a loud, ugly sound that shattered the tension like a hammer hitting glass.
Both men snapped their heads toward the corner.
Megan stood up.
She deliberately let the heavy leather-bound ledger slip from her grasp.
It hit the floor with a concussive thud, sending a small cloud of dust into the warm air.
“My apologies, your grace.”
Megan said, her voice breathy, laced with a perfectly manufactured panicked clumsiness.
She immediately dropped to her knees, scrambling to gather the loose papers that had spilled from the binding.
Tyler let out a harsh sigh of annoyance, his focus broken.
“Good god, woman, watch your hands.”
Megan paused on her knees.
She looked up at Tyler, letting her expression shift from flustered employee to something colder.
She tapped into a well of aristocratic disdain she hadn’t used since her father’s bankruptcy.
“I beg your pardon, Lord Henderson,” she said smoothly, her enunciation crisp-cutting and entirely devoid of deference.
The binding is from 1780.
The glue has dry rotted.
It requires a delicate touch.
Something I wouldn’t expect a man who reeks of cheap gin and bad debt to understand.
Tyler’s face flushed a deep mottled purple.
He stepped away from the desk, his hands balling into fists.
How dare you speak to me?
miss Robinson.
Brian interrupted.
His voice cracked like a whip.
It was an order, sharp and authoritative.
Megan didn’t flinch.
She stood up clutching the heavy book to her chest, her chin raised.
She kept her eyes locked on Tyler.
The collarbone, she said.
Tyler froze.
What Megan looked at Brian, pasting on an expression of mild academic curiosity.
The estate medical records from 1809.
Your grace, I cataloged them yesterday.
You broke your left collarbone near the old mill.
Dr.
Patel set it.
He charged the estate 3 shillings and noted that you were a surprisingly difficult patient who refused the laudanum.
She turned her gaze back to Tyler.
Her eyes flat and dead.
It is all documented, Lord Henderson.
Down to the penny.
The duke’s memory is perfectly fine.
It is his patience for your interrogation that seems to be wearing thin.
Tyler stared at her.
His mouth slightly open.
The wind had been completely knocked out of his sails.
He looked from the pale, rigid archivist to the massive, silent duke behind the desk.
I see.
Tyler muttered, the vicious spark in his eye suddenly extinguished.
He set his empty glass down on the desk with a sharp clink.
He looked suddenly tired and very small.
Well, if the answer is no, Craig, I shall leave you to your ledgers.
Good day.
He didn’t wait for a reply.
Tyler turned on his heel and strode out of the study, pulling the heavy door shut behind him with a loud click.
The silence rushed back into the room thicker than before.
Megan stood by her desk, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
Her hands gripping the edges of the book were trembling so violently the leather rubbed audibly against her wool dress.
She had just lied to a lord.
She had just actively participated in treason.
She had crossed a line in the dirt and there was absolutely no going back.
Behind the desk, Brian slowly sank back into his leather chair.
The leather groaned under his weight.
He didn’t look at her.
He rested his elbows on the desk and buried his face in his large, calloused hands.
He took a long, shuddering breath that sounded like a dry sob.
Megan didn’t move.
She waited for her heart rate to slow.
“There are no medical records from 1809,” Brian said into his hands.
His voice was muffled, thick with adrenaline and exhaustion.
“I know,” Megan replied, her voice remarkably steady.
“The old steward used them to start fires in the winter of 12.”
Brian lowered his hands.
He looked up at her across the expanse of the room.
His face was pale, his dark eyes wide and anchored onto her with an intensity that made the breath catch in her throat.
“How did you know it was the collarbone?” he asked softly.
Megan swallowed dryly.
“When I was binding the letters from your father, he complained to his solicitor about it.
He wrote that his heir was a fool for breaking his left collarbone and ruining his riding posture.”
Brian stared at her.
He didn’t say thank you.
He didn’t need to.
The air between them had shifted irrevocably.
They were no longer an extortionist and a victim.
They were no longer an employer and a servant.
They were co-conspirators.
Brian stood up.
He walked slowly around the edge of the desk, his heavy boots making no sound on the thick wool rug.
He stopped a few feet in front of her.
