If I touch you, it is because you ask me to. If I stay in this room, it is because you want me here. If you tell me to walk back through that door, I will go, and I will never cross the threshold again." He pulled back just enough to look into her eyes. The coldness was entirely gone from his gaze.
It was replaced by something raw, hungry, and dangerously vulnerable. "The choice is yours, Clara. Tell me to leave." Clara stared at him. The man society called a monster.
The man who had bought her. He was offering her the one thing she had been denied her entire life, absolute control over her own body. The shock of it hit her like a physical blow. The icy shell she had built around her heart cracked, splintering down the center. She didn't speak.
She didn't know how to. Instead, she reached up, her trembling fingers wrapping into the soft linen of his shirt. She pulled him down. When his mouth covered hers, there was no brutality. There was a desperate, shattering reverence.
Theodore groaned, his arms wrapping around her waist, pulling her flush against his chest. He kissed her like a man starving, like someone who had spent his entire life in the freezing dark and had finally found the sun. He didn't rush. He stripped away her practical, heavy nightgown as if it were spun glass. When he lifted her onto the massive four-poster bed, he followed her down, sinking into the mattress.
"Tell me," he murmured against her neck, his breath searing her skin. "Tell me if I hurt you." "Tell me to stop." "Don't stop."
She breathed, her hands tangling in his dark, silver-threaded hair. "Please." The consummation of their marriage was not a transaction. It was a baptism. He mapped every inch of her with his hands and his mouth, unearthing nerve endings she didn't know existed.
He worshipped her. He dismantled her defenses piece by piece, drawing out soft, desperate sounds from her throat until she was clinging to him, entirely undone. When the pain of the final barrier came, he stopped completely, holding perfectly still above her, his muscles locked with the strain of restraint. He waited, smoothing the damp hair from her forehead, whispering quiet, grounding praises against her skin until the tension broke and pleasure rushed in to take its place. Hours later, the fire had burned down to glowing embers.
Clara lay curled against his side. His heavy arm was draped securely over her waist, anchoring her. She listened to the steady, rhythmic thumping of his heart beneath her cheek. She realized, with a sudden, startling clarity, why the rumors had been so necessary. A man capable of this kind of absolute, consuming devotion could not survive in the shallow, vicious waters of London society.
He would be eaten alive. The coldness was his armor. But here, in the dark of Ironwood Hall, he had taken it off. For her. She closed her eyes, a single, silent tear slipping down her cheek to soak into his chest.
Not from sorrow, from the terrifying realization that she was already completely, helplessly in love with her husband. The next morning, the household of Ironwood Hall woke to a seismic shift. Mrs. Gable, the stern housekeeper, had instructed the maids to prepare two separate breakfast trays, per the long-standing tradition of aristocratic marriages. The duke would take his coffee in his study.
The duchess would have her tea in her rooms. But when the maid, a young girl named Martha, knocked timidly on the duke's door, there was no answer. Panic rippled through the staff. Had the duke left in the night? Had the marriage already shattered?
Martha was sent to the duchess's suite. She knocked on the heavy oak door. "Come in," a deep voice rumbled. Martha pushed the door open and froze, the silver tray rattling violently in her hands. The Duke of Windermere, the reclusive, terrifying master of the house, was sitting up in the duchess's bed.
He was shirtless, the heavy blankets pooled at his waist. Beside him, tangled in the sheets and resting her head casually against his shoulder, was the new Duchess. Theodore looked up at the terrified maid. "We will take breakfast in the morning room, Martha. Set places for two."
"And tell Mrs. Gable to have my trunk moved from the east wing. I will be residing in this suite permanently." Martha squeaked, bowed so fast she nearly dropped the tray, and bolted from the room. Clara let out a soft laugh, sitting up and pulling the sheet over her breasts."
"You have scandalized her." Theodore turned his head, his lips grazing her bare shoulder. "She will survive.
I refuse to sleep across the house from you like a polite stranger. Life is entirely too short for that particular brand of misery." The news swept through the stone corridors of Ironwood like wildfire. The Duke had claimed his wife. The rumors from London were violently, undeniably false."
"The staff, who had spent years watching their master wander the halls like a hollow ghost, walked with a new, frantic energy. That afternoon, the rain finally broke. The sky over the Yorkshire moors opened into a brilliant, piercing blue, though the air remained brutally crisp. Theodore ordered two horses saddled. "You can ride?"
he asked Clara as they stood in the muddy courtyard. She wore a heavy riding habit of dark green wool, a stark contrast to the flimsy silk she had worn in London. "My father sold my horse when I was 16 to cover a debt at White's," Clara said evenly, pulling on her leather gloves. "But I have not forgotten how." Theodore's jaw tightened at the mention of her father, but he said nothing.
He simply stepped forward, gripping her waist in his large hands, and lifted her onto the side saddle of a calm, gray mare with effortless strength. They rode out past the iron gates, leaving the shadows of the massive house behind. The moors were a revelation. To the sheltered aristocrats of London, the north was a desolate wasteland. But Clara saw only untamed, violent beauty.
The rolling hills were carpeted in heather and brittle gorse. The wind howled off the distant sea, carrying the sharp scent of salt and crushed peat. Theodore rode slightly ahead on a massive black gelding. He watched the land with the keen, possessive eye of a hawk. Here, he did not look tired or cold.
He looked like he belonged. He belonged to the rough earth and the gray stone. They reached the crest of a high ridge. Below them, a small village sat nestled in the valley, smoke curling lazily from stone chimneys. Theodore pulled his horse to a halt.
Clara brought her mare up beside him. "Tenants," he said, gesturing to the valley. "200 families, sheep farmers mostly. A few weavers." "They rely on you," Clara noted, watching a tiny figure herd a flock of white dots across a distant field.