My Husband Thought He Bought A Trophy Wife — He Had No Idea What I Was Capable Of
Part 2
He barked a final order to his foreman and practically threw himself down the metal stairs of the gantry.
He stormed across the foundry floor, his heavy boots eating the distance between us.
Workers scrambled out of his way, recognizing the absolute murder in his stride.
He reached me, grabbing my upper arm in a vise-like grip, and roared over the sound of the drop forge.
“What in God’s name are you doing here?”
I didn’t flinch.
I shoved the bundle of vellum against his chest, yelling back that he had forgotten the railway contracts.
He looked at the papers, then back at my face, noticing the soot resting on my cheekbone.
He gritted his teeth, his fingers tightening slightly as a shower of sparks rained down near my skirt.
He asked why I hadn’t sent a boy to deliver them.
I lied, shouting over the industrial roar that I preferred to ensure they arrived intact.
He stared down at me, the anger in his eyes warring with something much darker and deeper.
He realized I wasn’t shrinking away from the fire, nor was I cowering from his temper.
I was standing my ground in the middle of a literal inferno, looking right back at him with defiant, unflinching eyes.
Without another word, he dropped the contracts into his pocket and slid his hand down to my wrist.
His grip turned from a restraint into a firm, undeniable tether.
“Walk,” he commanded.
He led me out of the main foundry, away from the screaming metal, and pulled me into a dimly lit, brick-lined corridor.
The heavy iron door slammed shut behind us, cutting off the deafening noise.
The silence rushed in, abrupt and heavy, the air smelling of damp stone.
I leaned against the brick wall, pulling cooler air into my burning lungs.
Greg stood directly in front of me, his chest heaving beneath his damp, soot-stained cotton shirt.
He didn’t step back to give me space.
Instead, he planted his hands on the brick wall on either side of my head, trapping me in the shadows.
“Do not ever come into the blast zone again,” he said, his voice dropping an octave, low and ragged.
I looked up, feeling the heat radiating off his skin.
“I am not fragile, Greg.”
His eyes dropped to my mouth, his soot-stained face inches from mine.
“No,” he whispered.
“You are not, and that is exactly what terrifies me.”
The admission hung in the damp, heavy air of the corridor.
The man who commanded blast furnaces and bought aristocratic titles was terrified of me.
I lifted my hand, ignoring my roughened skin, and pressed my palm flat against his cheek.
He closed his eyes, a violent shudder ripping through his massive frame as if my touch was hotter than molten steel.
“I am not a ledger to be balanced,” I whispered.
“I do not break.”
He opened his eyes, the black gaze feral and stripped entirely of its cynical armor.
Did I really think I could walk into his brutal kingdom without consequences?
Part 3
No, Megan had not expected to walk into Greg’s brutal kingdom without consequences.
The consequence was immediate and staggering.
His mouth crashed down on hers in the heat of the steel mill, tasting of ash and desperation.
It was the culmination of a silent war that had begun exactly three months prior.
The bridal suite smelled of wilted lilies and cold fireplace ash.
Megan stood stiffly in her corset, the whalebone digging into her ribs like a physical warning.
Across the dim room, her new husband unbuttoned his waistcoat.
He didn’t bother to look at her.
“I will not pretend to love you.”
Greg shifted his weight. the words dropping like heavy stones onto the hardwood floor.
Megan unpinned her veil, letting the heavy silk slide from her hair.
“Good,” she replied, her voice dead flat.
“Neither will I.” The carriage ride to Ironhold had lasted 3 hours, and neither of them had spoken a single word.
Megan spent the journey staring out the rain-streaked window, watching the skeletal trees of the English countryside blur into a gray, damp smudge.
The interior of the carriage smelled of wet leather, damp wool, and the sharp, medicinal bite of Greg’s shaving soap.
It was a sterile smell.
There was no warmth in it, no comfort.
Every jolt of the wooden wheels sent a fresh ache up Megan’s spine.
Her wedding dress, a monstrous concoction of ivory, heavy satin, and Brussels lace, felt less like a garment and more like a beautifully upholstered coffin.
Her mother had insisted on the dress.
“You must look like a bride who is entering a fortune, not a girl who is fleeing a bankruptcy,” she had hissed in the dressing room that morning.
So, Megan had worn the dress, and she had smiled, and she had spoken her vows in a church packed with people who knew exactly why this marriage was taking place.
Greg Miller needed a wife from a respectable, old-blooded family to legitimize his newly acquired industrial wealth.
Megan Robinson needed his money to keep her family out of debtors’ prison.
It was a transaction.
A contract signed in blood and ink, sealed with a cold kiss at an altar that smelled of floor wax.
Beside her, Greg sat with his long legs stretched out, taking up more than his fair share of the cramped space.
He was a large man, broad-shouldered and rough-hewn, entirely lacking the refined, delicate features of the aristocratic men Megan had grown up around.
His hands, resting on his knees, were scarred, working hands.
He stared straight ahead, his jaw tight, his expression locked into the same mask of barely concealed boredom he had worn since the ceremony began.
When the carriage finally lurched to a halt before the massive stone facade of Ironhold, the rain was coming down in sheets.
There was no welcoming party, no line of servants waiting with lanterns and warm smiles.
Greg shoved the carriage door open himself, stepping out into the mud without waiting for the driver.
He didn’t offer Megan his hand.
She managed the descent alone, dragging her heavy, mud-splattered train up the limestone steps, her thin leather slippers instantly soaking through.
Inside, the manor was cavernous and drafty.
A single gas chandelier burned low in the entryway, casting long, wavering shadows against the dark oak paneling.
The silence of the house was oppressive.
It didn’t feel like a home.
It felt like a museum abandoned before it ever opened to the public.
“The housekeeper left a fire going in the master suite, Greg shifted his stance, his voice grating in the quiet hallway.
It was the first time he had spoken since they left London.
He didn’t look back as he started up the grand staircase.
Your trunks were sent up yesterday.
Megan followed.
Her wet skirts heavy as lead.
Her lungs shallow beneath the unforgiving grip of her corset.
By the time they reached the bedroom at the end of the east wing, she was exhausted.
Her scalp throbbed from the dozens of iron hairpins holding her elaborate coiffure in place.
She just wanted to sleep.
She wanted to strip off the suffocating layers of silk and lie in the dark.
The master suite was massive.
Dominated by a four-poster bed draped in heavy velvet curtains.
The fire in the hearth was struggling, emitting more smoke than heat.
The air held a stale, neglected quality.
The smell of wilted lilies from a vase on the mantle and cold ash.
Greg walked to the sideboard, poured himself a finger of amber liquid from a crystal decanter, and drank it in one swallow.
He set the glass down with a sharp clack.
He turned to face her, finally.