Up close, he smelled of wood smoke and clean linen, masking the sharp metallic scent of cold sweat.
He reached out.
For a brief, terrifying second, Megan thought he was going to touch her bruised cheek.
She braced herself, but his hand bypassed her face, gently grasping the edge of the heavy ledger she was clutching to her chest like a shield.
“Give it to me, Megan,” he said quietly.
She slowly relaxed her grip.
He took the heavy book from her hands with effortless ease, setting it on a nearby table.
He looked back down at her.
The cynical dead look was gone from his eyes.
In its place was something raw, present, and terrifyingly focused.
“He’ll come back,” Brian said, his voice dropping to a low murmur meant only for her.
“Tyler is a parasite.
He’ll keep probing until he finds a soft spot.
Then we make sure there aren’t any,” Megan said.
She surprised herself with the we.
The word slipped out naturally, a fatalistic acceptance of her new reality.
She looked up into his eyes, refusing to shrink back from his looming presence.
You know how to run the land.
You know how to fix the roofs and balance the books, but you don’t know how to be a peer.
You don’t know the history, the slights, the invisible rules.
She took a shallow breath.
You need to learn.
A slow, bitter smile touched the corner of Brian’s mouth.
It changed his entire face, making him look surprisingly devastatingly handsome.
And you are going to teach me, miss Robinson?
I am going to keep you from the gallows, your grace, she replied, her voice firm, though her pulse was racing.
Because if you hang, my fire goes out.
Brian stepped back, giving her space to breathe.
He looked at the closed door, then back at the desk piled high with the fraudulent life he had built.
All right, he said, softly turning back to her.
Where do we begin?
December arrived, not with a gentle snowfall, but with a brutal freezing rain that turned the estate grounds into a treacherous marsh.
Inside the estate hall, the temperature in the library was barely tolerable, even with a massive oak log splitting and hissing in the fireplace.
Megan rubbed the bridge of her nose.
The skin there was tight, protesting the constant strained focus of the past 3 weeks.
The grandfather clock in the corner ticked with a slow, heavy rhythm that felt like a hammer against her temples.
It was 2:00 in the morning.
Again, she said.
Her voice was flat, devoid of sympathy.
Brian was pacing.
The library was vast, lined with towering shelves of leather-bound vanity, but his sheer size made the room feel like a cage.
He had stripped off his tailored coat hours ago.
His white linen shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows, revealing forearms corded with muscle and crisscrossed with faded, jagged white scars.
He stopped near the windows, staring out into the pitch-black rain.
He looked like a draft horse tethered to a parlor chair.
“The lord of Collins has three daughters.”
Brian recited, his voice a low, mechanical rumble.
“Lady Margaret, Lady Anne, and” He dragged a heavy hand over his face, the rasp of his palm against his jaw loud in the quiet room.
“And I don’t give a damn.”
“Lady Catherine.”
Megan corrected, ignoring his outburst.
She didn’t look up from the sprawling handwritten diagram she was plotting on the desk.
“And you must care.
If Collins attends the winter quarter sessions, he will expect you to ask after them.
If you fail to remember Catherine, who was recently widowed, he will consider it a deliberate slight.
And Collins sits on the magistrates bench.
He is not a man you want looking closely at your affairs.”
Brian turned.
The shadows of the room clung to the harsh angles of his face.
He looked utterly exhausted.
“I spent 10 hours today riding the boundary lines in the freezing mud because the tenant at Miller’s farm has trench foot and can’t repair his own fences.
And now I must memorize the marital status of a woman I have never met.”
“Yes.”
Megan said simply.
She finally looked up at him.
She saw the violent frustration coiled in his shoulders.
It would be so easy for him to snap.
He was a man who had survived a musket line.
He could tear this room apart with his bare hands.
But he didn’t.
He just breathed out a long, slow sigh.
The fight draining out of him, leaving only the crushing fatigue of a man carrying a world that wasn’t his.
It did something strange to Megan’s chest.
A tight, unwelcome twisting sensation.
She hated the peers.
She hated the suffocating rules of their society.
The very rules that had allowed her father to gamble their lives away without consequence.
Yet here she was, weaponizing those rules to protect a peasant who had stolen a crown.
“Sit down, Brian.”
