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Arthur watched until both figures became little more than distant silhouettes against the darkness.

Only when they had passed beyond the great iron gates did he become aware of footsteps approaching quietly across the stone behind him.

"Your Grace." Mr Ellis stopped a respectful distance away, removing his spectacles before clasping them tightly between trembling fingers.

"I can only offer my deepest apologies, Sir."

Arthur remained silent.

"When Mr Eapley arrived, he gave every appearance of intending to pay a civil call. I received him as any gentleman would be received and showed him into the morning room whilst I came in search of you. I had been informed that you and Lord Benedict were due to depart for your hunt and, believing you already to have done so, I searched the grounds first. Had I thought to look in your study before venturing elsewhere..."

His voice faltered beneath the weight of his own guilt.

"...none of this would have happened."

Arthur closed his eyes. His valet had served the House of Buckingham with unwavering loyalty for years, anticipating Arthur's needs before they were spoken, managing Winworth with quiet efficiency and possessing a judgement Arthur trusted almost without question. How could the man possibly have foreseen that Malcolm, who had never respected another soul in his life, would abandon all reason and wander uninvited through the house in search of the Duchess?

None of the blame for what had transpired belonged at Mr Ellis' feet. Arthur knew it. Every rational corner of his mind urged him to tell him so, but no words came.

Rage had coursed through him to the point it felt almost impossible to distinguish where his heartbeat ended, and his fury began.

Barely half an hour earlier he had been sitting with Laurence in the quiet of his study, the latest edition of the London Courier spread open across his desk between them as they considered, with no small degree of apprehension, how best to tell Colonel Radnor that his wife had petitioned Parliament for a divorce during his convalescence. It was news that could wait no longer, though neither of them relished the task of delivering it to a man who had only recently escaped death.

They had scarcely exchanged more than a handful of words when the study door burst open without warning, and Miss Hatch breached its threshold. Never, in all the months she had served the household, had she entered the Duke's study.

Her cheeks were drained of colour, her breathing ragged, and although she attempted the briefest approximation of a curtsey, it was plain she had neither the composure nor the patience to observe the usual formalities.

"Your Grace..."

Her voice trembled so violently that Arthur was already on his feet before she had spoken another word.

"Mr Malcolm is here..."

She swallowed, fighting to steady herself.

"...and he is frightening Her Grace."

She had not waited to be dismissed. She had turned and fled almost as quickly as she had entered.

Arthur remembered remarkably little after that. He remembered the chair scraping the floor behind him. He remembered Laurence calling something he never heard. He remembered following after his wife's maid. Long corridors that usually seemed endless disappeared beneath his feet in moments; servants flattened themselves against the walls as they passed. Every hurried step felt like a burden, each one seeming only to prolong the path that would lead him to Eliza.

When they reached the drawing room, he saw Eliza’s slight frame shrinking beneath Malcolm’s; one of his hands had curled around her neck while the other remained obscured somewhere between their bodies. His attention was caught instead upon her curls, usually so unapologetically free and wild, now lay dishevelled in a manner that spoke unmistakably of a struggle.

And her eyes, God. He had seen fear before.

He had seen it in boys barely old enough to shave as they waited for the surgeon’s knife, and in enemy officers in his grasp, who understood, often before anyone else, that they would not live to see another sunrise. But nothing had prepared him for seeing that same terror reflected in the eyes of his wife.

In their own home.

A better man would have gone to her immediately. Said man would have crossed the room, taken her into his arms and soothed her until the terror left her eyes.

But in that single, irreversible moment every instinct born of rank and reason had deserted him. He had not paused to consider consequence or propriety, nor did he stop to assess whether Malcolm had deserved the opportunity to explain himself. He had seen one thing—his wife's fear.

Gripping Malcolm by the shoulders with such haste that he scarcely had time to react, Arthur wrenched the weasel from where he stood and sent him crashing into the wall. The room echoed with the sickening thud of his back striking oak panelling, followed by the brittle shatter of porcelain. Even now, he could remember the satisfaction of hearing the timber shudder beneath the impact and the almost irresistible temptation to hear the sound of bones cracking a second time.

Instead, Arthur forced Malcolm to his knees and pressed the cold barrel of a pistol against the flesh beneath his jaw. Fury had governed his every movement then, drowning out reason while the image of Eliza trapped against that window consumed him. Only Laurence’s subtle intervention had prevented what might have followed. He had trusted his friend without question, and when Laurence spoke loudly enough to remind him that his wife was still present, he stilled until Eliza was escorted from before administering the punishment Malcolm had so thoroughly earned.

"You dare touch my Duchess?” he breathed, his voice low.