THE DUCHESS' LITTLE MIRACLE

A HISTORICAL REGENCY ROMANCE

THE BROODING DUKES

BOOK FIVE

TIFFANY BATON

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ABOUT THE BOOK

“Help me raise my daughter, and I will find the man who is threatening you.”

After receiving threatening letters for weeks, Seraphina is determined to make them stop. Following her only lead, she sneaks into the estate of the Duke of Rodwell… only to be caught by the man himself.

Having just acquired a “daughter”, a scandal is something Duke William cannot afford. So instead of throwing Seraphina out, he makes her an offer: he will find out who is behind the letters if she helps him raise his child.

Seraphina has never been good with children. Yet somehow, the young girl adores her. Now if only she could figure out why being near the Duke makes her heart beat so strangely…

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CHAPTER ONE

“It is a rather grim structure, Your Grace,” Jameson said, pressing his spectacles up his nose as the carriage swayed to a halt. “Though I suppose one cannot expect architectural splendor from an institution of this... nature.”

William looked at his solicitor, Jameson, for a long moment before answering. His linen collar was slightly damp from the humidity inside the carriage, and his fingers kept twitching against the lock of his briefcase. The man looked even more exhausted and nervous than William felt, his shoulders hunched as though he expected the brick walls of the orphan asylum to collapse on them both.

It was a tedious habit of Jameson, letting his face show every minor worry before a meeting.

“What were you expecting?” William asked. “Blenheim? Were you expecting a grand rotunda? Perhaps a marble fountain in the courtyard to welcome the orphans? It is a charity house in the middle of a damp field. Good god, Jameson.”

Jameson shifted as he tried to adjust his neckcloth. “I only worry given the… fickleness of this situation.”

“How did you even become a solicitor?” William muttered, his eyes narrowing slightly at the man’s fidgeting. “How you managed to pass your law examinations with such a fragile disposition remains an absolute mystery to me, and to think you’ve been doing this for almost twenty years.”

“Do I seem nervous, Your Grace?”

“You are sweating more than a thief at a hanging, and we have not even crossed the threshold. If you lose your composure before we see the headmaster, they will double whatever price they intend to ask of us.”

“We are not yet sure they are asking for anything.”

William scoffed. “I did not travel eight hours to be made a fool of.”

He did not wait for Jameson to find a reply, nor did he wait for the footman to lower the steps. He rolled his eyes, pushed the carriage door open himself, and stepped down into the cold drizzle.

The damp air hit his face, and William stood by the wheel for a moment, forcing a slow breath into his lungs to steady the irritation building from his lower stomach. He absolutely despised long travel, and this particular journey had dragged on for over eight grueling hours, leaving his lower back stiff and his patience entirely worn thin.

It was exactly why he had snapped just now. Hours of confined space, matching Jameson’s jittery breathing and watching him fiddle with that briefcase, had made the entire situation utterly intolerable. Every muscle in William’s body pricked with annoyance at the wasted day, the miserable weather, and the sheer inconvenience of it all.

Still, he tried not to let his temper get the best of him before he even knew what he was dealing with. Flattening his expression, he adjusted his cuffs and prepared to face whatever mess waited inside.

The wet gravel crunched under William’s boots as he crossed the courtyard, Jameson walking a step behind him, seeming to have regained his composure. The orphan asylum’s doors were oak, weathered gray by decades of winters. Jameson knocked once, and then the door opened. William stepped into a drafty entrance hall that smelled strongly of damp wool, boiled cabbage, and cheap lye soap.

A young woman in a wool shawl was already waiting near a sputtering oil lamp. Her hands were tucked tightly into her sleeves, and the moment William’s towering figure blocked the doorway, she froze, her chest hitching in an involuntary breath of alarm.

“Your Grace,” a voice chimed from the shadows of the corridor.

An older woman stepped forward, her black skirts rustling sharply against the floorboards. She had iron-gray hair, a severe posture, and just as her eyes locked onto William, she lowered it almost immediately. William didn’t speak. He simply stood there, dripping rainwater onto the floor, his green eyes tracking her movements.

“I am Mrs. Ayton, the headmistress,” she said. “We... we did not expect you to travel personally, Your Grace. A reply via your solicitor would have —”

“You sent a letter bearing a threat to my family’s privacy, Mrs. Ayton,” William cut in. “You did not invite a correspondence. You invited an appearance, don’t you think? I am here, but I am tired. Let us not waste the daylight.”

“My apologies, Your Grace,” she murmured. “Please, follow me. We thought it best to handle this with the utmost discretion. We wanted to tell you first, you see. Before... well, before news of this nature began to spread to the village or the parish council. A name like yours carries a great deal of weight, and ears are always sharp in these parts.”

“I trust you will keep your tongue behind your teeth, Mrs. Ayton,” William said flatly.

He gestured for Jameson to follow. The air grew progressively colder the further they walked from the main entrance, and from behind the closed doors, William could hear the muffled, collective drone of children reciting lessons... dull, repetitive, and miserable.

“We found a girl, Alice, only three weeks ago,” Mrs. Ayton explained, her footsteps echoing sharply as she hurried to keep ahead of William’s strides. “She was brought to us by a carter who found her wandering near the east crossroads. The poor thing was terribly sick when we first took her in. A lung fever, we feared. She spent the first ten days entirely delirious.”

Mrs. Ayton hesitated, turning a corner toward a sturdier set of doors at the end of the wing. “But once the fever broke and her mind cleared, she became very quiet. Unusually quiet for a child of seven. When we began to question her about her origin, she refused to speak a word to the staff. She simply clutched a small leather pouch around her neck. It wasn’t until a few days ago, when the matron tried to bathe her, that she finally permitted us to see what she was hiding.”

The headmistress stopped before the door, her hand resting on the latch. She turned back to William. “It was the only thing she had left of her parents, Your Grace. She claims her mother gave it to her on her deathbed.”

“Get to the point, Mrs. Ayton,” William said, his voice entirely devoid of patience.

“It is a letter,” she whispered, leaning in slightly as if the very walls might carry the secret away. “A letter written in a hand we could not identify, but sealed with a crest we recognized instantly from the regional tax registries. It bears your family seal, Your Grace. The Norwyn seal. Intact, in red wax.”

Jameson let out a sharp, choked gasp behind William. “Good heavens...”

William did not flinch. His family seal in a place like this was almost certainly a fraud, a desperate attempt by some opportunistic peasant to extort his estate. People lied, forged, and cheated for a fraction of his wealth every day, and he had not traveled eight hours to be swindled by the matron of an orphanage.

“Open the door,” William commanded.

Mrs. Ayton complied immediately, lifting the latch and stepping aside.

The room inside was a small, austere parlor, containing nothing but a plain wooden table, two stiff chairs, and a small hearth that held more ash than actual fire.

Sitting on the edge of one of the chairs was a small girl. Her skin was still pale from her recent illness, her dark hair pinned back in a neat but simple braid that looked too heavy for her small frame. She wore an oversized, scratchy gray wool dress, but despite her meager surroundings, she sat remarkably straight, her hands folded in her lap.

On the table before her lay a single, folded piece of cream parchment. He walked directly to the table, his eyes locking onto the red wax seal.

Christ.

Up close, the fraud he had fully expected to expose simply wasn’t there. There were no sloppy tool marks in the wax, no blurred lines from a cheap lead counterfeit, and the impression was perfectly deep. It was clean.

William didn’t let his expression slip, but a cold silence settled over his chest. He reached down, his long fingers picking up the parchment, and turned it toward the solicitor.

He turned and held it out to Jameson without a word.

Jameson stepped forward, and the nervousness left him the way it always left him when there was something precise to be done. He took the parchment and held it angled toward the gray light of the window. He did not look at the crest itself. His thumb moved instead to the outer rim of the wax, slow, feeling for something a casual eye would never find... a hairline nick pressed into the third chevron by the London engraver who had cut the die, a flaw so small it was invisible unless you knew to look for it, put there precisely so that anyone who knew could look.

He found it.

He held the seal closer and breathed in once through his nose. The wax was not the brittle, cheap kind that crumbled at the edges and smelled of tallow.

He lowered the letter.

“It is entirely authentic, Your Grace,” Jameson said quietly, for William’s ears only. “This is precisely what I feared when the summons arrived. If news of this document starts to spread, if the papers or the parish council —”

“Hush, Jameson,” William cut in and shut his eyes tightly. “Let me handle it.”

William flipped the document over, noting that the parchment wasn’t sealed shut. The wax was split cleanly in two, the bond holding the folds together severed. He turned his gaze toward the headmistress, his eyes flattening into ice.

“You broke the seal,” William said calmly. “What gave you the right?”

Mrs. Ayton visibly shrank, her hands finding the fabric of her apron and gripping it. “Your Grace, I must ask that you understand the circumstances under which the decision was made. The child was brought to us in the dead of night by a carter who had found her at the crossroads, delirious with fever and without a soul in the world who could name her. We did not know if she had family within the parish or beyond it. We did not know if she would survive the week.” She drew a breath. “I searched her effects for anything that might tell us who she was. A parish token. A name sewn into her garments. Anything at all. When we found the parchment, I confess I hesitated. But the child needed a physician, and we had no means to pay for one, and I thought — I hoped — there might be some provision inside.” She looked at him and looked away again. “I broke the seal to establish whether there were funds enclosed for her care. That was the whole of it, Your Grace. I would not have done so otherwise.”

“A gross trespass,” Jameson said. He stepped away from the window, forcing Mrs. Ayton to look at him. “The law recognizes no such defense for the violation of a Peer’s private token. To willfully split the armorial bearings of the House of Norwyn is a flagrant offense against His Grace’s person. I can assure you that the local magistrates, and indeed the Court of King’s Bench, would take a remarkably grim view of such malice. With a single word, we could have an injunction leveled against this parish that would strip you of your office and leave you personally liable for —”

William raised a single hand into the air and Jameson stopped talking immediately, the half-formed threat dying instantly in his throat as he snapped his mouth shut.

“You have made your point, Jameson,” he said calmly. “The room is far too small for this much noise, and I require quiet to read.”

Slowly, he unfolded the paper, his eyes scanning the writing before he read.

“To the Duke of Norwyn,

When this letter finds you, the fever will have done its work and I shall be beyond the reach of your family’s concern. I leave you Alice. She carries your blood, she carries your eyes, and she has no one left in this world but the promise you made.

You will recall the summer lodge at Oakridge. You will recall what passed between us there, and you will recall the morning you pressed this seal into my hand and told me it was your word made tangible — that should I ever find myself without recourse, your family would be bound to honor whatever was written upon it.

I did not think I would ever use it. I use it now.

Do not let our daughter be surrendered to the parish. She is all that remains of what you swore to protect.

— Clara”

“Clara...” he thought to himself.

The frustration was almost boiling over inside him, but William clenched his jaw, forcing himself to keep calm. There was no use raging about the whole situation now.

Mrs. Ayton stepped closer to the table. “The seal is one thing, Your Grace, but the gossip in the village has already begun. The carter who brought her here saw the seal. The local busybodies have been coming by for days, trying to identify it. Even the parish officials are demanding to know who will pay for the girl’s keep.”

William did not look up from the letter.

“These sound like threats to me, Mrs. Ayton,” he said. “I do not respond well to threats.”

“I would do no such thing, Your Grace,” she stuttered. “It’s just... the parish has funds for nameless orphans, yes. But the village is small and people are curious. It would be a considerable scandal if the papers discovered that a child who carried the Duke of Norwyn’s private seal was living on charity. It might be better for everyone if the girl were moved somewhere further north. Completely removed from here. Somewhere no one would ever think to ask questions.”

William slowly lifted his chin, and the glare he fixed on the headmistress caused the woman to halt mid-breath. He despised the transactional ease with which she assumed a child’s life could be bought, paid for, and discarded just to keep a nobleman’s ledger clean.

“You imply a great deal for a woman whose livelihood depends entirely on the goodwill of the local gentry,” William said. “Let me make one matter entirely plain to you, Mrs. Ayton. I had absolutely no knowledge of this child’s existence until your letter arrived at my townhouse. If I did, you would never have set eyes on her. She would not be sitting in a place as run-down and neglected as this orphan asylum, left to the elements and the meager charity of a parish board.”

Mrs. Ayton opened her mouth to say something, but William stepped forward, his frame completely dominating the space between them and forcing her back a full pace.

“Had I known,” William continued. “I would have faced my responsibilities immediately. A Norwyn does not leave his obligations to rot in a damp charity house, nor do I allow village gossips to dictate how my family conducts its affairs. If she belongs under my protection, she will have it, and she will have it openly.”

The headmistress swallowed hard. “Of course, Your Grace. I meant no offense to your character,” she murmured, smoothing her apron. “It is simply that... well, we knew the late Duke, your father. I remember when his hunting parties would frequent the lower village some winters ago. When I look at the girl’s brow, the precise structure of her jaw... the resemblance to the old Carlton blood is quite striking. People will see that resemblance. You look remarkably alike, if I may say —”

“You may not,” William cut her off.

Mrs. Ayton fell silent.

William turned to the girl for the first time. Alice sat perfectly still in her chair, watching him with wide eyes. She showed no emotion, almost as if she was waiting for something to happen. For something to make her react.

“Jameson,” William commanded, extending his hand backward without breaking his gaze from the child. “The draft from the briefcase.”

Jameson moved instantly, retrieving a legal parchment from his case and placing it in William’s hand. William laid the document flat on the table, right over the space where the letter had rested.

“This is a deed of settlement for your chapel roof and an annual endowment for your winter stores,” William said. “It is contingent upon your absolute, permanent silence regarding the letter, and everything that has transpired this afternoon. If a single whisper leaves this parish, the funding ceases permanently, and I will personally ensure the diocese conducts a full review of your administrative books. Do we understand one another?”

Mrs. Ayton looked down at the paper, then back up at William’s face. She curtsied deeply. “The discretion of this house is absolute, Your Grace. Thank you.”

“Excellent. Then I must thank you for your diligence in bringing my... daughter to my attention,” William said and forced a smile. The word daughter tasted foreign, and entirely dangerous on his tongue.

He turned toward the door, not offering a hand, a comforting gesture, or even a second glance to the child as he gave his curt command. “Come, Alice.”

The girl didn’t hesitate. She stood up from the stiff wooden chair, and fell into step a pace behind him.

William walked out of the parlor, and they crossed the entrance hall and stepped back out into the cold, gray drizzle of the courtyard. The footman was already holding the carriage door open, the iron steps lowered against the wet gravel. William gestured sharply for the girl to ascend first, watching her climb onto the leather bench before he climbed in after her, his long legs cramping instantly in the familiar, confined space of the coach. Jameson scrambled in last, shutting the door tightly against the wet wind.

The carriage groaned as the driver signaled the horses, the wheels grinding against the mud as they turned away from the asylum’s gates and began the long journey south.

Inside the coach, the silence was total. Alice sat on the opposite bench, her small boots dangling several inches above the floorboards, her eyes fixed entirely on the passing hedges outside the window. Jameson sat rigidly beside William, his hands folded tightly over his briefcase, his eyes darting between the Duke and the child, practically vibrating with a dozen unasked questions.

Jameson cleared his throat. “Your Grace... I think it is paramount that we discuss what —”

“Not now, Jameson,” he answered. “Not here.”

William leaned his head back against the leather cushions, staring at the small, pale face across from him. The irritation from the eight-hour journey had morphed into a weight in his stomach.

He had absolutely no idea what he was going to do with a child, where she would live, or how he would explain her presence to a society that watched his every move. He only knew that the carriage was moving, and the silence inside it was louder than the rain outside.

He would deal with the rest of it later.

CHAPTER TWO

“When I find this person, Leonora, I swear to you, I am going to make them regret the very day they learned how to hold a quill,” Seraphina Beaumont ranted, her voice hitting a pitch that threatened the structural integrity of the windowpanes.

The small, cluttered drawing room of the London townhouse had been reduced to a veritable marching ground. Seraphina paced from the chaise to the sideboard, her slippers slapping against the floor with a furious rhythm that grew faster with every single turn. She threw her hands into the air, her fingers twitching with a manic, unspent energy that looked entirely absurd given her petite stature.

“When I find this miserable, spineless coward, I am going to challenge them. I will track down their tailor and dye every single one of their pristine waistcoats a hideous shade of sulfur yellow. I will hide rotten river fish in the molding of their carriage. I will map out their entire family tree just to write a scathing, multi-volume satirical pamphlet exposing every single cousin who ever eloped with a chimney sweep! I will do it, Leonora! I am entirely capable of such malice!”

“You are not capable of that, Seraphina,” Leonora answered.

“Yes, I am!”

Leonora sat calmly by the hearth, a teacup balanced on her knee as she watched Seraphina blur past her. “Seraphina, please. Take a breath. If you keep pacing like a caged panther, you are going to wear a permanent trench into the rug, and we cannot afford to replace it.”

“I do not care about the rug!” Seraphina spun on her heel, her skirts twisting violently around her ankles as she marched in the opposite direction. She was visibly frustrated, her breath coming in short puffs while a few rogue curls tumbled completely out of their pins from the velocity of her movements. “You do not understand the absolute indignity of it all. I have spent five years in the shadows. Writing since I was twenty and one years old. Five exhausting years! I have ruined my eyesight by the light of tallow candles, suffered through endless ink stains that refuse to wash out of my fingers. I have practically lived like a ghost, writing for anyone willing to read it, all so some arrogant, anonymous blackmailer could casually stroll up to our stoop, drop multiple letters, and threaten to expose my entire life to the ton? I am tired of investigating every postmark in London. I am tired of looking at every innocent messenger boy like he is the harbinger of my social execution.”

“Calm down,” Leonora said softly, setting her teacup aside. “Don’t worry. We are going to find out who is behind this. We always find a way through.”

Seraphina stopped dead in her tracks, puffing out a breath that blew a strand of hair away from her eyes. “Are we? Because right now, my primary investigative lead is a piece of paper that smells faintly of expensive tobacco and impending doom.”

Leonora sighed, leaning forward in her chair. “But are you still going to see Lady Byron? At home?”

Seraphina’s shoulders dropped, the fiery agitation draining out of her for a brief second. “Yes. I don’t have a choice. It is only Lady Byron who knows about the writing. So, I am hoping she would know what to do,” she answered, then sat by Leonora’s side. “I am hoping she might know who the person behind this is, or what they want. But at the exact same time... Oh, I cannot bear the thought of going back there. That is why I have been putting this visit off for so long. I do not want to disappoint her, Leonora. I never wanted to disappoint her. That woman has done so much for us, raising us when we had no one else in this world, and the only reason I even began writing these editions in secret was to earn enough to repay her. To ease her burdens. If she looks at me and sees that I have brought this ruin down upon our heads, I...” She trailed off, her throat tightening as she stared down at her hands.

“I understand, Seraphina. Truly, I do,” Leonora said softly then patted Seraphina on the back. “But these letters threatening to expose you have been coming ceaselessly for months now. I will admit that I am worried for you. I know you love what you do, and you would want to keep publishing, so I truly would hate it if this person tells everyone your identity and ruins the column. We need help. Maybe Lady Byron can tell us what to do.”

Seraphina nodded. “You’re right. I should just… go back home and let Lady Byron know what has happened. Show her the letters. Maybe she can catch something that I have missed and we finally figure out who is sending them.”

“Good.” Leonora said, then crossed her arms across her chest. “I still cannot believe that you kept it a secret from us all this while. That you were writing articles for the paper. Columns! I mean people speak of these columns and hold the writer in high regard. They even look forward to your next release. But even your sisters had no idea that you were the mystery writer.”

Seraphina flinched, the anger completely evaporating, replaced by a sudden guilt. “I know. I am sorry. I can say I am sorry a thousand times, Leonora, but you must understand why I had to do it. I had to keep it an absolute secret so nobody would know. We were going to tell you both eventually. Euphemia and you. I swear it. I am just so sorry it came out like this, with a blackmailer knocking at our door. But please, let us just deal with this threat first before you and Euphemia decide to punish me for my silence.”

“I understand, Seraphina. Truly, I do,” Leonora said. “Still, I am terribly upset with you. I could have helped. I could have... read a few before you published them... we could have talked about your opinions.”

Seraphina gave her sister a knowing look. “Leonora, you have your own secrets, too. We are not getting into that particular ledger right now, are we?”

Leonora paused, a faint, telltale flush creeping up her neck. She offered a reluctant, wry smile. “Fair point.”

The tension in the room broke, and Leonora drew Seraphina into a brief hug, holding her tightly. When they parted, Seraphina sank back onto the chaise, the latest letter clutched tightly in her palm.

She tried to ignore the threats at first. When the first missive arrived, she had dismissed it as merely a disgruntled reader or an outraged gentleman reacting to one of her sharper, more critical pieces in the gazette. But she had been receiving these letters for some time now, and this person seemed to have far too much information about their family. They explicitly mentioned Euphemia’s name in this latest one. They knew she was married to a Duke now. They detailed exactly how a public scandal regarding Seraphina’s scandalous, heavily opinionated articles would drag her sister’s new household through the mud and destroy her standing before the court.

Seraphina stared down at the paper, her mind racing through every syllable of the threat.

She had been trying to trace the origins of the correspondence by focusing entirely on the material itself, spending all her hours visiting the library, poring over stationers’ records, and investigating commercial printing presses. She had already ruled out the standard publishers. She figured that the exquisite quality of the vellum made it undeniable that this belonged to a noble household of wealth. Yet, identifying the exact estate from the paper alone had been a failure so far, as the blackmailer had been careful to send the missive with a completely plain, anonymous wax seal.

Slowly, almost subconsciously, she began running her fingertips across the corner of the heavy paper, smoothing her hand over the margins where the texture felt unusually thick.

