Page 89 of An Inconvenient Duke

“The choice is yours on how to proceed,” Clayton said quietly but with unquestioning resolve. “I’ll do whatever you ask of me, General. So will every man here.”

Danielle bit her lip in concern. Waving off Pearce’s attempt to keep her in place, she started across the warehouse toward him.

The decision clawed at his heart, more fiercely with every step she took toward him…Elise or Danielle. Justice for his murdered sister or protection for the woman he loved. The same woman who had filled the emptiness in his soul and gave him purpose, who even now chased away the darkness that pushed in around him and threatened to suffocate him with what Clayton had revealed.

She loved him and trusted him. He would never betray her.

“There is no choice,” he answered firmly. Then he stepped forward to greet her.

Just as her hands slid warmly into his, he saw Hartsham rise to his feet on the other side of the warehouse. He lunged at the nearby guard and wrestled the pistol out of the man’s hand. He placed the muzzle at his temple.

“For Scepter!” he yelled, then pulled the trigger.

Twenty-Seven

One Month Later

“If we keep very quiet and stay right here,” Marcus murmured into Dani’s hair as she snuggled against him on the settee in the library at Charlton Place, stealing a precious few moments to themselves, “maybe no one will notice for the rest of the evening that we’re missing.”

She laughed and tilted back her head to smile up at him. “And flee from our own engagement dinner? I don’t think our families would like that very much.”

“Ourfamily,” he corrected. “One family now. And they’re going to have many opportunities for after-dinner conversations with us over the years. Tonight, I want you to myself a bit longer.”

Hmm. She wasn’t sure that her aunt and Claudia would agree with his logic, and certainly not poor Mr. Trousdale, who was currently alone with the two women. They were undoubtedly terrifying him with ongoing wedding plans that seemed to become more exotic and extravagant with each passing day. The last Dani had heard, Claudia was considering the theme of a Venetian masquerade in Hyde Park, complete with gondola rides on the Serpentine.

Dani’s engagement dinner tonight was the complete opposite and very purposefully so. Given how overwhelming and perilous her life had been lately, she preferred a calm evening at home in which she and Marcus could finally—and formally—announce their engagement to their loved ones. Of course they wouldn’t marry until after Claudia, and then in a small ceremony with only close friends and family in attendance. Despite Marcus’s attempts to convince her to let him secure a special license so they could be married within the week, Dani stood firm. Claudia deserved this special time when she was the center of attention, and Dani didn’t want to take one bit of that away from her.

He took her hand and laced his fingers through hers. “Besides, it’s nice to have a private moment with you after dinner.”

Thank God for that. This was the first time they’d had dinner together since that terrible night all those weeks ago, when Claudia had surprised the intruder in Elise’s room. So much had happened since then that Dani could barely fathom it all. Her fingers tightened in his. She couldn’t have gotten through these past few weeks without Marcus’s strength to support her.

Although she still suffered nightmares over the last glimpse she’d had of him, Hartsham was dead and buried, his darkest secrets right along with him. Any attempt for more justice for his victims had been forced to stop. Under English law, neither a dead man nor his estate could be pursued for his crimes, and no one among the King’s Counsel or on the Committee for Privileges saw a need to interfere with the earldom being passed to a younger brother and to Beatrice and her daughter inheriting the non-entailed properties, as set out in his will. When Brandon Pearce sent word of the government’s decision, Marcus surprised her by accepting it without argument, his fight ending. He’d never told her why he’d let go of pursuing public justice for Elise, why he’d decided to allow everyone to continue to believe that she’d died from a fall from her horse.

In her heart, Dani was relieved, because now they could finally let go of the past and move on. Together.

The other lives Hartsham had worked to destroy were slowly being pieced back together. Venus’s Folly closed without warning; the building where it had been located was abandoned. And then there was Mrs. Slater, the woman Dani had once trusted enough to consider bringing into Nightingale. In the end, she’d gotten away—of a sort. The carriage in which she was being transported to Newgate was attacked. Merritt Rivers, who had been escorting her and had gotten caught up in the attack, reported that the men who stopped their carriage took the woman against her will, with her fighting and screaming while they shoved her into a second carriage and drove off into the night. Merritt had been unable to put up a chase. Neither she nor her husband had been seen since that night, although Home Office agents were still scouring the country for them, convinced that Scepter was behind their disappearance. Dani knew they would never be found.

The same would have happened to the woman at the town house, too, if Clayton hadn’t thought to spirit her away before he went to the warehouse, hiding her under guard in the last place Scepter would think to look for a prostitute—in the bedroom of the Right Reverend William Howley, Bishop of London.

So far, Scepter had left her and Marcus alone, but she feared that this wouldn’t be the last they’d hear of them.

“I have something for you.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the backs of her fingers. “I’ve been waiting all evening for the right moment to give it to you.”

“A gift?” Her chest panged with love at how wonderful he was. “You really shouldn’t have.” Truly…but she was also dying to know what it was.

“Not only should I do this, but I should have done it long before now.” He reached into the small opening of the fob in his trousers. “If I wasn’t such a nodcock, I would have done this the first evening I saw you again, right there in the garden at the party, looking so beautiful.”

Her throat tightened with emotion, yet she managed to tease, “By the glow of Roman torchlight?”

His lips pulled into a lazy half grin that sent her pulse spiking the way it always did. Knowing better than to answer that, he took her hand and slipped a ring onto her finger. “For you, my love.”

She stared at it, unable in her surprise to find her voice. Oh, it was simply beautiful…a gold band scattered with tiny pearls and delicate diamonds that glittered in the firelight.

“It was my mother’s engagement ring,” he said quietly. “She’d want you to have it.”

“I can’t accept this,” she whispered, although she stroked a fingertip longingly over it. “It belongs to Claudia or Pippa…” And breaking her heart that such a beautiful symbol of love could never be hers.

“My birth mother’s ring,” he clarified. “Claudia and Pippa have enough special pieces from their own mothers. This ring is meant for the woman I marry. It belongs to you, my darling.” He lifted her hand to place a kiss to the ring. “Now and always.”