Page 11 of The Duke’s Man-At-Arms (The Duke’s Guard #11)

L ord Haversham stood in the warehouse hallway staring at the body-sized hole in the door he’d locked behind him hours earlier. “Where in the bloody hell is she?”

“She was here half an hour ago,” the man he’d left in charge guarding his prisoner replied.

Haversham rounded on the man, who alternately stared at his feet and the door to the room that had held the one woman who had spurned him. Anger at losing the angel of the streets nearly choked him. Michaela had rejected him because of some ideal and need to follow in her father’s footsteps. Her beauty and rumored dowry aside, Miss Michaela Colborne was an abomination who tempted him! No other woman had ever wanted to supplant what was a man’s calling—to become a physician and heal others.

Though it had been years since that night when he’d thought to appease her by asking what she dreamed of, mistakenly thinking she’d say him . She had slashed his pride, and the very heart of what made him a man, by confessing her desire to become a doctor like her father. Incensed, he’d struck out at her with vicious words. When she absorbed them, ignoring his words, he’d snapped. Overpowering her with his strength, he showed his superiority the only way he could—taking her by force, using her roughly, swiftly, and without emotion. When he was finished, he lashed out at her again, predicting that no one would have her now. She was damaged goods, and everyone would know of her shame. If she ever dared to speak of what happened between them, he promised that her father would be humiliated, made to share in her ruin.

The emptiness in her once-bright eyes had him regretting his ill treatment of her. But in the next breath, she had gathered her composure around her like an impenetrable suit of armor. In that one moment, his heart blazed with hatred for her that consumed him then…as it did now.

“Find her!” he shouted.

His cohort flinched, nodded, and tripped as he rushed off to do his bidding. Haversham wondered how a mere woman like Michaela could find the strength to continue in the face of ruin. When his anger had cooled, he felt certain that she would never show her face again. Supremely confident that he had put her in her place, he’d dismissed her and never thought of her again. That had been his mistake.

He had been slowly cultivating contacts within the ton , those who shared his views that women were put on this earth to amuse men and appease their needs. Period. They’d carefully selected individuals to deliver the young women who answered their advertisements for honest work in London, spent time speaking to boarding house owners, until they had a handful that were not above earning more coin training innocent women from the country how to please a gentleman’s baser desires.

It wasn’t until recently, when one of his partners in their very lucrative business had been exposed and hauled down to Bow Street before being sent to Newgate, that he’d gathered the information pointing to one individual whose name was revered by some, hated by others. This, he thought, curling his hands into fists…this was how Michaela Colborne had managed to go unnoticed for so many years. Hiding in plain sight during the day, while combing the streets searching for women of her own ilk, with tattered reputations, undeserving of a second chance, at night.

How could I have been so blind to believe that I had conquered her? Bloody hell, I thought by taking the one thing all women waved as a prize before a man they hoped to marry that she would realize she no had no value at all.

Haversham slammed the side of his fist against the doorframe. The shaft of pain went unnoticed, as he realized she still prized her unrealistic dream of healing others. She had succeeded where he had failed, thinking he had demeaned her, conquered her, when she in fact survived and still fulfilled her calling.

“I will find her…and I will make her pay!”

He ached with need, remembering how quickly he’d lost control once he’d used his brute strength to overpower her to take her against her will. He slowly smiled. He preferred an unwilling partner—it heightened his pleasure.

He acknowledged his prey was stronger now, no mere virginal chit. His erection hardened to the point of pain as he imagined her fighting the inevitable… He could not wait to take her again!