Her fingers caught on something unusual. It wasn’t the natural grain of the vellum, but a strange, subtle indentation near the edge. Her brow furrowed as she felt a faint ridge that she hadn’t noticed in her earlier, frantic readings. It was some manner of blind stamp... a microscopic, un-inked impression pressed directly into the fibers of the paper, though by what means or for what purpose, she could not begin to guess. She had never encountered anything like it in all her years of handling correspondence.

Seraphina frowned, rubbing her thumb harder against the spot. There was a tiny, deliberate hidden flaw carved into the outer border of this invisible emblem that standard stationery never possessed.

“I need a microscope,” Seraphina muttered, her eyes widening as the mechanics of her mind began to click together. “Or a magnifying glass. Something to look at this closer. There is something hidden in the impression itself.”

Without waiting for Leonora to reply, Seraphina scrambled off the chaise, nearly tripping over her own hem as she rushed out of the drawing room and down the corridor toward the small library. She burst through the double doors, heading straight for the desk where her research materials were kept. She grabbed the heavy brass glass, holding the letter directly under the beam of the lamp.

She focused the lens, adjusting the angle until the magnified details of the un-inked, blind impression filled her vision. There, pressed into the thick fibers of the vellum, was a hidden mark.

Seraphina’s breath hitched in her throat as she made out what looked like a seal.

“That is a crest if I have ever seen one,” she whispered to herself, feeling a string of something tight and bright pull through her chest. Not quite relief. Not yet. But the sensation felt good. It was a lead.

“Now… whose house is this?”

CHAPTER THREE

Every bone in Seraphina’s body was screaming that this was a catastrophic idea, but as she crouched in the shadows of the high stone wall, she reminded herself of the alternative.

Going back home to face Lady Byron, looking that woman in the eye, and confessing that she had utterly failed to protect the family... that was worse.

The thought of admitting defeat was a far more terrifying prospect than what she was currently doing. She was the eldest. She was supposed to be the shield, the one who bore the brunt of their precarious social standing, and yet she had allowed a blackmailer to breach their perimeter and threaten Euphemia’s new life. Confronting Lady Byron with the reality of her failure made her blood run cold.

So, breaking into a Duke’s townhouse to find definitive proof of extortion was, by comparison, the only rational choice available to her.

Finding the identity of her tormentor hadn’t been simple, but Seraphina had broken the puzzle down. She had taken the letter to the College of Arms the following morning with the magnifying glass and a copy she had made of the impression by candlelight. The clerks there kept the master rolls of every registered coat of arms in England, every crest, every coronet, every arrangement of symbols on every shield belonging to every family with a title. She had gone through them methodically, page by page, until she found it.

The match was exact.

The Duke of Norwyn was her tormentor.

Getting past the threshold of the Norwyn estate had not been easy.

She had spent one morning watching the house from the street, noting everything. Noble households ran on routine and the Norwyn estate was no different. By ten o’clock the coal merchant’s men had arrived at the cellar door with enough noise and dust to pull every available pair of eyes in that direction, and the scullery entrance on the east side of the building had been left entirely unattended.

She had dressed plainly. Gray wool, white apron, a basket of linens over her arm. In her experience the people did not look closely at domestic staff, which was both a social failing and, on this particular morning, extremely useful. She had walked in through the scullery door, and followed the back corridor deeper into the house.

The study had not been difficult to find. Houses like this were built to a logic. Reception rooms at the front, family rooms in the middle, the duke’s private rooms toward the rear where the noise of the street could not reach them.

She had opened two doors before this one, her heart hammering in her chest with each attempt. The first had revealed a linen-scented stillroom, and the second a small, sunlit morning room, both luckily entirely vacant, allowing her to retreat unnoticed into the hallway.

Then she reached the third threshold. The door was heavier than she expected. It was a door designed for absolute privacy, a barrier meant to safeguard state secrets or personal sins from the prying eyes of the household.

“Yes!” she whispered to herself, walking into what she was certain was the duke’s study. The door shut behind her, and a profound wave of triumphant satisfaction washed over her.

“Brilliant,” she whispered to herself, her eyes darting across the expansive room. “Absolutely brilliant. Seraphina, Beaumont... you have outmaneuvered yourself.”

She hurried toward the desk, her fingers instantly sorting through a neat stack of papers resting beside a blotter. As she flipped through the pages, her heart gave a violent leap. They were newspapers. Specifically, the exact issues of the gazette containing her heavily opinionated, highly controversial social commentary columns.

“Got you,” she muttered under her breath, a smile touching her lips as she pulled out one specific cutting.

She carefully turned over the stack. Seraphina didn’t write for the gazette every week. Her schedule was erratic, appearing twice weekly or sometimes every three weeks depending on how thoroughly a political matter had incensed her. For a reader to possess a scattered collection of the newspaper was normal, but this stack contained every single edition she had penned over the past year, meticulously sorted and archived.

“It is him,” she whispered, her certainty hardening. “There is no doubt left. I cannot believe a duke as wealthy as this man is capable of something like this. Why?”

She prepared to slip the evidence into her apron, ready to make her escape, when the sound of footsteps echoed from the corridor outside, moving directly toward the study door.

Seraphina’s eyes widened in sheer panic, as she wondered if her lucky streak had finally run out.

Her mind raced through her options. Should she stand in the corner and curtsy? She was dressed like a maid, hence there was every possibility he would treat her as one.

‘No,’ she thought. She was holding stolen newspapers.

Her instinct for self-preservation took over, and she bolted toward the door just as the brass handle began to turn. Pressing herself flat against the wall directly behind the swinging arc of the door, she held her breath, hoping that the person would walk past her into the room, allowing her to slip beneath their arm and sneak out into the hall unhindered.

The door swung open, shielding her from view for a fraction of a second. A tall figure stepped into the room.

Seraphina made her move, dipping low to slide past his flank toward the open corridor.

But she didn’t make it.

Before she could even clear his shadow, a large hand shot backward with blinding speed. His fingers clamped firmly around her stomach, stopping her dead in her tracks. With a single sweep of his arm, he drove her backward, pinning her firmly against the wall.

Seraphina let out a sharp gasp, her chest heaving against the pressure of his hand on her. Instinctively, she brought her hands up to push against his chest, trying to force some distance between them, but he barely budged.

This, she was fairly certain, was the Duke of Norwyn. William Carlton. The man stood locked in place, his hand still anchored across her abdomen, his dark eyebrows drawn together in a fierce line. He tilted his head, his gaze studying every inch of her face.

Looking up at him up close, Seraphina found herself struck by a jarring thought. For someone so remarkably handsome, with such a chiseled jaw and piercing green eyes… for someone who looked like he was sculpted out of a romantic poet’s wildest fantasy, how could he possess such a wicked, sinister soul? It seemed entirely unfair that nature had masked such malice in elegance, allowing a man so beautiful to do something so monstrously evil to a family he had never even met.

“What do you think you are doing here?” he asked. “In my study?”

Seraphina swallowed hard, trying to force her voice into a docile, subservient tremor. “I... I am merely a new maid, Your Grace. I only came in to dust the sideboard and clean the grate. Forgive me.”

The Duke’s gaze didn’t soften, if anything, amusement flickered in his eyes. He didn’t release his grip.

“A maid?” he repeated flatly. “Let us address the errors in that narrative, shall we? First of all, my housemaids do not wear that particular shade of gray, my housekeeper insists on a much darker charcoal. Second of all, unless I have suddenly begun paying my domestic staff a ridiculous fortune, a maid cannot afford the scent of the expensive Attar of Roses that you are currently wearing.”

Seraphina bit her lip, her heart pounding as he leaned a fraction closer. She had not thought about it that morning while she dressed that putting on the perfume Euphemia had gifted her a month ago would be her undoing.

“Third of all,” he continued. “I am exceedingly good with faces, and I have never once seen yours in this household. You are far too pale, as if you have spent your entire life hiding away in dark rooms, entirely untouched by the sun. You look remarkably fragile to be hauling coal buckets.”

Seraphina’s panic flared into a defensive spark. She glared up at him, lifting her chin despite the hand pinning her to the wall. “I am not fragile.”

His grip tightened just enough to remind her of the physical disparity between them. “I will ask you one more time. Who are you, and how did you get into my study? Who are you working for?”

Seraphina felt the stolen newspaper cuttings crinkling against her bodice. Realizing she had no cards left to play except the truth, she looked him dead in the eye.

“I know what you did,” she said clearly.

The Duke froze then. For a single, fleeting second, the mask on him cracked. Seraphina watched as a flicker of shock and calculation crossed his features. She saw the brief, worried tension tighten around his jaw, and a thrill of triumph cut through her fear.

‘I have caught him,’ she thought fiercely.

“I see,” William said, his voice vibrating right through Seraphina’s ribs. “So you think you have caught me out. You think you can walk into my home and hold this over my head?”

“Of course I do!” Seraphina retorted, her chest rising and falling sharply against his arm. She refused to let him see how fast her heart was beating. “You thought you could do it entirely in secret, didn’t you? You thought I would never trace it back to you, that I would just roll over and let you ruin everything. But you left a trail, Your Grace. A very specific, very stupid trail.”

William’s eyes darkened, a sharpness entering his gaze that made Seraphina wonder if she had pushed him too far. He sneered, hiding what looked surprisingly like a flash of panic.

“A stupid trail?” he echoed, his voice dangerously smooth. “What, pray tell, do you intend to do with this information? Publish it? Paste it across the front page of the gazette so the entire Ton can gawk at my private affairs?”

“If you don’t stop, I absolutely will!” Seraphina hissed, glare for glare, her eyes blazing with defiance. She couldn’t believe the absolute nerve of this man, admitting to it so casually. She gently swatted his hand away from her body and stepped forward. “I will write an exposé that will make your noble name a laughingstock from Mayfair to the docks! How dare you do this to us? How dare you target my family? Have we not been targeted enough? We have suffered enough at the hands of the ton, my sister, Euphemia especially, and we did nothing to you!”

“Target your family?” William’s eyebrows shot up. He stared down at her, his entire expression shifting into one of profound bafflement. “What are you babbling about? I do not care who your family is. Alice is my family; you must be mistaken.”

Seraphina blinked, her fury pausing mid-breath. The name stalled her momentum completely. “Who on earth is Alice? I am talking about the letters.”

“The letters?” William repeated, as his confusion deepening, his brow furrowing as he looked at her. “What letters? What do letters have to do with how you found out about Alice?”

“I found out about you because of the letters!” Seraphina said, entirely exasperated. She threw her hands up in frustration, though they only succeeded in hitting the infuriating expanse of his shoulders. “The letters you sent to me. The ones threatening to expose me and drag my sister Euphemia’s new household through the mud. The ones with your private crest embossed directly onto the paper.”

William froze. He stared at her for a long moment as if trying to decipher a foreign language. He stepped back a pace, shaking his head.

“I have never sent you a letter in my life,” he said flatly. “I don’t even know who you are.”

Seraphina arched her eyebrows. “I’m... one of the Byron sisters. For the past year, the ton has talked about my family ceaselessly.”

William crossed his arms. “What?”

Seraphina wanted to explain further, but she was starting to wonder if there was any point to it. “Seraphina Beaumont? Euphemia Vane? Leonora Ashcroft? Three ladies raised by Lady Byron with a... complicated past?”

“Are you unwell?” he questioned so suddenly, it made her swallow. “What does that have to do with me and Alice?”

“Who is Alice?” she retorted.

William pressed a finger to his nape and shut his eyes briefly. “I will personally see to it that the Bow Street Runners are summoned to drag you away for housebreaking. They can extract your identity in a holding cell.”

“No, wait,” Seraphina said, her voice dropping as she tried to force a sense of logic into the escalating chaos. She shook her head, gesturing frantically between the two of them. “You do not understand. I came here because I found a crest… your private family crest, embossed right onto the corner of a letter threatening to ruin my life by revealing that I write for the column under a pseudonym. I only snuck into this study because I was looking for proof that you were the blackmailer!”

“Why would I care about your columns, let alone go through the trouble of blackmailing you over them?”

“Because...” Seraphina gestured wildly toward the desk behind him, her voice rising. “Because you have every single one of my articles archived on your desk! All the articles, my columns... all written by E. R. Voce. I know how many I wrote in the past year and you have all the editions. You’ve been collecting them for a year! Don’t lie to me, you have been tracking me down. The proof is there.”

William looked over his shoulder at the stack of newspapers, then turned back to her, a look of utter disbelief crossing his face. “I collect them because I read them, you ridiculous woman. Having a complete set of the gazette does not make me a blackmailer.”

Seraphina’s jaw dropped. The wind was completely knocked out of her sails. “You... you read them? For pleasure?”

“Yes! More importantly, I have no earthly reason to threaten your household. I do not even know who you are.” William paused and slowly tilted his head to the side. “You said these letters carried my family crest. The Norwyn crest?”

“Yes,” Seraphina said, her voice finally losing its defensive heat. “A blind stamp. I have never seen anything like it before, but I can show you.”

Reaching into the deep pocket of her linen apron, she pulled out the folded page she had carried with her. She stepped forward, holding it out between them like a fragile peace offering.

“Look right here,” she murmured, her thumb guiding his attention to the bottom corner. “Touch the edge where the fibers are pressed. You have to catch the light just so to see the emboss.”

William frowned, his fingers reaching out to take the page from her hands. His fingertips brushed against hers for a fleeting second, sending an unexpected jolt up her arm. He turned the paper toward the window, his thumb lightly grazing the exact spot she had indicated.

Seraphina watched his face intently. She had expected his features to remain entirely cold, but she caught the exact moment the realization hit him. His eyebrows drew together in a knot. He read the lines of the blackmail threat, his expression remaining outwardly composed to any casual observer, but Seraphina could see the subtle, furious tension locking around his jaw.

“Who on earth would dare cross me like this?” he muttered to himself.

“It is your crest, is it not?” Seraphina took a tentative step closer, her anger entirely dissolving into a strange, hollow confusion. “You truly did not know about these letters?”

William turned, leaning his weight back against the edge of his desk. He crossed his arms over his chest, looking down at her with a look of exhaustion. “Give me one good reason, Miss, as to why I would go through the trouble of sending you threatening letters.”

Seraphina opened her mouth to argue, then closed it. She looked away toward the rows of leather-bound books, her mind racing as she tried to construct a logical motive. She couldn’t come up with a single one. Furthermore, if a powerful Duke actually wanted to ruin her or her sisters, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to use his own highly restricted, family stationery to do it.

A real blackmailer would have hidden their tracks perfectly.

“So,” William said, his voice cutting through her thoughts. “This entire intrusion had absolutely nothing to do with Alice?”

“I don’t even know who Alice is,” Seraphina cried out, throwing her hands up in exasperation. “But if you aren’t the one holding this sword over my family’s neck, then can you at least point me in the right direction? Who else has access to your private seals?”

William did not answer right away. Instead, he stared at her, his gaze tracking the frantic rise and fall of her chest beneath the drab maid’s uniform. Slowly, a look of profound, incredulous disbelief washed over his face.

“Tell me something,” William said. “Are you entirely insane?”

Seraphina blinked. “I am perfectly sane, thank you very much.”

“You just admitted to sneaking into the estate of a Duke, a man you fully believed was a ruthless, dangerous extortionist who held your family’s future in his hands. You put on a fake uniform, bypassed my household security, and walked directly into my private sanctuary. Have you absolutely no survival instincts? Or are you just exceptionally stupid?”

“I am not stupid!” Seraphina retorted, her cheeks flushing hot. “I might be desperate but not stupid. It was a highly calculated risk. I needed proof before you —before he — could strike at my sisters. I had to do something.”

“Calculated?” William let out a dry laugh. He straightened up from the desk, pushing off the wood and taking a step toward her. “Let me show you exactly how ‘calculated’ your little plan was.”

Before Seraphina could even register the shift in the room’s air, William closed the distance between them. In one smooth, blindingly efficient movement, his hand shot out, capturing both of her wrists in a single grip and pinning them gently but immovably against the wall above her head. At the exact same moment, his other hand bracketed her waist, trapping her completely against the wall.

Seraphina gasped, her heart leaping straight into her throat. “Unhand me. Now,” she sneered.

Her breath hitched, her eyes locking onto his in absolute shock. The tension between them stretched thin and tight, an electric charge that made her skin tingle from head to toe.

“Unhand yourself,” he answered. “Tell me what your calculated plan had in place for a situation where you got trapped like this.”

“Your Grace, this is absolutely —”

“Improper?” he asked. “Rude? Embarrassing? Did you expect your blackmailer to be anything but?”

He looked down at her, then found her eyes again. “So... you write that column? You are E. R. Voce? That is a fascinating discovery. Why use a pseudonym then? A man’s name.”

“Why? You intend to tell people?”

“I don’t care who writes it.”

“Then don’t ask about it,” she whispered.

“If I were your blackmailer,” William whispered, his gaze dropping to her lips for a fraction of a second before rising back to her wide eyes. “You would already be ruined. You would be entirely at my mercy, trapped in a room with a dangerous man, with no way out, no allies, and no defense. Your ‘calculations’ would have bought your family a tragedy. Do you understand me?”

Seraphina swallowed hard, her pulse fluttering wildly against his fingers. She hated how small she felt, and she hated even more how breathless her voice sounded when she finally managed to speak. “Point taken,” she whispered, glaring up at him with all the defiance she had left. “Now release me.”

William let her go instantly, stepping back, still composed, which made her want to kick his shins. He smoothed down the front of his waistcoat.

“It seems we both have a problem,” William said, pacing back toward his desk. “Someone is using my family crest, which I cannot and will not tolerate, and someone is threatening you, which you clearly cannot handle on your own without getting yourself killed.”

Seraphina straightened her rumpled apron, her voice bristling with injured pride.

“We can help each other. I will use my resources, my runners, and my standing to find out exactly who stole my crest and sent those letters. In exchange, you will help me.”

Seraphina eyed him warily, crossing her arms over her chest. “Help you with what?”

William cleared his throat. “Alice. She is... a young girl. She has recently come into my care, and I have absolutely no conception of what a child of her years requires. The housekeeper suggests more pinafores, the governess suggests advanced French grammar, and Alice... wakes up screaming at night. You are a woman of... loud opinions. You will help me navigate her needs.”

Seraphina watched him, her mind quickly weighing the offer. A Duke’s resources would find the blackmailer in a fraction of the time it would take her to sneak into records offices. It was her best, perhaps her only chance to protect her sisters and secure their safety.

“Fine,” Seraphina said, lifting her chin with as much dignity as her maid’s uniform allowed. “We have a deal. But if you ever try to lock me against a wall again, Your Grace, I will write a column about your terrible conversational skills.”

William’s lips twitched with a faint, reluctant smile. “Agreed. Come back tomorrow morning. We can work out the details then.”

“I can do that.” Seraphina nodded.

“Good,” he said and nodded once. “Now, get out of my study.”

Seraphina turned toward the door, but before she could grasp the handle, William’s voice stopped her short.

“Also, Miss... Seraphina?”

She paused, looking back over her shoulder.

“Next time,” he said, gesturing at the door. “Use the front door.”

Seraphina let out a frustrated huff, throwing the door open and marching out into the corridor, her cheeks burning. As she hurried down the hall, her mind raced through a dozen different ways agreeing to his terms could go completely sideways. She didn’t even know the truth behind this Alice situation, and striking a pact with an enigmatic, overbearing Duke was bound to be a nightmare.

But as she made her way out of the estate, she reminded herself that it was still a far better option than going back home to admit to Lady Byron that she had failed.

This was her next best chance. She was going to explore this option to its absolute limit, and if it didn’t work out, she would do what she was originally supposed to do and face the music at home.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Are you completely out of your mind?” Leonora did not even wait for the bedroom door to click shut before she turned around, her hands sliding straight to her hips. “Sneaking into a Duke’s house? In a housemaid’s uniform? Have you gone completely mad, Seraphina? I should write to Euphemia this instant and tell her about this absurdity!”

“Lower your voice, Leo,” Seraphina muttered, her fingers fumbling with the strings of the stiff apron. Now that she was back inside her own room, the excitement that had carried her through Mayfair was fading. Her limbs felt heavy, and her skin prickled with a late wave of fear. “The servants will hear you.”

“Let them hear me! Let the entire neighborhood hear me!” Leonora marched across the rug. “You could have been arrested. You could have been dragged to jail. Do you have any idea what a scandal like that would do to Euphemia? She has been a Duchess for five minutes, Seraphina. The ton is still looking for any excuse to look down their long noses at us, and here you are, sneaking through back alleys like a common thief.”

“I did not sneak through an alley. I walked right through the cellar entrance with a basket of laundry,” Seraphina corrected, kicking her shoes off into the corner. “It worked. Mostly. You would not believe how well it worked, Leo. The uniform was a great idea. I was practically invisible.”

“Mostly? You were caught by the master of the house!” Leonora threw her hands up, her dark curls shaking. “I cannot believe this. A man who could have sent you to prison without blinking! We have resources, Seraphina. We have an entire household. We could have gone to Lady Byron for help. You said you were going to. She knows how to deal with these people. She has spent her whole life managing the dangerous social circles of London.”

Seraphina froze. “What would I tell her? That I let someone get past our guard? That our family name is being threatened by a blackmailer because of my newspaper articles?” Seraphina turned to face her sister. “You know exactly how she would look at me. She always says, ‘The oldest must protect the rest, Seraphina. If you fail, the family breaks.’ I am the one who is supposed to handle the danger, Leo. Not her, and certainly not Euphemia.”

Leonora’s expression softened just a bit, but she kept that stubborn glare she had worn since they were children. “Lady Byron raised us to be smart, not reckless. She taught us to plan our moves, not to throw ourselves into danger just because we are too proud to ask for help.”