She said softly.
He froze.
It was the first time she had used his real name since the cellar.
He stared at her.
His dark eyes entirely unreadable in the dim light.
Slowly he walked back to the desk and sank heavily into the chair opposite hers.
He rested his arms on the mahogany surface.
Up close, he smelled of wet wool, saddle leather, and the sharp metallic tang of cold sweat.
“I can’t remember it all, Megan.”
He said.
The gravel in his voice was thick.
It wasn’t a complaint.
It was a desperate, factual statement.
“The names, the titles, the grudges from 20 years ago.
Craig grew up breathing this air.
I grew up shoveling I’m going to make a mistake.”
“You already make mistakes.”
She replied, brutally honest.
“You walk into a room like you own it by force, not by divine right.
You drink your tea too fast.
You look at the servants when they serve you.
He frowned.
Is looking at a man a crime?
In this house, yes.
To a duke, a footman is furniture.
When you thank them, you break the illusion.
She leaned forward, her elbows on the desk, mirroring his posture.
The physical distance between them was less than 2 ft.
But we are going to use that.
Use what?
My lack of manners?
Your strangeness.
She said, her eyes tracing the scar that cut through his left eyebrow.
The war, Brian.
We blame everything on Waterloo.
If you forget a name, it is a lapse of memory from the trauma.
If you are brusque, it is military efficiency.
We don’t try to make you the Craig they remember.
We make you an Craig who was broken by the French and put back together differently.
They will accept a damaged duke much faster than an impostor.
Brian watched her.
The intensity of his gaze was a physical weight.
He reached out his thick, calloused index finger, gently tapping the edge of the genealogical chart she had been drawing.
You are frighteningly good at this, he murmured.
I learned how to survive among wolves, she said, her voice tightening.
Just because I lost my teeth doesn’t mean I forgot how they hunt.
He withdrew his hand, his expression softening into something raw and observant.
You haven’t lost your teeth, Megan.
You just hide them.
He leaned back in his chair, the leather groaning.
The tension in his jaw had eased.
All right.
Tell me about Lady Catherine’s dead husband.
They worked until the fire burned down to nothing but glowing red embers.
Megan’s voice eventually went hoarse, the words blurring on the page.
When she finally closed the ledger, the silence in the room was absolute, save for the ticking clock.
She looked up.
Brian had fallen asleep in his chair.
His head was tilted back, his breathing deep and even.
Without the waking tension holding his features in a rigid mask, he looked younger.
He looked vulnerable.
Megan stood up quietly.
Her joints ached from the damp and the cold.
She walked around the desk.
She should leave.
She should go to her newly warmed bedchamber and sleep.
Instead, she picked up a heavy wool blanket from the leather sofa and walked over to him.
She draped it over his broad shoulders.
As she leaned in, her knuckles brushed against his neck.
His skin was incredibly warm.
Brian shifted his eyes, opening slowly.
They were bleary, but they locked onto hers instantly.
He didn’t pull away.
“Thank you.”
He rumbled, his voice thick with sleep.
Megan’s breath hitched slightly.
She stepped back, putting the heavy oak desk between them once more.
“You’re welcome, Your Grace.”
The invitation arrived a week later, embossed with heavy gold foil.
Lord and Lady Miller request the honor of the duke of the estate’s presence at their annual winter solstice dinner.
It was not an invitation.
It was a summons.
Miller was the Lord Lieutenant of the county.
He was the man who would report directly to the Crown if any rumors regarding the estate hall gained traction.
“I am not going.”
Brian said.
He tossed the stiff card onto his desk as if it were a venomous snake.
Megan picked it up, her fingers tracing the gold foil.
“You must.
Tyler has been in town for a month.
You can be certain he is whispering in drawing rooms, planting seeds about your eccentricities and your tight purse strings.
If you hide like a hermit, you validate his claims.
You need to show them a duke.
Brian stood up, his jaw set.
I can’t sit at a table with 12 peers for 3 hours.
They will interrogate me.
They will ask about town, about Parliament, about things I haven’t had time to memorize.
Then I will go with you, Megan said.
The words hung in the air.
Brian stared at her.
As what?
My archivist?
As your distant cousin, Megan lied smoothly, her mind working furiously.
