Samuel pushed past her, wearing his thickest riding coat. His jaw was set. You are not going alone. Get in the cart.

They fought the snow for two hours to reach the eastern ridge. When they arrived, Elias's cottage was half buried. The thatched roof caved in under the weight of the ice. Hannah didn't hesitate.

While Samuel and the stable hands braced the remaining beams with heavy timber, Hannah waded into the freezing debris. She found Elias's wife pinned beneath a shattered table. Her hands bled as she dug through frozen mud and splintered wood, dragging the woman to safety. She wrapped the shivering woman in her own heavy cloak.

They returned to Holly Park hours after dark. The guests were gathered in the grand hall, waiting for dinner. The heavy doors banged open. Hannah and Samuel stood in the threshold.

They were covered in mud, soot, and freezing slush. Hannah's hair was plastered to her face, her hands raw and bleeding. The aristocrats stared in horrified silence. Augusta stood up, appalled. “My God, Samuel, you look like laborers.” Samuel looked at his mother.

Then he looked at his wife, standing tall beside him, freezing, bloody, and entirely victorious. We all, Samuel said, his voice echoing in the silent hall. This is our land. These are our people.

If you find the reality of it offensive, mother, the carriages can be readied in the morning. He didn't wait for a reply. He put his hand on the small of Hannah's back and guided her past the gaping nobles up the grand staircase. In their private chambers, Samuel poured a bowl of hot water.

He didn't call for a maid. He took a linen cloth, knelt before Hannah by the hearth, and gently took her freezing, bruised hands in his. The silence between them was thick, heavy with the adrenaline of the day. Samuel washed the mud from her skin with a slow, meticulous tenderness that contrasted sharply with his massive, calloused hands. “You ruined your gown,” he noted quietly, his thumb brushing a scrape over her knuckles. “It was cheap wool,” Hannah whispered, staring down at his dark head.

Samuel looked up. The firelight flickered in his dark eyes. The walls of duty, transaction, and survival were crumbling. “You are a terrifying woman, Hannah,” he murmured.

“Is that a complaint, Your Grace?”

“No.” He pressed a slow, lingering kiss to her raw palm. “It is a prayer of thanks.”

Colin hated the country. He hated the mud. He hated the smell of livestock. and most of all he hated that his older brother had shut off his allowance. He arrived in late February unannounced, riding a horse that looked entirely blown out.

He slipped in through the side doors, avoiding the main hall. He was pale, sweating profusely despite the lingering winter chill, and desperate. He found Hannah alone in the library. She was sitting by the fire, reading a letter from a grain merchant in London.

Colin didn't bother with greetings. He locked the heavy double doors behind him with a sharp click. Hannah didn't flinch. She deliberately folded the letter, placed it on the side table, and looked up at her brother-in-law.

“You look unwell, Colin,” she observed, her tone devoid of sympathy. “Cut the act, you parish rat,” Colin spat, pacing toward her. He stopped a few feet away, his hands twitching at his sides. I need £2,000 tonight, and you are going to write the draft.

No, Hannah said simply. Colin sneered, a desperate, feral look in his eyes. He reached into his coat and pulled out a stack of letters tied with a black ribbon. I did some digging, Hannah.

Real digging, Colin hissed, waving the letters in the air. St. Jude's orphanage. You told Samuel your parents died of fever, but the parish master keeps extensive, if poorly spelled, records. You aren't a legitimate orphan.

Your mother was a destitute dockside woman who left you at the gates because she could not afford to feed an illegitimate child. He smiled, a hideous, triumphant stretching of his lips. Imagine what Almack's will say. Imagine the ton finding out the Duke of Holly married a woman born outside marriage.

Augusta will have a stroke. The scandal will ruin Samuel. It will ruin the Holly name forever. £2,000. Hannah, it's a bargain to keep this quiet.

Hannah looked at the letters. Then she looked at Colin's sweating face. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs at the ankle. “Are you quite finished?” she asked.

Colin frowned, confused by the utter lack of panic. “Did you not hear me? I will ruin you.” “You won't,” Hannah said, standing up. She walked over to the mahogany desk, unlocked the top drawer, and pulled out a thick legal looking folder.

She dropped it on the desk with a heavy smack. “While you were busy bribing an old workhouse master for gossip, Colin, I was auditing the family trust.” Hannah rested her fingertips on the folder, specifically the trust set aside for her sister Clara's dowry, a trust that required two signatures to access.

Yours and the late Mr. Finch's. Colin's face went the color of spoiled milk. The letters in his hand drooped. Finch was very meticulous, Hannah continued, her voice cold and even.

“He kept duplicate receipts of the money he funneled out of Clara's trust and handed directly to you to cover your losses at White's. £15,000 over four years. Colin, you stole your own sister's future to pay for your card games.” Colin took a step back, hitting the edge of a bookshelf. “You can't prove that.”

“Finch is gone. Finch is currently sitting in a debtor's prison in York, singing like a canary in exchange for a lighter sentence,” Hannah said. She picked up a single sheet of paper from the folder. “I also took the liberty of contacting your current creditors, the syndicate in Covent Garden.”

They were known for brutal collection methods. Colin swallowed audibly. He looked like he might vomit. “I bought your debt from them yesterday morning,” Hannah said, her voice dropping to a terrifying quiet register.

“I used the surplus money I saved this winter to purchase your promissory notes. So you see, Colin, you don't owe the syndicate anymore. You owe me.” Colin stared at her, utterly paralyzed. The realization crashed over him like a falling anvil.

He had tried to blackmail a woman with rumors. She had blackmailed him with an iron cage. “You're a monster,” he whispered. “I am an accountant,” Hannah corrected smoothly.