"You are. It is a small smile, to be sure, the sort of smile a man might give if he had just discovered that the world was not entirely terrible, but it counts."
Stephen took the cider. "You are insufferable."
"I know." She grinned. "But you like me anyway."
He did. He liked her more than he had ever liked anyone. And that, of course, was terrifying.
The crisis came in October. A letter arrived at Sanderton Manor addressed to Miss Daisy Turner in a handwriting that made her go pale. Steven watched from the doorway of the morning room as she read it, her face shifting from surprise to fear to something that looked like resignation. Her hands shook as she lowered the paper.
"It is my husband," she said, her voice flat. "He has found me. He is coming."
Steven's blood turned to ice. He crossed the room in three strides, taking the letter from her hands. The words swam before his eyes, demands, threats, a promise to ruin her if she did not return.
"What does he want?" Steven asked, though he already knew.
"Me. My money. What little I have left. He has gambled away everything else, and now he means to drag me back to London and use my connections to restore his credit." She crumpled the letter in her fist. "He says he will ruin me if I refuse. He will tell everyone that I abandoned him, that I am an adulteress, that I am mad, and they will believe him because he is charming and I am a woman alone."
Steven took her hands, cold now, trembling, and held them tightly.
"He will not touch you."
Daisy looked up at him, her eyes bright with unshed tears.
"You cannot stop him, Steven. He has the law on his side. A wife belongs to her husband. There is nothing anyone can do."
"There is something I can do," Steven said.
And for the first time in seven years, he felt the weight of his title not as a burden, but as a weapon.
Lord Percival Turner arrived at Sanderton Manor on a gray Thursday expecting to find a frightened woman and a reclusive earl who would crumble at the first sign of conflict. He was a handsome man in a florid, overfed way with a smile that did not reach his eyes and a habit of standing too close to people when he spoke. His coat was expensive but worn at the cuffs, a sign of diminished circumstances that he tried to hide with an air of confidence.
Steven received him in the great hall standing before the fireplace with his hands clasped behind his back. He had dressed carefully that morning, not in his usual shabby coats but in the formal attire of an earl, dark wool, silver buttons, the signet ring of his grandfather on his finger. He looked, for the first time in years, exactly like what he was, a man of power and lineage accustomed to being obeyed.
"Lord Sanderton," Percival said, bowing with exaggerated courtesy. His voice was smooth, practiced. "An honor. I have come to collect my wife. I trust she has not been too much trouble."
"Miss Turner is not your wife," Steven said. His voice was calm, measured, utterly devoid of the stammer that had plagued him in his youth. "She is a guest in my home and she will remain so for as long as she wishes."
Percival's smile tightened.
"I beg your pardon, my lord, but the law—"
"The law," Steven interrupted, "is what I say it is on my land. And you are on my land, Turner. You will leave. You will not return. And if I hear of you troubling Miss Turner again, in Yorkshire, in London, or anywhere else, I will use every resource at my disposal to destroy you."
Percival laughed, but there was a nervous edge to it.
"You cannot be serious. A reclusive earl with no friends, no influence."
"You are mistaken," Steven said. He stepped closer and for the first time Percival flinched. "I have been quiet, Turner, but quiet is not weak. I have spent seven years learning patience. I have spent seven years watching, and I know things about you, about your debts, your mistresses, your little schemes that would ruin you 10 times over. So I will say this once, leave now and do not come back."
The silence that followed was absolute. Percival stared at Steven, his florid face draining of color. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. No words came. For a moment Steven saw something flicker in the man's eyes, fear perhaps, or calculation, but then it was gone.