The flickering firelight caught the harsh angles of his face.
The permanent furrow between his brows.
He looked tired.
He looked just as trapped as she felt.
He began to unbutton his waistcoat, his movements mechanical, devoid of any intimacy or heat.
He stopped mid-motion, his dark eyes locking onto hers.
There was no anger in his gaze, only a deep, weary resignation.
Let us save ourselves was deal of exhaustion, madam.
Greg shifted his stance, his voice flat, devoid of any inflection.
I bought your family’s debts and in exchange, I bought your name.
I expect you to run this house and act the part of a respectable wife in public.
But behind these doors, I have no expectations of you.
He dropped his waistcoat onto a chair.
I will not pretend to love you.
The words dropped like heavy stones onto the hardwood floor.
They hung in the cold air between them, brutal and absolute.
A normal bride might have wept.
A romantic might have slapped him.
Megan felt only a sudden, rushing wave of profound relief.
The tension that had been coiled in her stomach for 3 months finally snapped.
She didn’t have to smile anymore.
There was no need to tilt her head and laugh at his terrible jokes or pretend she found his gruff demeanor charming.
Reaching up, her fingers found the first iron pin in her hair.
She pulled it free and let it clatter onto the vanity table.
Good, Megan replied.
Her voice just as dead, just as flat as his.
She unpinned her veil, letting the heavy, suffocating silk slide from her head to the floor.
Neither will I.
Greg paused.
A flicker of something, surprise perhaps, or just confusion, crossed his face before the mask slammed back into place.
He gave a single, curt nod.
I have a room adjoining the study down the hall, he said.
I will sleep there.
He turned and walked out, closing the heavy oak door softly behind him.
Megan stood alone in the center of the massive, cold room.
She listened to his footsteps fade down the corridor.
Then, she reached behind her back, her fingers blindly searching for the impossible knots of her corset laces.
She was entirely alone, and for the first time since her father’s bankruptcy had been announced, she felt something resembling peace.
The morning light filtering through the gaps in the heavy velvet curtains was gray and unforgiving.
Megan woke to the bitter chill of the room, her breath pluming faintly in the air.
The fire had died entirely during the night, leaving the hearth a pile of white ash.
She lay perfectly still beneath the heavy down comforter, listening to the house.
It was silent.
There was no chatter of maids in the hallway, no clatter of breakfast trays, just the rhythmic ticking of a grandfather clock somewhere in the distance.
Her body ached.
The narrow, hard mattress she had grown up with had offered more comfort than the sprawling feather bed of Ironhold’s master suite.
Her skin felt bruised from the tight lacing of yesterday’s gown, and her mouth tasted stale.
She pushed the covers back and sat up, her bare feet hitting the icy floorboards.
She had managed to get herself out of the dress last night, leaving it pooled in the corner like a discarded skin, but the effort had left her too exhausted to unpack her nightgowns.
She had slept in her chemise and drawers.
Shivering, she walked to her trunks.
She bypassed the silk wrappers and lace-trimmed morning gowns her mother had insisted she pack for a new bride.
Instead, she pulled out a worn, dark blue wool dress, one of the few garments from her old life she had stubbornly refused to throw away.
It was unadorned, practical, and warm.
She dressed quickly, dragging a brush through her tangled hair, and twisting it into a severe utilitarian knot at the nape of her neck.
When Megan opened the bedroom door, the hallway was deserted.
She navigated the labyrinthine corridors, her sensible leather boots clicking sharply against the bare floorboards.
Ironhold was a house built for grand displays of wealth, yet it felt hollow.
The carpets were threadbare in places, the paintings on the walls coated in a fine layer of dust.
It was the house of a man who cared about the acquisition of property, but not the maintaining of a home.
She followed the faint smell of roasted coffee down to the ground floor.
The dining room was massive, featuring a mahogany table long enough to seat 30.
Greg sat at the very end, dwarfed by the sheer scale of the room.
He was dressed in a tailored dark gray suit, looking every bit the ruthless industrialist the newspapers claimed he was.
He was reading a stack of ledgers, a cold cup of coffee sitting at his elbow, a half-eaten piece of dry toast on a china plate before him.
He didn’t look up when she entered.
Megan walked the length of the room and pulled out a chair halfway down the table, deliberately keeping a significant distance between them.
The scraping of the wooden chair legs against the floor was loud, abrasive.
Greg finally raised his eyes.
They were bloodshot, rimmed with dark circles.
He looked at her practical wool dress, his gaze snagging on the lack of lace, the severe hair.
He frowned, but said nothing.
A lone elderly maid shuffled into the room carrying a silver pot.
She poured a cup of tea for Megan with trembling hands, spilling a few drops on the saucer.
“Thank you.”
Megan murmured.
The maid offered a terrified quick bob of a curtsy and fled the room as if the air were on fire.
Megan picked up her teacup.
It was lukewarm and steeped far too long, bitter and astringent on her tongue.
She set it down carefully.
“Your staff is either severely lacking in numbers or entirely terrified of you, Mr.
Miller.
Perhaps both.”
Greg turned a page in his ledger.
“They are paid to clean and cook, not to provide companionship.
If you require a lady’s maid to coddle you, hire one.
The household accounts are in the study.”
“I do not require coddling.”
Megan maintained eye contact, her tone level.
She reached for a piece of toast, ignoring the silver tongs and using her fingers.
“But I do require a house that functions.
The fire in the master suite was barely laid, the dust in the corridors is an inch thick, and this tea is undrinkable.
If, as you said last night, my purpose is to run this house, I intend to do so.”
Greg closed his ledger with a heavy thud.
He leaned back in his chair, folding his large hands over his stomach.
He studied her, really looked at her, for the first time since she had walked down the aisle.
He was searching for the spoiled aristocrat he assumed he had purchased.
“Ironhold has run fine under Mrs.
Higgins’s supervision.”
Greg shifted his stance, though his defense sounded half-hearted.
“Ironhold is decaying.”
Megan countered bluntly.
“It smells of damp rot and neglect.
You have built an empire in the city, but your home is a mausoleum.
If I am to be the mistress here, I need the keys to the cellars, the current staff payroll, and full authority to hire and dismiss as I see fit.
Greg stared at her.
The silence stretched tight and humming like a piano wire.
Megan held his gaze, refusing to look away, refusing to fidget.
She wasn’t asking for permission.
She was stating the terms of her employment.
Finally, Greg reached into his waistcoat pocket.
He pulled out a heavy iron ring laden with brass keys and slid it across the polished mahogany.
It came to a stop an inch from Megan’s plate.
“Don’t spend money on frivolous nonsense,” he warned, his voice low and gravelly.
“I won’t pay for new velvet curtains just because you don’t like the color of the old ones.”
