The Duke Called Me A Worthless Peasant — Until I Saved His Career
Part 1
The collision sent me stumbling directly into the Duke’s path.
I caught myself just before crashing into his chest, my hands briefly grazing the lapels of his dark velvet coat.
“Watch your step, girl,” Duke Brian Davenport snapped, his voice a low, thunderous rumble that silenced the immediate vicinity of the ballroom.
He brushed his lapel as if my touch had soiled the fine fabric.
I immediately lowered my eyes, a survival instinct honed over years of living under my aunt’s roof.
“I beg your pardon, Your Grace,” I whispered.
“It was an accident.”
My aunt, Brenda Kensington, materialized instantly, her face flushed with fury and embarrassment.
“Your Grace, a thousand apologies,” she simpered.
“This is my late husband’s niece, Megan.
A tragic case, really.
She lacks the refinement necessary for civilized company and is utterly unworthy of mingling in our circle.”
Brian didn’t even offer me a second glance.
He looked past me, his expression one of supreme boredom and disdain.
“Clearly, Viscountess, one can always smell the lack of proper breeding,” he sneered.
“See that your domestic staff is kept out of the way.
I have no need to converse with the help, nor someone so clearly devoid of value to our society.”
A soft, mocking laughter rippled through the surrounding aristocrats.
My cousin Heather smirked from behind her silk fan.
I stood frozen, my jaw tightened until my teeth ached.
The urge to unleash a torrent of insults in three different languages burned in my throat.
But the memory of my precarious living situation forced my absolute silence.
I curtsied stiffly and retreated into the shadows of the musicians’ alcove.
My cheeks burned not with shame, but with a cold, righteous fury.
The Duke of Ashbourne had judged me a worthless peasant based on a faded gray dress and my aunt’s spite.
I swore to myself, right then and there, that Brian Davenport would one day choke on his own towering arrogance.
I was not a peasant, nor was I uneducated.
Before his untimely demise from a sudden fever in Venice, my father, Dan Miller, had been a brilliant diplomat for the crown.
He possessed no grand estates, but he owned a mind that could untangle the most complex international disputes.
He had raised me out of a suitcase, dragging me across the continent from the grand palaces of St. Petersburg to the sun-drenched courtyards of Madrid.
He had bestowed upon me his only true wealth, his intellect.
By my eighteenth birthday, I was fluent in French, Italian, Spanish, German, and Russian, alongside a working knowledge of Mandarin.
Yet in the drawing rooms of London, intellect in a woman without a dowry was considered a tragic deformity.
So I was absorbed into my aunt’s sprawling estate, relegated to the duties of a glorified maid.
Three weeks after the ball, the social season culminated in the royal diplomatic gala.
It was hosted at the grand estate of Lord Craig Harrington.
This was no ordinary gathering; it was a veiled theater for a high-stakes political summit.
The crown was desperately trying to secure a trilateral trade agreement regarding naval routes.
It involved the British Empire, the Russian Empire, and the Kingdom of Portugal.
Brian Davenport, given his diplomatic background, was appointed to finalize the verbal agreements.
The air in the grand reception room was thick with tension.
I was present only because Heather had demanded a familiar servant to repair a torn lace hem.
Having finished my humiliating task, I lingered near the heavy velvet curtains.
In the center of the room stood Brian.
He was flanked by Count Ivan Petrov, a notoriously temperamental Russian envoy, and Ambassador Carlos Mendoza of Portugal.
The situation was deteriorating rapidly.
The crown’s official interpreter, a frail older gentleman named Mr. Evans, had suddenly collapsed half an hour prior.
With the official translator incapacitated, the Duke was forced to rely on his own rudimentary French.
He was trying to mediate between a Russian who hated the French and a Portuguese ambassador who refused to speak it out of sheer stubbornness.
“Your Grace!” Count Petrov bellowed in heavily accented, broken English.
His face was turning a dangerous shade of crimson.
“The tariffs on the Baltic timber are an insult!”
Before Brian could formulate a soothing response, Ambassador Mendoza interjected in rapid Portuguese.
He threw his hands in the air, clearly accusing the British of favoring the Russian naval routes over their own Atlantic agreements.
Brian held up his hands, his usual icy composure cracking under the immense pressure.
“Gentlemen, please,” he pleaded.
“If we could just return to the initial terms outlined in Paris.”
“Paris is a den of liars,” Petrov roared, switching rapidly to Russian.
He unleashed a string of blistering curses directed at the British Navy and Brian’s intelligence.
Mendoza began shouting over him, demanding immediate concessions.
A collapsed treaty tonight meant economic disaster for the crown, and the failure would rest entirely on Brian’s shoulders.
He turned to his aides, his eyes flashing with desperate anger.
“Find someone who speaks Russian, damn it!” he hissed.
“Now!”
But the room was completely frozen.
To intervene and fail in front of these furious foreign dignitaries would be social and political suicide.
I didn’t ask for permission as I stepped out from the velvet curtains, looked the furious Russian Count dead in the eye, and spoke my first word.
