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

Chapter 10

Meanwhile, across London, in Bloomsbury, Isabelle Fairmont sat beside a narrow window in her aunt’s modest townhouse, and the folder lay open on the table before her.

The house smelled of bread and tea — a peaceful smell, a safe smell. Aunt Margaret moved quietly in the small kitchen behind her, whistling tunelessly as she set the kettle singing. But Isabelle’s thoughts refused to calm.

Inside the folder: the copies of the East India Company records the Duke had once allowed her to examine. She had not meant to look again. She had meant to leave the entire matter alone — to let the Duke’s investigators, whoever they were, dig wherever they chose to dig, and to keep her own hands clean of it.

Yet curiosity had betrayed her again.

Her fingers trembled slightly as her eyes returned to the signature. Henry Karstair. Dominic’s father. The name repeated again and again beneath the accusations against Thomas Fairmont — her father — in document after document, page after page. And each signature looked identical.

Perfect.

Too perfect.

Forgery. Her mind knew that now. She had known it in the carriage, in the study, and every night since, alone in the attic room under the eaves, tracing the lines with a stolen magnifying glass she kept wrapped in a handkerchief.

The H, identical. The pressure of the stroke, identical. The ink — a composition she had tested with a scrap of her own supply, mixed from lampblack and gum, old-fashioned, no longer used by men who signed official documents.

Every signature on every page had been written with the same pen, the same hand, the same careful tracing, and then aged with heat and moisture to look legitimate.

Her mind knew that now.

But her heart had not yet caught up.

Because even if Dominic’s father had been innocent — even if Henry Karstair’s signature had been forged, same as hers, same as her father’s — the man responsible still belonged to the same world. The same powerful, interlocking, self-protecting world that had destroyed her family. The same world that had let a man die in poverty rather than admit a mistake in its ledgers.

And Dominic himself — the son of that world, the keeper of its secrets, the man who had offered to sacrifice everything for justice, even his own name.

The memory of it made her chest tighten painfully.

Because he had meant it. She knew he had meant it. He had said I still am when she asked if he was willing to lose everything, and the truth had been written all over his face like a wound.

She had fallen in love with the son of the man she suspected of ruining her father. That was the terrible, unnameable truth at the center of her chest — made worse by the fact that she did not yet know if the son knew. Was Dominic’s kindness genuine? Or was he lion and lamb both, charming her toward the truth so his family could bury it a second time?

A knock on the front door shattered the silence.

Isabelle heard it — the solid, servant-less knock of a visitor who expected to be admitted, followed by the shuffle of Aunt Margaret’s slippers across the floorboards. Voices murmured. Then the kitchen door opened.

“My dear.” Aunt Margaret’s voice was gentle, careful. “There is a gentleman asking for you.”

Isabelle’s breath caught. “His name?”

“Viscount Karstair. He looks rather determined.” Her aunt paused. “And rather anxious, though he seems the sort who would rather be drowned than admit it.”

Isabelle closed the folder. Her hands were steady now — that was a skill the years had given her, calm hands for a shaken heart.

“I will see him.”

Dominic stood in the small parlor like a man who had stepped into a different world.

The room was modest: simple furniture, books stacked everywhere, fresh flowers in a ceramic vase — chrysanthemums, bright and stubborn — and a fire burning low in the grate. The sort of place London’s aristocracy rarely noticed, and never visited.

When Isabelle entered, he turned instantly.

For a moment, neither spoke.

She looked different here. Less guarded. Less distant. The house light was kinder than candlelight — it found the red strands in her brown hair, the softness at the corners of her eyes. She was wearing an old gown, mended at the cuff, and somehow he found he preferred it to any silk in London.

“You found me quickly,” she said.

“I had help from the Duke.”

“Ah.” She nodded slowly. “The Duke. Whom you apparently work for, now.”

“Whom I work with,” Dominic corrected, and something in his voice was almost warm. “We have become… partners, of a sort. It was his idea that I should come to you directly.”

Silence settled between them — the kind that could go either way, toward war or toward something else entirely.

Finally, he spoke. “You stopped coming.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Isabelle hesitated. Honesty had been her only armor for five years; she would not put it down now. “Because it became dangerous.”

“For whom?”

“For both of us.” She met his eyes. “I saw the documents, Dominic. The ones the Duke allowed me to copy. Your father’s signature appears on every accusation against mine — dozens of times, perfectly identical, mechanically impossible.”

Dominic was very still. “And you concluded —”

“That my father was innocent, and someone used your father’s name to destroy him. That, or —” She stopped herself.

“Or what?”

“Or your family knew what those documents were, and signed them anyway.”

The words hung in the air like a drawn blade.

Dominic did not flinch. “And yet you did not allow me to explain.”