“I prefer draft-proofing to velvet, Mr.
Miller.”
Megan straightened her spine. picking up the heavy ring of keys.
The cold metal felt grounding in her palm.
“It is far more practical.”
Greg watched her slip the keys into the pocket of her wool dress.
A strange, unreadable expression passed over his harsh features.
He picked up his pen and returned to his ledgers.
“Breakfast is at 7:00.
Dinner is at 8:00.
Do whatever you want with the hours in between, Mrs.
Miller.
Just stay out of my study.
Understood?”
Megan maintained eye contact.
She picked up her bitter tea and took a slow sip.
The boundaries were set.
The territory was marked.
They were not husband and wife.
They were two weary generals negotiating a truce.
And for the first time in a year, Megan felt like she could breathe.
Ironhold did not surrender easily.
The house was a stubborn beast, accustomed to its own rot.
Megan spent her first fortnight fighting a war of attrition against 50 years of accumulated grime.
She began by firing the housekeeper, Mrs.
Higgins.
The woman had been stealing from the pantry and turning a blind eye to the damp seeping The dismissal was swift, unfeeling, and executed in the kitchen corridor over a bucket of dirty mop water.
Greg had given Megan the keys.
She was going to use them.
She hired local girls from the village, daughters of the tenant farmers, who knew how to put their backs into a scrubbing brush.
For the first time in her life, Megan did not sit in a parlor doing needlepoint while the servants worked.
The house was too large, the rot too deep.
She pinned her skirts up, tied a linen apron over her plain wool dress, and worked alongside them.
The physical labor was a revelation.
It hurt.
By the end of the first week, her hands, once soft and entirely unblemished, were red and raw from lye soap and ammonia.
Two of her fingernails had snapped to the quick.
Her back ached with a deep, persistent throb.
She loved it.
The exhaustion was a heavy wool blanket that smothered her mind, leaving no room for regret, no energy to mourn the life she had been sold out of.
When she collapsed into her massive, empty bed at night, she slept instantly, dreamlessly.
Greg observed this transformation with silent, brooding suspicion.
They existed in a strange, silent orbit.
Breakfast was at 7:00.
Dinner was at 8:00.
He left for his steel mills in the valley before the sun fully cleared the horizon.
And he returned long after dark, bringing the smell of sulfur and burnt coal into the foyer.
They took their meals at opposite ends of the cavernous mahogany table.
The silence between them was not peaceful.
It was heavy, industrial.
It was the silence of a factory floor after the machines have been shut down.
Megan would chew her mutton.
Her posture rigidly perfect, while Greg ate with the fast, aggressive efficiency of a man who viewed food merely as fuel.
He never wore his suit jacket at the table.
His shirt sleeves were always rolled up, exposing the thick, corded muscles of his forearms and the faded, jagged scars that crisscrossed his knuckles.
Aristocratic men had soft, manicured hands.
Greg’s hands looked like they could crush stone.
“The butcher’s bill is twice what it was last month.”
Greg shifted his stance one evening.
It was a Tuesday.
The rain was lashing against the dining room windows, a violent, steady drumming.
It was the first time he had spoken to her in four days.
Megan carefully set her fork down on the china plate.
The silver made a sharp clink.
“That is because I am feeding your staff meat instead of the moldy oats Mrs.
Higgins was rationing out.
A starving maid cannot haul coal up three flights of stairs.”
Greg paused, a piece of bread halfway to his mouth.
He looked down the long expanse of the table, his dark eyes narrowing.
The gaslight cast harsh, unforgiving shadows across the sharp planes of his face.
He looked at her hands resting on the white linen tablecloth.
He noticed the raw, chapped skin, the broken nails.
He frowned.
“You are paying them double the standard wage,” he noted, his voice a low rumble over the sound of the Rohirrim.
“I am paying them what it takes to bleach 50 years of neglect out of your floorboards.”
Megan replied evenly.
“If you wish to manage the household ledgers, Mr.
Miller, I will gladly return the keys.”
He stared at her.
The muscle in his jaw ticked.
He didn’t like being challenged, she realized.
He was surrounded by men who agreed with him, employees who feared him.
But Megan had nothing left to lose, and therefore nothing to fear.
She was already ruined.
She was already sold.
Greg dropped the bread onto his plate.
He reached into his trouser pocket, pulled out a thick leather billfold, and extracted a sheaf of banknotes.
He tossed them onto the table.
They slid across the polished wood, stopping halfway between them.
“For the roof in the west wing.”
He met her gaze brusquely.
“The plaster is flaking onto the carpets.
Get it fixed.”
Megan looked at the money.
It was far more than was needed for a simple patch job.
It was enough to strip the slate and relay the entire wing.
She didn’t reach for it.
“I will secure three estimates from the roofers in the village.”
She held her ground, her voice completely devoid of emotion.
“I will inform you of the cost when I have chosen the most sensible bid.
I do not need a slush fund.”
Greg’s eyes darkened.
A muscle twitched in his cheek.
He looked at her not as a woman, and certainly not as a wife, but as a puzzle piece that refused to fit into the designated slot.
He gave a sharp, singular nod, picked up his glass of dark wine, and drained it.
He didn’t speak to her again for the rest of the meal.
But when Megan finally rose to leave the room, she noticed the money was still sitting on the table.
He hadn’t taken it back.
It was a small, unspoken concession.
The house smelled of lemon oil and roasting fires, the damp rot slowly receding.
The battle lines were drawn, and Megan was holding her ground.
The clock in the downstairs hallway was chiming 2:00 in the morning when the sound ripped through the quiet house.
It wasn’t a loud noise.
It was a heavy, clumsy thud, followed by the scraping of wood against plaster.
Megan woke instantly.
The fire in her room had burned down to glowing embers, casting a faint reddish light across the ceiling.
She lay still, her breath shallow, listening.
Another scrape.
A muffled curse, low and guttural.
It was coming from the first floor, from the east corridor.
Megan didn’t hesitate.
She threw off the heavy duvet, her bare feet hitting the icy floorboards.
She didn’t bother looking for her wrapper.
She grabbed the heavy iron poker from the fireplace hearth, its weight reassuring in her scarred hands, and slipped out into the pitch-black hallway.
The air outside her room was freezing.
She moved silently, a ghost in her white linen chemise, following the wall until she reached the top of the grand staircase.
Below, the foyer was entirely dark, but a thin sliver of yellow light bled from beneath the heavy oak door of Greg’s study.
The one room he had explicitly told her to stay out of.
She gripped the iron poker tighter, her knuckles turning white.
She descended the stairs, bypassing the steps she knew creaked.
She reached the study door.
There was no sound coming from inside now.
Just a thick, heavy silence.
