“My mine. I was going to tell you, but I wanted to wait until everything was in place.” This was one piece of good news. “I discovered I had inherited an estate with a mine operating on part of it. I decided to make it into a model mine. We finished the arrangements not quite two weeks ago.”

His jaw hardened and he stared at her with a stern look. “Eleanor, no. I won’t have it. You will give the operation back to the mining concern immediately. I will not have your life in danger for an experiment.”

He would not what?

A surge of anger rushed through her. She stopped walking and stared up at him. She had to have heard him incorrectly. “I beg your pardon. Surely you did not just say what I thought I heard. ‘You won’t have it?’ Let me tell you, my lord, that it is my property, and under the settlement agreements it will remain my property, and I will run it the way I see fit.”

His face flushed and his eyes bore into her. “You will be my wife and will do what I say.”

If he’d slapped her, she could not have been more shocked. How could she have been so wrong about him? If he changed his mind at the first sign of a little trouble, she could not trust him. “In that case, perhaps we should not be wed. You clearly want a wife who is more malleable than I.” Eleanor glanced over her shoulder. “Turner.”

“Right here, my lady.”

The footman gave John a sympathetic look as he hurried after her.

Bloody hellhounds!

He raked his finger through his hair, knocking off his hat.

Hell and damnation!

She was stubborn and willful—the sight of the ruffian bleeding from her sword had scared him to death—and too damn brave. She had to understand that he could not allow her to—to do what? Protect herself? Still, if she hadn’t decided to interfere with a mining operation, she would not have been in danger. Noticing he was still walking toward Hatchards, he turned around. It was one thing for a group of gentlemen to change how a mine operated. But a lady? And a young lady at that? Yet that was not how she had been raised. How was he going to keep her safe? Then part of what she said finally sank in. Had Eleanor just called off the wedding? She could not. She might be carrying his child.

This couldn’t be happening. He needed her. He needed to think. John headed home but found his mother and sister in the hall when he arrived. That reminded him that Aurelia had given Eleanor the mining information. “Well, well, look who we have here. My sister. The person who just got my betrothed”—if she was still his betrothed—“attacked.”