“It wasn’t pride,” Seraphina said, finally ripping the maid’s cap from her hair and letting her pins drop onto the dressing table. “It was the only logical choice. I found his crest. I knew his name. If he was the one sending the letters, I needed to find the evidence before he could hurt us. How was I supposed to know he was just a dedicated reader who keeps my articles stacked neatly on his desk?”

Leonora stared at her, her mouth dropping open. “He collects your articles?”

“Every single one,” Seraphina said, a small, involuntary smile touching her lips before she quickly hid it. “I think we breezed past that too quickly. I should have asked him why he collected them.”

“Seraphina, you worry me!” Leonora shook her head. “I do not like to worry. You are the practical one. Effie is the one who acts with her heart but you used to be the one who saw things logically.”

Seraphina shut her eyes. “All right. It was stupid, but everything is fine now. Can we stop this?”

“No.” Leonora shook her head, though she finally sat down on the edge of the mattress, the tension leaving her shoulders in a long sigh. “Where did you even get that uniform anyway?”

“The back of the laundry room at the inn down the lane. I borrowed it while the maid was hanging the sheets.” Seraphina pulled the dress over her head, incredibly glad to be out of the scratchy fabric. “I left two shillings on the table. It was a fair trade.”

“It was stealing.”

“It was a temporary loan.” Seraphina sat down at her dressing table, staring at herself in the glass. Away from the wood and tobacco scent that filled the Duke’s study, away from those eyes that tracked her every movement, her mind was finally clearing up. The strange spell of his presence was fading, replaced by a reality. “The main point is, he isn’t the blackmailer. Someone stole his personal stamp. He is just as angry about the letters as I am.”

“So he let you go? Just like that?”

“Not just like that,” Seraphina murmured. Her skin grew warm as she remembered the feeling of his hand locking her wrists against the wall. The memory made her heart skip a beat in a way that had nothing to do with fear of the law. “We made a deal. He will use his position to find the person using his crest. In exchange, I have to help him with a domestic problem.”

Leonora leaned forward, her eyebrows raising. “A domestic problem? Like what?”

“A little girl. A child named Alice who has recently come to live with him. He has absolutely no idea how to take care of a child.”

The room went completely quiet. Then, Leonora let out a sound that was half-choke and half-laugh.

“Alice?” Leonora asked, her eyes lighting up with amusement. “A child? He wants you to help him with a little girl?”

“I don’t see what is so funny,” Seraphina said, straightening her back.

“Seraphina, you are amazing with a printing press. You can take apart a politician’s argument in four sentences. But you are, without a doubt, the most awkward person in the world whenever a child walks into the room.”

“That is a complete lie.”

“Is it?” Leonora stood up, acting out a small child’s posture. “Do you remember when Euphemia’s friend, Emily, brought her little boy around? The boy just wanted to show you his wooden toy horse, and you looked at him like he was handing you a loaded pistol. You held the toy by the very tip of the tail and asked him if his mother had checked the safety of the paint!”

“It was a very good question! Cheap paint is dangerous,” Seraphina defended herself, her face turning red.

“It couldn’t have been cheap paint. Emily is a duchess!”

“Well, I don’t know why I asked. It just felt right to do so.”

“What about Euphemia’s stepchildren? The twins?” Leonora continued, laughing now. “One time, when we visited them, they came running into the hallway, and you immediately hid behind a large statue.”

“That kind of... jolly can be overwhelming,” Seraphina muttered, looking away.

“Children do not always like you, Seraphina. They can feel the pure panic behind your eyes. You have no idea how to talk to them unless they can read a textbook.”

“That is because children make absolutely no sense,” Seraphina said, her voice dropping into a serious tone. She was trying to convince herself as much as her sister. “They do not follow logic. You cannot argue with them. If you tell a regular adult to sit down, they look at the room and sit down. If you tell a six-year-old to sit down, they look at the floor and start rolling on it.”

“Exactly, and now you have promised a Duke that you will take care of his ward?”

“I did not promise to take care of her. I promised to help him figure out what she needs,” Seraphina insisted. She turned back to the mirror, brushing her hair. “I am very good at figuring things out.”

Leonora watched her for a long moment, her laughter fading. “You’re going to do it anyway, aren’t you?”

“I have to,” Seraphina said. Her hand stopped moving, and she looked at her sister through the mirror. “You understand that if this person tells the ton that I am the one writing the column, the ton will eat us alive? They will come for me, they will come for you... for all of us. If I do not find them, everything Lady Byron sacrificed to give us a good life will be destroyed. I would rather face a dozen crying children than let this family fall apart because I was too scared to keep my end of a bargain. I will make it work. I always do. Just trust me.”

But as she spoke the brave words aloud, she knew deep down, she didn’t believe it entirely. For the first time in her life, Seraphina was terrified. She felt completely in over her head. The truth was, she didn’t know anything about the Duke of Norwyn. She didn’t know what kind of man he truly was, or if he had told her the complete, honest truth in his study. For all she knew, he could still be the blackmailer, playing a clever game with her. Or he might know exactly who the culprit was and be leading her into a trap.

She didn’t know a thing. But she knew she had caught a single thread, and she had to keep pulling it.

She had to fix this because she remembered all too well what the ton was capable of. The ton had almost ruined her family completely when they first arrived in Mayfair. The nasty gossip about their appearance, the whispers about how odd they were, and the cruel jokes about three completely unrelated ladies being raised as sisters by Lady Byron had nearly broken them.

Now, someone was threatening to start that gossip all over again, armed with a weapon that could soil Euphemia’s reputation too and pull their whole lives down. Seraphina refused to let that happen.

No matter the cost, no matter how scared she was, she would be the one to fix this.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Afiring squad would be predictable,” William whispered, his deep voice hushed as he stared rigidly at the nursery door. “You can reason with soldiers. You cannot reason with whatever is happening in this room.”

Seraphina shifted slightly in her day dress, tilting her head to look up at him. “You look as if your coat is buttoned so tightly you cannot even take a full breath, Your Grace. It is a seven-year-old child, not a foreign diplomat.”

“She has rejected three separate plates of toast this morning,” William muttered, his eyebrows drawing together as if he was frustrated. “The governess believes it is a silent protest against the French tutor. I believe she is simply trying to break my spirit.”

“Well, at least she’s not... throwing teacups,” Seraphina whispered back, folding her arms over her chest.

“That would be good. At least she’d be doing something,” he said, rubbing a hand down his face with a look of pure exhaustion. “She does not do anything at all. She is completely quiet. She does not speak a single word to me; she does not touch her meals, and she simply sits by the window. But the nights are the real problem. She wakes up screaming from nightmares. The entire household is awake at two in the morning, and I am entirely at a loss.”

Seraphina felt a prickle of sympathy, but her own internal panic quickly pushed it aside. She knew everything about writing political strategies, but she knew absolutely nothing about quiet, traumatized little girls. Seraphina knew she treated children like strange, fragile specimens, keeping her distance and speaking to them as if they were a fully grown adult.

It was not her fault. Lady Byron had not raised them with any particular gift for softness.

“Have you tried talking to her?” Seraphina asked, trying to sound practical.

“Of course I have tried talking to her,” William snapped softly, looking more frustrated with himself than with her. “I manage estates, I speak in Parliament, and I deal with the finest minds in the realm. But when I sit down in front of that child, she looks at me as if I am a monster, and my mind goes entirely blank. I do not know how to bridge the gap, and honestly, I am not so sure I want to.”

“Well, standing out here like two statues isn’t going to fix it,” Seraphina said, taking a deep breath to steady her own racing heart. “Shall we open the door now?”

William straightened his coat, shifting back into his stiff posture. He turned the handle and pushed the door open, stepping into the bright, sunny room.

Alice was sitting on a small cushioned sofa by the window, her tiny hands folded neatly in her lap. She looked incredibly small against the grand backdrop of the Norwyn estate. Her eyes snapped toward the doorway as they entered, but her little face remained completely blank, devoid of any joy.

William cleared his throat, the sound booming in the room as he walked forward, his steps stiff and formal. “Alice,” he said, his voice carrying the exact same tone he probably used to address the House of Lords. “This is Miss Seraphina. She has come to visit with you today. She is a woman of great intelligence and opinion, and she will be spending some time in your company.”

Seraphina wanted to bury her face in her hands.

A woman of great intelligence?

She was terrible with children, but then she was nowhere near William’s level.

Alice didn’t move. She didn’t blink. She just stared at Seraphina so intently that it made Seraphina want to look for a large piece of furniture to hide behind. The utter silence in the room stretched out, incredibly awkward.

William looked from Alice to Seraphina. He looked completely out of his depth, his hands twitching at his sides as if he wanted to run.

“Right then,” William said quickly, taking a step backward toward the nursery door. “Now that introductions have been made, I find I have a deeply pressing matter to attend to. The estate ledgers require my immediate attention, and the manager is waiting in the study. I shall leave the two of you to build a proper rapport.”

Seraphina’s jaw dropped. She turned her head so fast she nearly gave herself whiplash, glaring at him in absolute shock.

“Your Grace, you won’t stay?” she asked him.

“No,” he whispered, retreating. “Good luck.”

Before she could utter a single word to stop him, the Duke of Norwyn practically fled. He backed out into the corridor with surprising speed for a man of his size, and the door clicked shut behind him.

Seraphina stared at the wood of the door, her hands clenching into tight fists at her sides. At that exact moment, she wanted nothing more than to march right through that doorway, track him down to his precious study, and slap the pristine, handsome grin clean off his face. He had trapped her against a wall the day before, to prove his absolute power, lectured her about her lack of survival instincts, and now, the very moment a quiet seven-year-old girl looked at him, he had abandoned her to save himself. It was a betrayal of the highest order.

Slowly, the silence of the room settled around her, and Seraphina forced herself to turn back around to face the window, entirely alone with a child who could clearly smell her fear.

She cleared her throat, forcing her voice to pitch slightly higher into what she imagined a warm, maternal tone sounded like. She even forced a wide, overly bright smile onto her face, though it felt more like a grimace.

“Well now!” Seraphina said, clapping her hands together. “What a very big, beautiful window you have here, little Alice! Do you like to look at the little birds outside? Look at them fly! Flap, flap, flap go their little wings! Do you see the pretty green trees?”

Alice’s eyes widened just a fraction. It was a tiny shift, but Seraphina caught it instantly. For the first time, the girl’s expression wasn’t completely blank; it was deeply curious. Sensing that tiny spark of reception, a rush of hope flared in Seraphina’s chest, giving her the urge to keep going.

“Flap flap!” she beamed. “Do you like birds? I love birds!”

The silence stretched for ten agonizing seconds. Then, Alice slowly tilted her head, her eyes scanning Seraphina’s flushed face.

“Are you quite... well, miss?” Alice asked, her voice incredibly small, perfectly calm, and too mature for a seven-year-old. “Do you require a glass of water? Or perhaps a cold cloth for your forehead?”

Seraphina first froze as the embarrassment washed over her like icy water. Her cheeks burned with a scorching heat that surpassed even the humiliation of being caught in a stolen maid’s uniform. A seven-year-old child was offering her medical assistance because her attempt at baby talk had made her look clinically insane.

“I am perfectly well, thank you,” Seraphina said quickly, dropping her hands to her sides and abandoning the high-pitched voice instantly. She abandoned her fake smile too, letting her expression drop back into its usual serious lines.

“At least you spoke to me. I will see that as a win,” she added.

If the childish approach was a disaster, she would simply have to rely on what she actually knew. If Alice wanted to speak like an adult, then they would speak like adults.

“The truth is,” Seraphina said as she sat by Alice’s side on the sofa. “I am entirely out of my comfort zone here. My sister Leonora frequently reminds me that I have no natural affinity for youth. I find predictability comforting, you see. Which is why my own true interests lean heavily toward physics and mathematics. The universe operates on strict, unyielding laws. Force equals mass times acceleration.”

Alice blinked, her eyes tracking Seraphina as she moved on the sofa. She didn’t say anything, which Seraphina took as a sign of supreme interest.

“Take the concept of gravity, for instance,” Seraphina continued, warming up to her subject. She began to gesture with her hands, entirely forgetting that her audience had only recently mastered the alphabet. “Sir Isaac Newton proved that every particle of matter attracts every other particle with a force proportional to the product of their masses. It is absolutely fascinating. When you look out that window at the falling leaves, you are witnessing a mathematical certainty. Then, of course, there is fluid mechanics, which explains the precise atmospheric pressure required to form the clouds you see today. If one understands the calculations, the world becomes entirely logical.”

Seraphina felt a rush of confidence. Alice was still, her small gaze locked onto her, completely paying attention. That meant she was listening, which was the first real sign of progress all morning. Driven by that spark of reception, Seraphina felt the urge to keep going, convinced she was finally getting through to the child.

“I prefer logical things,” Seraphina continued. “Practical things. Things that can be clearly defined, and things that a mathematical equation can solve. I absolutely detest leaving anything to chance. I like when every single detail is thought out completely.” She paused, a wave of self-reflection hitting her. “Which is exactly why the past few months have been so deeply chaotic for me. I have been making a lot of mistakes, Alice. It goes against everything I believe in.”

She shook her head, almost forgetting she was talking to a seven-year-old as she began to truly vent. “For instance, I should not have gone into the study yesterday. It was an entirely irrational move, and I certainly should not have confessed who I was. If he truly did not know my identity, why did I feel the need to blurt out that I am the one writing the column? It was a stupid, reckless thing to do. I should have kept completely quiet about it. But absolutely nothing about my life lately has been rational or logical. It defies every rule I live by.”

As she ranted on, completely wrapped up in her own frustrations, Seraphina turned back around to deliver her concluding thoughts on the beauty of order.

The words died in her throat.

Alice’s head had tilted entirely to the side, her small cheek resting heavily against the plush framework of the window seat. Her tiny hands were still folded in her lap, but her eyes were tightly shut, and her soft, even breathing filled the room. The child was fast asleep, utterly lulled into a state of peaceful unconsciousness.

Seraphina sat frozen, her mouth slightly open. Slowly, she let out a long breath and rubbed her temples.

“Well,” she whispered to herself, looking down at the sleeping girl. “If I cannot bond with you, at least I am highly skilled at providing a lullaby. I can put you to sleep every single time. Perhaps that is a win after all.”

Before she could even think about waking the child, the nursery door clicked open. Seraphina jumped, half-expecting the Duke to return, but it was only the butler.

“Miss Seraphina,” the butler said, bowing low. “His Grace is expecting you in his private office once you are done with Miss Alice.”

Seraphina felt her stomach drop straight into her shoes. She looked at the sleeping child, then at the butler, her mind racing with pure dread. She was too proud, and far too embarrassed, to admit to the staff that she had just completely failed to bond with a little girl.

“Well, I’m finished now,” she said, defeated. “Can you send her governess in?”

“Of course,” he responded.

As she followed the butler down the corridor, a sense of doom settled over her. She was completely ruined. The partnership was barely an hour old, and she had already failed her end of the bargain.

When William found out that she had bored his traumatized ward to sleep with mathematical equations, he would probably laugh her out of Mayfair and end their agreement on the spot, and without his help, the blackmailer would win.

CHAPTER SIX

“The letters,” William said, as soon as she walked into his study. “Did you bring them?”

“I am nothing if not prepared, Your Grace,” Seraphina replied. She reached into the small reticule at her wrist, pulled out the neatly folded packet of parchment, and extended it toward him.

William took them, his fingers brushing against hers for a brief second before he turned away to lean against the edge of his desk. He unfolded the first page, his head tilting down as his eyes began to scan the letter.

With his attention fully occupied, Seraphina finally allowed herself to look at him. There was no denying that the Duke of Norwyn was an aggressively attractive man. He possessed a striking, athletic build that even the tailoring of his superfine coat could not entirely hide. His shoulders were broad, tapering down to a lean waist and long legs that suggested a man who spent more time in the saddle than in smoky London clubs.

His hair was a rich, deep brown, thick and slightly wavy, falling just loose enough to soften the otherwise harsh angles of his jawline. But it was his eyes that drew the gaze most of all... a vivid green that seemed entirely too intricate to belong to a cold man like him.

He looked less like a pampered peer and more like a dangerous predator briefly wearing the clothes of a gentleman.

Men like these have to be hiding secrets.

William shifted, the fabric of his trousers straining slightly against his thigh as he leaned heavily on the desk, flipping to the next letter. She wasn’t sure how many he had read in the time she spent studying him.

“These are worse than I anticipated,” he murmured, his brows drawing together. “From what I can see here, this person wants you to stop writing?”

“Yes.” She nodded.

“Why?” he questioned. “That is ridiculous. Look here. The first two only hint at your style of writing, but by the third, they are referencing your exact phrases from the April edition. Whoever this is, they are tracking your specific vocabulary. They are gathering more precise information about you as time goes on. It feels like stalking.” He looked up, his eyes locking onto hers, searching. “It is incredibly concerning. How did you read these and simply keep writing? Most women would have burned their pens and fled to the countryside in terror.”

Seraphina forced a smile. “Most women would be right to do so. But this is practically the only thing in the entire world that I am good at, Your Grace, and I am not easily frightened by words on a page. I knew the risks when I took up the pseudonym. I expected someone, eventually, to grow angry enough to threaten me.”

William stared down at the final parchment, his thumb tracing the edge where she had torn it open. “But you are desperate enough to want to find them?”

“Yes. The last letter they sent is the only one that truly managed to terrify me,” she admitted. “The one that explicitly mentioned my sisters. I can tolerate a coward throwing stones at me from the shadows. I am perfectly willing to face this man myself, to look him in the eye and watch him try to ruin me. But I will not allow him to use my family to threaten me. They did nothing wrong. These are my opinions.”

The study fell completely silent, save for the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner. William did not look back down at the letters. Instead, he simply stared at her, his eyes unblinking. For a long moment, it felt as though he were measuring her, testing the mettle of the woman standing before him.

Finally, he cleared his throat, the sound cutting through the tension of the room. He straightened up to his full height, folding the letters back into a neat stack.

“You have an absurd amount of courage, Miss Seraphina,” William said, his voice entirely serious now. “Under normal circumstances, a threat like this would not concern me in the slightest. What you must understand right now is that I am incredibly, obsessively protective of my family’s name. I have not spent years protecting that name just for someone to make a mockery of it with a stolen crest. I am going to get to the bottom of this, and I will find the person who did this.”

“Also, for what it is worth,” he continued. “I actually like your writing. I like your opinions, even though some of them can be quite problematic and wrong.”

Seraphina’s posture went instantly rigid. She snapped her head up, her eyes narrowing. “Problematic? In what way, exactly, are my columns problematic, Your Grace?”

A small smile crept onto his face. “We can get into that later,” William countered smoothly, brushing the question aside. “For now, what is important is that you should know that I am looking into this. I have people already doing something about it, and they will be coming in later today to meet with me. You do not need to face him alone, Miss Seraphina. Though I must admit, it is quite refreshing to meet a woman who is entirely unafraid of a fight.”

The gravity of his promise hit her all at once. For the first time in her life, a stranger was standing between her and a threat, declaring his intention to shield her. Even though she knew his primary motivation was protecting his own legacy, the fact that he was extending that protection over her made something warm and entirely unwelcome tingle deep in her chest.

A fierce heat rushed into her cheeks. Embarrassed that she was allowing his words to reach places in her body, Seraphina quickly looked away, feeling thoroughly flustered.

She heard the soft thud of his boots against the rug. William walked right over to her, closing the space until she was entirely trapped by his shadow. Without a word, he reached out, placing one finger right beneath her jaw. With a gentle pressure, he angled her face up.

Seraphina found herself staring straight into his eyes, where a distinct, teasing humor was dancing.

“Your cheeks are flushed a rather brilliant crimson, Miss Seraphina,” William murmured, a wolfish grin pulling at his lips. “Tell me... is this the very first time a gentleman has ever made you swoon?”

It was, in fact, the first time a man had ever made her feel utterly breathless. Hating the sudden weakness, Seraphina pulled her jaw out of his grasp and glared at him, her eyes flashing with fury.

“Do not flatter yourself, Your Grace,” Seraphina said as she stepped back to break his hold completely. “It is a simple matter of... vasomotor activity.

“Vasomotor activity?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Yes. Your sudden and entirely unnecessary proximity restricted the ambient airflow between us, causing a minor thermal imbalance. My cutaneous capillaries merely dilated to regulate the surface temperature of my skin. It is basic human physics, not... swooning.”

William’s hand hovered in the empty air for a fraction of a second before he dropped it back to his side. “Physics? You are blaming a blush on atmospheric conditions?”

“I am stating a physiological fact,” she countered. “When an individual is suddenly crowded by an exceptionally large, overbearing object, the body prepares for a threat by accelerating the pulse. A startled horse flushes in the muzzle for the exact same medical reason, yet I highly doubt it is swooning for the rider.”

“A horse, Miss Seraphina?” William let out a short, low laugh, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “You are comparing me to a horse? If your pulse accelerated, it was not out of fear. You are far too stubborn to be afraid of me. But if it pleases your pride to believe your blood vessels are merely obeying laws of biology, far be it from me to dismantle the illusion.”

“It is not an illusion; it is mechanics,” she snapped, her chin tilting upward. “But I did not come down to your study to debate the laws of circulation. You requested my presence.”

The amusement that had been in his eyes withered and he looked serious so suddenly. He cleared his throat and walked back over to his desk to lean on it. “Right. Alice. Tell me of your time in the nursery. Did you manage to establish any form of rapport?”

Seraphina felt a distinct tightening in her stomach, the lingering heat of her blush instantly replaced by a cold wave of dread. “I am afraid I could not do much for the girl today. But she spoke to me.”

“She did?” he asked, seemingly surprised.