On your mother’s side.
miss Megan Robinson of the Sussex Linfields.
My family fell on hard times, and you being a benevolent duke took me in as a ward.
It provides a perfect excuse for me to sit near you.
If they ask a question you cannot answer, I will drop a fork, spill a drink, or faint.
I will control the room.
Brian looked at her.
His eyes dark.
They will judge you.
They will look at your dress, your hands.
They will know you are poor.
I am used to being poor, Brian, she said, her voice hardening.
I am not used to the gallows.
We go.
Four days later, Megan stood in front of the mirror in her chamber.
The dress she wore belonged to the late duchess, hastily altered by a confused but well-paid seamstress.
It was a deep midnight blue velvet, 10 years out of fashion, but the fabric was unimaginably heavy and rich.
It exposed her collarbones and the pale bruised skin where she had hit the cellar floor, a faint yellow mark that still hadn’t faded.
She looked like a ghost playing dress-up.
The irony was suffocating.
A knock at the door startled her.
She opened it to find Brian standing in the corridor.
He was wearing full evening dress.
The severe black coat, the crisp white cravat, the subtle gleam of a silver watch fob.
He looked terrifyingly regal, but his eyes were a storm of anxiety.
He looked at her, his gaze traveling from the heavy velvet at her hem up to her bare throat.
He didn’t speak for a long moment.
You look He swallowed dryly.
You look like you belong in this house.
I look like a fraud, she corrected him quietly, pulling a pair of worn silk gloves over her raw, ink-stained hands.
Shall we go to war, Your Grace?
The Miller estate was a monument to excess.
The dining room was suffocatingly hot, smelling of roasted meats, heavy claret, and the cloying sweetness of French perfumes.
The candlelight reflected off a hundred pieces of silver, making Megan’s eyes water.
She sat three seats down from Brian.
He was at the right hand of Lord Miller, a bulbous man with a face like a boiled ham.
For the first hour it worked.
Brian was quiet, answering questions with monosyllabic gravelly replies.
When Miller asked about a specific horse race in Newmarket, Megan accidentally knocked her wine glass against her water goblet.
The sharp ringing sound drew the table’s attention, allowing Brian to seamlessly ask for the salt, changing the subject.
But then the heavy mahogany doors of the dining room swung open.
My deepest apologies for the intrusion, Miller.”
A voice boomed.
Megan’s blood turned to ice.
Tyler stood in the doorway.
His coat was damp with rain, his face flushed with cold and drink.
He smiled a wide predatory showing of teeth.
“The roads from town were treacherous.
I knew you wouldn’t mind an extra plate for a thirsty neighbor.”
Miller flustered, but bound by etiquette, ordered the footman to bring a chair.
Tyler was seated directly across from Brian.
Megan gripped her velvet napkin beneath the table, twisting the heavy fabric until her knuckles ached.
This was not a coincidence.
Tyler had waited for a public arena.
The next hour was an agonizing dance.
Tyler drank heavily, his eyes fixed entirely on Brian.
He brought up childhood tutors.
He brought up hunting dogs that had died 15 years ago.
Brian deflected, his jaw tight, using the Waterloo trauma excuse Megan had drilled into him.
But Tyler was relentless.
“Tell me, Craig.”
Tyler said, his voice cutting through the dull roar of conversation.
The table slowly quieted, sensing the sudden shift in the air.
“I was speaking with Lord Collins at the club’s last week.
He mentioned that before the war, you possessed a rather extraordinary pocket watch.
Gold with a ruby embedded in the casing.
A gift from the Prince Regent.”
Tyler leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table.
“He wagered me 50 pounds that you lost it in the mud at Waterloo.
I wagered you still had it.
I told him my cousin would never lose something so precious.”
Tyler smiled.
“Settle the bet, Craig.
Do you have the watch?
Megan stopped breathing.
There was no watch.
If the real Craig had owned such a thing, he would have had it on him when he died.
And Brian hadn’t mentioned bringing one back.
All eyes were on the duke.
Brian didn’t move.
He sat perfectly still, his massive hands resting flat on the white linen tablecloth.
He looked at Tyler.
He didn’t look flustered.
He didn’t look anxious.