“Because there is nothing you could say that would change the truth.” Her voice was quiet. “I know what I saw. I have seen those signatures in my dreams for five years.”

He shook his head slowly. “No.” His voice lowered. “You are wrong.”

Isabelle frowned. “What do you mean?”

Dominic reached into his coat and placed a folded document on the table — a yellowed memorandum, creased with age, stamped with the East India Company crest.

“The Duke examined the signatures,” he said. “Officially. By an orders-clerk he trusts, through channels no one can trace back to either of us. And they were forged.”

The words landed in the quiet room like stones.

Isabelle stared at him. “Forged.”

“Yes. The handwriting patterns are identical across dozens of documents — across two dead men’s names. Hers and my father’s.”

Her breath quickened. “That proves imitation.”

“Exactly.” Dominic stepped closer. “My father was not the man who destroyed yours. He was a victim of the same forger — a scapegoat, chosen because his name was powerful enough to make the accusations stick.”

“Then who —”

“Sir Edmund Graves.”

The name struck her like a blow.

“The under-secretary?” Her mind raced. “He handled the original audit records. He had access. Authority. Time.” Pieces slid into place — the complaint in the memorandum, the clerk’s careful words, the initialed E.G. “But we need proof. Real proof, not a memorandum.”

“Yes.” Dominic’s voice was steady. “And you believe I can find it?”

Isabelle looked at him — truly looked, for the first time since he had entered the room. The same man. The same steady gaze. And yet somehow, in the last minute, the world had rearranged itself around them.

“Yes. I believe you can.”

“Why?”

“Because you see patterns no one else notices.”

“That is not the real reason.”

He met her gaze. “You’re right.”

A pause.

“The real reason,” Dominic said quietly, “is that I trust you.”

The words landed softly between them — too softly, dangerously softly, like the first snow on a thread of ice.

Isabelle looked away. “Trust is a fragile thing.”

“Yes. I almost destroyed yours.”

“No.” Dominic’s voice was steady. “You protected yourself. That is not the same thing. And I am asking — I am hoping — that you will believe me when I say I did not know what my father’s name had been used for. I found out four days ago, in a clerk’s complaint, in a box of his old letters. I did not know, Isabelle. I swear it.”

She looked back at him. “And what about you?”

“What about me?”

“You were willing to lose everything for this. Your name. Your position. Your engagement to Victoria Lennox, if there is one.”

His answer came quietly. “I still am.”

Their eyes held — too long, too close.

Finally, Isabelle whispered, “Dominic. If we pursue this, it could ruin you.”

“Yes.” A faint smile touched his lips. “And yet you came here anyway.”

“Because I—” She stopped, breathless. “Because I thought you were the man who—”

“I know what you thought.” His voice had gone soft, almost tender. “And I am asking you to think it no longer.”

The silence between them shifted — warmer, more dangerous.

Then Aunt Margaret’s voice floated from the kitchen. “Tea is ready!”

Both stepped apart as though burned.

Dominic cleared his throat. “Your aunt seems… attentive.”

Isabelle pressed a hand to her racing heart and almost laughed. “She is protecting my reputation. She has been doing it for nine years, and I suspect she intends to keep on.”

“As she should.”

Dominic reached for his gloves. “I will return tomorrow with the Duke. We will gather the Ministry’s original records, and we will lay the truth before you — every page, every signature, everything. If your mathematics confirm the forgery, we take it to the Cabinet. If you find my family guilty—” His voice wavered only slightly. “Then you name it, and I will stand aside, and the scandal will fall where it belongs.”

“Why?” she asked, and the word came out broken. “Why would you do that, Dominic? You are a duke. You can have anything — everything — and you are laying it all at my feet?”

He paused at the door.

“Because,” he said quietly, “my father was innocent. And your father was innocent. And I have spent the last five years of my life surrounded by people who talk about honor the way they talk about furniture — as something heavy, to be moved when inconvenient.”

His eyes met hers.

“I would rather lose everything than become one of them.”

Isabelle felt the words land in her chest like a bell being struck.

“Very well,” she said. “I will help you.”

Dominic’s expression softened — relief, and something deeper, warmer. “I knew you would say that.”

He opened the door. But before he stepped through, he turned back once more.

“Miss Fairmont.”

“Yes?”

“You should know something.” A small smile touched his lips. “I have never been so thoroughly defeated by a governess.”

Isabelle’s cheeks warmed. “And you should know something as well, Viscount.”

“And what is that?”

She met his gaze. “I suspect you have not lost yet.”

Dominic laughed softly — a real sound, warm and surprised. Then he stepped into the afternoon sunlight and was gone, leaving Isabelle standing in the doorway, wondering if the greatest danger between them was no longer the scandal.

But something far more complicated.