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“What in the hell?” The duke’s irate voice reached him just before the man’s shadow crossed in front of the open doorway. Caleb watched as his eyes registered the figure in the room. “Montgomery? Damn it, man, there’s a smoking room?—”

The duke took another step into the room. His words cut off as he took in the whole picture, his eyes darting around and cataloguing details. Caleb’s pose. The still open drawer. The papers spilled out onto the desktop.

“You went through mythings?” he demanded, drawing himself up, preparing to wield his outrage. “How dare?—”

“No.” Caleb’s word was a brick wall. He inclined his chin at the chair across from the desk. “Ye’ll sit and ye’ll give me answers, or else I will force ye to do so, do ye understand me?”

Graham’s face split into a sneer. “I do not know where you get the audacity to come in here and make demands afterbreaking inandstealing from me.”

Caleb’s body thrummed with barely contained rage as he ground out his cigar right on the hard wood of the table, purposefully ignoring the ashtray sitting only inches away that was clearly designated for this very use.

The duke’s strangled sound of anger was cut off when Caleb rounded the desk, grabbed his father-in-law by the cravat, and punched him hard across the jaw.

The duke’s head snapped to the side and his weight sagged in Caleb’s hold. For a moment, Caleb worried that he’d knocked the man unconscious—that would be inconvenient, if not a little satisfying—but when he dropped the duke into the chair, he saw that the man’s eyes were open, even if his head was lolling a little.

Caleb leaned back against the edge of the desk, faintly recalling when he’d used this same pose to try to intimidate his new wife.

Well, he thought with a bitter smile. This was going to goverydifferently.

“I will repeat myself in case I knocked what little sense ye have right out of your head,” he said. “I am going to ask ye questions and ye are going to answer them.”

There were dozens of questions that Caleb wanted to pose, truly, but he knew his time was limited. So he went with the most important one.

“Why did ye do it, then?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the duke insisted, cradling his bruised jaw in one hand, trying to push himself to his feet with the other.

Caleb hit him again, this time on the other side of the face. The older man collapsed back into the chair like a marionette with cut strings.

Caleb’s right hook wasn’t quite as strong as his left hook, so the duke recovered a bit more quickly.

“I don’t have to stand for this,” he snarled. “I’m calling for hel?—”

This time, Caleb socked him in the gut, putting an end to that.

While Graham gasped for air, Caleb grabbed him by the neck again and slammed him against the wall. It was laughably easy; Graham had that fashionable, slender build, but he was notably lacking in physical strength.

Caleb leaned in close, crowding the man.

“This is the last time I’m going to ask ye,” he said, a violent smile spreading across his face. “I daenae really need answers, ye ken. Ye’ve left proof enough in your papers over there. So if I happen to kill ye?” He shrugged. “I’ll recover.”

True alarm flickered in Graham’s eyes at last, but the rat still tried to argue.

“Grace will never forgive you,” he croaked.

Caleb laughed humorlessly. “Won’t she?” he asked. “I rather think she would—and that’s even before I tell her everything.” He cocked a fist and watched as Graham’s eyes, moving slightly sluggishly, tracked the movement.

Caleb paused until he felt the threat was sufficiently clear.

“I’ll give ye one last chance, then,” he said. “Tell me: why did ye have yer daughter abducted?”

CHAPTER 25

Caleb saw the moment the fight went out of Graham. The man wasn’t built for a fight, and for all his grand words about weapons and power, he was, like most bullies, a coward beneath it all.

“She was just supposed to be bloody useful for once,” Graham spat. “That’s the thing about daughters. They’re only good for being used. That’s what they’refor.”

Caleb threw the man back into the chair with force, since the only other option was to break all his bones, and Graham likely wouldn’t be able to continue confessing through all the screaming, if Caleb chose that route.