A handsome Goliath… but that was of little consequence. He could have been the King of Scotland, and Anna would still want him gone.
“I hear there is some trouble, Your Grace,” Mr. Miller said, bowing his head to Anna.
She relaxed ever so slightly in her butler’s presence. “Yes, Mr. Miller. I was just wondering if you could answer a question for me.” She paused. “Tell me, were we informed that there was an heir to the Stonebridge title and estate?”
“No, Your Grace,” Mr. Miller replied without hesitation. “There is no heir. One could not be found.”
Anna turned toward the stranger, who now stood by the drawing room windows, staring out at the emerald lawns that stretched toward the most beautiful woodland. “There you have it, sir. I do not know who approached you, but you have been misinformed.” She smiled tightly. “You have no more right to this manor than any of the other fortune hunters who have come before you. I am not easily swindled, sir, so be on your way or I shall have to summon the constables.”
“Sir?” The man tutted in the back of his throat and cast a dark glance in her direction. “Nay, lass. It’sYer Grace. Or Duke for ye.”
She stood sharply and gestured toward the door. “This way, sir. I shall show you out. Perhaps you can return with more compelling evidence. Perhaps you will not, because none exists.”
It was her best and, in truth, only course of action to view those damning documents on the side table as falsehoods and forgeries. Even if, in her heart, she knew they were legitimate, she wouldn’t relent anytime soon. Certainly, not before she had summoned Mr. Phipps to ask him what on earth he was doing, whipping the rug out from underneath her.
To her surprise, and uneasy relief, the dark-eyed stranger pushed away from the window and walked back toward the door. Anna met him there, determined to be the one to kick him out of her home.
“Ye don’t seem to understand,” he said, stopping abruptly, his hand shooting across the doorway at the same instant she tried to cross the threshold.
She started at the sudden strike of his palm against the jamb and the corded forearm that blocked her, the sleeve of his greatcoat slipping back.
She didn’t even notice his other hand. Instead, she felt it, gently curling around her chin, turning her head and tilting it upward so she had no choice but to look into the deep black pools of his eyes.
“H-how dare you!” she snapped, pulling away from his touch… though the warmth of his fingertips and the roughness of his palm tingled long after she had withdrawn. “What manner of brute presumes to touch a woman, aduchess, without her consent! You see, this is why your ruse has collapsed. A duke must be a gentleman, and you, sir, are no gentleman.”
He let his hand drop, though his other remained on the doorframe, blocking her exit. A short distance away, Mr. Miller had turned bright red, anger flickering in his pale blue eyes, his fists clenched tightly.
“Nay matter what ye say, lass, it has been agreed upon. A lack of manners doesn’t change me ancestors, nor me succession,” the stranger replied. “Inheritance doesn’t need a gentleman; it just needs a man, and I am here to claim what’s mine. All of thisismine now.”
She blinked in disbelief, rendered speechless by the unjust but entirely true statement. Maybe Mr. Phipps had realized it, too, that an estate as grand as Stonebridge couldn’t possibly be left in the hands of a mere woman. Indeed, it seemed the solicitorhadchanged his mind; otherwise, he would not have gone to the trouble of chasing down such a diluted descendant of her husband, Robert Holton.
“And what of me?” she asked breathlessly, noting how the man leaned in slightly, as if to make a point of how little he cared for propriety.
He was far too close to her, so much so that she could smell the rain and the fresh air on him. She watched a droplet drip onto his neck, where it meandered slowly downward in a mesmerizing trail over the exposed triangle of bare skin, halted only at the edge of his collar as the white fabric absorbed it.
“Ye should find somewhere else to reside,” he replied in that rumbling, deep voice, like summer thunder after weeks of unbearable heat. “We can arrange that if ye can’t arrange it for yerself. I am aware that this title comes with several properties. I will put ye in whichever is farthest.”
Anger spiked through her chest, her words barbed as she cast out all propriety and stepped right up to him, glaring into his eyes. “But this is myhome. I will not be dismissed as if I am nothing.”
Just then, the butler cut cleanly between the two, putting himself between Anna and the usurper. “Step away from Her Grace,” he said coldly. “It is dishonorable for you to be so close to her.”
But the new duke was so tall that he looked right over Mr. Miller’s head, not bothering to glance at the other man, his attention unwavering on Anna.
“I wouldn’t deign to tell me what to do if I were ye,” he said flatly, though it was unclear if he was talking to her or the butler. Both, perhaps.
Anna’s cheeks warmed as the Duke kept staring, and although she fought fiercely to keep her gaze on him with all her defiance, she couldn’t maintain it for much longer. There was something in those black eyes that made it impossible to look for too long.
A moment later, her chin dropped to her chest, and her eyes turned down to the floor. “I shall instruct some of the servants to prepare the London townhouse for you, or perhaps my former husband’s house on the coast would be more befitting a man like you,” she said through gritted teeth. “I will accept your claim to the title, but I willnotbe so generous as to hand my home over to you. The name of Stonebridge can be yours. Take it; I do not care. The manor of Stonebridge,thatis mine.”
The Duke lowered his hand from the doorframe, his head slightly tilted as if she were a curiosity to be closely observed. “We’ll discuss it over dinner tonight.”
“No, thereisno discussion. This conversation is finished,” she replied with all the courage she could muster, hoping it translated fiercely enough to her voice and her face. With any luck, he would mistake the heat and the blush it had undoubtedly caused in her cheeks for pure vehemence.
The Duke moved forward, and the butler had no choice but to stand aside or be knocked by the breadth of the man’s muscular chest. As Mr. Miller did so, the redness inhisface darkening a shade, there was nothing standing in the Duke’s way anymore.
The man loomed over Anna, and though he raised his hand up, he did not touch her chin again; he merely left the memory of it in the air. “Don’t mistake me respect for a lass in yer position with weakness, Yer Grace,” he warned. “If ye were a man, ye’d be out on those lawns with a pistol in yer hand by now, facing me in a duel.”
“If I were a man, you would have no right to barge in here and claim my home!” she shot back in furious desperation. “If I were a man, you would not be here at all, barking orders!”
