He took three steps toward the carriage, blood dripping from his sleeve.
Cranford raised his weapon again.
“Johnathan!” William shouted.
But Frances had already opened the carriage door.
“Do not,” she called out.
Cranford froze—pistol half-raised.
“If you shoot him in the back,” Frances said, her voice clear and unflinching, “you will confirm to the entire world what you truly are. A man who cannot win without cheating. A man who could not keep a woman, so he tried to destroy her.”
Her voice never broke.
“Choose wisely, my lord. There is an audience.”
Cranford’s hand trembled.
Then—slowly—he lowered the pistol.
He simply turned on his heel and disappeared into the mist like the ghost of a man who had already lost everything.
Johnathan turned back toward the carriage.
Frances met his gaze.
And in that moment—bloodied, breathless, shaking—he smiled.
Because he had never been more certain of anything.
She was his.
Frances did not wait.
The instant Cranford vanished like the coward he had always been, she was moving—skirts lifted, boots flying, heart pounding.
The sharp morning air hit her cheeks like ice water, but she did not care.
Johnathan stood in the field, blood blooming across the sleeve of his coat, his dark hair mussed by wind and sweat. He opened his arms to her, and his eyes—God, those eyes—found hers and held.
Her heartbeat thundered in her ears as she closed the distance.
She collided with him, wrapping her arms around his middle as gently as she could, mindful of his injury but desperate to feel the solid truth of him.
“I told you not to get shot,” she murmured into his chest.
“I told you not to surrender to maniacs,” he rasped into her hair.
“Touché.”
He kissed the top of her head, his hand curving protectively around her waist despite the blood staining his cuff. “It is over.”
She leaned back. “Indeed, it is.”
William approached from behind, his voice dry. “The steward’s already bribing the stable master. I suspect by noon, no one will remember anything except that the Duke of Hargate faced a duel and walked away the better man.”
“Do I look like the better man?” Johnathan asked, grimacing as he shifted his shoulder.