Megan pressed her hand flat against the wood and pushed.
The door swung open on freshly oiled hinges.
The study smelled aggressively of stale tobacco, spilled ink, and something else.
Something sharp and metallic.
Copper.
Greg was slumped over his massive mahogany desk.
The single desk lamp was lit, casting a harsh, concentrated circle of light over his scattered blueprints and ledgers.
He was still wearing his overcoat, but it was ruined.
The heavy wool was torn at the shoulder, soaked in dark, wet mud.
No, Megan realized as her eyes adjusted to the glare.
Not mud.
Blood.
Greg’s head snapped up at the sound of the door opening.
His face was entirely devoid of color.
His skin a sickening ashen gray.
A deep gash ran along his hairline, sluggishly leaking blood down the side of his face, soaking into his stiff white collar.
His left arm was clutched tightly against his ribs, his breathing shallow and ragged.
He looked at her, standing in the doorway in her thin nightgown, gripping a fireplace poker like a broadsword.
“I told you.”
He swallowed hard, his voice barely a croak, “to stay out of my study.”
Megan slowly lowered the poker.
The adrenaline that had spiked in her chest evaporated, replaced by a cold, clinical pragmatism.
She didn’t gasp.
She didn’t scream for the maids.
The maids would panic.
She walked into the room, setting the poker gently on the edge of a leather armchair.
She moved to the desk, circling behind him to get a better look at his arm.
“Don’t.”
Greg clenched his jaw, trying to pull away from her.
But the movement caused him to hiss in sharp, sudden pain.
He slumped back into the chair, his head rolling against the leather upholstery.
“A chain snapped,” he muttered, his eyes slipping shut.
“At the foundry, a crane.
The load dropped.”
“You are bleeding onto the Persian rug I spent three days having beaten, Mr.
Miller.”
Megan straightened her spine. her voice entirely flat.
Greg let out a sound that was half laugh, half groan.
“My apologies, madam.
I will try to bleed more neatly.”
Megan turned on her heel and walked to the small washstand tucked into the corner of the study.
She poured water from the pitcher into the porcelain basin.
It was freezing cold, but it would have to do.
She grabbed a clean linen towel from the rack.
When she returned to the desk, she didn’t ask for permission.
She grabbed the lapels of his ruined overcoat and pulled.
Greg cursed violently, his good hand clamping over her wrist to stop her.
His grip was weak, but his skin was burning hot against hers.
“Let go of me,” Megan commanded.
She didn’t raise to voice, but the absolute authority in her tone made his fingers falter.
You cannot take the coat off yourself.
And if the blood dries, I will have to cut it off.
I am not ruining a pair of good shears on your stubbornness.
Greg glared at her.
His dark eyes feverish.
But slowly, he released her wrist.
Megan peeled the heavy, sodden wool off his shoulders, letting it drop to the floor.
His shirt was a lost cause.
The left sleeve soaked entirely through.
She gripped the fabric at the collar and pulled hard, tearing the thin cotton down the seam.
The wound on his shoulder was ugly.
A jagged, deep tear from a piece of flying shrapnel, full of grease and iron dust.
It wasn’t actively spurting, but it was deep enough to require stitching.
She dipped the linen towel into the cold water and wrung it out.
“This is going to sting.”
She tilted her chin.
“I have had worse,” Greg gritted out.
Megan pressed the cold, wet cloth directly into the gash.
Greg’s entire body went rigid.
A sharp, strangled breath ripped through his teeth.
His massive frame violently tensing against the chair.
He didn’t scream, but the veins in his neck bulged, his knuckles turning stark white as he gripped the armrests.
Megan didn’t flinch.
She didn’t offer soothing words.
She wiped away the blood and grease with methodical, ruthless efficiency.
The smell of the copper was overwhelming now, mixing with the sharp scent of his sweat and the lingering odor of sulfur from the mills.
She was leaning over him, close enough to feel the chaotic, erratic thud of his heart against his ribs.
For the first time, she noticed the other scars.
Faded white lines crisscrossing his chest, a burn mark on his collarbone.
This was a man who had been broken and rebuilt by his own factories.
“Why didn’t you go to the surgeon in town?”
Megan asked, her voice low as she rinsed the bloody cloth in the basin.
Greg’s eyes were locked on her face, tracking her movements.
The feverish glaze was receding, replaced by a sharp, focused intensity.
“If the men see the owner bleeding.”
He met her gaze softly, the harsh gravel gone from his voice, “they think the iron has won.
You never let them see you bleed.”
Megan stopped.
She looked down at him, at the dirt and the blood and the brutal, cynical exhaustion in his eyes.
He wasn’t looking at her like an aristocrat he had bought.
He was looking at her like a soldier in the same trench.
“Then it is a good thing,” Megan maintained eye contact quietly, pressing the clean cloth back against his skin, “that I am not one of your men.”
Megan left him bleeding in the leather chair and walked out into the freezing corridor.
She did not run.
Panic was a luxury for people who had someone to catch them when they fell.
She made her way to the downstairs kitchen, her bare feet entirely numb against the flagstones.
The kitchen was pitch black, but she knew the geography of it now.
She found the heavy tin sewing box on the Welsh dresser, her fingers blindly tracing the spools of thread until she found the thickest silk.
Next, she went to the pantry.
She bypassed the cooking sherry and found a bottle of cheap, unaged whiskey the groundskeeper kept hidden behind the flower sacks.
When she returned to the study, Greg had not moved.
His head was tilted back against the chair, his eyes closed.
His skin was the color of old parchment.
For a fraction of a second, Megan thought he was dead.
Then his chest rose, a shallow, hitching breath that rattled in the quiet room.
She set the tin and the bottle onto the desk.
The sharp clunk of the glass made his eyes snap open.
They were glassy, the pupils blown wide.
“You need stitches.”
Megan held her ground.
She pulled up a wooden stool, sitting so her knees practically brushed his trousers.
She opened the tin, selecting a heavy steel needle meant for mending canvas.
Greg looked at the needle, then at her face.
“You know how to sew flesh?”
“I know how to execute a French knot and repair a torn hem,” Megan replied, threading the needle with steady, methodical hands.
“The mechanics cannot be so vastly different.
Skin is simply a thicker fabric.”
A dry, harsh sound escaped his throat.
It took her a moment to realize it was a laugh.
“If you kill me, the estate goes into probate.
You won’t get a penny.”
“Then I strongly suggest you do not die.”
She held her ground.
She picked up the bottle of whiskey, uncorking it with her teeth.
She spat the cork onto the desk.
“Hold your breath.”
She didn’t give him time to brace himself.
She poured the raw liquor directly over the open gash on his shoulder.
Greg violently jerked, a guttural, animalistic sound tearing out of his chest.