“Yes.” She answered, not wanting to go into any details about how Alice questioned if she was well.

“Tell me, Miss Seraphina, do you even possess any actual experience with children? I realize that I did not ask you that.”

Seraphina hesitated, her tongue catching against the roof of her mouth. The proud, defensive urge to lie was overwhelming, but she knew an outright fabrication would tumble down the moment he asked for specifics.

“I have... observed children,” she began.

“Observed them?” William countered. “Like a specimen under a glass? That is not experience.”

“I did my research before coming here, Your Grace,” Seraphina defended sharply. That much was true. “I read books for half of last night. I am well aware that I do not possess a maternal disposition, but I understand logic. Let’s say Alice has suffered a tremendous, destabilizing shock pending when you give me actual details on why she is screaming at night. The human mind does not simply reset itself because a new face enters the room. Healing requires a predictable environment and a great deal of time. I cannot perform miracles within the span of twenty minutes, and it is entirely unfair of you to expect them.”

“I do not expect miracles,” William said back. “I expect progress, though. I expect some indication that she is not slipping further away into that terrifying silence. If you are entirely out of your depth, you should have stated so before we struck our bargain.”

“I am not out of my depth,” Seraphina responded, hesitating to continue talking. “But she did fall asleep while I was speaking to her. I don’t know... I might have bored her. But that only means that I know what not to say when I try again. No more talk about Isaac Newton. “

William crossed his arms and scoffed. “She... what?” William whispered.

“She fell asleep,” Seraphina repeated, lowering her voice, though her heart was still beating violently. “Right there on the window seat. Her head slumped against the framework, and she drifted off entirely.”

William stared at her, stunned. He looked at Seraphina as if she had just spoken to him in a foreign language. “She has never done that before,” he said.

“What? Fallen asleep? That’s impossible.”

“She doesn’t sleep when people are in the room. That is what I hear,” he explained. “She just stares at them until they leave. She only sleeps when no one is watching her. Even the faintest noise wakes her up. She is hyper-vigilant, Miss Seraphina. If a maid so much as adjusts a curtain or walks within five paces of her room, Alice bolts upright in terror. Her mind is always on guard.”

He took a slow step toward her, his gaze searching her face so intensely that it made her breath hitch. “It is interesting that she fell asleep with you in the room. How did you manage it? What did you say to her?”

Seraphina’s throat went entirely dry. She could not possibly tell him the truth. She could not look him in the eye and admit that she had bored his deeply traumatized ward into a state of absolute unconsciousness by delivering a dry, aggressive lecture on the most stupid thing she had done in weeks, and how it tied to Newton’s law.

“That...” Seraphina said. “... is a trade secret.”

William’s eyes narrowed. “A secret? We are partners, Miss Seraphina. You are required to share your methods if they are yielding results.”

“Our partnership is built on a mutual exchange of information,” Seraphina countered smoothly, crossing her arms and offering him a cool, challenging smile. “I will gladly exchange the exact details of my nursery methodology the moment you provide me with something substantial regarding the blackmailer. Just one clue, Your Grace. Give me a name, a direction, or a piece of evidence your professionals uncover, and I will tell you exactly how I put Alice to sleep.”

William stared at her for a long moment before a small, begrudging smile tugged at the corner of his lips.

“Very well,” William murmured, dipping his head in a shallow bow. “I accept your bargain. I shall have some answers soon. See that you are prepared to deliver yours.”

“I am always prepared,” she replied.

Without waiting for him to dismiss her, Seraphina curtsied and turned on her heel to march out of the study, the door closing behind her as she finally let out the long, shaky breath she had been holding.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Iam with child,” Euphemia repeated, her lips parting into a helpless grin.

For a single second, the morning room at the Duke of Montgomery’s estate fell entirely still. Then, as if a dam had burst, the quiet room shattered into a glorious chaos of giggles, shouts, and ecstatic laughter. Leonora leaped from her chair, and Seraphina forced her own body to follow, descending upon their sister with all the joy she could summon.

“Oh, my goodness! You are going to have a child!” Leonora cried, her entire frame practically vibrating with excitement as she threw her arms around Euphemia’s neck. “I’m going to be an aunt!”

Euphemia laughed, burying her face in Leonora’s shoulder, her chest heaving with a happiness so rapid and dense it looked almost suffocating. As Seraphina wrapped her arms around them both, her chin resting against Euphemia’s soft hair, her mind did what it always did. It detached. It observed.

She looked at the way Euphemia sank back into the cushions of the sofa once the initial shouting subsided, her hand instinctively descending to rest over the gentle, barely noticeable curve of her abdomen. It was a protective, involuntary reflex. Seraphina had read about it. Euphemia’s fingers curved slightly, molding to the shape of her abdomen as if she could already shield the microscopic cluster of cellular life multiplying inside her.

“I am too excited for words,” Euphemia admitted, her voice dropping to a breathless whisper. “But honestly, I am not nearly as excited as the twins. Ever since we told them, it has been an absolute whirlwind. Every single moment, Georgianna and Cordelia find a way to remind me that a baby is coming.” She let out a soft laugh, her eyes shining. “They keep coming into the room just to touch my abdomen, feeling for any movement, and they play with me constantly. It has been a lot to take in.”

Seraphina watched her face closely, cataloging the subtle shifts. The dilation of her pupils, the steady, warm flush of her cheeks. It was the physical manifestation of maternal instinct.

To Seraphina, it was a completely foreign specimen.

Neither Euphemia, Leonora, nor Seraphina had ever actually experienced the love of a mother. Their upbringing had been a stark, transactional affair. Lady Byron, the woman who raised them, was many things... brilliant, strategic, and an invaluable ally who had actively encouraged Seraphina’s political writing from the very beginning, but she was never motherly. She had taught them how to survive, how to think, and how to navigate the treacherous waters of society with their wits intact, but she had never held them with that fierce, unconditional tenderness.

She had never looked at them the way Euphemia was currently looking at an unborn child.

So, how did Euphemia learn that gaze? Did it come naturally when one loved a child?

If Seraphina wanted to help Alice... the quiet, traumatized little girl currently sitting in the nursery of the Norwyn estate, she knew she had to decode this phenomenon. It had been an entire week since she last visited Alice, an agonizing seven days of reflecting on how she had utterly failed to reach her, ultimately boring her into a state of unconsciousness. She would be going back to Mayfair soon, and she could not afford another disaster.

‘Perhaps the childish approach failed because it was artificial’, Seraphina reasoned, analyzing Euphemia’s behavior. ‘Maternal conduct is not merely high-pitched vocalization or hollow cheerfulness. It is an emotional gravity. It is the establishing of a safe, predictable orbit where the child is the center of mass.’

If she wanted to help Alice lower her hyper-vigilant defenses, she would have to simulate this motherly state. She would have to study Euphemia’s empathy, break it down into its core components, and replicate it with practical precision.

“What of your fierce, terrifying duke?” Leonora asked, her snapping Seraphina out of her calculations. “How is he handling the news?”

Euphemia’s cheeks flushed a deeper shade of crimson. “Nathaniel has been completely spoiling me. I am practically forbidden from doing anything at all. Every single morning, he is there, and in truth... we have been sleeping in the same bedchamber for almost a year now. He refuses to let me leave his side for long.” She looked between Leonora and Seraphina, her expression turning intensely earnest, almost evangelistic. “Oh, I hate to tell you both that I was right, but... I was definitely right. There is love in this world, and it is within our reach. I want you both to know that. Love is the most magnificent, transformative feeling. It is having a partner who listens to your thoughts, who cherishes your flaws, who shields you from the world...”

“All right, all right, all right!” Leonora interrupted with a loud laugh, throwing her hands up in absolute surrender. “Stop selling the idea to us so fiercely! You are simply trying to make us terribly jealous at this point!”

Seraphina forced a smile to remain on her face, but internally, the weight of her own secret was pressing heavily against her chest. She had made Leonora swear she would not mention anything about the Duke of Norwyn to Euphemia so they did not worry her, but Leonora revealed that she could not keep the column a secret. She had to pick one because she needed to tell Euphemia something.

“I’m so in love!” Euphemia beamed.

The contrast between Euphemia’s pristine, romantic reality and the absolute chaos of her own life was staggering. Euphemia was floating on the peak of human happiness, completely oblivious to the fact that the very foundation of their family’s past survival was currently teetering on the edge of total ruin.

“In truth,” Euphemia began again, her eyes flashing with scandalous mischief as she leaned forward. “We were wrong as to what the term ‘making love’ really means.”

Leonora leaned in instantly, her eyebrows arching high. “What did you find out, Euphemia?”

“Oh, that is something else completely. I shall have to explain it to you both properly so you can be prepared,” Euphemia said, waving a hand through the air. “In fact, we might very well need writing materials so I can map it all out for you.”

But as the playful words left her mouth, her voice began to dwindle. Euphemia’s gaze shifted entirely, bypassing Leonora and landing squarely on Seraphina. The joy vanished from her face, replaced by concern. She had noticed her sister’s silence.

“Seraphina, what is the matter? What is wrong?” Euphemia asked softly.

Before Seraphina could formulate a calculated lie, Leonora chimed in. “She is in trouble, Euphemia. That is the other reason we came to visit you today. There is trouble brewing, Effie, but we will not truly know the depth of it until Seraphina goes to visit with Lady Byron first. Apparently, she needs to see her before anything else, and when she returns, she will tell us exactly what has happened.”

Seraphina kept her face perfectly smooth, but a cold prickle of determination flared within her. Leonora honestly believed they were going back to the countryside to seek Lady Byron’s counsel. She truly thought they would run to their guardian for protection. But Seraphina was entirely determined that they would do no such thing. Lady Byron had given them the tools to be independent, and Seraphina refused to crawl back to her like a defeated child the moment a shadow fell over her work. The threat was hers to handle. She would deal with the blackmailer in London, under her own terms, with the Duke of Norwyn’s assistance.

But she could not say that here. She could not risk fracturing Euphemia’s peace, especially not now, with a child on the way.

“Please, do not panic, Euphemia,” Seraphina said gently, reaching across the small gap between them to squeeze her hand. “You are with child. But I have a secret I must tell you. It is time.”

“What do you mean it is time?” Euphemia asked, her eyes moving rapidly between Leonora and Seraphina, her breathing catching. “What secrets are you talking about?”

Seraphina took a deep breath, letting her gaze sweep across the morning room before locking onto her sister’s. “For years now, I have been writing under a pseudonym about various political and social matters, and I have been publishing my work in London. But a severe problem has arisen. I have been receiving letters indicating that someone has discovered my true identity.”

Euphemia sat completely frozen, her jaw dropping in utter shock. “A pseudonym, Seraphina? I don’t... What?”

“Didn’t I tell you, Euphemia?” Leonora asked, shaking her head as she looked upon their sister, now heavy with child. “Didn’t I tell you that Seraphina had her own reasons for wanting to come to London when we first arrived? Look at it now. I was right. It wasn’t just me who had an ulterior motive. Seraphina had her own all along, and it was to be closer to this publisher she has been writing to.”

“You publish, Seraphina?” Euphemia pressed on, her voice rising slightly. “What pseudonym? What do you write about? Is it scandalous?”

“I promise I will tell you every single detail the moment I return,” Seraphina lied smoothly, squeezing her hand again to reinforce the falsehood, letting her sister believe that a trip to Lady Byron was indeed their next logical step. “Please, do not panic. Nothing is completely broken yet, and everything will be under control. Just allow me to go and see Lady Byron first.”

Euphemia shook her head, her mind visibly reeling as she tried to process the reality of the sister she thought she knew. “I cannot believe this. I truly cannot wrap my head around it. You have been a published author for years? How could you do something so incredibly risky?”

“Euphemia, think for a moment,” Seraphina countered softly. “We were lucky that the Duke did not ask for a dowry from our family because he did not want it. But have you ever stopped to wonder, if he had demanded a dowry, how we were ever going to pay for it? This was how, Euphemia. It was because of the income from this pseudonym that we were able to afford some of the comforts we had. It is because of this writing that we survived. So please, do not be so quick to dismiss it as a mere mistake. Do not worry, and trust me. Stop panicking, please.”

The mention of their past financial survival seemed to work like a mathematical proof, cutting through Euphemia’s emotional distress. Her rapid breathing slowed, her initial panic beginning to calm as she chose to rely on Seraphina’s capability.

“Whatever it is,” Euphemia said softly, her fingers wrapping tightly around Seraphina’s. “You must let me know if I can help you. We will figure this out.”

Leonora smiled, placing her hand over theirs, completing the triad. “Sisters will always stick together. No matter what comes our way, we will handle it together as sisters.”

Just then, the door to the morning room swung open, and Nathaniel walked into the space. The defensive atmosphere they had built vanished in an instant. Leonora and Seraphina stood up seamlessly, masking their conspiracy with warm, cheerful greetings for the Duke.

“We shall excuse ourselves for a bit, Your Grace,” Leonora said with a smile, gesturing toward the door. “Seraphina and I are rather famished from our travels, and we intend to grab something to eat downstairs.”

With a final, silent look of reassurance directed at Euphemia, Leonora and Seraphina slipped quietly out of the room, leaving the husband and wife alone in the drawing room.

Once outside, Seraphina stood in the corridor for a brief second, staring at the floor. She had a week before she had to return to Mayfair, a week to completely redefine her approach to Alice. Watching Euphemia hadn’t given her an emotional epiphany, but it had given her a hypothesis. Being a mother wasn’t about baby talk; it was about providing an absolute, unyielding center of gravity that absorbed a child’s chaos.

She would study it. She would map it, and when she went back to the Norwyn nursery, she would execute it flawlessly.

The carriage ride back to London was mostly quiet. The silence of the night match the exhaustion settling deep into Seraphina’s bones. By the time the horses hauled them up to the cobblestones outside their front door, the city had long since gone dark. It was well past midnight.

“We should have told Effie about the Duke,” Leonora finally said. Seraphina knew she was going to say something.

“I know,” she responded.

“She is a duchess now,” she continued. “Her husband has connections; he can help.”

“It is my problem to solve,” Seraphina countered.

“When are you going to willingly accept help, Seraphina? Why are you so stubborn?”

Seraphina shut her eyes. “Leo. Please. Not now.”

Seraphina stepped down from the carriage, fully intending to immediately retire to her bedchamber to begin drafting her strategic notes on maternal behavior. But the moment the front door swung open, the routine of the late hour shattered.

Standing in the dimly lit entry hall was a man she recognized instantly. It was the butler of the Norwyn household staff. She had not caught his name. The moment his eyes landed on Seraphina, he bowed and rushed forward.

“Miss Seraphina,” the man breathed. “Thank heavens you have returned. You must come with me at once. The carriage is already waiting.”

Seraphina stepped forward, her heart skipping a beat. “What is wrong, Sir?”

“It is Lady Alice,” he gasped, shaking his head. “She is burning with a terrible sickness. She woke up screaming hours ago, and the physician cannot calm her. His Grace sent me himself, he demands you come to the estate immediately. To try and put her to sleep.”

A cold dread dropped straight into Seraphina’s stomach.

“Seraphina?” Leonora whispered from behind her. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I’ll be back soon.”

Without another word of complaint, she turned right back toward the street, her heart hammering in her chest as she stepped into the carriage.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“He is the fourth physician I have summoned to this house since the clock struck ten, and if there were a fifth within a twenty-mile radius of Mayfair who possessed an ounce of medical competence, he would be standing here as well!”

William did not stop pacing to deliver the speech. He was a tempest locked inside the stifling nursery, his coat discarded and his shirtsleeves rolled violently up to his elbows. He looked frantic. His hair was thoroughly disheveled where his fingers had repeatedly plowed through it, and his eyes looked completely bloodshot under the glare of the candelabras.

“It makes no logical sense,” he continued. “None at all! A fever is a predictable biological response to an infection or an inflammation of the blood. It can be measured. It can be cooled with ice and treated with willow bark. But this... this erratic firing of the mind? The hallucinations? I have applied every known methodology! I have checked the nursery for drafts. I have demanded the cook verify every ingredient in the supper broth to rule out accidental poisoning. What am I supposed to do when the child simply refuses to obey its body mechanics?”

Seraphina stood just inside the threshold of the room, taking in the absolute chaos that had swallowed the nursery. On the massive, four-poster bed, Alice was thrashing beneath a mountain of quilts, her small legs kicking out blindly as if trying to run from an invisible predator. Her tiny face was slick with sweat, her chest heaving as she let out broken whimpers. The elderly governess was hovering over the mattress, her hands trembling violently as she tried to press a cool, damp linen cloth against the child’s burning forehead, while a somber-faced physician stood by the bedside, staring down at a useless bottle of laudanum.

“Your Grace, I would recommend a further application of leeches to the temples to reduce the inflammation of the blood. The fever has persisted long enough that we must draw the excess heat from the system before it reaches the brain —” the physician began, his voice hesitant.

“We have drawn enough blood to satisfy a butcher, and her pulse has only accelerated!” William snapped, completely cutting the man off as he stormed toward the window, his large hands clenching into fists. “There must be a rational explanation. The brain is an organ of order. If it is projecting monsters into the empty air, there must be a flaw we are failing to identify. Is it an excess of bile? Is it a pressure on the carotid arteries? Tell me something.”

“Your Grace,” Seraphina called out, stepping fully into the room.

William did not hear her. He turned on his heel, resuming his pace, his gaze locked onto the carpet as he ranted to himself. “I am trying to be what she needs. I am trying to provide the security required for a child of her station. That is the only logical course of action. It is not the child’s fault that she was born into the world. We bear no fault for the past, but now that she is under my roof, it is my absolute duty to maintain her preservation. But how can I preserve a child who is actively tearing herself apart from the inside out?”

Seraphina moved directly into his path. He was moving so quickly, completely blinded by his own thoughts, that he didn’t even realize she was there until he was less than a foot from colliding with her.

With a swift movement, Seraphina reached out and placed her palm flat against his forearm, catching the rigid muscle beneath his shirt. The contact anchored him. William stopped instantly, his chest heaving as he looked down at her.

“What is happening, Your Grace?” she asked, worried. “You look utterly undone.”

William stared at her for a fraction of a second, his jaw tightening so hard a muscle leaped along his cheek. He let out a breath that sounded dangerously close to a fractured growl.

“She is having nightmares,” he whispered. “That is the root of this entire disaster. It has been nightmares since the very day she arrived. Now, the fever has turned them into vivid, waking hallucinations. She keeps talking in her sleep. If she is not talking, she is screaming at the top of her lungs. She has not had a single, full night of sleep since you were here a week ago. She will sleep for ten minutes here, twenty minutes there, but never fully... never even an hour before she wakes up shrieking. I cannot understand why! What could have been so deeply, profoundly traumatic in her short life that it would permanently break her mind’s capacity for rest? I do not know.”

Seraphina looked up into his fierce gaze, her hand still resting against his arm. For a woman who spent her entire life reducing the universe to mathematical equations, political frameworks, and cold, predictable prose, this moment felt terrifyingly unquantifiable. The look of frustration, the desire of a proud, protective man trying to force the universe to be safe for a broken child, struck something incredibly deep within her.

It wasn’t logical.

She squeezed his arm, drawing his attention fully back to her. “Your Grace,” she said softly, her mind cataloging the room, the governess, the anxious nurse, the doctor, all of them crowding around the small, thrashing girl, looking absolutely terrified of William Carlton. “I think everyone should leave the room first. Except you.”

William’s brows drew together in confusion. “What do you mean? We cannot simply abandon her.”

“We are not abandoning her,” Seraphina countered. “But you told me yourself last week that Alice is hyper-vigilant. She does not sleep when people are in the room because her mind is always on guard, watching for threats. Right now, her senses are overwhelmed by a fever, and she is trapped in a room crowded with anxious adults, whispering, and poking at her skin. If her brain is already hallucinating monsters, we are giving her a dozen real shadows to feed those terrors. We need fewer people in this room. Just you and me.”

William looked from Seraphina to the child on the bed. He let out a long, ragged breath, the tension in his shoulders dropping slightly.

“Fine,” he murmured. “I will try anything at this point.” He turned toward the bed, and gestured. “All of you, retire downstairs immediately.”

The physician looked as though he wanted to protest, but one look at William’s expression silenced the man completely. Within a minute, the nursery was cleared, leaving only Seraphina and William with Alice.

Seraphina walked directly over to the bed, climbed onto the mattress, and sat down near the pillows, crossing her legs beneath her skirt.

William did not follow her. Instead, he retreated to the dim corner of the room, standing completely still with his arms crossed over his chest, his gaze tracking her every move.

Seraphina looked down at the little girl. Alice’s eyes were wide, but they were glossy and unfocused, rolling toward the ceiling as she let out a series of short, frantic whimpers. Her tiny hands were clutching at the air as if trying to ward off a blow.

“Alice,” Seraphina said quietly, without inflection.

The tone of her voice seemed to cut through the child’s panic. For a single, small moment, Alice’s legs stopped thrashing. Her eyes moved through the room until they locked onto Seraphina’s face. She didn’t stop crying entirely, but the frantic, terrifying screams began to subside, settling into a series of soft, trembling sobs.

She was listening.

“Now, Alice,” Seraphina said. “Whatever it is you are seeing, it is entirely unreal. It is not a creature. It is not a spirit. It is not anything that can harm you.” She paused. “What it is, is your own mind.”

Alice looked at her.

“You see, when the body runs a fever,” Seraphina continued. “The blood becomes overheated. This was observed and recorded by physicians long before either of us was born. When the blood is too warm, it agitates the nerves, and the nerves, which under ordinary circumstances carry messages accurately between the eyes and the brain, begin to carry them imprecisely. The brain receives a message and misreads it. It fills the gaps with things it already knows. Things it has seen before. Things it fears.” She folded her hands in her lap. “It is not unlike a magic lantern. You have seen a magic lantern?”

