She Slapped England’s Most Feared Duke… Then He Refused to Let Her Go

Chapter 13

London adored redemption almost as much as it adored scandal.

Within a week, every newspaper in the capital carried the same headline: FRAUD IN THE EAST INDIA COMPANY EXPOSED. Sir Edmund Graves had been arrested. The forged documents had been uncovered. And two names, once ruined, were publicly restored: Thomas Fairmont. Henry Karstair.

The truth spread through drawing rooms and clubs with breathtaking speed. Men who had once whispered accusations now spoke with admiration. Ladies who had once pitied the disgraced mathematician now praised his brilliant daughter. Society had changed its mind, as it always did — swiftly, noisily, and with a total lack of shame about the speed of the conversion.

Isabelle read the papers in Aunt Margaret’s parlor, over toast and tea, and cried into her hands until the ink ran in her palms.

But Isabelle Fairmont no longer belonged to that world. Not as a governess.

After the scandal, Lady Harrington had politely explained, over tea, that the household required “less attention from the public eye” — which meant, in the careful language of her class, that a governess whose name was now on every tongue in London was a liability the family could not afford. She had been very gracious about it. She had offered a reference, and a carriage, and the promise that Charlotte would be “so sad to see her go.”

Isabelle had accepted all of it, and quietly left Harrington House.

Now she lived in Bloomsbury with Aunt Margaret. A smaller life. A quieter life. She had no position, no fortune — only her father’s name, newly polished, and a reputation that swung weekly between scandalous and heroic depending on which drawing room remarked on it.

Yet, for the first time in years, it was a life she had chosen for herself.

That afternoon, the sun warmed the small garden outside the townhouse. Isabelle sat beneath the climbing roses in a chair with a fraying cushion, reading one of her father’s old mathematics journals — the margins dense with his handwriting, the equations beautiful as sheet music. Peace felt unfamiliar. But welcome.

Bees moved through the roses. A few doors down, someone’s cook was singing. The world, it appeared, had decided to be ordinary.

Then Aunt Margaret appeared in the doorway.

“My dear?”

Isabelle looked up. “Yes?”

“There’s a gentleman here to see you.” The pause was delicate. “A very determined one. He insisted it is a matter of great importance.”

Isabelle closed the book slowly. “A gentleman?”

“A very handsome one,” her aunt added, with the faintest smile, “who has been walking past this house twice daily for a week, pretending to admire the roses. It is either a courtship or a very strange obsession with our chrysanthemums.”

Isabelle’s heart performed something complicated in her chest.

“Is his name Dominic?”

Her aunt blinked. “Yes, actually.”

A small laugh escaped Isabelle — half joy, half nerves. “Please let him in.”

Dominic Karstair entered the small parlor moments later, and he looked — strangely — nervous.

Not the confident aristocrat London knew. Not the sharp-eyed strategist who had stalked a forger through the dark. Just Dominic, holding his hat in both hands like a schoolboy awaiting judgment, his collar slightly askew, his eyes fixed on her face as though she were the last light in a long winter.

“Miss Fairmont.”

“Viscount.”

For a moment, neither spoke. Then Isabelle gestured toward the sofa.

“You look as though you are about to face a duel.”

Dominic laughed quietly — the real laugh, the one she had come to know, the one he gave her and almost no one else. “Possibly worse.”

He sat. She sat. The parlor walls seemed to lean in, listening.

“I spoke with your aunt,” he said.

“You did?”

“Yes. At length. She is a formidable negotiator.” He swallowed. “She informed me that if I intended to ruin your peace again — her words — I must first prove my intentions are honorable, and that she would be watching from the kitchen window at all times, and that she has a cleaver.”

Isabelle’s lips curved. “She is very protective. As she should be.”

“She also said—” Dominic inhaled slowly, and set his hat down on the table like a warrior laying down his shield. “She also said that you have spent five years fighting for someone else’s name, and that if anyone in this city was going to ask for yours, they had better be prepared to fight for it every day of their life.”