His good hand clamped down on the edge of the mahogany desk, his fingers gouging into the polished wood with enough force to splinter it.
The smell of the alcohol hit the air instantly sharp astringent masking the heavy iron scent of the blood.
Megan set the bottle down.
Her own heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs, but her hands remained entirely steady.
“Stay still,” she ordered.
She leaned in.
The heat radiating from his skin was intense.
She could smell the smoke in his hair, the stale sweat, the raw masculine scent of him beneath the grime of the factory.
She pressed the tip of the steel needle against the edge of the jagged wound and pushed.
The skin resisted.
It was thick, tough, and the needle required far more force than she had anticipated.
She gritted her teeth and drove it through.
Greg hissed, his entire body going rigid as stone.
“Christ,” he breathed, the words strained through tightly clenched teeth.
“Breathe,” she told him, pulling the thick black silk thread through the bloody tissue.
She tied the first knot, pulling it tight.
“If you pass out, you will fall out of the chair, and I am not strong enough to drag you to the sofa.”
“I am not going to pass out.”
He swallowed hard.
He opened his eyes.
They were inches from hers.
Megan drove the needle in again.
This time, she felt the slight tremor in his muscles, the visceral, involuntary recoil of a body being subjected to pain.
She hated the sickening pop the skin made as the metal pierced it.
Her fingers were slick with his blood, making the needle slippery, treacherous.
They did not speak again.
The silence in the room was absolute, save for the ragged sound of his breathing and the ticking of the clock in the hall.
Megan worked with brutal efficiency.
She did not try to be gentle.
Gentleness took time, and time meant more bleeding.
She put six crude, uneven stitches into his shoulder, closing the gaping tear.
When she tied off the final knot and snipped the thread with her teeth, she sank back onto the wooden stool.
Her shoulders ached.
Her hands were stained crimson up to the wrists.
Greg’s head was thrown back, his eyes fixed on the plaster ceiling.
His chest heaved.
He looked utterly destroyed, a machine that had finally broken down.
Megan picked up the blood-soaked towels and tossed them into the cold fireplace.
She poured water into the basin and washed her hands, watching the water turn a rusty, cloudy pink.
“There is a bottle of laudanum in my trunk.”
She held her ground, drying her hands on a clean scrap of linen.
“I will fetch it.”
“No.”
Greg exhaled slowly.
His voice was exhausted, stripped of its usual commanding baritone.
“I need to be at the mill by 6:00.
The foreman needs the new schematics.”
Megan stopped.
She turned around, staring at him.
He was covered in his own blood, half-dressed, sporting a wound that would have left most men bedridden for a fortnight, and he was calculating the hours until dawn.
“You are a fool.”
She tilted her chin, her voice devoid of heat, entirely factual.
“If you go to the mill, the stitches will tear.
You will bleed through your coat, and the men you are so desperate to impress will watch you collapse on the factory floor.
Greg slowly turned his head to look at her.
The glare in his eyes was fierce, defensive.
You know nothing about my men.
I know about pride, Mr.
Miller, Megan maintained eye contact, walking toward the door.
She paused, her hand resting on the brass knob.
It is a hollow, useless thing.
It did not save my father from bankruptcy, and it will not save you from a gangrenous infection.
You will stay in this house tomorrow, or I will have the groomsmen lock the carriage house.
She didn’t wait for his response.
She walked out, shutting the study door firmly behind her, leaving him alone in the harsh, glaring light.
Greg did not go to the mill.
For the next 4 days, Ironhold felt like a cage containing a very large, very angry bear.
Greg paced the ground floor corridors, his arm bound tightly in a linen sling beneath his waistcoat.
The air in the house was thick with his restless, volatile energy.
The maids, already terrified of him, flattened themselves against the wallpaper whenever they heard his heavy boots approaching.
Megan ignored him entirely.
She had the roofers to deal with.
The men had arrived from the village on Tuesday morning, smelling of wet wool and cheap tobacco, bringing their ladders and slate.
She set up her operations in the drawing room, a space she had recently stripped of its moth-eaten curtains and scrubbed clean with vinegar.
On Thursday afternoon, the rain returned.
A cold, relentless downpour that turned the gravel driveway into a mud pit.
Megan sat at a small writing desk near the window, reviewing the week’s ledger.
The door to the drawing room stood open.
“The timbers rotted worse than we thought, Mrs.
Miller,” said Mr.
Barnes, the head roofer.
He stood on the Aubusson carpet in his muddy boots, clutching a flat cap in his hands.
He was a thickset man who had made a career out of overcharging the local gentry.
He looked at Megan with the patronizing, indulgent expression men reserved for women playing with ledgers.
“We’ll have to replace the joists in the east wing.
It’s an extra £40, and it’ll take another week.”
Megan did not look up from her column of numbers.
The scratch of her dip pen was the only sound in the room for a long moment.
Finally, she blotted the ink, placed the pen down, and raised her eyes.
“£40?”
Megan repeated.
Her voice was quiet, polite, and entirely devoid of warmth.
“Aye,” Finch said, shifting his weight, leaving a fresh smear of mud on the carpet.
“Timber prices are up, can’t be helped.”
“Mr.
Barnes.”
Megan straightened her spine. folding her hands neatly on the desk.
“I walked the east wing attic with the carpenter yesterday.
Three joists are affected by the damp.
The rest are solid oak, likely felled two centuries ago, and remain perfectly sound.
Furthermore, standard Baltic pine, which is what you use, I saw the wagons, is currently trading at 6d a foot at the lumberyard in town.
I checked.”
Finch blinked.
The patronizing smile freezing on his face.
“You are not replacing the entire roof structure, nor are you charging me £40, Megan continued.
Her tone conversational but unyielding.
You will replace the three rotted joists.
You will be paid £12 for the additional labor and materials.
And if you attempt to inflate an invoice in this house again, I will dismiss your crew, hire the firm from the next county, and ensure every estate manager within 50 miles knows your estimates are entirely fictional.
She held his gaze.
She didn’t blink.
Finch opened his mouth to argue, closed it, and swallowed hard. £12, ma’am, he mumbled, looking down at his boots.
I’ll see it done.
See that you do.
Use the servants’ entrance when you leave, Mr.
Barnes.
You are tracking mud.
The roofer practically fled the room.
Megan sighed, picking up her pen, dipping it back into the inkwell.
She hated the tediousness of haggling, the constant exhausting vigilance required to prevent the house from bleeding them dry.
You drive a hard bargain, Mrs.
Miller.
Megan’s hand paused.
She looked up.
Greg was leaning against the doorframe.
He was dressed in a dark waistcoat and trousers, minus his jacket.
The white linen sling stark against his chest.
He had been standing there, she realized, in the shadows of the corridor, listening to the entire exchange.
