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

Chapter 4

London did not forgive scandals easily. By the following morning, every drawing room west of the river whispered the same story: a governess, a slap, and the Duke of Harrington smiling afterward.

Isabelle felt those whispers long before she heard them. They had a texture, those rumors — like the scrape of wool against skin, like the too-sweet smell of a room where someone had been crying. They reached her through the servants’ corridor, through the half-heard exchanges of the maids, through the way the footmen had stopped meeting her eyes.

The Harrington breakfast room had never felt colder.

Lady Harrington poured her tea with sharp, deliberate movements — the kind of movements that could, if you watched closely, slice paper. Outside the tall windows, the city of London stretched gray and indifferent, and Charlotte — Charlotte alone in the entire house seemed untouched by the storm her governess had caused — arranged pressed flowers across the tablecloth in patterns of her own invention.

“You have created an extraordinary embarrassment for this household, Miss Fairmont.”

Lady Harrington’s voice was quiet. Far too quiet. Quiet was the danger sign.

Isabelle folded her hands in her lap. “I defended my father.”

“You assaulted my brother.” The teacup clinked into its saucer with a sound like a pistol shot. “In front of the Duke of Wellington’s cousin. And two cabinet ministers. And three ambassadors.”

“He insulted a dead man.”

“Dead men cannot feel insulted, Miss Fairmont. Dukes, however, are notoriously sensitive. And I am the one who must live with the consequences of your temper. I am the one who must explain to society why the woman who teaches my daughter to conjugate French verbs slapped the head of this family.”

Isabelle did not answer. She knew her position perfectly. A governess without fortune. Without family influence. A woman society could discard with a single whisper — she had learned that lesson the year she lost her father, when the invitations stopped, and the friends vanished, and the one person who had been kind to her was the cousin of a housemaid, offering a spare crust of bread and a corner of a fire.

And yet. The Duke had not dismissed her.

The Duke had invited her to his library.

That thought lingered in her mind all morning like a dangerous promise — a match left burning in a locked room, sending up smoke.

Charlotte looked up from her flowers. “Miss Fairmont?”

“Yes, my lady?”

“Are you going to the library tonight?”

Lady Harrington stiffened. “Charlotte—”

But the girl smiled her round, innocent smile. “Uncle William said she must come. He told the butler to prepare the west corridor after dinner.”

The teacup in Lady Harrington’s hand stopped halfway to the table. “He said that.”

Charlotte nodded cheerfully. “And he told the footman to bring the good candles. And the fire.” She tilted her head. “Is Miss Fairmont going to be a codebreaker, Mama? Like the gentlemen in the stories Papa used to read?”

A long silence followed.

Lady Harrington set the teacup down with terrible care. “Miss Fairmont.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“You will attend.”

It was a command dressed as a fact. “I beg your pardon?”

“My brother rarely changes his mind once a decision is made.” Lady Harrington’s gaze sharpened, and something in it had changed — something almost like fear, though Isabelle could not imagine what the sister of the most powerful man in England had to fear from a governess. “And when he becomes interested in something—” She paused. “It is rarely safe for the object of that interest.”

Isabelle held her stare. “I am not afraid of the Duke.”

“That,” Lady Harrington said quietly, “is precisely the problem.”