A cold knot formed in her stomach.
“May I see it?”
They had reached the castle steps by then. Christian did not answer at once. He led her inside, across the entrance hall, where the morning post still rested upon the silver salver.
After a moment’s silence, he picked up the folded letter he had placed there earlier.
“I should not have hidden it from you,” he said quietly.
Fiona’s heart began to beat faster as he handed it to her.
She unfolded the paper.
To the Duke of Thornwick,
I write to inform you that my daughter, Miss Fiona Hart, is to be returned to her family immediately. The scandalous reports reaching us from Yorkshire leave no doubt as to the nature of her continued residence in your household, and I demand that she be released from whatever hold you have over her without delay.
If she is not returned within a fortnight, I shall be compelled to take legal action. I have consulted with my solicitor, who assures me there are remedies available for the abduction and corruption of an unmarried gentlewoman. You may be a duke, sir, but you are not above the law.
Furthermore, I am informed by reliable sources that your reputation is such that no respectable family would countenance an alliance with you. My daughter may have forgotten herself, but I have not. She will not be sacrificed to your appetites, however exalted your title.
I await your immediate compliance.
Sir Reginald Hart
Fiona read the letter twice, her hands trembling.
Abduction. Corruption. Legal action.
Her father believed she had been kidnapped. Believed Christian had coerced her, manipulated her, somehow corrupted her into remaining here. He could not—would not—believe that she had chosen this for herself. That she had chosen love over respectability, passion over propriety, Christian over everything she had been raised to value.
Slowly, she lowered the paper.
Christian had been watching her as she read, his expression carefully composed. Yet she saw the tension in his shoulders, the tightness in his jaw, as though each word her father had written had been another stone laid upon his back.
“I told you the words were not kind,” he said quietly.
“No,” Fiona whispered. “They were not.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The great hall seemed suddenly too large, the silence pressing in on all sides.
Then Christian drew a slow breath and straightened.
“Well,” he said, his voice steadier now, though she could still hear the strain beneath it. “At least the matter is plain.”
“Christian—”
“I had hoped,” he continued, almost absently, “that if I wrote to him directly—honourably, respectfully—he might judge me on my intentions rather than my reputation.”
He gave a faint, humourless smile.
“That hope was… optimistic.”
Fiona folded the letter carefully, though her fingers still shook.
“My father has always cared more for appearances than truth,” she said softly. “If the village gossip has reached him, he will have convinced himself of the worst.”
Christian looked at her then, the hardness in his expression easing slightly.