Isabelle’s eyes went warm. “Did she say all that?”

“She did. I agreed with all of it.”

Then he stood.

Before Isabelle could react, he dropped to one knee.

Her breath caught. “Dominic —”

“I know the proper order of things,” he said, and his voice had gone low and steady and sure, “was already ruined by espionage and political conspiracies and a governess who slapped me in front of half of London. I know the correct procedure is to ask one’s family, and secure the permission of one’s elders, and make a formal call, and stand a formal distance, and wait a formal length of time.”

He opened a small velvet box.

Inside rested a delicate gold ring — a band of soft, old gold, set with a single clear stone the color of winter sun on ice.

“But I spent three nights watching you decipher cyphers by firelight,” he said, “and I spent three more trying to write you a letter I was too much of a coward to send. And I have decided that five years of stolen time is enough.”

His eyes met hers.

“Miss Isabelle Fairmont. Will you allow me to court you properly?”

The question hung in the quiet room like a held breath.

From the kitchen came the clatter of a teacup, very loud. Aunt Margaret was clearly listening.

Isabelle’s eyes filled with warmth. “You wish to court me?”

“Yes. Walks in the park?”

“Yes.”

“Awkward tea visits supervised by your aunt?” His mouth twitched. “Yes.”

“Flowers?”

“Many. Chrysanthemums, if they are the coin of this realm.”

She tilted her head. “And if I refuse?”

Dominic smiled. “Then I will return tomorrow and ask again. And the day after that. I am told I am extraordinarily stubborn, and I have learned from an expert.”

Isabelle’s laugh slipped out before she could stop it — bright and startled, the laugh of a woman who had not laughed easily in years.

“You are impossible.”

“Yes.” His eyes were shining. “And stubborn. I learned from the best.”

Something passed between them then — the weight of all the danger, all the secrets, all the nights spent deciphering codes beside candlelight. It was still there, all of it. But now something else had grown stronger. Trust. And something far more dangerous.

Love.

Finally, Isabelle said softly, “You may court me.”

Dominic exhaled as though he had been holding his breath underwater.

“But,” she added quickly, and he froze mid-relief, “you must promise me something first.”

“Anything.”

She leaned closer. “Never lie to me.”

His answer came instantly — no hesitation, no calculation. “Never.”

She studied him for a moment. Then she slipped the ring onto her finger.

The small gold band caught the afternoon sunlight, and the stone threw a blade of light across the parlor wall, across the roses of her father’s journals, across the face of a man who had chosen her — deliberately, absurdly, completely.

Dominic looked at it as though it were the most extraordinary thing he had ever seen.

“Does this mean I may return tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“And the day after?”

“Yes.”

“And the day after that?”

Isabelle laughed. “I suspect you intend never to leave.”

“That is correct.”

He reached for her hand — slowly, as though it were made of glass — and paused. “May I?”

She nodded.

Dominic lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. The touch was warm, and gentle, and entirely different from the formal kiss of a drawing room. It was a promise.

From the kitchen came a very emotional sniff.

“Aunt Margaret,” Isabelle whispered, “is approving.”

“Very much,” her aunt’s voice floated through the door, thick with unspent tears. “And I am not pretending otherwise. You kiss her hand like a man who means it, and that is rare, and I have sharpened my judgment for sixty years to spot the difference.”

Dominic laughed, stood, and helped Isabelle to her feet.

For a moment, they simply looked at one another. Two people who had nearly become enemies. Two people who had almost lost each other to secrets and suspicion. And yet somehow — through all of it — they had chosen the same side.

Dominic brushed a loose strand of hair from her cheek.

“You know something amusing?” he said quietly.

“What?”

“The night you slapped the Duke of Harrington.” His eyes were dancing. “I thought you were the most dangerous woman in England.”

Isabelle smiled. “And now?”

His voice softened. “Now I know you are.”