Page 73 of An Inconvenient Duke

“I didn’t tell you that I’d sought out Hartsham because you can’t be anywhere near the trap we’re setting for him,” he explained.

She wiped her whiskey-wet lips with the back of her hand. “What trap?”

He took back the whiskey. “I’ve arranged for him to deliver a woman from the brothel to me, to Brandon Pearce’s town house. Once she’s there, Clayton Elliott will question her, and we’ll gather enough information for Home Office agents to search Hartsham’s properties for more evidence of blackmail, which will hopefully be enough to arrest him.” Staring down into the glass, he couldn’t look at her as he explained, “But Hartsham has to believe I’m in earnest about committing all kinds of debauched activities with this woman, the kind that he could use to blackmail me, or it won’t work. The presence of a society lady like yourself would undermine all of that.”

Worse. If Hartsham had spies watching her or the house, he would know that she came here to speak to him—him, not Claudia, whom his men would have known was away for the afternoon. Her presence here was already enough to scuttle their plan and convince Hartsham that Marcus had lied to him, that he was being herded into a snare. If the earl realized it, he would slip away before they could capture him.

Eagerness shone on her face. “I want to help with—”

“Absolutely not. You are to stay away from Hartsham and Charlton Place until it’s all over, understand?” He cupped her face in his palm to punctuate his words as he added solemnly, “And I want you to stop working with Nightingale.”

She smiled to reassure him, but he wasn’t at all put at ease when she said, “There’s no reason to pause the network’s activities. Nightingale won’t be in your way. Hartsham has nothing to do with us. Beatrice hasn’t been involved for months, and whomever Elise was helping, that was two years ago and—”

He silenced her with a touch of his lips to hers. “Not pause,” he corrected, caressing her jaw with his thumb to ease the sting of what he was asking of her. “Stop it completely.”

A haunting look of betrayal crossed her beautiful face. She repeated his words back to him, “Absolutely not.”

She backed away from him, and he felt the growing distance opening like a chasm between them. But there was no help for it. Hewouldkeep her safe. At all costs. Including Nightingale.

Not breaking eye contact, she gave a faint shake of her head. “I’m sorry, Marcus, but I won’t do that.”

“Damnation, Danielle!” Frustration burned in his gut that she so adamantly kept putting herself into harm’s way. “Someone wants us dead, and we’re not certain that Hartsham is working by himself. He might very well have connections to Scepter. Your work with Nightingale is causing problems for him—forthem—and they want to end it by putting you into the ground, the same way they ended my sister.” Her eyes glistened when he added hoarsely, “They’ll succeed, too, unless you stop.”

The blood drained from her face, taking with it that beautiful flush in her cheeks. “What you’re asking me to do…I can’t,” she whispered. “I won’t do—”

“Why?” he demanded. Concern swelled inside him so strongly that he pulsed with it, along with a growing sensation he wasn’t at all used to—helplessness. “Whyare you so set on endangering yourself? You’re willing to sacrifice your reputation, your position—for God’s sake, yourlife—”

“Because of Harriett!” she blurted out, the words coming in a tumbling, angry rush. “I’m doing this because of my aunt and all the women like her.”

That stunned him, and he loosened his hold enough that she could pull her arm away and step back. She stared at him as if she couldn’t believe herself what she’d just admitted to him.

He waited silently for an explanation, but then dreaded it when it finally came.

“The viscount used to beat her.” The intensity of her whisper matched the fierceness of her cry only moments before. “Sometimes so badly that she couldn’t get out of bed.”

Emotions warred inside him, disbelief at what she was saying yet an overwhelming need to trust her. He treaded carefully by countering gently, “I knew Viscount Bromley. He was a good man.”

“They all are.” Bitterness dripped off her tongue. “In public. Around their friends and society acquaintances. Even in front of the servants. They never leave marks anywhere anyone might see, are always so careful to hide what they’ve done. Long-sleeved dresses and buttoned-up spencers can hide so very much…” She jabbed up her chin as the frustrated anger inside her grew visible. “Even if they make a mistake and in their anger strike a blow somewhere visible, the women will claim they were clumsy and knocked into a piece of furniture, tripped on a path, burned themselves while stirring up a fire…”

As the words strangled in her throat, he saw her swelling tears, and he ached for her. “Danielle—”

“That good man you knew beat Harriett to within an inch of her life.”

When he froze at the harshness of that, she took the glass of whiskey from him and drank down a large swallow, one that left her coughing and the back of her hand pressed to her lips.

She blinked hard to gather herself before she continued. “He’d been beating her for years, since shortly after they’d married, but she couldn’t leave him—she had no property or money of her own to live on,” she rasped out between her fingers, her hand still pressing at her lips. “All that transferred to the viscount. As it does with all women, in all marriages.” Her voice lowered to a rasping whisper, so intense that it twined around his spine with every word. “And the Church was culpable when they told her that her role as a wife was to be subjugated to her husband, to obey him in all things…when they told her that her husband wouldn’t beat her if she were a better wife.”

Her hand shook so badly that the remaining whiskey splashed in the glass. She had to close both hands around it to keep it still.

“Divorce was impossible,” she continued quietly. “It takes an act of Parliament, which means money and connections, and what woman has enough of either of those to secure one? Even then, a man can divorce his wife on grounds of adultery, but a wife has to prove not only adultery but also cruelty. What woman wants to bring even more shame and anguish upon herself by publicly admitting that her husband not only committed adultery but also beat her?” She raised the glass to her lips for a comforting swallow. “How does a woman even prove grounds for cruelty at all when English law gives a husband the right to beat his wife?”

“There are no laws that make that legal,” he interjected quietly. “Those men are not protected in the courts.”

“There are no laws that make itillegaleither.” Her hand clenched the glass so tightly that her fingers turned white. “Show me a man anywhere in England who was sentenced to gaol for beating his wife. I dare you to, because I know you can’t.”

She set the glass onto the desk, then buried her shaking hands in her skirt. It ripped his heart in two that she wouldn’t let herself reach for him and the comfort he could give her. That he knew she would push him away if he tried.

“Husbands are seldom arrested for wife beating, and if they are, then the judges always find in favor of the husband. They rule that it’s the husband’s right as a male guardian to beat a woman in his care if she deserves it.” A bitter laugh at the brutal absurdity of that fell from her lips. “If shedeservesit…as if any living creature deserves to be abused! As if women are nothing more than animals to be beaten into submission, until they either die or their spirit breaks completely. Good God! How do we continue to let this happen?” She gestured in frustration at him. “We wage war against French tyrants but let Englishmen reign unchecked within our own houses!”