"How?" Genevieve challenged, her voice rising. "The ship is at the bottom of the ocean. The helmsman is dead. The men Gregory paid are likely dead, too. He doesn't leave loose ends. The only proof is my word, and that is not enough to hang a lord."
Richard pulled a heavy wooden box from the bottom drawer and set it on the desk. He snapped the brass latches open. Inside, resting on dark green velvet, lay a pair of perfectly maintained dueling pistols.
"We don't need to find the old proof," Richard said calmly, checking the mechanism of the flintlock. "We just need to make him create a new proof."
Genevieve stared at the pistols. A cold knot formed in her stomach. "You want to bait him?"
"He's greedy, and he is a coward," Richard said, looking up at her, his gray eyes flat and lethal. " financières? If he thinks you are a vagrant, a scam artist, he will come to silence the fraud before the rumors affect his credit in London. If he suspects it might actually be you, he will come to finish the job he paid for 7 years ago. Either way, he cannot ignore the threat to his bank accounts."
Hail let out a low, appreciative whistle. "It is a dangerous game, Ashbourne. You are inviting a viper into your home."
"The viper is already in my home," Richard said coldly. "He has been living in my wife's shadow for 7 years. It is time I cut off his head."
"And when he arrives?" Hail asked, crossing his arms. "What then? You cannot shoot a peer of the realm in your drawing room and claim self-defense."
"I do not need to shoot him," Richard replied, dragging the steel nib across the thick paper. The scratching sound filled the quiet room. "I just need him to confess. And you, Hail, are going to be standing in the shadows to hear it."
The magistrate considered this. He looked at Genevieve. She was pale, but her jaw was set in a rigid line of absolute determination. The trembling of the morning had vanished, replaced by a cold, brittle armor. She was no longer the frightened scullery maid. She was a woman preparing for a hanging.
"You are willing to act as the bait, Your Grace?" Hail asked softly.
"I am the only bait he will take," Genevieve said. She pulled the dark fur collar tighter around her neck. "He took my life, Magistrate. He took seven years of my marriage. I will gladly sit in a room with him if it means watching him hang."
Richard stopped writing. His hand clenched around the pen so tightly the wooden barrel groaned. He hated this. The instinct to lock her in a windowless room and surround the house with armed guards was nearly overwhelming. But she was right. Gregory was too insulated. They needed him arrogant, panicked, and cornered.
"Very well," Hail said, standing up. "I will need to deputize a few of your men. Caldwell has already locked the gates. We will prepare the trap."
Hail paused at the door, his expression grim. "If Gregory brings armed men from London, this could turn into a bloodbath."
"Let him," Richard said. He sealed the letter with red wax and pressed his signet ring into it. "I have seven years of blood to repay."
When Hail left, the heavy silence returned. Richard walked over to Genevieve holding the sealed letter. He looked down at her.
"I will send this with a fast rider," he said. "It will reach him by tomorrow morning. He will likely arrive within 3 days."
Genevieve looked at the red seal. 3 days. "Are you afraid?"
"Yes," she admitted. She didn't look away from him. "I am terrified. I have spent every day since the shipwreck trying to become invisible. Now I am standing in a spotlight, waiting for the man who tried to kill me."
Richard knelt beside her chair. He didn't care about the indignity of the posture. He reached out and took her rough, calloused hands in his. He pressed his lips to her scarred knuckles.
"You are not invisible anymore, Genevieve," he swore, his voice trembling with a fierce, quiet intensity. "You are in my house. You are under my protection. If he tries to touch you, I will break him into pieces so small they will never find him."
The storm broke on the third night. It was a violent, thrashing tempest that tore branches from the ancient oaks lining the driveway and battered the stone walls of Ashbourne Hall with sheets of freezing rain.
The house was practically pitch black. Richard had ordered the exterior lanterns extinguished and the ground floor curtains drawn tight. To anyone approaching, the estate looked like a massive, abandoned tomb.
Inside the main drawing room, the tension was suffocating. The fire had been allowed to die down to a smoldering heap of red coals casting long, monstrous shadows across the walls. Richard stood by the heavy oak mantelpiece, a glass of untouched scotch in his hand. He wore a dark formal coat, looking every inch the formidable Duke of Ashbourne.
Genevieve sat in a high-backed wing chair in the darkest corner of the room. She was wearing one of her old gowns: a dark, heavy velvet dress Caldwell had retrieved from the forgotten trunks in the attic. It was slightly too loose on her new, leaner frame, but the rich fabric instantly transformed her. With her dark hair pinned up, she looked exactly like the portrait hanging in the gallery upstairs. Only the tension in her posture gave her away.
Magistrate Hail was stationed behind the heavy velvet drapes of the adjoining library, out of sight, with two of Richard's largest gamekeepers positioned silently in the darkened corridor.
At a quarter past midnight, the heavy crunch of carriage wheels sounded on the gravel drive, barely audible over the roaring wind.
Richard's jaw tightened. "He's here."
Genevieve closed her eyes for a brief second, taking a slow, ragged breath. When she opened them, they were completely empty of fear. She pressed her back against the chair, sinking deeper into the shadows.
A few moments later, the heavy brass knocker on the front door hammered three times. The sound echoed through the silent house like a gunshot.