Alice gave the smallest possible nod.

“The image on the wall is not real,” Seraphina said. “It has no substance. You could put your hand through it and feel nothing but air. But it looks real because the light and the lens have conspired to put it there. Your mind is the lantern. The fever is the heat that powers it, and the moment the heat reduces, the image disappears.” She held the child’s gaze. “What you are seeing has no bones, Alice. It has no weight. It cannot touch you. It exists only because your blood is too warm and your nerves are doing their best under difficult circumstances.”

Alice’s brow had drawn together into a small, concentrated furrow. She was not crying. She was thinking. Seraphina could see the exact moment the fear had loosened its grip and something else had taken its place.

Seraphina pressed forward before the moment could close.

“The remedy is straightforward,” she said. “When you see the shadow, do not look away from it. Look directly at it and remind yourself of what it is. Overheated blood. Imprecise nerves. A magic lantern with no operator.” She paused. “You are the one who decides what the lantern shows, Alice. Not the fever.”

From the corner of the room she heard William shift. She did not look at him.

Alice looked at the middle distance for a moment, her small face working through something.

“The lantern has no operator,” Seraphina repeated. “None whatsoever. Let me also tell you something about fevers. I find this the most interesting...”

She did not know how long she sat there talking. Ten minutes passed, then twenty, then thirty. Seraphina dismantled the entire concept of nightmares, explaining the physiological stages of sleep, the involuntary movement of the diaphragm during dreams, and the chemical nature of the cool cloth resting on her forehead. She spoke of Isaac Newton, of the stars, and of the absolute, mathematical certainty that the morning sun would rise at precisely four minutes past five.

Slowly, the tension left Alice’s tiny limbs. Her small chest began to rise and fall. Her eyelids grew heavy, fluttering against her pale cheeks, until finally, with one last, soft sigh, her eyes shut completely. She fell into a deep sleep.

Seraphina waited for several minutes, ensuring the child’s breathing remained unbroken. Satisfied, she began to shift her weight, intending to slide quietly off the mattress and give the girl space.

But the moment she moved, she felt a restriction. She looked down. Alice’s tiny fingers had reached out in her sleep, wrapping themselves with surprising, iron-clad strength around the fabric of Seraphina’s skirt. She was holding on as if her very life depended on it.

Seraphina froze, looking up toward the corner of the room.

William was already standing by the bedside, having moved forward without making a single sound. He stared down at Alice’s sleeping form, and then scoffed. “She likes science?” he questioned in a whisper. “She is entirely asleep, and all we had to do was... bore her to sleep?”

William let out another amused huff, his gaze dropping to the tiny hand gripping her dress. “What do you want to do now? If you pull away, she will likely wake.”

Seraphina sighed softly, settling back against the pillows. “Perhaps... perhaps I shall simply spend the night here on the edge of the mattress. So that she does not wake in terror.”

William looked at her, his expression softening. “Do you want me to stay? Do you need anything?”

“No,” Seraphina replied gently, offering him a small, weary smile. “Go and retire for the night, Your Grace. You look undone, and you will be of no use to anyone if your own mind breaks down from exhaustion.”

William stayed perfectly still for a long moment, simply looking at her where she sat on the bed with the child anchored to her side. “I am grateful for this. You should know that,” he said.

“It is all right,” she whispered. “Go.”

With a final look, William dipped his head and walked out of the room, the door closing softly behind him.

Left alone in the nursery, Seraphina looked down at Alice’s peaceful face. For the past week, she had been stressing over how to copy Euphemia’s maternal tactics, believing that she had to force herself to be soft, gentle, and overflowing with emotional warmth to save a child.

But looking at the way Alice had responded to her, Seraphina realized something. Maternal affection was not a singular, uniform mold. Every child required a different frequency. She didn’t need to mimic her sister’s emotional gravity. She simply needed to find what worked specifically for Alice, and apply her own mind to it.

She leaned her head back against the bedpost, her hand resting near the little girl’s fingers. For the first time all night, the panic in her chest settled into a calm, victorious certainty.

She had found the key to the nursery.

CHAPTER NINE

Seraphina blinked against the light in her eyes, a dull ache throbbing behind her temples from her cramped position in the bed. She hadn’t moved for hours. Beside her, Alice remained perfectly still. Sleeping.

Seraphina looked down at her lap. Alice’s tiny hand was still wrapped around the fabric of her skirt, but it was looser now. Moving slowly, Seraphina began to slide the fabric free, centimeter by centimeter, until her skirt was released without a single stir from the sleeping girl.

A low sound drew her gaze upward.

William was standing on the opposite side of the bed, still looking entirely unraveled by the night. He had not dressed for the morning. His coat was entirely missing, and his white linen shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, revealing the line of his throat and his chest. The fabric was thoroughly rumpled, clinging slightly to the broad expanse of his shoulders as he leaned back against the bedpost.

Seraphina’s eyes caught on the exposed skin of his throat, tracking the pulse beating there. Her gaze lingered against her own volition, dipping down to the shadow where his shirt parted before she forced herself to look away, her throat suddenly dry.

“Your Grace,” she managed to whisper. “You came back.”

“We need to talk,” William said. “In my study. Now.”

Seraphina offered a tight nod, carefully smoothing down her wrinkled skirts to hide the inexplicable tremor in her hands. She followed him out of the room, her eyes fixed firmly on the carpet to avoid looking at him.

Once they were in his study, William did not sit behind his desk. Instead, he paced toward the center of the room, turning sharply to face her as she closed the door behind them.

“Is something wrong, Your Grace?” she questioned. “You look... even more worried.”

“Miss Seraphina,” he began, his gaze locking onto hers so fiercely, it made her breath catch in her throat. “I have spent the early hours of the morning analyzing the parameters of our current situation. The blackmailer possesses my family crest. He threatens your livelihood, your identity, and your security. Simultaneously, my ward is trapped in a profound state of psychological distress, and you are the single individual in this city who has managed to stabilize her.”

Seraphina crossed her arms, trying to ground herself. “I am glad my methods were efficient, Your Grace. But I fail to see what parameters require an emergency discussion at dawn.”

“The parameter of proximity,” William stated, taking a slow step toward her. His shirt remained undone, the loose linen shifting with his movement, and Seraphina found her gaze dropping back down to his chest, utterly distracted by it before she snapped her eyes back to his face. “Alice requires your presence. You cannot properly administer your methodology to her if you are traveling across London at midnight. Yet, your constant presence under my roof would ruin your reputation entirely within a fortnight. The society we inhabit is rigid and small.”

He paused, his jaw tightening. “Therefore, the only practical... logical solution to both our problems is for you to marry me.”

The room fell into an absolute, ringing silence.

Seraphina stared at him, her mind completely locking up. For a woman who prided herself on having a swift, razor-sharp retort, she could do nothing but blink.

“You... what?”

“I am asking you to marry me,” William repeated, his tone entirely businesslike, as if he were proposing a corporate merger or an alliance between two merchant houses. “It is the single arrangement that provides total legal and social protection. You will have permanent access to Alice, the scandal of your presence is entirely neutralized, and the blackmailer will find himself targeting the wife of a Duke, which carries an entirely different set of legal consequences.”

“No,” Seraphina said instantly.

William froze. His eyes widened slightly, a look of unadulterated shock flitting across his features. He looked at her as if she had just spoken in a foreign tongue. “No? What do you mean, no?”

“I mean exactly what the syllable implies, Your Grace,” Seraphina countered, her hands balling into fists at her sides. “I am rejecting your proposal. I have absolutely no intention of marrying you, nor any other man.”

William stared at her, taken aback. “Why?” he asked, bewildered. “Why on earth would you refuse? It is an incredibly advantageous arrangement. It solves every logistical hurdle currently before us.”

“It solves your hurdles,” Seraphina snapped, her chin tilting upward. “I have spent years building my own mind, my own career, and my own goals. I am entirely content to remain a spinster. I will not surrender my autonomy, my work, or my identity to become an ornament in your house, expected to produce heirs and manage your domestic accounts while my own thoughts are locked away in a drawer. I have my own life, Your Grace.”

William looked at her, his gaze tracking the flush that had rushed into her cheeks. Slowly, the shock left his face. He took another step forward, closing the distance between them until he was standing much closer than was socially acceptable, his height completely casting her into shadow.

“You misunderstand the parameters of the contract,” William said. “I am not asking for an ornament. I am asking for a partner. I am asking for your mind. If you marry me, we will not consummate the union. We wouldn’t need to. I am not looking for that sort of arrangement, and I will not ask an heir of you. The marriage will remain strictly legal and with boundaries. The moment Alice is thoroughly healthy, stable, and independent, we shall seek an annulment on those exact grounds. You will have your freedom back, entirely intact.”

Seraphina’s breath hitched. He was standing far too close. The scent of him was completely filling her senses. She could see the slight movement of his chest as he breathed, the fabric of his shirt brushing against the empty space between them.

“Furthermore,” William continued, leaning down slightly. “Your work will remain entirely your own. I will not forbid you from writing a single word. In fact, you may use my library, my resources, and my political connections to sharpen your columns. I am offering you an absolute shield... Seraphina. The world is a dangerous place for a woman with your specific intellect. If you are my Duchess, both you and your sisters that you want to protect will be entirely safe from any ruin this blackmailer intends to bring. My title is an iron wall. Let me put it around you.”

Seraphina felt a sudden, violent spasm in her chest. Her heart began to hammer loudly. It felt dangerously fast, almost suffocating. A strange warmth pool tightened deep in her stomach, making her feel thoroughly disoriented and weak.

“Your Grace,” she gasped, her voice sounding breathy and small as she took a hasty step backward to break his proximity. “Stop. Please. I... I feel quite sick.”

William’s brows drew together in instant concern. “Sick? In what manner?”

“My heart,” she stammered, pressing a hand over the center of her bodice, entirely flustered by the internal chaos. “It is accelerating at an unquantifiable rate. It must be a consequence of the late hour and the lack of rest from last night. It is affecting my internal mechanisms. I am certain I am developing a fever.”

Before she could protest, William closed the gap between them again. He reached out, his warm hand coming to rest flat against her forehead to evaluate her temperature.

The physical touch was like an electric current firing through her nerves. Seraphina’s face instantly heated up to a burning crimson beneath his palm. Her eyes locked onto the open collar of his shirt, her gaze tracking the line of his collarbone, her mind completely spinning as the proximity of him threatened to overwhelm her logic.

“You do not have a fever, Seraphina,” William murmured, his thumb brushing lightly against the temple of her forehead before he slowly lowered his hand. “Your skin is entirely normal.”

“I do have a fever,” she insisted sharply as she pulled away from his hand entirely. “I am the one experiencing the internal thermal imbalance, Your Grace, and I tell you, I am quite unwell.”

William stared at her, a clever look entering his eyes, though his face remained perfectly serious. “If you say so. But my proposition stands. A temporary contract, Seraphina. With no physical strings, to ensure the preservation of your family. It gives you the opportunity to fix this.”

Seraphina looked at him, and thought about the absolute safety his title would grant to Leonora. Her heart was still thrashing wildly in her chest, and it was difficult to think straight. She needed to escape this room. She needed to escape his gaze.

But her mind, ever the analytical machine, forced her to pause and weigh the logic of his words before she spoke.

He was right. Under any other circumstances, the proposition would be utter madness, but functionally, it was the most efficient equation available to her. If she became his wife, she would be cloaked in the power of his family name. The house of Norwyn carried a deeply entrenched weight in the ton. It was a name that commanded caution. A malicious extortionist might easily crush an anonymous spinster writing for a newspaper, but that same person would undoubtedly think twice, perhaps even retreat entirely before exposing the wife of a Duke.

The title would buy her the one commodity she desperately required. Time. It would give her the positioning she needed to uncover the blackmailer and fix the issue herself, without dragging her sisters down into ruin.

Yet, the thought of surrendering her hard-won independence tasted like defeat. She had vowed to remain a spinster, to dedicate her life entirely to her books, her columns, and her intellect. To bind herself to a man felt like erasing everything she had built.

‘But it is temporary, Seraphina,’ she reminded herself, clinging to his precise wording. There would be no physical strings, no consummation, and a clean annulment waiting for her the moment Alice was restored to health. Her work would not be forbidden, her goals would remain intact.

What could possibly go wrong?

“Very well,” she breathed and swallowed. “I agree to the terms. We shall marry under those exact parameters, and not a single variable more.”

William nodded and finally took a step back. “Deal.”

Seraphina turned on her heel and practically fled the study, her skirts twisting around her ankles as she hurried through the doorway. Standing alone, she leaned her back against the wall and let out a long, shaky breath.

Slowly, with every meter she put between herself and the door of the study, she noticed how the acceleration in her chest began to subside. The hammering slowed, her pulse gradually returning to its ordinary rhythm. She looked down at her hand, which was still trembling slightly against her skirts, and reasoned that the room probably needed to be aired out.

The study had been shut up all night with stale air and coal gas, and she was certain that the lack of proper oxygen had simply caused a temporary constriction of her respiratory tract.

CHAPTER TEN

“Explain yourself, Seraphina,” Leonora demanded, her voice sharp enough to cut glass. “This is a complete and total disaster. How, exactly, did this happen? You swore up and down that you would never get married. You have given us endless, exhausting speeches about the traps of marriage! Yet, I come back from a quick errand to find out you are marrying a Duke? How long have you been keeping this a secret? I had to wait for Effie to arrive for me to find out.”

“Oh, ignore her! I came the very second your letter arrived,” Euphemia squealed, reaching across the table to grab a fresh sheet of paper. “The moment I read that you accepted the Duke, I got on the carriage right away. A wedding, Seraphina! A grand wedding!”

Seraphina sat frozen between them, her teacup held halfway to her lips, her mind completely blank.

Her thoughts were spinning out of control. It did not feel real. It felt like she had somehow fallen into a strange, bizarre dream. In all her years of life, through all her reading, political writing, and careful planning, she had never imagined a world where she would become a Duchess. She was Seraphina Beaumont. She was supposed to be at her desk, writing political articles and pointing out the flaws in society from behind a secret name.

She was not supposed to be picking out wedding lace.

“I should have known something wasn’t right.” Leonora continued her pacing. “For the past two days you’ve been ridiculously quiet. What possessed you to accept his proposal? What were you thinking? Did you even think at all?”

“Don’t listen to Leonora’s negativity,” Euphemia said happily, waving her hand as she dipped her pen in ink. “We have so much to plan and so little time! First, the special license. The Duke will have to get one from the Archbishop so we don’t have to wait three weeks for the church announcements. That means the wedding can happen at St. George’s. If everything goes the way it should.”

“St. George’s?” Leonora gasped, throwing her hands in the air. “Euphemia, she barely knows the man! For all we know, he could be a terrible person. “She hasn’t the faintest idea what she is stepping into. Now, I know we all came to London hoping for love... and a happy home, and all those romantic notions. But doesn’t this entire business feel suspicious to you, Effie?”

Seraphina stared blankly at the tablecloth.

‘How did I say yes?’ she asked herself. ‘What went wrong with my logic?’

She remembered how William had looked in his study. She remembered the warmth of him, the crazy pounding in her chest, and his simple, practical promise. A shield. No physical strings. Total freedom for her writing. In that moment, it had made perfect sense. It was a clever move to save her family from disaster. But watching Euphemia write down a massive list of flowers, the promise felt less like a clever plan and more like a giant trap snapping shut.

“For the dress,” Euphemia rambled on, writing as fast as her hand could move, “we need white lace over heavy silk. Nothing too fancy. Seraphina doesn’t care for ruffles, but a high lace collar will make her look like a proper Duchess. Oh, and the cake! We must tell the cook that a huge three-tiered plum cake is non-negotiable.”

“Did he force you into this?” Leonora asked. “You can tell us. Did he trap you in a corner? Did he threaten your reputation? Because if that arrogant man forced you⁠—”

“Do you truly think that any gentleman is capable of forcing our older sister, Seraphina, into anything?” Euphemia interrupted with a tilt of her head. “Can’t you see how romantic it is? It is just like a storybook!”

‘It is nothing like a storybook,’ Seraphina thought numbly, looking out the window.

She felt completely lost. The sharp, clever writer who could destroy a politician’s argument in five minutes was now utterly frozen by wedding planning. She had no idea how to be a bride. She had no idea how to pretend. The whole thing was a fake. A deal to protect her writing and help a traumatized child.

“Most importantly,” Euphemia continued, dropping her voice to a dramatic whisper as she leaned towards Seraphina on the sofa. “It is paramount we talk about the wedding night.”

Leonora groaned, dropping her head onto her hands. “Oh, please, no. We are not asking the right questions here.”

“No, Leonora, it matters!” Euphemia insisted. “Seraphina knows nothing about what married people do! She only reads science books and news reports! When I tried to explain love to you both before, she wasn’t even listening! Seraphina, pay attention. I am going to draw you a picture so you know what to expect.”

Leonora let out a frustrated groan. “Euphemia, if you draw our sister a picture right now, I am jumping into the river!”

“I am trying to help her!” Euphemia argued, holding her pen up like a sword. “You both are refusing to listen to me. Lady Byron did not have this talk with us, and I assure you, it is important.”

“I could not care less about that,” Leonora retorted.

“It is not for you right now. It is for Seraphina. Your time will come.”

Leonora scoffed and sat down. “That is what you believe.”

Euphemia placed a hand on her hip. “Leonora Ashcroft!”

“Could you both please stop talking?” Seraphina finally snapped.

The room went completely quiet.

Seraphina carefully set her teacup down. She sat up straight, using her best stern voice to freeze them both in place.

“Let us deal with this calmly, logically, and one thing at a time,” Seraphina said, looking back and forth between Leonora’s angry face and Euphemia’s messy, ink-covered hands. “Leonora, no one trapped me, forced me, or ruined me. I agreed to this deal with a clear head. It is a good deal. Euphemia, put the pen down. There will be no fancy lace, no giant plum cakes, and absolutely nobody is drawing pictures. I have read about duties and marriages. I will be fine.”

“But the books do not document every single thing!” Euphemia argued.

“I find that very hard to believe,” Seraphina countered. “The books I read are based on real facts and clear logic. Everything in nature follows plain rules, and science explains all of it.”

Euphemia placed the pen and paper on the table. “Books cannot tell you why your chest feels warm, or why your hands shake, or why your mind goes entirely blank when he looks at you!”

“Yes, it can,” Seraphina replied coolly, without missing a beat. “That is simply a fast heart rate brought on by excitement. Or perhaps just a warm room with poor airflow. It is a simple bodily reaction, nothing more. One does not need grand feelings to explain a basic physical response.”

Euphemia threw her hands up, thoroughly exasperated. “You cannot treat a marriage like an arithmetic problem! A husband is not a science project.”

“Of course he is,” Seraphina insisted. “Science follows clear rules. If you follow the right steps, you get the expected result. Relying on good sense will always work far better than relying on silly poetry.”

Euphemia slowly lowered her hand. She blinked once, then twice, as if trying to reorder the universe in her mind.

“Wait,” Euphemia said, her voice dropping to a breathy whisper. “Hold on a minute. Seraphina... are you not in love with him? Do you have no feelings for the Duke you are about to marry at all?”

Leonora let out a long, loud sigh of utter relief and threw her hands up toward the ceiling. “Thank you! That is what I have been trying to tell you for the past twenty minutes! That is precisely what I have been saying!”

Leonora turned to face Euphemia, ticking the facts off on her fingers. “She met His Grace while investigating who has been sending those wretched threat letters. She noticed the distinct quality of the vellum paper, identified a hidden blind stamp pressed into it, and tracked that seal straight to the Duke of Norwyn’s estate to confront him. Now she comes back to tell us that the man asked her to marry him, and she said yes!”

Leonora took a sharp breath, her eyes widening. “To make matters even worse, all of this began because she agreed to take charge of his ward. We do not even know who this ward is! Is the child his secret daughter? A distant relative? She has no idea who this person is!”

Euphemia gasped, clutching her chest as if taken aback by the absurdity of it all. “But Seraphina does not even like children!”

“That is what I have been trying to say!” Leonora said, pointing wildly at Euphemia. “Thank you! Thank you for finally listening to me!”

Euphemia turned back to Seraphina, her expression shifting from shock to concern. “So, Seraphina... what is going on here? What is this? You told us you were getting married and I thought you had found... well, love! Or something like it.”

Seraphina smoothed down the front of her skirt, remaining entirely unbothered by her sisters’ dramatic outburst. “You both need not worry. It is a logical, practical arrangement,” she explained calmly. “The Duke possesses significant power and connections in London. He can help me discover who is sending these letters far faster than I ever could on my own. Furthermore, the situation ties directly to him. Whoever is behind this is using his family’s private seal. He has a personal stake in finding the culprit.”

“But no!” Euphemia protested, inching closer to her and shaking her head. “That is not how this is supposed to go! We came to Mayfair to find love! To find happiness and build a proper family. We left the countryside because we were terrified of being lonely, of ending up old and forgotten.”

“Effie, you married someone you were not in love with at first,” Seraphina noted. “That worked out for you, did it not?”

Euphemia pressed two fingers to her forehead. “Yes, I did,” she admitted. “When Nathaniel and I married, it was certainly not a grand love story, that much is true. It was done to save public face. We were simply fortunate... exceedingly lucky that we grew to care for one another, and that we have the deep love we share now. I achieved the happiness I wanted. But that is an exception, Seraphina, not the rule.”

Euphemia’s eyebrows knitted together. “I was holding out hope that you would allow yourself to fall in love before making such a commitment. I know that is a far-fetched wish. Knowing the kind of person you are... it feels nearly impossible. You are like a stone wall. A rock. You do not open her heart up to affection like other people do, and I am terrified of what might happen after the wedding when the quiet settles in.”

