Page 6 of The Duchess’ Little Miracle

This, she was fairly certain, was the Duke of Norwyn. William Carlton. The man stood locked in place, his hand still anchored across her abdomen, his dark eyebrows drawn together in a fierce line. He tilted his head, his gaze studying every inch of her face.

Looking up at him up close, Seraphina found herself struck by a jarring thought. For someone so remarkably handsome, with such a chiseled jaw and piercing green eyes… for someone who looked like he was sculpted out of a romantic poet’s wildest fantasy, how could he possess such a wicked, sinister soul? It seemed entirely unfair that nature had masked such malice in elegance, allowing a man so beautiful to do something so monstrously evil to a family he had never even met.

“What do you think you are doing here?” he asked. “In my study?”

Seraphina swallowed hard, trying to force her voice into a docile, subservient tremor. “I... I am merely a new maid, Your Grace. I only came in to dust the sideboard and clean the grate. Forgive me.”

The Duke’s gaze didn’t soften, if anything, amusement flickered in his eyes. He didn’t release his grip.

“A maid?” he repeated flatly. “Let us address the errors in that narrative, shall we? First of all, my housemaids do not wear that particular shade of gray, my housekeeper insists on a much darker charcoal. Second of all, unless I have suddenly begun paying my domestic staff a ridiculous fortune, a maid cannot afford the scent of the expensive Attar of Roses that you are currently wearing.”

Seraphina bit her lip, her heart pounding as he leaned a fraction closer. She had not thought about it that morning while she dressed that putting on the perfume Euphemia had gifted her a month ago would be her undoing.

“Third of all,” he continued. “I am exceedingly good with faces, and I have never once seen yours in this household. You are far too pale, as if you have spent your entire life hiding away in dark rooms, entirely untouched by the sun. You look remarkably fragile to be hauling coal buckets.”

Seraphina’s panic flared into a defensive spark. She glared up at him, lifting her chin despite the hand pinning her to the wall. “I am not fragile.”

His grip tightened just enough to remind her of the physical disparity between them. “I will ask you one more time. Who are you, and how did you get into my study? Who are you working for?”

Seraphina felt the stolen newspaper cuttings crinkling against her bodice. Realizing she had no cards left to play except the truth, she looked him dead in the eye.

“I know what you did,” she said clearly.

The Duke froze then. For a single, fleeting second, the mask on him cracked. Seraphina watched as a flicker of shock and calculation crossed his features. She saw the brief, worried tension tighten around his jaw, and a thrill of triumph cut through her fear.

‘I have caught him,’ she thought fiercely.

“I see,” William said, his voice vibrating right through Seraphina’s ribs. “So you think you have caught me out. You think you can walk into my home and hold this over my head?”

“Of course I do!” Seraphina retorted, her chest rising and falling sharply against his arm. She refused to let him see how fast her heart was beating. “You thought you could do it entirely in secret, didn’t you? You thought I would never trace it back to you, that I would just roll over and let you ruin everything. But you left a trail, Your Grace. A very specific, very stupid trail.”

William’s eyes darkened, a sharpness entering his gaze that made Seraphina wonder if she had pushed him too far. He sneered, hiding what looked surprisingly like a flash of panic.

“A stupid trail?” he echoed, his voice dangerously smooth. “What, pray tell, do you intend to do with this information? Publish it? Paste it across the front page of the gazette so the entire Ton can gawk at my private affairs?”

“If you don’t stop, I absolutely will!” Seraphina hissed, glare for glare, her eyes blazing with defiance. She couldn’t believe the absolute nerve of this man, admitting to it so casually. She gently swatted his hand away from her body and stepped forward. “I will write an exposé that will make your noble name a laughingstock from Mayfair to the docks! How dare you do this to us? How dare you target my family? Have we not been targeted enough? We have suffered enough at the hands of the ton, my sister, Euphemia especially, and we did nothing to you!”

“Target your family?” William’s eyebrows shot up. He stared down at her, his entire expression shifting into one of profound bafflement. “What are you babbling about? I do not care who your family is. Alice is my family; you must be mistaken.”

Seraphina blinked, her fury pausing mid-breath. The name stalled her momentum completely. “Who on earth is Alice? I am talking about the letters.”

“The letters?” William repeated, as his confusion deepening, his brow furrowing as he looked at her. “What letters? What do letters have to do with how you found out about Alice?”

“I found out about you because of the letters!” Seraphina said, entirely exasperated. She threw her hands up in frustration, though they only succeeded in hitting the infuriating expanse of his shoulders. “The letters you sent to me. The ones threatening to expose me and drag my sister Euphemia’s new household through the mud. The ones with your private crest embossed directly onto the paper.”

William froze. He stared at her for a long moment as if trying to decipher a foreign language. He stepped back a pace, shaking his head.

“I have never sent you a letter in my life,” he said flatly. “I don’t even know who you are.”

Seraphina arched her eyebrows. “I’m... one of the Byron sisters. For the past year, the ton has talked about my family ceaselessly.”

William crossed his arms. “What?”

Seraphina wanted to explain further, but she was starting to wonder if there was any point to it. “Seraphina Beaumont? Euphemia Vane? Leonora Ashcroft? Three ladies raised by Lady Byron with a... complicated past?”

“Are you unwell?” he questioned so suddenly, it made her swallow. “What does that have to do with me and Alice?”

“Who is Alice?” she retorted.