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Stange—but then a part of my mind recollected that the door to the study had been closed when I’d left, and was now partly open. I stepped back into the corridor, along the passage, and into the room.

There she was, in the armchair, her back to me. Her hair was still piled up into a messy bun, the shawl still around her.

“Briar?” My voice was a little more hesitant. This wasn’t like her. The Briar I knew would have turned to greet me, yelled out if she was working on something, anything.

She wouldn’t have just…ignored me.

My heart skipped a beat as I stepped over to the desk and placed the brown paper wrapped parcel upon it. I almost missed the desk, my gaze was so focused on Briar.

What the hell was going on?

“Briar, has something happened?” I said, shrugging off my greatcoat and throwing it on the sofa as I stepped hastily toward her.

As I came around the side of the armchair, I saw her face—and that was when I knew something was wrong.

Briar looked…I couldn’t understand it. Sad, but also furious. Bitterly disappointed about something.

My heart sank, my lungs constricting painfully. “Was it your advisors—did they call on you? Did they not like your latest proposal? Were they?—”

“No one came to call,” Briar said quietly. “I received a letter.”

I sank slowly onto an armchair opposite her. It didn’t feel like the right time to push aside the ledger she was clutching and sit next to her. Somehow, I could see Briar wouldn’t appreciate that—though why, I had no idea.

“A letter?” I repeated. “From your advisors?”

From what Briar had said, it wasn’t like them to do something like that. Perhaps her Queen’s Head scheme had been foiled by someone else making a counter bid. Perhaps the place with the large pool had been bought by someone else before Briar could put the final touches to her financial proposal.

Whatever it was, it was bad. I’d never seen her look like this.

Briar swallowed, then met my eye. “It wasn’t from my advisors.”

“Not from your advisors?” I said, confused. “Then?—”

“It was from your friend.”

I froze.

My friend?

It had to be Georgiana. She might want me to sign something, I guess, ahead of this wager that they kept talking about—but then, why would they? Hadn’t the arbitration been enough?

And why, asked my beleaguered mind, finally catching up, would they have written to Briar? Surely they would?—

My heart became ice. Why had Georgiana written to Briar?

“Whatever Georgiana said,” I tried to say calmly, “I wouldn’t?—”

“It wasn’t Georgiana. It was Delilah Rotherwick,” said Briar, her gaze sharp as she stared at me.

I blinked. “Lilah?”

Lilah was perhaps the friend who held a grudge longer, sure, but she was also my sister-in-law. True, the legal connection may have been severed when my wife died, but why on earth would she be bothering Briar? It didn’t make sense—unless of course, they were looking for Briar to join the wager.

My heart relaxed and the tension that had been building in my shoulders melted away. “If Lilah wants to talk wagers, that’s excellent news! I didn’t even consider?—”

“She didn’t want to talk about a wager.”

I should have known by the tone of Briar’s voice that it was bad news, but I couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t allow myself to believe it.

What Briar and I had, it was so good. Better than anything I could have imagined, better than I deserved. It wasn’t going to fall apart before me…was it?

“Here,” Briar said quietly, picking up a letter and passing it over to me.

I could hardly hear anything except the thumping of my pulse in my ears. Fine, it was bad news. The question was, how bad?

I realized just how bad the moment I read the first few paragraphs.

And so when I discovered through my informants that my friend has inveigled himself not only into your confidences but your very home, I wanted to send you a warning.

Do not trust Peregrine, the Duke of Markham.

Bitter bile gathered in my mouth and it was all I could do to swallow it down.

Lilah. She couldn’t let it go, could she?

By the time I had reached the bottom of the letter, I was ready to throw it across the room and never see my family again. What did I need them for? I had Briar.

But when I looked up, I saw to my instant dismay that I was wrong. I didn’t have Briar. Not anymore.

“You—you’re not going to believe all this, are you?” I said hotly.

Yet my anger didn’t spark the effect I wanted. Briar didn’t forcefully disagree, tell me that she would never doubt me, and that she was furious at the boldness that Lilah showed by writing such nonsense.