Seraphina gave a smile. “Then you may set your fears aside, because I do not care about any of that. Love was never my goal.”

Euphemia blinked, stunned. “What?”

“Just like Leonora said the day we visited your estate,” Seraphina said smoothly. “When I agreed to leave the countryside and move to London with you both under the guise of starting our families and being happy together, I had my own motives. I wanted to be closer to my publisher so I could handle my writing column in peace, without relying on delayed posts and distant couriers. Also, I came to keep an eye on both of you so you would not... run wild. But I truly never had the intention of finding love or marrying anyone. It was never my plan. I was only playing along.”

She softened her tone slightly, looking between her sisters. “I am sorry if that disappoints you, but romantic devotion was not what I was looking for in the long run. That wasn’t why I came here. But this arrangement works. In a way, I am fulfilling what you wanted, Effie. I will be married, secured, and protected. Can you not simply consider that a victory?”

Euphemia looked at her for a long moment, letting out a defeated sigh. “Fine,” she murmured softly. “I know I cannot argue with you over this or change your mind. So I won’t. It would be pointless, and I do not have the energy. If this is truly what you are doing... can you at least let me plan the wedding? Exactly as I want to?”

Seraphina hesitated for a beat, weighing her options, before nodding. “Very well. But know this. It must remain simple, disciplined, and within reason. No outrageous extravagances.”

“I still think this is a terrible idea,” Leonora chimed in, crossing her arms over her chest. “It is cold and far too risky. But fine. If you are set on doing it, then I suppose that is what is going to happen.”

Euphemia smiled, reaching to pat Leonora on the lap before turning her attention back to Seraphina. “So... does this mean you are no longer traveling to the country to visit Lady Byron?”

Seraphina shook her head. “That was always meant to be a last resort. My hope is that the Duke can help me catch this blackmailer quickly, so I never have to ask Lady Byron for assistance or reveal to her that our secret has been exposed to a stranger.”

Euphemia nodded. “Well, I certainly understand that. Hopefully it never comes to that. But if it does, Seraphina, you must promise to reach out to me so Nathaniel and I can help as well.”

“I hope it does not come to that either,” Seraphina responded. “But thank you, Effie. I know you only want to help, and I can be... well, me. But... I appreciate you coming all the way for this wedding. As superficial as it may be.”

As her sisters finally settled down, the tension in the room began to thaw. Seraphina took a breath, reflecting on the moment.

It felt as though the fog on her mind was starting to clear.

Her sisters were finally on board with the plan. She could move forward, marry the Duke, and focus entirely on the objective. Once they caught the person threatening her family, that individual would face the full weight of the law. In the meantime, she would honor her side of the bargain. She would do her absolute best to care for Alice, guide her, and make her life better.

At the very end of it all, once the threat was eliminated and the child was settled, they could annul the marriage. Everything would be resolved, the danger would pass, and life would go right back to normal.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Do you have information for me?”

Anthony paused, his hand frozen mid-air as he reached for a decanter on the sideboard. He turned slowly, holding an unlit cigar in his other hand, staring at William as though he had suddenly lost his mind.

“Come on, William,” Anthony said, letting out a disbelief-filled chuckle. “It is your wedding morning. In less than an hour we have to leave for St. George’s. Your carriage is being prepared downstairs, your butler looks like he is on the verge of an apoplexy, and you are standing there looking like a tax auditor. Why, in heaven’s name, are we talking about work?”

William did not so much as blink. Standing by the desk, he adjusted the lace at his wrists, his eyebrows drawn together. “Go straight to the point, Anthony. Do you have any information for me or not? I did not invite you into my home this morning to keep me company, did I?”

“Would that be such a bad thing? To keep you company?”

“Has the Duke of Glenhaven nothing better to do than haunt my study, or has running your own estate grown so dull that my affairs have become interesting to you?”

Anthony set the unlit cigar on the tray and shook his head in exasperation. William had been close friends with him since their university days, a bond forged over late-night debates and survived despite their wildly contrasting natures. Where William was all rigid, Anthony navigated life like it was his playground. But beneath that breezy surface lay a sharp mind, which was precisely why William trusted him with matters he would never dare breathe to another living soul.

“You are absolute murder on the nerves, do you know that?” Anthony sighed, pouring himself a splash of brandy despite the early hour. “Most men on their wedding morning are worrying about their vows, or their boots, or whether their bride will like the morning gift. You look like you are preparing to lay siege to a fortress.”

William paid the complaint no mind whatsoever. His entire focus was fixed on a single objective: finding the origin of those letters. Over the past several days, he had dragged Anthony into this mess under the guise of an urgent, highly confidential estate matter, and William had very specific, very calculated reasons for pushing so relentlessly.

On one hand, there was the matter of Seraphina... or rather, the practical, highly unorthodox bargain he had struck with her. She had agreed to help him manage the situation with Alice. It was a trade. His protection and investigation in exchange for her intellect and assistance.

Alice was a problem William was utterly ill-equipped to solve. The girl’s frequent, agonizing nightmares were turning the halls of his estate into constant battlefields. It was a massive house... dozens of rooms, multiple floors, thick stone walls, and a small army of servants, yet somehow, every outburst, every episode, every crisis involving Alice always managed to find its way directly back to him.

He could not escape it. He could not simply sit here in his study and focus on his affairs, his ledgers, or his parliamentary duties when the entire household was thrown into chaos because a child was screaming in the dark. It was a massive, exhausting burden. This was entirely new territory for him. He loathed disruptions. He despised unpredictable, emotional variables interrupting the orderly, logical flow of his life.

He did not he possess the gentle nature such a role required. But Seraphina... Seraphina was different. From the moment she had interacted with Alice, she hadn’t just... figured it out. She was the only person who had managed to make any real progress with the girl.

So, she that made her indispensable.

But when William looked at Seraphina, he didn’t see a sweet, ever-yielding lady of the ton. He saw an operational necessity. Marrying her was, above all else, a masterclass in practicality. It solved two monumental problems at once. It gave Seraphina the safety and cover she needed from her unknown enemy, and it brought her directly into his household to manage Alice, effectively saving him an endless amount of trouble. With Seraphina taking the helm of the chaos, he would finally be free to focus entirely on his work without constant, nerve-wracking interruptions. Solving this blackmail mystery was his part of the contract, his ticket to securing her complete, unreserved cooperation.

On the other hand, the entire affair was deeply, personally irritating to him as a matter of principle. The mere thought that someone out there was using his family’s name was an insult he could not stomach. It was an intrusion into his domain. From what he had gathered during his discussions with Seraphina, the blackmailer had been clever enough not to press a recognizable wax seal onto the letters, doing so would have been an immediate, foolish giveaway. But they had not banked on the fact that Seraphina would discover the blind-stamped mark embedded directly into the fabric of the paper itself.

Why would anyone use material so explicitly tied to the Norwyn estate?

Was it a calculated risk? An attempt to throw suspicion onto his household? Or was it an arrogant message directed specifically at him? William did not care what the motive was, he only cared about the resolution. He wanted to unearth whoever was responsible, tear down their little scheme, and make them thoroughly regret ever touching his family’s name.

Anthony leaned back against the edge of the desk, holding his glass, interrupting William’s thoughts.

“If you must know, I took the paper straight to the finest paper merchants and stationers in London,” Anthony began. “Whatman’s Mill is the sole manufacturer of that specific type of paper, as you know. We cross-referenced their distribution records over the past three years to see if any unauthorized reams were sold or delivered to secondary vendors.”

“And?” William prompted, his eyes narrowing slightly.

“Nothing, and that is precisely the trouble,” Anthony admitted, taking a small sip of brandy. “I visited every stationer of note in Mayfair, the ones who handle custom trimming, hot-pressing, and watermarking for the nobility, and not one of them had ever produced or sold a mark like it. No ledger of yours or your father’s mentions such a thing either. Whatever this blind stamp is, William, it was not made by any manufacturer I can find. I asked if anyone had brought in loose sheets of fine stock to be cut, prepared, or bound by hand instead.”

“Did anyone?”

“No,” Anthony replied simply. “No clerk remembered handling that paper for an outside customer. Which brings us to the third step. This very house.”

William’s jaw tightened. “The estate.”

“Precisely,” Anthony said, setting his glass down. “If the paper did not come from a merchant or a secondary stationer, then it was acquired directly from your inventory. Something perhaps tested, but never put to proper use. Which means we must examine your own household. We need to look through the estate records, check the physical storerooms downstairs, audit the stock, and question anyone who has ever had access to your private study or the supply vaults. And we ought to check for any record of who might possess your family’s crest besides yourself. A signet, a seal, anything bearing the mark that was ever gifted, lost, or otherwise let out of your father’s hands.”

Anthony paused, giving William a long, calculating look before speaking again, his voice dropping slightly as if the walls themselves might hear. “Which leads me to a rather delicate question, William. What if this involves one of your father’s... many exploits?”

William’s eyes narrowed, but he did not immediately cut him off.

“Think about it,” Anthony continued smoothly. “The late Duke was, to put it mildly, a man of extensive personal freedom. Even long after his marriage, he was not what anyone would call a respectful or faithful husband. He entertained half the women in the country; he was a frequent patron of low-born taverns, gambling hells, and every notorious haunt London had to offer. He was notoriously, overly generous to the wrong people. He gave away jewelry, land, allowances...”

William let out a low, grim breath, turning toward the window that looked out over the morning street. He knew his father’s reputation better than anyone. The late Duke had been a rogue of the highest order, a man who lived entirely for his own pleasures and left behind a tangled web of past affairs, disgruntled Lords... and lovers.

“I cannot rule it out,” William admitted coldly. “My father left plenty of loose ends scattered across England. It is entirely possible that someone retained access to his private stock, or stole a crest years ago, waiting for an opportunity to cause trouble.”

“Then that is where we direct our search next,” Anthony said, nodding in agreement. “We start digging into the old estate archives, the financial ledgers, and the list of people who passed through your father’s life during those final years.”

Silence settled over the study for a brief moment.

“Well,” Anthony said, pushing off the desk. “Now that we have managed to discuss blackmail, stolen crests or paper, and your father’s colorful past on the morning of your wedding... can we perhaps turn our attention to the actual event? The carriage will be around in twenty minutes.”

William adjusted his cuff links again, keeping his eyes fixed on the street below. “It is a simple ceremony. A business arrangement formalized by the church.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Anthony chuckled, stepping closer to the window. “I have seen your bride at a few social functions, you know. Miss Seraphina Beaumont. She is quite pretty, actually. Very striking.”

William didn’t look back. “She is acceptable.”

“Acceptable?” Anthony laughed softly. “My dear William, the woman looks as though she was carved out of pure, white porcelain. Does she ever step outside into the sunlight? I don’t think I have ever seen a woman with skin quite so pale.”

William permitted himself an almost imperceptible turn of his head, a wry look touching his features before he caught himself. “She does possess an extraordinarily pale complexion. I would believe it if she lived entirely in a darkened library, surrounded by old dust and leather bounds, emerging only when the moon is high.”

Anthony grinned, leaning against the window frame. “Mmm. Sounds to me like you are paying attention to her, William. Getting a little attracted to your future Duchess, are we?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” William snapped. “Attraction is not even remotely on my mind. To be quite frank, the woman is very frustrating.”

Anthony raised an eyebrow, clearly enjoying the rare sight of William rattled. “Frustrating? How so?”

“She does not behave like a normal lady. She is... unusual,” William said, taking a step away from the window. He stopped near the center of the room, his mind turning over the baffling reality of Seraphina Beaumont.

“Unusual?” Anthony asked, genuinely curious now. “In what way? You’re not saying enough, William. She is the daughter of a late viscount, no?”

“It is everything about her,” William muttered. “The way she speaks. The way her mind operates. She is... strange.”

In truth, William had never met a woman who unsettled his worldview quite like Seraphina did. She was not so different from her pseudonym. Most women of his acquaintance operated within the predictable, well-rehearsed boundaries of the ton. They giggled, they flirted, they discussed the weather, or they dropped subtle hints. They were easy to manage because they were predictable.

Seraphina was an anomaly. She was outrageously daring in a way that defied every bit of common sense a woman was supposed to possess. Who else would have tracked a blind stamp, sneaked onto a Duke’s private estate, and confronted him in his own domain without so much as a tremor in her voice? She hadn’t swooned. She hadn’t panicked.

He thought back to the way she had handled Alice. Where anyone else would have offered empty platitudes or coddled the girl into further hysteria, Seraphina had applied a logic that was completely un-ladylike, entirely bizarre, but utterly brilliant.

She was strange.

Yet, that exact strangeness was the precise reason he had agreed to put a ring on her finger. A standard lady of society would crumble under the weight of his household. A standard bride would demand his constant presence, complain about the gloomy atmosphere of his estate, and throw her hands up in flustered despair the second Alice began to scream in the night.

Seraphina wouldn’t do that. She was a strange, daring, completely absurd woman, but she was precisely what he needed.

She seemed practical to a fault. It was a thoroughly convenient marriage, the most pragmatic, unromantic, and sensible proposition he had ever agreed to.

“William?” Anthony called out to him.

William glanced at him then. “She views everything through a lens of strict logic and observation,” William said, turning his back to Anthony. “I have never met a woman so consumed by facts and science. She is different from anything I anticipated. It is... unsettling.”

Anthony chuckled, shaking his head with an amused grin. “Well, my dear friend, it sounds to me as though you have finally met your match. Also, given the reputation of these Byron sisters, you stand very little chance of keeping your neat, orderly world intact. Heaven help you, William.”

William turned to look at him then, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes. “As long as she maintains we both keep up our ends of this agreement, this union will serve its purpose perfectly.”

“The agreement being your... protection for her to raise Alice?” Anthony asked.

“Yes,” William replied, knowing he only gave Anthony a portion of the truth.

Before Anthony could offer another teasing retort, a knock rattled the door of the study. The butler stepped inside, bowing deeply.

“Your Grace? The carriage has been brought round to the front. It is time to depart for St. George’s.”

William took a deep breath, expanding his chest and settling his shoulders. He adjusted his coat one final time, preparing himself for the get everything over with as quickly as possible.

“Remember what we discussed,” William said firmly to Anthony. “You’re right about looking inward. So, we’ll look into the estate records. Check every single name connected to my father’s past. I want to know who holds that crest, and I want to know as quickly as possible.”

“I am on it, Your Grace,” Anthony said, offering a deep, mock bow as he reached for his hat. “Now come along. Let us get you married, shall we?”

William turned on his heel, and walked out of the study, his mind already calculating the next move in a game he had no intention of losing.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Should I just turn back?

The thought, unbidden and illogical, struck Seraphina the exact moment her boot touched the flagstones of St. George’s nave.

By every law of nature, taking a step was nothing more than shifting mass from one point to another. Muscles contracted. Weight transferred. Friction held. It was ordinary. Predictable.

So why did it feel impossible?

Seraphina’s heart pumped fast, each beat harder than the last. That kind of pulse belonged to exertion or mortal danger, not to a woman standing motionless in ivory silk. The beautiful gown Euphemia had selected suddenly weighed a hundred pounds, dragging at her shoulders, pinning her to the floor as though the earth itself had decided she wasn’t meant to move.

‘Science does not account for this,’ she thought, her fingers tightening around the small, neat bouquet of winter blooms. ‘There is no mathematical formula for the precise weight of an irrevocable choice.’

The church was nearly empty, yet the echoing silence pressed against her chest. There were no gawking crowds, no rows of gossiping society matriarchs fanning away the chill. The congregation consisted of a tiny, scattered group. Her sisters stood near the pews with anxious, watchful eyes, and two men waiting near the altar.

One was William, standing tall, his spine a rigid line of discipline. Beside him stood Anthony Thorne, the Duke of Glenhaven, a man Seraphina recognized instantly from past ballrooms and recent, tense whispers. Anthony was known as a master of influence, a man who observed the world with lazy, but razor-sharp indulgence. His presence here as William’s sole witness was proof enough of how tightly bound his affairs were with the host of secrets William carried.

Seraphina forced her legs to move, each step an exercise in willpower.

‘You chose this,’ she reminded herself, fighting the dizzying impulse to lift her skirts and run for the street. ‘It is a transaction. A pragmatic partnership to secure your freedom, protect your family, and unravel the mystery of the blackmail.’

Yet as she neared the altar, the reality of what she was doing threatened to overwhelm her. William turned his head to look at her. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, his eyes caught hers in that moment and it made her chest tighten, leaving her feeling suffocated.

He was infuriatingly handsome, a fact her mind had logged the first time they met but was now forced to confront up close. His features were almost unnervingly symmetrical. A sharp jawline, high cheekbones, and dark hair styled away from his face.

But it was his stillness that rattled her most. William looked so infuriatingly calm, so collected, as though he were just... standing.

Is this not affecting him at all?

A prickle of irritation cutting through her rising panic. Was this monumental shift in their existences merely another transaction to be checked off his daily ledger?

As she took those final steps toward him, the pristine of their arrangement began to fracture under the weight of reality.

Is this a mistake? How can this possibly work?

Her mind, usually her greatest refuge, turned traitor, feverishly poking holes in the very plan she had helped construct. What if their assumptions were flawed? What if the blackmail threat wasn’t resolved as quickly as they calculated? Worse still, what if the legal parameters failed them? What if the petition for an annulment was denied, or the evidence required proved impossible to secure without ruining them both?

She would be permanently bound in a marriage that she did not want in the first place, trapped in a charade with no exit strategy. Every contingency she had so neatly mapped out on paper suddenly felt laughably fragile in the shadow of the altar.

The vicar’s voice rose, and Seraphina jerked, forcing herself not to think in that moment. It was no use.

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together in the sight of God...”

The rest of the service dissolved into a blur. The ancient Latin phrases, the traditional English vows, the rise and fall of the vicar’s cadence... it all flowed past Seraphina as though she were submerged underwater. She heard her own voice answer when prompted, steady and deceptively calm, a trained response from a mind that refused to break under pressure. She felt the cold band of gold slide onto her finger, a metallic ring marking a fundamental shift in her existence.

Then came the murmur of signatures in the parish register, the scratch of a feather quill against parchment, and it was done. Seraphina, who governed her life by empirical truth, was now, by law and canon, the Duchess of Norwyn.

Even the ride back to the Sterling estate where they stayed in Mayfair was a blur. She had stared out the window, refusing to let her sisters see that she was doubting even her own mind.

Trunks lined the front hall, heavy straps pulled tight around her wardrobe, her writing desk accessories, and padded boxes containing her notebooks and instruments. The house smelled faintly of dried lavender, beeswax, and the winter air blowing in through the open front door where footmen were hauling her luggage toward the waiting carriage.

Inside the drawing room, Seraphina stood near the window, her hands clasped tightly behind her back. Her fingers were ice-cold. Inside her chest, the terrifying panic was still hammering away at her composure.

“Seraphina, you must breathe.”

Leonora’s gentle voice broke through the noise in her head. Seraphina turned, forcing a perfectly composed smile onto her face.

“I am entirely calm,” Seraphina said, her voice rising slightly too quickly. “I am merely reviewing the travel itinerary in my head. The distance to the Norwyn estate, the speed of the carriage, the road conditions⁠—”

“You are smoothing your skirt for the fifth time in two minutes,” Euphemia replied softly, coming closer to lay a warm hand over Seraphina’s trembling fingers. “It is completely acceptable to be terrified, you know. I was terrified when I took my vows, and on the entire journey to the estate. I cannot even recall half of it.”

“I am not terrified,” Seraphina insisted, though the lie tasted hollow.

“It is a life,” Euphemia corrected gently. “You must remember, Seraphina, despite the unusual nature of your agreement with His Grace, society will not view you as a guest in his home. You are the Duchess now. There will be estate accounts to oversee, tenant requests, domestic staff expecting leadership, and social obligations to navigate. You cannot simply retreat into your books and pretend the world outside your study does not exist.”

At Euphemia’s words, Seraphina’s brow softened, the tight line of her jaw relaxing just a fraction.

“What manner of responsibilities are we talking about, precisely?” Seraphina asked. “Can I not simply delegate them? If this arrangement is merely temporary, if I am not to remain in this role for long, why must I expend energy learning the intricate machinations of his household?”

Euphemia gave a shake of her head. “Because the world does not pause for temporary arrangements, Seraphina. It does not matter how brief your tenure as Duchess may be. If the household falters, if tenant petitions go unheeded, or if you refuse to host even a single gathering, society will talk, and the rumors will be far from kind.”

“Surely people will not dare gossip so brazenly,” Seraphina countered, trying to piece together a defense. “The Duke of Norwyn is immensely powerful; his reputation formidable. Few would risk whispering against his house.”

“They will not gossip about him,” Euphemia replied firmly. “They will gossip about you. They will say the new Duchess is cold, incapable, or woefully lacking in her duties. You remember the storm of whispers that surrounded my own marriage, how quickly society sharpens its knives the moment a woman fails to meet their arbitrary expectations.”

Seraphina opened her mouth to argue, but the logic in Euphemia’s warning was inescapable.

“If you want to survive this intact, you must be strategic from the very first hour,” Euphemia continued, stepping closer and taking Seraphina’s hands in her own. “Your absolute priority upon arrival must be the housekeeper. Find out who she is and become acquainted with her immediately. Do not make an enemy of that woman, Seraphina; she has likely run that estate since long before you arrived, and she knows every whisper in every corridor. Earn her respect.”

Euphemia offered a reassuring squeeze of her fingers. “Learn the names of the senior staff as quickly as you can. Learn where things are kept, how the household moves, who answers to whom. Treat it like one of your scientific studies if you must, but let that be your focus for the first few weeks. Manage the house, keep the peace, and you will be fine.”

