Tomorrow morning, my solicitors will freeze every account you possess. I will strip you of your allowance, your carriages, and your staff. I will banish you to the crumbling dower house in Yorkshire, and I will personally ensure you freeze in the winter. The Dowager stared at him. For the first time in his 32 years, Theo saw genuine fear in his mother's eyes.
She realized, too late, that she had pushed the bored, compliant duke too far, and awakened something entirely ruthless in his place. "You would ruin your own mother for a penniless nobody?" she hissed. Theo stood up straight. He looked down at her as if she were dirt on his boot. "You have 24 hours to vacate this house, Mother," Theo said loudly, ensuring every guest heard.
"Leave the diamonds on your dressing table. They belong to my wife." He turned his back on her, walking out of the dining room without a backward glance, leaving the wreckage of his aristocratic life burning beautifully in his wake. The rain began to fall as Theodore Ashdown walked out of the Westmore mansion.
It was not a gentle, cleansing rain. It was London rain. A freezing, acidic drizzle that pulled the soot from the chimneys and plastered it against the skin. He stood on the pavement of Park Lane for a long moment, ignoring the waiting carriage, letting the cold water hit his face. He had just detonated a bomb in the center of his own life.
The reverberations were already spreading. Tomorrow, the clubs would talk of nothing else. By Friday, the scandal sheets would be printing poorly drawn caricatures of him. Lady Beatrice would play the deeply wounded victim. Lord Fairfax would likely threaten a duel, realize he was a terrible shot, and settle for demanding a financial settlement for the breach of promise.
Theo did not care. The social architecture of Mayfair felt as flimsy as wet paper. He finally stepped into the hackney cab. "Chancery Lane," he ordered the driver.
It was past midnight. The city was shuttering itself against the weather. By the time the cab rattled to a halt in front of a narrow, respectable brick building, the street was entirely dead. Theo did not knock on the front door. He walked around to the side alley, found a specific iron knocker on a reinforced oak door, and slammed it down three times.
He waited. He knocked again, harder. A bolt scraped back. The door cracked open, revealing a sliver of yellow candlelight and the deeply unamused face of Mr. Arthur Penhaligon. The solicitor was a man who looked exactly like his profession.
Sharp, dry, and entirely devoid of sentiment. He wore a heavy dressing gown and a nightcap, though his eyes were instantly alert. "Your Grace," Penhaligon said, his voice flat. He did not seem surprised. When one managed the legal affairs of a dukedom, midnight visits were an occupational hazard.
It is raining. I am aware, Penhaligon. Let me in. Penhaligon stepped back. Theo walked into the narrow hallway, shedding his wet coat and leaving it on a wooden peg.
He followed the solicitor into a study choked with the smell of old parchment, binding glue, and stale port. "I require a series of immediate legal actions," Theo said, not bothering to sit. He moved to the small fireplace, holding his hands out to the dying embers.
"First, the Dowager Duchess is to be stripped of all financial access. I want her signature invalidated at the Bank of England, Coutts, and every private lending house in the city. Her allowance is severed. Her credit is zero." Penhaligon walked over to his desk, struck a match, and lit an oil lamp. He pulled out a fresh sheet of foolscap.
He did not ask why. He simply dipped his pen. "Effective when?"
"Effective yesterday. By morning, I want it so that she cannot buy a loaf of bread on my credit."
"Done," Penhaligon murmured, writing in a rapid, spidery script. "And the properties?"
"She is banished to the dower house in Yorkshire. The staff there is to be reduced to a skeleton crew. Three servants, no carriage, no horses. If she attempts to enter any other Westmore property, she is to be removed by the constabulary as a trespasser."
Penhaligon paused. He looked up, the quill hovering over the paper. The cynicism in the older man's eyes met the absolute coldness in Theo's. "Your Grace, to cut off a Dowager Duchess so violently, she will not go quietly. She will retaliate. Have you considered the leverage she might possess?"
"She possesses forged naval ledgers implicating the late Baron Miller in treason," Theo said flatly. The words tasted like ash. "She has threatened to turn them over to the Crown Magistrate to destroy his family."
Penhaligon did not flinch. He carefully placed the pen back in its inkwell. He understood the game now. It was not a family squabble. It was mutually assured destruction.
"Forged ledgers," the solicitor repeated slowly. "If they are well executed, the Crown will not care if they are fake. They will hang the baron first and ask questions later. The Admiralty is hungry for a scapegoat this year."
"I will dismantle the forgery," Theo said, "but I needed to cut off her power first. She operates through my wealth. I am removing the weapon from her hand."
"And the annulment, Your Grace?"
Theo closed his eyes. The memory of Josephine shivering in that rotting room hit him again. "Burn it. Shred it. The annulment was coerced. Josephine is my wife."
She is currently residing at the Somerset Square townhouse. She is pregnant with my heir. Penhaligon's eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. That was the equivalent of a shocked gasp from anyone else.
"I see. Then we must draft a new will immediately, establishing the child's legitimacy and naming you as the sole executor of its welfare, should you meet an untimely end at the hands of Lord Fairfax or an angry Dowager."
"Draft it," Theo commanded.
"I will sign it before I leave." An hour later, Theo walked back out into the freezing rain. His pockets were lighter, his legal standing radically altered. He had stripped his mother of her armor. Now he had to go hunt for her sword.
When the carriage finally returned him to Somerset Square, the house was entirely silent. Graves was asleep in a chair in the foyer, an ancient flintlock pistol resting on his lap. The old butler jolted awake as Theo entered, smoothly hiding the weapon beneath a copy of The Times. "Is she sleeping?" Theo asked quietly, shrugging off his damp coat.