No. Instead, Briar just looked at me, a coldness in her eyes that I had never seen before.

“I checked my accounts, Peregrine,” she said quietly. “I can’t believe it. Two thousand pounds. You thought I wouldn’t miss it?”

I swallowed. Ah. Fine, so the timing hadn’t quite worked out—but that was easily explained away! I could fix this.

“I can explain,” I said calmly. “You see, the thing is?—”

“Stealing from me? Me, Peregrine? Really?” Briar said, rising to her feet, the sudden explosion of energy making me lean back. “You stole from me the very first time we met, and I willed myself to ignore it! I don’t know what I was thinking!”

I cringed at the memory but I rose to my feet too. This could all be explained, all Briar had to do was listen. “I can explain Briar—the thing is, all I wanted was?—”

“Yes, that’s precisely what I thought,” Briar said darkly, stepping back from me. “All you wanted. All you wanted! This was about you. Your ability to get money, your chance to do something, you thought about yourself and no one else!”

“That’s not true!” I said hotly, stepping forward as though being closer to Briar would help me explain. “I told you before, I’d worked on an idea that could?—”

“You’d worked on it, an idea you could—is the only person you think about yourself?” Briar said, shaking her head with wide eyes. “I can’t believe I was so stupid!”

I swallowed. “You’re not stupid, Briar.”

“Really? Because as far as I can see, I allowed myself to be bedded by a rogue, offered him a job after he stole from me, gave him my heart, moved him into my townhouse, then was robbed again,” Briar said in a cold voice I’d never heard before. “Where have I gone wrong?”

Struggling against the desire to defend myself, I tried to take a deep breath. This was about Briar. She was right, I couldn’t make this about me. She was so precious, so important. I wouldn’t let her think I’d?—

“I want the money back, and I want you out.”

I blinked. She couldn’t have said that. “Briar, I?—”

“I should never have trusted you, Peregrine.” Briar said, and she was blinking back tears, and it broke my heart to see her so wretched.

She’d stepped out of the study now, as though keeping as much physical space between us was the only thing keeping her safe.

As if I would hurt her.

“Briar, you have to listen to me,” I said urgently. Somehow all of this happiness, all the joy I’d found with her, was slipping away. “I'm not the same person I was when you met me—I’ve changed!”

“You’ve not changed at all,” Briar breathed, tears glistening in her eyes.

“You are a knave, Markham. You’re the duke who risked it all, and you’ve lost. You are everything you said you didn’t like about yourself, everything you feared.

You’ve just proved yourself to be the worst kind of man, and I want you out. ”

Rage flared in my chest. The injustice of it! If Briar just let me explain: but I never got the chance to explain, did I? My friends hadn’t wanted to hear it, my landlord hadn’t wanted to, and now Briar, the one person I trusted the most in the world.

Well, I shouldn’t have been so surprised. This was what happened.

“Fine. Fine! You want me out? I'm out,” I said, words spilling from my lips before I could stop them.

And there was fiery rage roaring through my veins, a rage I knew I should quell but I couldn’t. It was always the way. No one wanted to trust me, so why should I give them any cause to?

“Pack up my belongings and send it to me, or dump it, I don’t care,” I snapped, grabbing my greatcoat from the sofa and tugging it on.

“Burn it, like you’re burning this down before even trying to understand.

It may surprise you, Briar, but you’ve got this wrong.

Big time. And the moment I walk out that door, it’ll be too late to fix. ”

“Then walk,” Briar said, her eyes unwavering. “Walk, Peregrine.”

For an instant, just an instant, things could have been different. My hand was on the door to the hallway and I could have said something.

But the words didn’t come.

With a guttural growl that revealed more of what I felt than I could put into words, I stormed into the hall, jammed my shoes on, and slammed the door behind me. I didn’t stop to take a breath, it seemed, until I was out on the London pavement, the carriages roaring in my ears.

And then I took a breath.

Now what?