There was a strange, unfamiliar expression on his face.
The perpetual scowl was gone, replaced by a sharp, calculating assessment.
He wasn’t looking at her the way a man looks at a wife.
He was looking at her the way one wolf looks at another who has just bared its teeth.
People assume that because I am a woman, I am innumerate.”
Megan straightened her spine. returning to her ledger.
“I prefer to correct that assumption early.”
Greg pushed off the door frame and walked into the room.
He moved slower than usual, his posture slightly stiff to accommodate the pull of the stitches in his shoulder.
He stopped at a side table, pouring himself a small glass of whiskey from a crystal decanter.
He poured a second glass and walked over to her desk.
He set the glass down near her inkwell.
It was a staggering breach of their usual protocol.
They did not share drinks.
They did not occupy the same room unless dictated by the clock.
Megan looked at the amber liquid, then up at him.
“It is 2:00 in the afternoon.
It is raining.
I am trapped in this mausoleum, and you just saved me 28 pounds.”
Greg exhaled slowly.
He took a sip from his own glass.
“Drink it.”
Megan hesitated, then picked up the heavy crystal tumbler.
The whiskey burned her throat, a sharp reminder of the night she had poured it directly into his flesh.
“Why did your father go bankrupt?”
Greg asked suddenly.
The question was blunt, devoid of polite hesitation.
Megan stiffened.
“Bad investments.”
She held her ground vaguely, looking out the window at the driving rain.
“Men like your father do not make investments,” Greg countered, his voice low, probing.
“They inherit money.
They sit in drawing rooms, and they slowly bleed dry.
What was it?
Cards?
Horses?”
Megan set the glass down.
The familiar bitter taste of humiliation rose in the back of her throat.
She could have lied.
She could have maintained the aristocratic fiction.
But the man standing in front of her had his own blood under her fingernails.
“Both.”
She held her ground, her voice hard, brittle.
“He wagered the estate on a steeplechase, and when he lost, he borrowed against my mother’s dowry to cover the debt.”
He continued borrowing until there was nothing left but the title and a crumbling townhouse we couldn’t afford to heat.
“He sold the silver.
He sold my grandmother’s jewelry.
And then, when there was nothing else left to sell, he sold me.”
She looked directly at Greg, daring him to pity her, daring him to mock the ruin of her bloodline.
But Greg didn’t look pitying.
He looked entirely unsurprised.
He swirled the remaining liquor in his glass, watching the amber liquid coat the crystal.
“He was a fool,” Greg shifted his stance quietly.
“If you possess something of value, you don’t gamble it.
You hoard it.”
He looked up, his dark eyes locking onto hers.
The silence between them shifted, thickening, changing texture.
It wasn’t the cold industrial silence of the dining room anymore.
It was something heavier, something thrumming with an electric, unspoken tension.
He was looking at her as if he was just now calculating her exact, precise value.
Greg broke the gaze first.
He set his empty glass on the desk, his knuckles brushing the edge of her ledger.
“Tell the cook to prepare the roast for 7:00 tonight.”
He met her gaze, turning back toward the door.
“I am tired of eating at 8:00.”
It was a command, but it sounded distinctly like a concession.
Megan watched his broad back as he walked out into the gloomy hallway, her heart beating a fraction faster against her ribs.
The house was cold, the rain was relentless, but for the first time since she arrived at Ironhold, the air didn’t feel quite so dead. 10 days passed.
The rain stopped, leaving the grounds of Ironhold wrapped in a thick gray fog that clung to the skeletal oaks.
The roof was patched, the kitchen was stocked, the house, while still vast and echoing, no longer felt like a tomb.
Greg’s shoulder healed with the stubborn, rapid vitality of a man who refused to allow weakness in his own body.
He had returned to the mills after 3 days, ignoring Megan’s warnings, though she noted he kept his left arm rigidly against his side.
The tension between them had settled into a quiet, watchful truce.
They still occupied opposite ends of the dining table.
They still slept in separate, locked rooms.
But the absolute zero of their marriage had warmed to a precarious thaw.
On a Tuesday evening, Megan sat by the fire in the drawing room.
She was mending a tear in one of her plain wool skirts, the needle flashing silver in the gaslight.
The door opened without a knock.
Greg walked in.
He had abandoned his jacket and tie, his white shirt unbuttoned at the collar.
He carried a small pair of silver embroidery scissors, the delicate loops looking absurdly tiny in his massive, scarred hand.
He walked directly to her armchair and dropped the scissors onto the small table beside her.
They landed with a sharp clink.
“Take them out.”
He met her gaze.
Megan paused, her own needle halfway through the wool.
“The village physician is perfectly capable of removing stitches, Mr.
Miller.”
“The village physician has hands that shake from cheap gin,” Greg replied, his voice a low rumble.
He didn’t wait for her consent.
He unbuttoned his shirt with his right hand, pulling the fabric down to expose his left shoulder.
He turned a wooden chair around and sat straddling it, resting his good arm over the backrest, presenting his injured shoulder to her.
Megan set her mending aside.
She looked at the heavy span of his back, the rigid line of his spine beneath the thin cotton of his shirt.
He was demanding a proximity they had entirely avoided since the night he bled on his desk.
She picked up the silver scissors.
“If I pull the flesh, I do not want to hear complaints.”
“Just cut the damn silk, Megan.”
It was the first time he had used her given name.
The sound of it, harsh, unpolished, entirely lacking the affected drawl of the men from her past, did something strange to her pulse.
It made the air in the room feel suddenly acutely thin.
She moved her chair closer, her knees nearly brushing his thigh.
The wound had closed over, a raised, angry pink line against his pale skin, held together by the six black silk knots she had tied.
The bruising around the tear had faded to an ugly, mottled yellow.
Megan leaned in.
The scent of him was overwhelming.
Carbolic soap, cold night air, and the deep, underlying musk of a hard working man.
She carefully slid the lower blade of the tiny scissors under the first knot.
The metal was cold against his skin.
She felt his muscles instinctively twitch.
Steady, she murmured, more to herself than to him.
She snipped the thread.
It broke with a tiny audible snap.
She used her fingernails to grip the end of the silk, pulling it free from the healed flesh.
Greg inhaled sharply through his nose, his jaw tightening, but he didn’t move.
She moved to the second knot.
Then the third.
The silence in the room was dense, thick with the sound of the crackling fire and their synchronized breathing.
Megan had to lean closer to see the fourth knot, her face only inches from the curve of his neck.
She could see the steady heavy pulse beating in his throat.
You did not go to the charity gala in London this weekend, Greg shifted his stance quietly.
His voice was aimed at the fireplace, not at her.
Your mother wrote to me.
She was displeased.
