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A Kind Lady Defended an Elderly Dowager Being Insulted — Never Knowing She Was the Duke's Mother

A Kind Lady Defended an Elderly Dowager Being Insulted — Never Knowing She Was the Duke's Mother

Chapter 18

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"Why are you here, Your Grace?" Beatrice asked softly. "You said you would call on Monday. This is Saturday morning. The ton is likely still asleep, dreaming of ways to secure your fortune.""I am here," Leopold said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp, "because I realized I made a tactical error last night."Beatrice's chest tightened. Here it comes: the retreat, the realization that he went too far, that a spinster is not worth the scandal. She braced herself for the dismissal. "A tactical error?""Yes." Leopold pulled his hands from his pockets. In his right hand, he held a small, familiar tissue paper package. He held it out to her.Beatrice looked down: it was the Brussels lace."My mother asked me to return this to you," Leopold said.Beatrice stared at it, a cold, hollow feeling spreading in her stomach. She had been right; it was over before it began. She reached out and took the package, her gloved fingers brushing his."I see," she said quietly, looking away from him, staring at a patch of muddy grass. "The demonstration is concluded. The point has been made. I am to take my charity back and resume my invisibility.""Look at me, Beatrice," Leopold commanded.She snapped her head up, her eyes flashing with sudden, defensive anger. "Do not speak to me like one of your servants, Your Grace! You have had your amusement—""—I am returning the lace," Leopold interrupted, his voice rising, drowning out her anger with a sheer, desperate intensity, "because my mother told me that if I want you, I have to earn you myself. I cannot use her gratitude as a bridge."Beatrice stopped breathing. She stared at him, the small package crushed in her grip.Leopold took a step closer; the air between them crackled."I spent ten years fixing a broken estate, Beatrice. I spent ten years surrounded by people who view me as a bank vault with a title attached. I am tired of the artifice. I am tired of the lies." He looked down at her, his stormy eyes stripping away every defense she had carefully constructed over the years. "I saw you in that shop," he continued, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. "I saw a woman who possessed more courage, more raw, unvarnished decency in her little finger than the entire peerage combined. You stood between a predator and prey, and you did not flinch. I do not want a porcelain doll. I do not want a political alliance. I want a partner."Beatrice swallowed hard. The cynical armor she wore was cracking, fracturing under the weight of his absolute, terrifying honesty.
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A Kind Lady Defended an Elderly Dowager Being Insulted — Never Knowing She Was the Duke's Mother

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