She Kissed Him In Front Of Everyone To Save Him — Not Knowing That She Had Just Saved The Richest Duke
Chapter 13
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On a Tuesday, exactly one month after the kiss that burned her life to the ground, Alistair ordered the carriages packed. They left the stifling, powdered air of Mayfair for the brutal, sweeping moors of Derbyshire.Ashborne was not a polite country manor. It was a massive, sprawling estate of dark stone built onto the side of a craggy hill overlooking a valley of ancient oaks. It felt less like a house and more like a fortress holding the wild at bay.For Lydia, it was the first time she had been able to breathe in 30 days. The frantic energy of the London season evaporated, leaving behind a profound, echoing quiet. Here, there were no enemies to fight. There was only the wind, the rain, and the man who had bought her life.Their dynamic shifted. In London, they were generals sharing a war room; in Derbyshire, the armor began to rust.It started on a Thursday evening. Rain was lashing against the tall mullioned windows of the library in driving horizontal sheets. Lydia was curled in a leather armchair near the hearth, a book resting unread in her lap. The firelight painted the room in strokes of amber and deep shadow.Alistair sat at the massive oak desk at the far end of the room. He had been there for hours, surrounded by stacks of ledgers, correspondence, and shipping manifests. He was not wearing his coat. His cravat was entirely undone, hanging loose around his neck, and his sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, exposing forearms corded with muscle and dusted with dark hair. He didn’t look like a duke; he looked like a man drowning in paper.Lydia watched him rub the heel of his hand against his right eye. He looked deeply, physically weary. It was the same exhaustion she had seen on his face in the Danbury alcove right before she threw herself at him.Without thinking, Lydia set her book down. She stood, the heavy wool of her skirt brushing the floorboards, and walked over to a side table holding a crystal decanter. She poured two fingers of amber liquid into a heavy glass. She crossed the long room. Her soft-soled slippers made no sound, but Alistair’s head snapped up when she was five feet away. The predatory instinct never completely slept.Lydia set the glass on the edge of the desk, right over a bill of lading from the West Indies."You are going to blind yourself, Your Grace," she said softly.Alistair looked at the glass, then up at her. The sharp gray intensity of his eyes was softened by fatigue. He leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking in the quiet room."There was a storm off the coast of Cornwall," he said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. "Three of my merchant vessels took heavy damage. I am trying to ascertain if the cargo is salvageable, or if I need to authorize the widows' pensions for the crews."