Megan cut the fourth thread, pulling it free.
My mother is perpetually displeased.
It is her default state of being.
The wives of my investors were expecting you to be there.
To parade your title and legitimize my money.
I am running your house, Megan maintained eye contact, moving to the fifth knot.
I do not have time to sit in a ballroom and listen to women gossip about my father’s debts while drinking warm champagne.
Greg slowly turned his head.
Because she was leaning over him, the movement brought his face dangerously close to hers.
The scissors froze in Megan’s hand.
She looked up, her gaze locking with his.
His eyes were entirely black in the dim light, heavy-lidded, and tracking the minute shifts of her expression.
The cynical armor he wore for the world was stripped away, leaving something raw, hungry, and entirely focused on her.
He looked at her mouth.
Megan’s breath caught.
Her hand, resting lightly against his collarbone for leverage, suddenly felt the searing heat of his skin burning through her fingertips.
She didn’t pull away.
The internal contradiction tore at her.
She had craved isolation.
She had demanded a cold transaction.
Yet the urge to lean forward, to close the final inch between them, was a physical ache in her chest.
Greg’s right hand moved from the back of the chair.
His rough, calloused fingers brushed against the fabric of her skirt, hovering just above her knee.
A silent, terrifying question.
Megan swallowed hard.
She gripped the scissors tighter, forcing her eyes back to the final black knot on his shoulder.
“Last one,” she whispered, her voice fractured.
She snipped the silk and pulled it out.
Greg exhaled a long, ragged breath.
He didn’t touch her.
He stood up slowly, pulling his shirt back over his shoulder.
The moment breaking like fragile glass under a heavy boot.
He walked to the door, stopping just before he crossed the threshold.
“The roof in the east wing holds up well to the rain.”
He met her gaze, not looking back.
“You did good work, Megan.
The contracts were sitting on the mahogany desk in the study.”
Megan saw them when she went in to retrieve the household ledgers the following afternoon.
Three thick bundles of vellum tied with legal ribbon requiring Greg’s signature before the bank closed at 4:00.
He had forgotten them.
It was a careless mistake, the kind a man makes when his mind is entirely occupied by something else.
Megan looked at the clock.
It was two.
She could have sent a stable boy.
It was the proper thing to do.
But the walls of Ironhold suddenly felt suffocating.
And the phantom heat of Greg’s skin from the night before still lingered on her fingertips.
She needed cold air.
She needed motion.
She ordered the carriage.
The valley was a different world.
As the carriage descended the winding road, the green hills of the English countryside gave way to a bruised choked sky.
The air turned acrid biting at the back of her throat.
Megan rolled down the window coughing as the scent of sulfur and burning coal filled the small compartment.
The Miller Steelworks sprawling before her was terrifying.
It was a massive sprawling beast of brick and iron belching black smoke into the atmosphere.
The noise was a physical entity.
A deafening rhythmic crashing of drop forges that rattled the carriage windows and vibrated in her teeth.
When the driver stopped at the main gates, he looked back at her with wide eyes.
Mum, it ain’t safe for a lady out here.
Wait for me, Megan instructed.
She grabbed the vellum contracts clutching them to her chest and stepped out into the soot stained mud.
She walked through the massive iron gates, ignoring the stunned stares of the workers hauling coal in the yard.
She followed the brightest glow, the loudest roar, stepping into the cavernous main foundry floor.
The heat hit her like a physical blow.
It was staggering, stripping the breath from her lungs.
The air was thick with ash and orange sparks floating like vicious fireflies.
In the center of the vast space, a massive crucible of molten steel was being maneuvered by heavy chains.
The liquid metal glowed with a blinding, incandescent, white-hot rage.
And there was Greg.
He stood on an elevated metal gantry, yelling orders over the roaring din of the furnaces.
He wore no jacket, no waistcoat.
His white shirt was soaked through, clinging to the heavy, corded muscles of his back and chest.
His face and arms were streaked with dark soot, his hair plastered to his forehead.
He looked demonic.
He looked magnificent.
This was not the brooding, cynical man who sat at the end of her dining table.
This was a king in his own brutal, burning kingdom.
He commanded the iron, and the iron obeyed.
Megan stood frozen near a massive cooling vat, entirely mesmerized.
She watched the flex of his shoulders, the absolute authority in his stance.
The aristocratic boys she had danced with in London were pale, fragile porcelain compared to the sheer, undeniable force of the man on the gantry.
Suddenly, Greg turned.
He was scanning the floor below, checking the placement of the molds, when his gaze snagged on her.
He froze.
From 50 yards away, through a haze of smoke and falling sparks, their eyes locked.
Megan saw the immediate, violent shift in his expression.
The authoritative focus shattered, replaced by stark, unadulterated shock, followed instantly by absolute fury.
He barked a final order to the foreman and practically threw himself down the metal stairs of the gantry, taking them two at a time.
He stormed across the foundry floor, his heavy boots eating the distance between them.
Workers scrambled out of his way, recognizing the murder in his stride.
He reached her, grabbing her upper arm in a vise-like grip.
“What in God’s name are you doing here?” he roared over the sound of the drop forge.
Megan flinched, not from his grip, but from the sheer volume of his voice.
She shoved the bundle of vellum against his chest.
“You forgot the railway contracts.
The bank closes at 4:00.”
Greg looked at the papers, then back at her face.
Her severe wool hat was tilted back, her pale skin already flushed deep red from the staggering heat, a smudge of black soot resting on her cheekbone.
“You could have sent a boy,” he gritted his fingers tightening slightly on her arm, pulling her back as a shower of sparks rained down near her skirt.
“I preferred to ensure they arrived intact,” she lied, her voice struggling to carry over the industrial roar.
Greg stared down at her.
The anger in his eyes was warring with something much darker, much deeper.
He realized she wasn’t shrinking away from the fire, nor was she cowering from his temper.
She was standing her ground in the middle of a literal inferno, looking right back at him with defiant, unflinching eyes.
Without another word, he dropped the contracts into his pocket.
His hand slid from her arm down to her wrist, his grip turning from a restraint into a firm, undeniable tether.
He turned on his heel, dragging her with him.
“Walk,” he commanded.
He led her out of the main foundry, away from the blinding heat and the screaming metal, pulling her through a heavy iron door into the relative quiet of a dimly lit, brick-lined corridor.
The heavy door slammed shut behind them, cutting off the deafening noise.
The silence rushed in, abrupt and heavy.
The air here was cooler, smelling of damp stone.
Megan leaned against the brick wall, pulling air into her burning lungs.
Greg stood directly in front of her.
He was breathing hard, his chest heaving beneath the damp, soot-stained cotton.
He didn’t step back to give her space.
He stepped closer.
