“I’ll Marry the First Man Who Enters,” She Joked — Then the Duke Walked In
Chapter 11
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Bella turned away from the fire. "Augustus."He stopped, his hand on the brass doorknob."We struck a bargain," Bella said. Her heart was beating a slow, heavy rhythm, but her voice remained level. "An heir was part of the terms."Augustus's jaw tightened; the muscle ticked under his ear. "You are exhausted. You have spent four days on a carriage. I am not a monster, Bella; I do not demand payment the moment the contract is signed.""I am not afraid of you," she said softly.He looked at her, his dark eyes tracing the line of her throat, the rigid posture of her shoulders. He let go of the doorknob and took two slow steps toward her; the sheer size of him blotted out the firelight."You should be," he said, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper. "I am not a gentleman. I do not know how to be gentle, and I will not apologize for it."He didn't touch her; he just stood close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his chest. He looked at her mouth for one long, suffocating second, then turned and walked out the door.Bella stood by the fire alone, the sound of his heavy boots fading down the hall. She touched her fingers to her collarbone; her pulse was racing. She turned and looked at the top drawer of the desk: she had work to do.Highridge Manor surrendered to Bella in exactly six days. She did not achieve this through gentle smiles or aristocratic charm: she achieved it with a ledger, a terrifying memory for numbers, and a willingness to walk into the dampest, rat-infested cellars without lifting her skirts.She fired the cook on Tuesday for siphoning household funds to a local tavern; on Wednesday, she promoted a terrified but meticulous kitchen maid to the position; by Friday, the fires drew properly because Bella had hired three local sweeps to clear ten years of bird nests from the chimneys.Augustus was a ghost: he left the manor before the sun broke over the crags and returned long after dinner had been cleared; he smelled permanently of sulfur, wet wool, and cheap tobacco; they passed each other in the drafty hallways like ships in a fog. He would nod; she would curtsy. It was a perfectly functional, perfectly hollow arrangement.On the seventh day, Bella ran out of patience.She dressed in a dark wool riding habit entirely lacking in frills and pinned her hair tightly to her scalp. She bypassed the carriage and ordered a stable boy to saddle a sturdy mare. She rode down the steep, craggy hill toward the Pendleton Collieries.The air grew thicker the closer she got; it tasted of ash. The noise was a physical weight: the rhythmic, deafening crash of the steam-powered water pumps, the clatter of coal carts on iron rails, the shouting of hundreds of men. This was not a gentleman's farm; it was a mechanical beast chewing up the earth and spitting out black gold.