He looked entirely terrifyingly blank.
“No,” Brian said.
His voice was not the polite drawl of a duke.
It was the low dead rumble of the man Megan had met in the cellar.
“I don’t have it.”
Tyler’s smile widened.
“A pity.
Did a French looter take it from your coat while you lay bleeding?”
“No,” Brian repeated.
Slowly, deliberately, Brian picked up a silver steak knife from the table.
He didn’t point it.
He just held it, his large thumb testing the serrated edge.
The casual violence of the gesture was shocking in a room full of silk and crystal.
“A man in my regiment lost his leg below the knee.”
Brian said, his voice dropping so low the table had to strain to hear him.
“He had a wife and three children in Cheapside.
The army pension wouldn’t cover the cost of bread.
So, before we left the war, I gave him the watch.”
He looked up from the knife, locking eyes with Tyler.
“He sold it to buy a butcher’s shop.
I value a man’s survival over a bauble given by a fat prince in a drawing room.
Do you have a problem with that, Tyler?”
The silence in the dining room was absolute, heavy, and suffocating.
Lord Miller looked as though he might swallow his own tongue.
Brian had just insulted the Prince Regent.
He had just admitted to giving away a royal gift to a commoner.
It was an appalling breach of etiquette, but it was also undeniably heroically noble.
Megan stared at him, her heart hammering against her ribs.
He hadn’t lied.
He hadn’t tried to play the duke.
He had just played himself a man who valued survival and loyalty above all else.
Tyler’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.
The trap had snapped shut, but Brian had walked right through it, breaking the mechanism.
I see, Tyler finally muttered, his face pale.
He looked down at his plate.
Brian laid the knife down.
Good.
Then you owe Lord Collins £50.
He turned his head slowly, looking down the table until his eyes found Megan.
The mask of polite boredom was back in place, but beneath it she saw the raw, pulsing adrenaline.
He had survived.
They had survived.
The carriage ride back to the estate hall was utterly silent.
The freezing rain had turned to sleet, battering the wooden roof of the carriage like buckshot.
Inside, it was pitch black.
Megan sat rigid, the heavy velvet of her dress feeling like a suit of armor that had suddenly become 10 sizes too small.
Brian sat opposite her.
She couldn’t see his face, but she could hear his breathing.
It was deep, rhythmic, the sound of a large animal coming down from a kill.
When the carriage finally lurched to a halt in the muddy courtyard, Brian pushed the door open before the footman could reach it.
He didn’t wait for the steps to be lowered.
He jumped down into the slush, turned, and offered his hand to Megan.
She took it.
His grip was completely steady, his palm rough and hot against her thin silk glove.
They walked through the grand entrance hall without speaking.
The servants, sensing the volatile energy radiating from the duke, practically melted into the shadows.
Brian bypassed the grand staircase and headed straight down the corridor towards the library.
Megan followed.
She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t stop.
Brian pushed the heavy library doors open and walked straight to the decanter on the sideboard.
He poured a glass of whiskey, didn’t bother with the crystal stopper, and drank it in one long, uninterrupted swallow.
Megan closed the doors behind them, the latch clicking with an awful finality.
The room was lit only by the dying embers in the hearth.
Brian slammed the empty glass down onto the silver tray.
The sound cracked like a pistol shot.
“He knows.”
Brian said to the wall.
He gripped the edge of the sideboard, his knuckles bone white.
“He might not know exactly what I am, but he knows I am not his cousin.
He smelled the dirt on me tonight, Megan.”
“You defeated him.”
Megan said, her voice shaking slightly despite her efforts to control it.
She stepped further into the room.
“You terrified him.
He won’t press you again.”
“Yes, he will.”
Brian spun around.
He was massive in the gloom, his black coat blending with the shadows.
“Because he is greedy, and greed doesn’t get terrified.
It just gets careful.
I cannot do this for another 30 years.
I am suffocating.”
He took two long strides toward her, stopping just inches away.
Megan didn’t retreat.
She tilted her head back to look at him.
His chest was heaving.
He looked wild, stripped of every ounce of aristocratic polish she had painstakingly layered onto him.
“Then let it go.”
She whispered.
The words slipped out treacherous and honest.