He planted his hands on the brick wall on either side of her head, trapping her there in the shadows.
“Do not.”
He met her gaze, his voice dropping an octave, low and ragged, “ever come into the blast zone again.
Do you understand me?”
Megan looked up.
He was so close, she could feel the heat radiating off his skin.
“I am not made of glass, Greg.”
“No,” he whispered, his eyes dropping to her mouth, his soot-stained face inches from hers.
“You are not, and that is exactly what terrifies me.
His admission hung in the damp, heavy air of the corridor.
Terrified.
Greg Miller, the man who commanded blast furnaces and iron, who crushed competitors and bought aristocratic titles with the stroke of a pen, was terrified of her.
Or perhaps he was terrified of the sudden, staggering realization that she was not invincible.
Megan looked at the soot staining his sharp jaw, the exhaustion lining his eyes.
Her own hand, rough now from lye soap, scrub brushes, and the relentless maintenance of his sprawling, decaying house, lifted.
She didn’t think about the ruined legacy of her father.
She didn’t calculate the transactional nature of their marriage contract.
She simply pressed her palm flat against his cheek.
Greg flinched at the contact.
He closed his eyes, a violent, involuntary shudder ripping through his massive frame, as if her touch was hotter than the molten steel in the foundry.
“I am not a ledger to be balanced, Greg,” she whispered into the dim space between them.
“I do not break.”
He opened his eyes.
The black gaze was feral, stripped entirely of its cynical armor.
He didn’t gently lean down.
He didn’t ask for permission.
He crushed his mouth to hers.
It was not a polite, aristocratic kiss.
It tasted of ash, copper, and desperation.
The impact drove her shoulders hard against the rough brick wall, but Megan didn’t shrink away.
She kissed him back with the same brutal, starved ferocity.
Her hands tangled in his thick, coarse hair, pulling him closer, desperate to feel the heat of his skin through the thin, damp cotton of his shirt.
He tasted of the factory, of smoke and hard, unforgiving labor.
His calloused hands gripped her waist, sliding up to fist in the fabric of her severe wool jacket, lifting her slightly off the cold flagstones.
It was a collision of two people who had spent months starving themselves of human connection.
Both entirely convinced they didn’t deserve it.
The kiss was messy, imperfect, their teeth clashed.
Megan let out a sharp, breathless gasp as his mouth left hers to press hot, open-mouthed kisses along the line of her jaw, his heavy stubble scraping her sensitive skin.
“You were supposed to stay in the house,” he muttered against her throat, his breath ragged and uneven.
“You were supposed to stay out of my way,” she replied, her fingers digging fiercely into his shoulders, anchoring herself to him in the dark.
He pulled back, his chest heaving, his forehead resting heavily against hers.
The silence in the corridor was a stark, ringing contrast to the deafening roar of the forge just beyond the iron door.
He looked down at her.
He saw the smudged soot on her pale cheek, the swollen, flushed line of her lips, the wild disarray of her practical hair.
The cold industrialist was entirely gone.
In his place was a man who had finally found something he valued more than his empire.
“I will drive you back,” Greg stated, his voice still rough, uncoordinated.
“Before I lose the remaining shreds of my sanity and lay you out on this damp floor.
Megan swallowed hard, her pulse hammering violently against her ribs.
She nodded once.
The carriage ride back to Ironhold was not silent, but it was completely wordless.
The space between them on the cracked leather bench, which had once felt like an insurmountable ocean, now crackled with an unbearable gravitational pull.
Greg didn’t stare out the rain-streaked window.
He stared at her, tracking every shallow breath she took.
When they arrived, the estate was quiet.
The maids had already retired to the servants’ quarters.
The gaslight in the grand foyer flickered, casting long, wavering shadows across the oak paneling.
Greg walked Megan to the foot of the grand staircase.
He stopped, his hand resting on the smooth wood of the banister.
He was still covered in industrial soot, still wearing his ruined shirt, his chest rising and falling heavily.
“Good night, Megan.”
He met her gaze quietly.
He was giving her the out.
The chance to retreat behind her locked door, to wash the ash from her skin, and pretend the foundry had never happened.
Megan put her foot on the first step.
She stopped.
The heavy wool of her skirt brushed against the wood.
She looked down at her hands.
The nails were short, the skin permanently roughened by the house she had bled to restore.
She didn’t want to hide in a cold, empty room anymore.
She turned around.
Greg was already walking toward his study, his shoulders tense, bracing himself for another night of ledgers and solitary whiskey.
Greg.
He froze.
He turned slowly, the shadows of the hallway clinging to his broad shoulders.
“The fire in the master suite.”
Megan held her ground.
Her voice shook slightly, betraying the tight coil of nerves in her stomach, but she forced her chin up.
“It is burning quite well tonight.”
Greg went perfectly still.
His dark eyes locked onto hers, reading the invitation, searching for any hint of aristocratic obligation or reluctant duty.
He found none.
He found only the same raw, unflinching honesty she had leveled at him on the factory floor.
He crossed the foyer in three long strides.
He didn’t offer his arm with stiff formality.
He simply took her hand, lacing his calloused, scarred fingers deeply through hers, and walked her up the stairs.
The master suite was sweltering.
The heavy velvet curtains were drawn, shutting out the damp English fog.
Greg shut the heavy oak door behind them and turned the brass lock.
The heavy click echoed loudly in the quiet room.
He turned to her.
He didn’t rush.
He slowly reached out, his thumbs gently brushing a fresh smudge of soot from her cheekbone.
His touch was remarkably gentle for hands that could bend iron.
“I told you on our wedding night.”
Greg stepped closer, his voice a low, gravelly rasp in the flickering firelight, “that I would not pretend to love you.”
Megan unpinned her hat, letting it drop to the floorboards.
She stepped into his chest, resting her hands against the steady, thundering beat of his heart.
She He up, offering him a small, terribly flawed, and entirely genuine smile.
“You did.”
Megan whispered, gripping his lapels and pulling his mouth down to hers.
“And we are both terrible liars.”
And there you have it.
The fiery, hard-earned conclusion to Megan and Greg’s story.
From a cold transaction sealed in a dusty church to a raw, undeniable passion forged in the heat of a steel mill.
They proved that the strongest bonds are often the ones we never intended to make.
If this grounded enemies-to-lovers historical romance kept you captivated, please hit that like button, share the video with your fellow romance readers, and subscribe to the channel.
Drop a comment below telling us your favorite moment between these two stubborn souls.
Until next time, keep the fire burning.
THE END
Tell us what you think about this story, and share it with your friends. It might inspire them and brighten their day.
If you enjoyed this story, read this one: My Husband’s Pregnant Mistress Messaged Me While He Slept — She Didn’t Expect My Cold Next Move
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].
