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His eyes roamed over her once more.

"For once, the Brute has managed to surprise me."

"It would seem that you are either positively deranged or entirely out of your mind," Eliza replied, her voice hardening despite the fear taking hold of her senses.

She tugged harder, but he did not budge. Instead, with effortless arrogance, he guided her backwards until her shoulders met the cool glass of a window.

The evening sun had almost disappeared now. Beyond the glass, the gardens had begun to dissolve into shadow. Malcolm braced one hand against the window frame beside her head, closing off her only avenue of escape.

His other hand settled against her stomach; the slow spread of his fingers over the fabric of her corset sent a wave of revulsion through her. Every instinct she possessed recoiled from the contact. Her pulse thundered in her ears, her muscles tightening as she tried instinctively to shrink away from him, but the cold glass pressed against her back left nowhere else to go.

"You know," he murmured, his voice a little louder than a whisper, "I still intend to inherit Winworth.” As he spoke, his hand drifted lower, one finger pressing deliberately into the fabric over her abdomen, as though the life that might one day grow there were nothing more than an inconvenience to his ambitions.

Eliza's breath caught.

His face was now so close she could smell tobacco lingering upon his breath.

"And when I do..."

His eyes settled upon hers with unsettling certainty.

"...I may decide to keep its Duchess as well. At least for a little bit."

“I would rather burn at the stake than entertain any notion of this”, she snapped back, and as the words left her lips, his eyes darkened, and before she could turn away or cry out, he crushed his mouth against hers.

She shoved at his chest with all the strength she possessed, breaking free with a gasp, her breathing ragged as she recoiled against the window, horror flooding through her. His hand lifted once more, this time reaching not for the curl that had lain beside her cheek, but for her neck. His fingers closed around it with deliberate firmness, holding her against the glass until her resistance stilled.

Eliza squeezed her eyes shut.

Her breath caught in her chest, every instinct compelling her to twist away, yet the unforgiving hand at her neck would not allow it. She braced herself for another unwanted touch, for any further degradation he intended to inflict upon her. But it never came.

Instead, the silence was shattered by a sickening crash, its force reverberating through the drawing room with such violence that the glass in the windows rattled, and, somewhere behind her, she heard porcelain strike the floor and splinter. Her eyes flew open, and her hands reached for her own throat that was now bare.

For a heartbeat she could make no sense of what had happened. The man whose hands and eyes had roamed so freely over her body was now floundering on the opposite side of the room.

Malcolm Eapley had been driven backwards into the oak panelling with such overwhelming force that one of the portraits hanging beside him had fallen from its hook, crashing into a sculpture below and sending fragments of porcelain skittering across the floor. His boots scraped uselessly against the polished boards as he struggled to regain his footing.

Standing over him was Arthur.

There was no warmth left in his eyes. No restraint.

Only fury.

Arthur held the polished barrel of a duelling pistol beneath Malcolm’s jaw, pressing it upwards with such force that the younger man’s head was forced back, leaving the long, vulnerable line of his throat exposed. Malcolm struggled beneath him, but Arthur drove him down even further until his knees struck the floor.

Malcolm, who only moments before had spoken with such effortless arrogance, had turned ashen, every trace of colour draining from his face as his eyes remained fixed upon the Duke.

It was then, and only then, that Eliza realised she was looking upon the very Duke whose reputation had inspired fear throughout half the county long before she had ever met him. She saw now the man they had whispered of—the violence he was capable of, the cold fury that had made his name something to be spoken with caution—and yet, standing in his presence, Eliza felt no fear at all.

She felt safe.

As if the danger she was in had just dawned on her, a trembling sob escaped her lips, her knees suddenly threatening to give way beneath her. Strong hands caught her before they could.

"Your Grace..." Laurence's voice reached her as though from an extraordinary distance, but he was right beside her; his words muffled beneath the frantic pounding of her own heartbeat.

"Your Grace, are you hurt?" He had taken hold of her shoulders with remarkable gentleness, carefully but firmly guiding her several paces away from Arthur and Malcolm, his anxious gaze moving rapidly across her face before travelling lower, searching her neck, her wrists and her arms for any sign of injury that might not yet have been visible to her.

"Can you hear me?" Laurence asked again.