“Leave the estate.
Take what money you can and disappear.”
“And go where?”
He asked, his voice cracking a raw, devastated sound.
“I died in the war.
I don’t exist anywhere else.”
He reached out.
His large hands, the hands that had shoveled muck and held a dying man, came up to frame her face.
He didn’t touch her skin.
His fingers hovered barely a millimeter from her cheeks, trembling violently.
Megan stopped breathing.
The scent of him, whiskey, rain, and fear, was entirely intoxicating.
“If I leave,” Brian rasped, his eyes burning into hers, “what happens to you?”
“I survive.”
She said automatically, her cynic’s armor trying to snap into place.
“I always survive.”
“Yes.”
He murmured.
“But you shouldn’t have to.”
He finally closed the distance.
His rough thumbs pressed against her jawline calluses, dragging against her skin.
It wasn’t a gentle, polite touch.
It was heavy, desperate, grounding himself to the only real thing in a house built on lies.
Megan’s eyes fluttered shut.
A small, involuntary noise escaped her throat.
The internal contradiction that had been tearing at her for weeks finally snapped.
She hated this world.
She hated the title he wore.
But she did not hate him.
She gripped the lapels of his heavy wool coat, anchoring herself to his chest.
“You can’t leave,” she said, her voice muffled against the fabric of his cravat.
“If you run, Tyler destroys the tenants.
If you stay, you live as a ghost.
There is a third option,” Brian said quietly into her hair.
Megan pulled back, looking up at him.
“What?”
Brian stepped away from her, the sudden absence of his heat making the cold air bite into her exposed collarbones.
He walked to the massive oak desk in the center of the room.
He opened the bottom drawer, a drawer he always kept locked, and pulled out a small heavy iron strongbox.
He set it on the desk and unlocked it with a key from his watch fob.
He reached inside and pulled out the letter, the same heavy vellum sealed with black wax, the confession Megan had found in the cellar all those weeks ago.
Brian walked back to her.
He held the letter out.
“Take it,” he commanded.
Megan frowned, looking from the letter to his face.
“Why?”
“Because if I hold it, I am a fraud waiting to be caught.”
Brian said, his voice stripping down to absolute unvarnished truth.
“If you hold it, I am yours.”
He pressed the letter into her hands.
“Keep it, Megan.
Put it in a bank in town under your name.
Hide it.
Do whatever you want with it.
But as long as you have the power to destroy me, this isn’t a lie anymore.
It’s a choice.”
He looked at her entirely exposed.
“I don’t want to be a duke, but I will play one for the rest of my life if my life belongs to you.”
Megan looked down at the brittle parchment.
The ink that could hang him.
The ink that had brought them together in the freezing dark.
She thought of her father who had sold her security for nothing.
And she looked at this man who was handing her his life for free.
She walked slowly toward the fireplace.
The embers were pulsing a deep angry red.
Megan.
Brian said softly.
She didn’t answer.
She knelt on the stone hearth.
She looked at the letter one last time.
Then with a steady hand, she tossed the vellum onto the coals.
The old paper caught instantly.
A flare of bright orange light illuminated the dark library.
The edges curled, the black wax bubbled.
And within seconds, the greatest lie in the estate hall turned to ash.
Megan stood up.
The firelight danced across her bruised cheek, making her look entirely beautifully human.
She turned back to Brian.
He was staring at the hearth utterly stunned.
I told you.
Megan said, walking back toward him.
A genuine fierce smile touching her lips.
I am tired of being cold and ghosts don’t build fires.
She didn’t wait for him to move.
She closed the distance between them, wrapping her hands in the lapels of his coat and pulled him down to her.
The kiss was like the man himself.
Rough, desperate, and entirely real.
The duke was dead.
But Brian was finally undeniably alive.
The ledger is closed and the ghost of the estate hall finally has a reason to live.
Megan and Brian began as adversaries bound by a treasonous secret.
But forged a bond stronger than any royal decree.
THE END
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Disclaimer
This story is a work of fiction inspired by real events. Names, characters, and details have been altered. Any resemblance is coincidental. The author and publisher disclaim accuracy, liability, and responsibility for interpretations or reliance. If you would like to share your story, please send it to [email protected].