Seraphina took in a deep breath; the panic fluttered higher in her throat, tight and suffocating.

Before she could form a reply, the door opened, and a servant bowed low from the threshold.

“Your Grace, the footmen have secured the last of your trunks. The carriage is waiting, and His Grace is ready to depart.”

Seraphina swallowed hard, her pulse thumping wildly against her collarbone. She offered her sisters a final, tight embrace, pulled her traveling cloak tightly around her shoulders, and stepped out toward the foyer.

As she crossed the threshold into the afternoon, looking toward the carriage where William stood waiting to hand her inside, Seraphina closed her eyes for one long, desperate second.

‘Please,’ she thought. ‘Let this all be a very vivid, terribly complicated dream.’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

William paused at the foot of the staircase, turning to look at his new wife. “I shall escort you to your wing.”

Seraphina paused on the step, her hand lingering on the banister. “My wing?”

“Yes,” William replied. “Your wing. The West Wing has been prepared for your personal use. It includes your bedchamber, a private drawing room, dressing quarters, an adjoining sitting room, a fully equipped writing closet, and some other amenities.”

Seraphina did not look relieved; if anything, her brows pulled together in a slight knot. “Well, before we proceed with tours of residential quarters, would you mind taking me to the library first?”

William felt his left eyebrow twitch, a rare, involuntary breach of his usual composure. “The library?”

“Yes.” She turned fully on the step, her expression serious. “I would really like to see the library, please.”

“Why not wait until morning?” William asked, folding his arms across his chest. “The house is vast, the hour is late, and I assumed you would be exhausted from the journey and the... events of the day.”

“I would prefer to know its exact location now,” Seraphina said, taking a step back down toward him. “That way, when I wake in the morning, I shall not need to disturb the domestic staff simply to locate a book. I can navigate there unassisted.”

William stared at her for a long second. “So that you can disappear into it at first light?”

“Precisely,” she replied without a shred of guilt. “Is that such a bad thing?”

“It is not a matter of good or bad, Seraphina,” William said. “It is simply unconventional. Typically, a new duchess of the estate expresses a desire to acquaint herself with the primary reception rooms, or perhaps review the morning room. She does not usually make a direct line for the archives to lock herself away. I was under the impression you intended to acclimate yourself to the household, and to Alice.”

A subtle flicker of realization passed over Seraphina’s features. Her expression softened, a momentary shadow of self-reproach crossing her face. “Ah. Yes. Of course.” She cleared her throat slightly, adjusting the fold of her cloak over her arm. “I shall certainly attend to Alice and the rest of the household obligations first thing in the morning. That goes without saying. But tonight... I would still like to see the library first.”

She paused, looking up at him with wide eyes that caught him off guard. “I presume I will have access to it? Or are certain sections restricted?”

William nearly scoffed, though he caught himself in time. “You are the Duchess of Norwyn now, Seraphina. Whatever belongs to this estate belongs equally to you now. There are no locked doors against you here, nor will anyone limit what you may or may not read.”

As the words left his mouth, William found himself observing her... the way she was looking at him. The way her eyes seemed to sparkle when she heard there were no limits.

He realized then that his new bride was thoroughly bizarre.

Most women of her standing, the few he had been forced to interact with over the years would be assessing the drapery, calculating the value of the family jewels, or dropping veiled hints about seasonal wardrobes and ball invitations. Seraphina, on the other hand, stood there on her wedding night, asking for the library.

It was, he had to admit, mildly entertaining. There was something about her honesty that appealed to the part of him that craved order. She said exactly what she thought, even when it was strange or inconvenient.

It was refreshing.

It was also deeply unsettling.

He couldn’t decide whether that kind of openness would make his life easier or simply replace one kind of chaos with another. He had invited her into his carefully ordered world, and now he was wondering if it was a brilliant decision or a spectacular mistake.

For now, she was an unknown, and he intended to keep observing until he understood exactly who she was.

“Very well,” William said, extending his arm slightly to indicate the corridor to the right. “Follow me.”

He led her down the long, high-ceilinged gallery of the east wing, where the portraits of previous Norwyn dukes stared down from frames. Seraphina did not linger on the paintings, nor did she spare a glance for the silver sconces or the marble busts lined up in the niches. Her focus was entirely forward.

At the end of the hall, William pushed open the double doors and stepped aside.

The Norwyn library was a two-story cavern, lined from floor to ceiling with thousands of volumes. A sweeping spiral staircase led to the upper gallery, and the unmistakable scent of aged paper, polished wood, and old ink filled the air. A single fire burned low in the grand stone fireplace, casting a warm glow across the room.

Seraphina stepped into the center of the room and simply stopped.

Her breath hitched softly. She looked up at the shelves, her eyes traveling from the highest ledgers to the lowest folios, taking in the magnitude of the collection.

Then, she turned back to face him.

The guarded, analytical expression she had worn all day disappeared in an instant. A smile spread across her face. It was bright, effortless, and completely it fit her. It transformed her, lighting up her features with such joy that William blinked...repeatedly.

For a moment, his mind struggled to catch up.

The composed, tightly controlled woman who had walked down the aisle of St. George’s was gone. In her place stood someone openly, almost fearlessly, delighted. He hadn’t expected her to change so completely.

“It is extraordinary,” she breathed, her voice dropping into an awed whisper as she looked back up at the shelves. “Simply extraordinary.”

William adjusted the cuffs of his coat, forcing his posture to straighten, though his pulse gave an uncharacteristic, unwelcome thud.

“It serves its purpose,” he said, watching her step further into the room.

Seraphina did not hear him, or if she did, she simply chose to ignore him. She walked down the middle aisle between the tall bookshelves, her skirts rustling softly against the floorboards. Her eyes moved quickly over the gold letters stamped onto the leather spines.

William stayed by the doors, his hands resting behind his back as he observed her. He was still trying to measure her. Seraphina stopped near the back corner, where the volumes on history and law were kept. She reached up and pulled a brown book from the shelf. She blew a light puff of air across the top edge, brushing away a thin layer of dust, and looked down at the title.

“A collection of essays on British law and trade,” she said, turning around to face him. Her voice had lost its wonder and returned to its usual sharp tone. “I did not think a man of your strict habits would keep books like this in his library.”

William crossed his arms over his chest, walking towards her. “Why is that? A man who manages thousands of acres of land must understand the rules of trade and government.”

“Well, understanding the rules is one thing,” Seraphina said, opening the book and flipping through the thick paper pages. “Supporting them without question is another.”

“You read it?” he asked with raised eyebrows.

“Of course.”

William scoffed, closing the gap in the narrow space between two shelves. “That shouldn’t surprise me.”

“This book argues that the law should always protect the rich landowners, no matter how much it hurts the common workers. It says that keeping absolute order is more important than treating people fairly.”

“Because it is,” William said smoothly. “Order is what keeps a country running. If you allow every tenant farmer to question the rules whenever they feel wronged, the entire system collapses. A good leader makes decisions based on facts and numbers, not on feelings.”

Seraphina closed the book with a thud. “That is a very cold way to look at the world, Your Grace. You talk about people as if they are numbers in an account ledger. Human beings do not work like that. You cannot just subtract their emotions and expect them to stay quiet.”

“Emotions are messy, Seraphina,” William replied, tilting his head slightly as he studied her. “They cause foolish choices. My father made his choices based on emotion and appetite, and that taught me everything I need to know about that subject. Logic and structure are the only things that keep an estate standing.”

“Logic without any human understanding is just cruelty,” she countered, taking a few steps toward him. “If a landlord raises rents so high that a family cannot buy bread, it does not matter how neat the ledger looks. The family will starve, and eventually, they will fight back. You call that order, but it’s almost as if you are building a fire under a kettle and closing the lid.”

William let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “Where did you learn so much about land reform and trade laws, Seraphina? From reading romantic novels in your drawing room?”

Seraphina straightened her back, her chin coming up immediately. “You must be referring to my sister, Effie. I do not read a lot of romance books. I write for the papers. I know how the world works just as well as you do.”

William did not move, but he kept his eyes fixed on her face. “Yes. How could I possibly forget. E. R. Voce?”

Seraphina went very still. Her hand, resting on the cover of the book, tightened slightly.

“What?” William asked, taking a step forward. “Are you scared I’ll tell someone? Does the thought of that frighten you?”

She did not answer him in words, but her reaction was written clearly across her face. A sudden, deep flush bloomed across her neck and climbed swiftly into her cheeks. It was one undeniable truth about Seraphina. Her skin never allowed her to hide her feelings. The bright pinkness standing out against her cheekbones betrayed how deeply flustered she was by his sudden closeness.

William observed the rush of color, forcing back a smile. For all her intellectual armor and fierce arguments, she was not entirely immune to teasing.

Taking a step back to grant her space, he placed both hands behind his back. “Do not worry, Seraphina. I have an obligation to protect you, remember? That also extends to your secrets. Even though I have people working to uncover your blackmailer, no one else will learn that you are E. R. Voce.”

Seraphina swallowed, the color lingering on her face as she turned and carefully slid the book back onto its shelf.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“I read your latest piece in the morning paper two weeks ago,” William said softly. “The one addressing the new property laws.”

Seraphina swallowed hard. “I suppose you found it completely unacceptable?”

“On the contrary,” William said, walking back over and stopping two paces away from her. “The arguments signed by E. R. Voce are far too direct to ignore. You do not waste time with long, fancy words or polite foolishness. You state the facts, point out the flaw in the law, and tear the government’s logic to pieces. I think half the men in Parliament could learn a great deal from your clarity.”

Seraphina looked up at him, her lips pressed into a thin line, caught between her natural urge to defend her work and her surprise at his assessment. “Even if you think my ideas on lower rents are impractical?”

“They are impractical for running a real estate,” William said calmly, reaching out so his fingers lightly touched the edge of the book she had placed back on the shelf. “But your logic is impeccably sound. You are an argumentative, headstrong woman who refuses to yield a point easily. But you are not foolish.”

Seraphina blinked, her posture softening just a fraction. A smile touched her lips before she caught herself. “Well... thank you. It is nice to know you are a fan of my work, Your Grace.”

William shook his head, his eyes narrowing slightly in amusement. “Do not flatter yourself, Seraphina.”

Yet as he looked down at her, at the lingering flush on her cheeks and the stillness that had settled between them, a strange, unbidden thought crossed his mind. The distance between them had shifted. The guarded walls they had built all evening were suddenly feeling remarkably thin.

He felt the subtle danger of it instantly. Allowing himself to stand here in the dark, exchanging wit with her, was a slope he had no business walking tonight.

“In any case...” William said, taking a step back and creating space between them once more, “...it is far too late. We should both turn in and rest.”

He offered her a brief, controlled nod, turning toward the doors.

“Good night, Seraphina,” he said, and began making his way out of the library.

“Are there any of my writings you do not agree with?”

Seraphina’s voice cut through the quiet of the library, catching William just as his boots reached the perimeter of the doors.

He stopped mid-stride. Slowly, he turned back to face her.

Under the flickering light, Seraphina watched his expression carefully. She could see the crease between his brows, the pause as he calculated whether to engage or simply walk away.

“You cannot possibly agree with everything I have ever published,” she pressed, her voice steady.

It was a fair assumption. Seraphina knew the weight her words carried under her pseudonym, E. R. Voce. She had spent the last few months listening to society debate her columns in drawing rooms and crowded ballrooms. Men of wealth and high standing had practically turned purple with rage over her essays on parliamentary reform and the enclosure of common land. She had overheard self-important lords call her writing dangerous and absurd, unaware that the writer they were vilifying was standing three feet away, sipping lukewarm tea and smiling politely behind her fan. There was no way a man as rigid and traditional as William agreed with every word she put to paper.

William hesitated. He took a slow breath, then turned and began walking back toward her.

Seraphina watched him approach, a swell of satisfaction rising in her chest. Truthfully, she had no idea why she had called out to him. Her original intention for asking to visit the library so late at night had been simple. She needed quiet.

The library was the one place she was certain would see her often. After the events of the day, her mind had felt like a tempest. She had sought out the library to calm the chaos, to ground herself among things that were quiet, logical, and permanent.

Yet, when William had made his turn to leave, a sudden panic had seized her. She had not wanted to be left alone in the silent room. She wanted to pry open the iron vault of his mind, to test his limits, to see what lay beneath that flawless composure. Asking him about her writing was a gamble, but it was the only key she had.

William stopped and leaned on the shelf across from her. “You are correct,” he said. “I do not agree with all of it. In fact, your essay from two years ago. I think it was the piece addressing grain duties and import tariffs. It was remarkably shortsighted.”

Seraphina’s eyebrows shot up. “Shortsighted?”

“Entirely,” William replied smoothly, leaning one hand against the shelf. “You argued that the immediate lowering of grain tariffs would instantly relieve the working class without destabilizing agricultural markets. You wrote — if I recall your exact phrasing — that the hoarding of grain behind protective walls is an insult to the hungry, masked as national security.”

A spark of heat bloomed in Seraphina’s chest. “It is an insult! Artificially keeping grain prices high to protect the profit margins of wealthy landowners while laborers cannot afford a loaf of bread is morally indefensible.”

“It is a complex economic ecosystem, Seraphina,” William countered calmly. “If you drop tariffs overnight, foreign markets flood the trade, local farms go bankrupt, tenants are evicted, and the very laborers you pretend to champion are left without employment at all. Your argument was built on passion, not economic mechanics.”

“Pretend to champion?” she questioned with widened eyes.

“Yes.” He said and crossed his arms. “I see a pattern here, Seraphina.”

“My argument was built on sound historical precedent!” Seraphina fired back, her frustration rising at his infuriatingly cool tone. “I can prove it to you.”

William raised an eyebrow. “Can you?”

“Yes, I can.” She spun around, her eyes sweeping the endless rows of books surrounding them. “Where is your history section? The foreign trade registries?”

William watched her, a ghost of a smirk touching his lips. He raised a hand and pointed toward the far corner of the room. “Upstairs. Second level, gallery to your right. Late eighteenth-century economic trade.”

Without another word, Seraphina gathered her skirts and marched toward the spiral staircase in the corner. Her feet tapped sharply against the metal steps as she climbed. Behind her, the rhythmic, heavier tread of William’s boots told her he was following. The knowledge that he was right behind her only fueled her determination.

Reaching the upper gallery, she paced along the narrow walkway, her fingers tracing the spines. “It should be here...” she muttered, her eyes scanning titles rapidly. Mercantilism, British Commerce, The Duties on Imports... “Aha!”

She pulled a volume bound in crimson leather from the shelf. “Right here,” she said triumphantly, turning to face him as he reached the top of the stairs. “The 1786 Eden Treaty records. It explicitly proves how reducing tariffs stabilized consumer prices and opened markets without bankrupting domestic sectors.”

She flipped the book open, the aged paper crackling softly under her fingers, and held it out toward him. “Look at the trade records right here. Read it yourself.”

William stepped closer, leaning down to glance at the page she was thrusting toward his chest. His eyes swept the text, and then he looked up at her, a slow, insufferable smile spreading across his face.

“Seraphina,” William said softly. “The 1786 treaty lowered duties on French wines, brandies, and manufactured textiles in exchange for British cottons and hardware. It was based on Adam Smith’s theories to reduce reliance on American trade.” He paused, leaning a fraction closer. “It did not cover grain. Not a single bushel.”

Seraphina blinked, her chest freezing mid-breath. She looked down at the page, her eyes wildly searching the text.

“You are using a commercial treaty on French wine to justify dismantling British grain protections,” William continued, his voice dripping with triumph. “I’m not saying your logic is unsound. Your precedent simply doesn’t exist.”

“It demonstrates the principle of free trade!” she insisted, her cheeks burning hot as she tried to salvage her ground, shifting her grip on the book. “If you look at the secondary provisions regarding raw materials —”

“It demonstrates that you reached for the nearest respectable treaty to support a conclusion you had already made,” William said, reaching out to grasp the edge of the cover to close the book. “Accept the flaw in your source, Seraphina.”

“I am not accepting anything when you are intentionally ignoring the broader economic framework!” she snapped, pulling the volume back toward herself to keep him from shutting it.

“Seraphina, let go of the cover —”

“You let go!”

She tugged. He held fast, intending only to stabilize the text, but neither yielded. They pulled in two different directions for a whole ten seconds, before a crack ripped through their squabbling.

The sound was shockingly loud in the library.

The aged, dry stitching along the spine gave way entirely. The leather split down the center, and a dozen loose, yellowed pages fluttered helplessly through the air like dying birds, tumbling over the gallery railing and drifting down to the ground floor below.

Seraphina froze. The front cover remained in her hand, while William was left holding the shattered spine and the back half of the text.

Silence descended upon the gallery.

William slowly looked down at the ruined, split binding in his hands, then up at her. His face was a mask of disbelief.

“Do you have any idea what this is?” William asked.

Seraphina swallowed hard, her confidence suddenly evaporating. Her sisters had warned her before that her stubbornness would eventually cause her some trouble.

“It was not my intention, Your Grace.”

“It is a first-edition 1792 annotated registry,” William said. “Signed by William Pitt the Younger. It belonged to my grandfather. It is irreplaceable.”

“I apologize, but...” Seraphina stammered, looking from the torn cover in her hand to the loose pages scattered across the lower floor. “You... you pulled it!”

“I held it!” William exclaimed, his composure cracking into outright frustration. He let out an exasperated breath, running a hand over his face. “You pulled it toward yourself like a child fighting over a toy!”

Seraphina opened her mouth to defend herself, but as she looked at him, the immaculate Duke of Norwyn, standing on a gallery holding a broken book with a look of pure, utter betrayal, something unexpected bubbled up in her chest.

It was a ridiculous, terrible moment to feel it, but the absurdity of the situation struck her. He was so intensely flustered, his tidy, perfectly ordered world momentarily shattered by a torn spine.

A small squeak escaped her throat as she tried to suppress a laugh.

William’s eyes snapped to hers. “Are you... are you amused?”

Seraphina pressed her lips tightly together, shaking her head violently, but her shoulders gave a tiny, betraying twitch. The pink flush in her cheeks deepened, not from embarrassment this time, but from the heroic effort it was taking not to burst into full, ringing laughter.

William stared at her, an incredulous groan rumbling deep in his chest. He tossed the remaining half of the book onto a nearby reading table and threw his hands up in exasperation.

“That is it,” William declared. “It is nearly one in the morning. I am calling an end to this madness. You are going to your wing.”

“Your Grace, I have an edition myself. I can replace⁠—”

“Seraphina, you are going to bed.”

“I am not going to bed,” Seraphina said, managing finally to master her voice, though her eyes were still dancing with amusement. “I am not tired. I intend to stay right here.”

“Seraphina, we have been traveling for nearly two days,” William said, taking a step toward the stairs and gesturing for her to precede him. “You are exhausted, I am exhausted, and you have already destroyed an eighteenth-century artifact. Go to sleep.”

“I am perfectly awake,” she argued, crossing her arms stubbornly over her chest and remaining firmly planted on the upper gallery. “I have two more texts I need to consult for my next column. I will go to my room when I am finished.”

William closed his eyes for a long, suffering second. He looked as though he wanted nothing more than to pick her up, carry her across the estate, and lock her in her bedchambers. But instead, he let out another defeated groan.

“You are, without a doubt, the most infuriating woman I have ever met,” he muttered.

Without waiting for her reply, William turned on his heel and strode down the iron staircase. He marched across the ground level, ignoring the scattered pages on the floor, his posture rigid with frustration as he headed straight for the doors.

Seraphina stepped up to the gallery railing, leaning over the wood with a bright smile spreading across her face.

“Good night, Your Grace!” she called out after him, her voice echoing sweetly through the tall rafters. “Again, I apologize for the book!”

William did not stop. He did not turn around. He simply stepped out into the corridor and pulled the doors shut behind him.

Seraphina leaned back against the railing, a giggle finally escaping her lips. Her heart was beating fast, her mind thoroughly awake. He had called her out on the Eden Treaty, yes, but as she looked down at the empty room, she knew she had rattled his legendary composure to pieces.

Smiling to herself, she turned back to the shelves to find another book.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Oh, there you are, destroyer of books.”

William didn’t even look up from his desk as Seraphina walked into his study, though his voice carried effortlessly across the room. He dipped his quill into the inkwell, fighting the urge to look up at her. “Are you here to tear apart any more of my family’s historical volumes? Are you simply taking inventory of what is left to dismantle?”

Seraphina paused near the door. “Good morning, Your Grace. I can see you are still holding a grudge over last night.”

She stepped forward, her morning gown rustling softly, and set a rectangular package wrapped in brown parchment onto the corner of his desk.

“I have come to offer a peace offering,” she said smoothly, resting her hands over her waist. “An apology, if you will.”

William glanced at the package, then up at her, raising an eyebrow, suspicious. He reached out, flicking open the twine and folding back the parchment. Inside lay a pristine, crimson leather-bound volume, the very same 1792 trade registry that had met its tragic end on the library floor hours earlier.

He picked it up, feeling the leather under his fingers, and flipped open the title page. He stared at the blank, unmarked frontispiece for a long moment before looking back at her, unimpressed.

“It is a duplicate,” William said plainly, setting it back down on his blotter.

“It is an identical first edition,” Seraphina corrected, leaning forward slightly.

“It is missing the annotation,” William noted. “The copy you shredded last night contained marginal notes written in 1794 by William Pitt the Younger himself, addressed directly to my grandfather regarding foreign trade negotiations. It was a one-of-a-kind historical document. This is merely a very clean, very late printing.”

Seraphina let out a light, exasperated breath. “It contains the exact same text, Your Grace! The economic figures are identical. The print is immaculate. It fulfills every functional purpose of the original.”

