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“Indeed, I think it’s important to bring this wedding forward to avoid any further bloodshed,” he continued.

Charles nodded effusively. “I could not agree more. Goodness knows how much blood has been spilled already. I would see it end here, with us.”

Frederick laughed.Loudly. Making sure it would be heard. As loud as a pistol shot and just as deadly for everyone in the room.

“I will do it!” Sophia gasped, desperate to hold off what was coming. “I will do it.”

But her soft voice was drowned out by her uncle’s harsh laughter, and the mocking laughter that joined it, from Samuel and her father. Even when it mattered, no one would listen to her. Even when it could save them, they preferred her silence.

I will do it.

The choice had been made the moment she got down from the saddle.Herchoice, if they had just bothered to ask.

CHAPTER 3

“Idon’t recall saying something humorous, Lord Lynwood.” Thomas turned his steely gaze on the snickering man. Sophia saw his fraying patience in a tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth.

“You don’t find it hilarious that we spill the smallest bit ofyourblood, and you panic so much that you offer marriage to my niece?” Frederick paused to take a sip of his brandy. “It is the greatest joke I have ever witnessed, to see a Pratt running scared at last.”

“Excuse me?” said Thomas.

Clasping her hands together in silent prayer, Sophia wondered if she ought to yell that she would do it, that she would marry Thomas if they would just back down.

Frederick sneered. “You appear to be confused often, boy. I was referring, of course, to your late father, who was brave enoughto vanquish so many of his enemies in honorable combat. Never lost a duel! Isn’t that right? I’m sure he must have shown his sons how to fight properly. It was probably a fluke that your brother lost the duel to my nephew. Yet, here you are, waving a white flag.”

The Dowager Duchess gasped at that, the hiss of her disgust fading into a full five seconds where one could hear a pin drop.

“What?” One could hear Thomas’s teeth grinding through his clamped lips. He looked like a balloon ready to burst.

Frederick sniffed. “You heard me well, boy.”

“You called us in here just to insult my late father and my dear mother in front of me, Lord Lynwood?” Thomas’s voice rolled like thunder in the back of his throat—an animalistic growl to echo the look in his eyes. “Need I remind you of your position? I won’t have mud thrown at me by an earl and a marquess who should know better.”

Oh no.

Sophia surged to her feet as if she could do anything to stop the men. Her mother’s hand closed around her wrist, pulling her back down into the chair.

“Donotinvolve yourself, and do not repeat what you have already said,” Lydia whispered.

But how could Sophia not? Whether the men in her family acknowledged it or not, she was at the center of this.

Frederick crossed the invisible lines that had been drawn, stepping into the space between them. “Oh, you can go and wave your titles somewhere else,Your Grace,” he spat. “Your father may have been an intimidator and a bully, but we will not tolerate that behavior in this house. If you did not want your mother to hear the truth, you should not have brought her with you. It would have meant one less scrub of the floors.”

Oh goodness, no, no, please.

“Howdareyou, you uncivilized pig!” responded the Dowager Duchess, her voice heard for perhaps the first time that afternoon.

Charles puffed out his chest. “I shall not toleratethatsort of thing in this house! You ought to watch your tongue, Madam.”

“Everyone, please! This is unacceptable!” James interjected, trying to defuse the situation.

“And they have the gall to callusbarbarians!” agreed Lydia, also throwing her voice in the ring.

“Not you too, Mother!” added poor James.

“Yes, behold the great lineage of the Kendalls,” Thomas said mockingly. “You offer them a hand in peace, and they spit inyour face. Youbothneed to watch your words, My Lords, and especially how you speak to my mother. Unlike you, we do not silence the women in our household.”

Sophia blinked, an odd feeling cutting through the liquid swirl of panic in her chest. Her gaze flicked to the Dowager Duchess, who had stepped closer to her son, weaving her arm through his. Like she knew that she would be safe there.