It had been a taunt, nothing more. A test of her mettle. He never imagined she would agree, had hoped perhaps, but the sharp jolt of surprise unsettled him far more than it should.
“Seven nights,” she repeated, and heard how flat the words sounded because she had scraped them clean of every trace of emotion. “You cannot be serious.”
“I am entirely serious.” He reached for the decanter and poured, but did not drink. “I do not play when the stakes are high.”
“You think this is a game?”
“I think it’s an arrangement.” He set the glass aside. “You wish to move me to generosity without telling me why. I wish to avoid gossip without being commanded by it. There is a price that will satisfy both.”
She tasted copper. She tasted humiliation and fury and fear. She kept all of it behind her teeth.
“You expect me to agree?”
“I expect you to weigh your needs against your scruples,” he corrected, too evenly to be accused of cruelty. “We are not discussing you on an auction block. We are discussing a private agreement that injures no one. You arrived tonight, cloaked and nameless. You chose secrecy. So did I.”
“Do not feign altruism,” she scoffed. “You pay to keep yourself comfortable.”
“And you will get what you came for,” he said. “Money, sufficient for a purpose you do not want to share with me. Your silence purchased honestly. And in return, I take the pleasure I have already interrupted once on your account. It is perfectly tidy.”
Gwen thought of Howard’s hand rising. She thought of her mother’s breath hitching like torn silk. She thought of William far away, writing Latin verbs while their mother bartered dignity for peace. She thought of the rumors she had sown, the protection they had bought, the contempt they had earned.
He will never keep his promise,the part of her that knew men like Howard whispered.He will hurt you. He will laugh when you bleed.
The Duke was watching her. He had the face of a man who had never once doubted that decisions would fall where he wished them to.
“You hesitate,” he noted. “Wise. Hesitation prevents tragedies. Consider this as well. If you choose to test your threat, you will fail. The papers like a story, but they like a villain even more. They like a clean line between the two. I can trample such lines with the weight of my name. I will do it without apology. Your story will collapse in a day.”
Her stomach churned.
“On the other hand,” he continued, “you can turn your mischief to profit. You secure the money. I secure your silence. You walk away after seven nights with money and the knowledge that you have paid for your purpose with your own will, not with a lie told to a printer.”
She hated that he made sense. She hated that his voice remained low and even and devoid of triumph.
He was not goading her. He was not cruel. He was not Howard. He was an entirely different breed of danger.
“What would these nights require?” she asked, and heard how her voice had steadied, as if she had braced her palm on a table and found it unshaken.
“Not obedience,” he replied, surprising her. “Agreement. Privacy. Punctuality. You will come when I send for you. You will leave when I ask you to. You will speak to no one. In return, I will be what I always am—careful, clean, finished after seven.”
“Finished,” she repeated. “You keep count?”
“Always.”
“Are these all in a row, or just seven whenever you require?”
“Whenever I require. My rules.”
She closed her eyes for a breath. She saw the little cottage in the north that she had invented to survive the nights when Howard prowled and slammed doors. She saw her mother pouring tea in a kitchen of their own, where no man placed a hand on her wrist to correct the height of the teapot. She saw a lad on a Christmas visit smiling because his mother smiled.
She opened her eyes. “Very well.”
The Duke’s gaze sharpened. “You accept?”
“I do.”
“Say it,” he said, not rudely, but with a quiet demand that felt like the closing line of a contract. “Say the terms.”
“I accept,” she declared. “Seven nights in exchange for the amount I have named.”