“A book of that nature is not merely a functional item, Seraphina,” he countered, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. “It was an artifact. Setting a replacement on my desk does not magically erase the fact that you tore an irreplaceable heirloom in half because you could not bear to lose an argument.”

“I did not tear it alone. You were holding the spine!”

William looked at her, frustrated. “Are we really going to argue about whose fault it is this morning?”

In truth, William knew she wasn’t entirely wrong during their argument the night before. Her use of the 1786 treaty was a stroke of effective rhetoric. It gave her argument weight; it gave the common reader an accessible parallel. It worked. But what infuriated him, what made him press her so relentlessly, was her refusal to grant that economic truth was rarely a singular monument. He didn’t need her to surrender her ideals; he simply wanted her to admit that opposing angles could coexist, that estate management was a delicate balance of compromise rather than a binary battle of good and evil. Instead, she had ripped his grandfather’s registry to shreds.

“It was an accident!” she fired back, her eyes flashing with heat. “It was nobody’s fault. I have gone out of my way to replace it. Most people would appreciate a person who takes the initiative to remedy a mistake.”

“Well I do not want it,” William replied smoothly, though the faint twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed his amusement at her rising temper.

Seraphina closed her eyes, taking a breath to reclaim her composure. “Well... it is a fine copy, and it is yours. Frankly, the only reason I came up to your study in the first place was because I did not see you at breakfast to give it to you.”

William paused. “Did you want me to come down for breakfast?”

“No,” she said, pacing a step toward the window overlooking the estate grounds. “But I was left entirely to my own devices. I was met by a procession of staff so long I lost count after the eighteenth person. I had no idea you employed such an army here. Forty-two indoor staff, thirty-eight outdoor hands, and twelve groundskeepers. My goodness.”

He searched her face, his gaze turning assessing. “Why? Was it overwhelming for you?”

“Of course not,” Seraphina said instantly, lifting her chin. “I am perfectly capable of greeting staff. I was given a formal tour of the main estate. You have a remarkably beautiful estate, Your Grace. Also, your staff are most welcoming. That is a relief. I simply assumed... well, I thought I would see you at the table.”

She turned back to face him. “You were not there, and neither was Alice.”

“Alice rarely leaves her chambers in the morning,” William said quietly. “The staff takes breakfast to her room.”

Seraphina watched him closely. “I understand,” she replied gently. “I plan to go up and visit her later today to introduce myself properly.”

“Good. Be sure to stay away from her books. Let’s try to prevent another incident like this one.”

He caught her rolling her eyes just before he rose to his feet and picked up a pair of riding gloves and a sealed parchment envelope.

She frowned slightly. “Are you going somewhere?”

“I have an engagement,” William said, reaching for his pocket watch and checking the time. “With Anthony. I will be gone a few days.”

In truth, the meeting with Anthony was far from a routine social call. They had finally tracked a potential lead regarding the anonymous blackmailer. But there was no reason to alarm Seraphina with unverified suspicions, not when they had only just arrived at the estate. Until he had concrete answers, it was safer kept to himself.

Seraphina’s brow furrowed as she walked over to his desk, stopping right in front of him. “An engagement? Your Grace, we arrived at the estate less than twenty-four hours ago. We have only just been married. Is it customary for a Duke to abandon his bride on her first full day at his home?”

William slipped his pocket watch back into his waistcoat, a smile spreading across his face. He rested his hands flat on the surface as he leaned toward her.

“Abandon you?” he murmured. “Are you telling me you expected something more... traditional?”

Seraphina blinked, taking a half-step back. “What?”

“What would you have us do during this period?” William asked, stepping around the desk and closing the distance between them with slow steps. “Would you prefer we spend the morning taking romantic strolls through the rose gardens? Sitting by the lake writing poetry? Should I arrange a picnic for two under the weeping willows?”

“That is not what I meant —”

“Or perhaps...” he continued, crowding her space until her back brushed against the wood paneling near the bookshelf. “...perhaps you envisioned us remaining secluded in our quarters, lost in wedded bliss?”

He caught the subtle hitch in her breath as he stepped into her space, his shadow falling over her in the morning light. The defiant lift of her chin faltered for the briefest moment. Then color spread to her cheeks in a warm, unmistakable flush.

“I... I merely meant that it looks improper,” she stammered, trying desperately to maintain her footing under his gaze. “To be seen in public when you only just got married. People might see through our charade.”

“Improper?” William teased, leaning in just a fraction closer, his hand resting on the bookshelf right beside her head. “You really don’t want me leaving the estate? Is there a particular custom you had in mind? A honeymoon, perhaps?”

Seraphina swallowed hard, looking up at him, her hands coming up to press against his chest to keep a fraction of space between them. “All right. All right, fine!” she huffed. “Go! Do whatever you want. I cannot stop you either way.”

William chuckled. He stepped back, releasing her, and straightened his coat with triumph.

“I am glad we understand each other,” he said smoothly, walking back over to his desk to retrieve his satchel and gloves. He turned to look at her one last time. “You’re not tied down to obligations and society’s expectations, Seraphina. It’s not as though this is a real marriage.”

He turned away and began making his way toward the door, glancing back just in time to see her smoothing down the front of her gown aggressively. She threw a glare at him, though the rapid flutter at the hollow of her throat gave away just how thoroughly he had shaken her.

“Do try not to destroy any more of my property while I am away, Seraphina,” he added.

“I cannot promise anything,” she retorted and crossed her arms.

William turned on his heel and strode out of his study, leaving the tension of the room behind as he made his way to meet Anthony and face far less pleasant matters.

“This is feeling entirely like chasing our tails,” Anthony groaned, pulling his horse to a halt as the small stone lodge came into view through the oaks. He adjusted his gloves, his jaw set in a grimace that had only deepened over the past four agonizing days. “We have scoured three separate properties, sifted through dusty ledgers until my eyes are nearly bleeding, and for what? To confirm that your family’s caretakers are exceptionally good at keeping inventory?”

William dismounted without a word. The fatigue of the road clung to his limbs, but the unrelenting knot in his chest kept him moving.

“We have eliminated three locations, Anthony,” William said, his voice clipped as he took the reins. “That is not chasing tails. That is narrowing the field.”

“It feels remarkably like the same thing when the sun is setting and we are no closer to an answer,” Anthony muttered, swinging down from his saddle. He fell into step beside William as they led their horses toward the cottage nestled on the edge of the estate grounds. “Let us recap the brilliance of our progress. No missing estate papers, no stolen seals, and not a single lock picked across half of Hampshire.”

He paused, turning his head to scrutinize William’s face. “Which brings me back to the theory you so casually dismissed at the inn last night. What if the person writing these blasted letters doesn’t actually possess a family crest at all? What if it is a clever forgery?”

“It is not a forgery,” William said flatly, not breaking his stride.

“How can you possibly be so certain?” Anthony pressed, quickening his step to keep pace. “A skilled engraver could easily mimic your crest well enough to fool an unsuspecting eye.”

“Who would dare? And for what? It makes far more logical sense for the blackmailer to possess both the paper and the mark together,” William replied. “One without the other leaves too much to chance. If you had known my father as I did, you would not find the existence of a stray crest plausible.”

Anthony frowned. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means my father was extraordinarily generous and far too indiscriminate with whom he allowed into his inner sanctum,” William said. “He handed out tokens, favors, and access as though his title were a common trinket. There is no telling how many people he allowed close enough to touch his private desk over thirty years.”

Anthony shook his head. “Even if that were true, how could anyone be reckless enough to use a duke’s name and mark so blatantly? Is this person trying to expose themselves? Or is the use of your crest meant to throw us off the scent entirely?”

William didn’t answer immediately. The thought had crossed his mind a hundred times during the long miles in the saddle. Every turn of the road brought the same loop of questions.

“That brings me to the question you keep adroitly dodging,” Anthony continued, dropping his voice as they approached the cottage entrance. “Who is this person, William? Who is being threatened?”

“It does not matter.”

“It does matter,” Anthony argued, exasperated. “I have spent four days riding across the country with you, sleeping in inns and interrogating housekeepers. After years of friendship, you might show me enough trust to tell me whose reputation we are risking our necks to save.”

William stopped just outside the garden archway, turning to face Anthony. “You know everything necessary to help me search. Knowing their identity changes nothing regarding the evidence. Drop it, Anthony. Let us finish the work.”

Anthony stared at him for a second, catching the look in William’s eyes. He threw his hands up in defeat. “Fine. Keep your tight-lipped mysteries. But if we find nothing here, I am dragging you back to Norwyn.”

Before William could respond, the door of the cottage creaked open, interrupting their conversation.

An elderly man with silvering hair and a gentle face stepped out onto the porch, wiping his hands on an apron. Beside him stood his wife, her eyes brightening the instant she recognized the tall figure standing at her gate.

“Your Grace!” Thomas Higgs exclaimed as he bowed, his face breaking into a wider smile. He hurried down the short stone path, his wife, Eleanor, fluttering close behind him. “Bless my soul, we had no idea you were coming to Oakhaven!”

“Good morning, Your Grace,” Mrs. Higgs chimed in warmly, curtsying. “Look at you! It has been far too long since you set foot in this house. Come in, come in out of the draft! Thomas, take the horses to the stable at once. I shall put the kettle on and slice some of the plum cake —”

“There is no need, Mrs. Higgs, though I thank you,” William said softly. He had known Higgs since he was a boy trailing behind his father on shooting trips. “We cannot stay long. I am only here on a matter of estate business.”

“Business?” Mr. Higgs paused, looking between William and Anthony with concern. “Is everything alright at the main house, Your Grace?”

“Everything is in hand,” William assured him, stepping inside the warm, wood-scented hall. “I simply need to inspect the inventory ledgers for this property. I am checking for any missing items, specifically anything bearing the family crest, and verifying that there have been no unauthorized visitors or break-ins over the past year.”

Mrs. Higgs looked astonished, resting a hand over her heart. “Break-ins? Here? Oh, heavens no, Your Grace. Thomas checks every lock and shutter every fortnight, rain or shine. Nothing has been disturbed.”

“I can fetch the delivery and removal ledgers right away, Your Grace,” Mr. Higgs offered eagerly, moving toward the small writing desk in the corner. “We keep strict account of everything that comes from the London house or leaves for the main estate. But... if I may ask, what has brought on such a worry?”

William exchanged a quick glance with Anthony. He had no intention of revealing Seraphina’s involvement or the intimate nature of the threat, but the Higgs were loyal, trusted servants who knew the estate better than anyone.

A carefully framed truth was necessary.

“Someone has been using my family’s crest to issue threats and blackmail,” William explained calmly. “I suspect whoever is responsible is connected to my father’s past. You both know better than anyone that during his time as Duke, he allowed many people access to his private quarters who perhaps should not have had such access.”

Mrs. Higgs sighed softly, exchanging a knowing look with her husband. “Aye,” Mr. Higgs said gently, careful to keep any disrespect out of his tone. “The late duke was... a very generous man, Your Grace. A vibrant man.” He paused, choosing his words with immense delicacy. “He did bring many guests to this cottage over the years. So many ladies... well, Mrs. Higgs and I lost count long ago.”

“I am aware,” William said, scanning the room. “In fact, I am of the opinion that this was his most favorite hideout.”

Mr. Higgs went quiet then, staring down at the floorboards as if searching his memory. He rubbed his chin, his brow furrowing deeper.

William noticed the shift immediately. “What is it, Thomas? What are you thinking?”

“Well...” Thomas hesitated, looking up at William. “It just brought back a thought, Your Grace. There was one lady. Many years ago now. She was different from the others the late duke brought down from London.”

William narrowed his eyes, stepping closer. “Different how?”

“She stayed much longer, for one,” Mr. Higgs recalled, his eyes scanning the room as the memory solidified. “Weeks at a time. She was clearly a lady of high standing, a proper lady of the ton, not like the... theatrical types he sometimes brought down. Proud. Kept to herself mostly. But I remember... I remember she wore his signet ring.”

Anthony perked up, taking a step forward. “His signet ring?”

“Yes, Your Grace. At least one of them,” Thomas said firmly. “I remember it clearly because she wore it quite openly, right on her finger, even down at the breakfast table. As though she wanted everyone in the house to see it. Like a trophy.”

William scoffed. “Are you certain it was his actual signet ring? The primary family crest?”

“I am nearly positive, Your Grace,” Mr. Higgs answered truthfully. “It had the Norwyn crest carved deep into it. Perhaps she still carries that ring.”

Anthony turned to William. “A ring like that... well, a person could easily press it into a document to sign or seal something on the Duke’s behalf if he permitted it.”

William stood frozen, the wheels turning rapidly in his mind.

He turned toward Anthony, who was watching him with a stunned, contemplative expression. The letters Seraphina had received bore no heavy red wax seal. There was no missing wax, no physical residue, and not a single sheet of official estate paper unaccounted for in any ledger they had checked.

“A signet ring would cause the mark that was embossed into that particular letter,” William said, tilting his head to the left.

“But it is an odd way of marking a letter,” Anthony said. “Why not just use a normal wax?”

“If there is no wax...” William mused aloud. “...could the paper have been dampened? If the fiber were softened with water or a solution, a signet ring pressed into the page with enough force would leave an impression.”

He gestured with his hands, visualizing the paper Seraphina had shown him. “A blind mark. An embossed impression etched right into the weave of the paper. It would leave a faint shadow of the crest without needing ink or wax.”

Anthony frowned, crossing his arms as he weighed the idea. “William, that sounds difficult, and it’s very weird. What would be the aim then?”

“If she managed it at all, it was no accident,” William conceded quietly. “It is possible that my father did it first and she learned from him. Perhaps used that technique to send secret letters to his many lovers so they would know it was from him, without outright putting his stamp on it. He had affairs with even married women of the ton, if I recall correctly.”

Mr. Higgs, who had been listening intently, shook his head slowly. “If I may speak, Your Grace...”

“Please, Thomas,” William said.

“The late Duke never did anything of that sort,” the old man said plainly. “I worked closely with your father for over thirty years, managing his private correspondence when he stayed here. He never once marked a letter without proper red wax. There was never a private mark he used with his ladies. He was... bold.”

“You’re certain?” William questioned, his eyebrows pulling together.

“Yes, Your Grace. To mark a paper blindly...” He shook his head. “Well, it sounds unusual.”

William’s jaw tightened. That left them facing a far more unsettling reality.

If the impression was not a technique invented by his father, then whoever was writing those letters to Seraphina had developed the method themselves. It was a calculated choice.

A choice to toy with him.

“Why go to such lengths?” Anthony repeated, voicing the exact question weighing on William’s chest. “If you want to threaten someone, a simple unsigned letter accomplishes the goal. Why take the immense risk of perfecting a dry-stamp technique using a stolen signet ring?”

“To tie my family to the threat,” William said quietly, his brow furrowing as he considered it. “A wax seal would be too bold. But this... this looks almost like a mistake. Perhaps this person banked on the fact that the victim would find it and cause a ruckus. Exposing me to society as the blackmailer. But the victim came to me first.”

The calculation of it made William’s blood run cold. Whoever was holding that ring was playing a deeply dangerous game, one that directly threatened Seraphina and entangled his own bloodline in its net.

“Thomas,” William said, stepping closer. “Think carefully. Do you recall her name? Any title, a family surname, even a Christian name she went by while she was here?”

Mr. Higgs rubbed the back of his neck, his face working hard as he searched his memory. He shook his head slowly, a frustrated grimace touching his mouth. “For the life of me, Your Grace, I cannot bring her name to mind. Your father was always careful never to use full titles around the staff when he brought guests down. It was always ‘my dear’ or ‘my lady.’ Never names.”

“Can you describe her, then?” Anthony asked, stepping alongside William. “Anything at all. Her appearance, her mannerisms, how she spoke?”

“Oh, she was a striking woman, Your Grace,” Mr. Higgs said, looking up as the vision came back to him. “Uncommonly beautiful, though cold as winter glass. She had dark hair, very dark, long, worn in rich curls that hung past her shoulders. She was clearly the daughter of someone in the peerage, you could tell. High-born, through and through.”

William’s hand tightened into a fist at his side. “There is no record of her stay here?” William asked. “No ledger, no correspondence left behind?”

“Not in the regular guest accounts, no,” Mr. Higgs replied. Then his eyes lit up slightly. “But... your father kept a locked chest in the store closet upstairs. Papers he didn’t want sent to the main house, old receipts, bits of private correspondence he meant to burn and never did. I haven’t opened it since he passed, but if there is any trace of her still left in this house, it will be in the store closet.”

Mr. Higgs looked at William then. “Let me search through it, Your Grace. Give me time to go through every scrap of paper line by line. If her name is anywhere in this cottage, I will find it for you.”

“Do it, Thomas,” William said. “If you find even a single initial, send word to the main estate immediately by private courier.”

“You have my word, Your Grace,” Mr. Higgs bowed respectfully.

“Thank you, Thomas,” William said, closing the book and handing it back. “You and Eleanor have been helpful, as always.”

“Will you not stay for dinner?” Mrs. Higgs asked, her eyes searching his face with concern. “Or perhaps, lunch? We could have the master bedchamber prepared in half an hour. You look utterly exhausted.”

William shook his head. “No. We must return to the main estate tonight.”

He looked around the room one last time, noting how the ghosts of his father’s life hung in every corner. He had no desire to spend a night under this roof.

“We understand, Your Grace. Please... try to visit us again soon. When times are much lighter.”

“I shall make the time,” William promised, before turning toward the door.

The ride back to the Norwyn estate was in near-total silence. Beside him, Anthony remained lost in his own thoughts, occasionally glancing over at William but keeping his mouth shut.

William’s mind was miles ahead, already inside the walls of his own study. He had set out four days ago hoping to return to her with a name, a culprit, and a resolution. Instead, he was returning with nothing more than a ghost from his father’s past, and the realization that their enemy was far more methodical than he had feared.

He knew he had to tell her what he had discovered. He had promised her transparency in the arrangement, and she was far too intelligent to be placated by half-truths. But as his horse carried him closer to home, the knot in his chest only tightened.

Facing a blackmailer in the dark was one thing. Facing Seraphina without an answer was quite another.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Would you believe me, Alice, if I told you that London’s streets are about to be lit by a fire no hand ever need touch?”

Alice did not answer, but the small doll in her lap slipped lower against her knees as her head tilted slightly to the left. She remained motionless on the window seat, her large eyes fixed on Seraphina’s face, focused.

For five consecutive mornings, this had become their unwritten ritual. Somewhere around ten of the clock, the brass latch of the library door would click softly, and Alice would drift into the room like a draft of cool air. She never asked permission, nor did she offer a greeting. She simply crossed the room, settled herself into the alcove overlooking the south gardens, and sat with Seraphina.

Seraphina adjusted her quill, dipping it lightly into the inkwell without breaking her gaze from the girl.

Even before the wedding, back when she had first arrived at the estate, Seraphina had spoken to Alice about science. She hadn’t known any other way to be. Luckily, it had drawn a spark of curiosity into Alice’s eyes from the very start.

The night of her arrival was the only night Seraphina had actually slept in her own bedchamber. She remembered the morning after, when Alice had failed to appear for breakfast. After speaking to the housekeeper, she found out that it was because she was still exhausted and asleep, worn out after fighting a night terror in the hours before dawn.

Every night since, Seraphina had abandoned her own room to sleep in Alice’s.

She slept by her side, listening for the shallow gasps or frantic shifts in the bedsheets that signaled a nightmare, stepping in before the panic could fully take hold.

The night terrors were far less frequent now, and when one did strike, Seraphina found that no soft soothing or motherly cooing could reach the child. Instead, all she had to do was begin reciting facts, stories of mechanics, bizarre phenomena of nature, or the ways of how the physical world worked.

Seraphina was entirely unsure whether she was fascinating the girl or merely boring her to sleep with lectures on atmospheric pressure and planetary orbits, but the strategy worked, and in science, a proven result could not be disputed; if a hypothesis yielded consistent data, one did not alter the experiment.

She would keep at it.

She could admit that she was tired, but watching Alice sit so serenely in the morning light made the exhaustion feel inconsequential.

Alice didn’t throw tantrums. She didn’t scream or demand things. In Seraphina’s presence, she was remarkably calm.

Seraphina believed this meant she was handling the girl well. That despite her total lack of traditional maternal instinct, her practical, unfiltered approach was working. Talking to Alice, even without receiving a word in return, functioned like thinking aloud to herself. It allowed Seraphina to organize complex political arguments in the air before committing them to paper, even while holding the sincere belief that the intellectual company was benefiting the girl.

Seraphina leaned forward, resting her forearms on the blotter and gesturing with her quill toward a series of detailed technical diagrams spread across her desk.

“It isn’t magic, mind you,” Seraphina continued. “Though I am certain the speculators in Mayfair will attempt to sell it as such to the credulous. It is pure, ruthless chemistry. They take common bituminous coal, lock it tightly into a cast-iron furnace where no air can enter, and bake it under intense heat.”

Alice shifted on the window seat. She didn’t speak, but her back straightened, her chin lifting as her gaze tracked the movement of Seraphina’s hand.

“Instead of burning to ash immediately, as it would in an open grate...” Seraphina explained. “...the coal breaks apart and releases a thick vapor. A hidden gas. They capture that gas, run it through lime-water to strip away the foulest of the sulfurous stink, and force it through narrow iron pipes laid deep beneath the flagstones of the city.”

She picked up a draft page, turning it toward the light. “Frederick Winsor demonstrated the scheme along Pall Mall not long ago. A single central furnace, sending invisible fire through fitted iron tubes to illuminate an entire street of glass lanterns at the turn of a brass cock. No tallow, no lamp-wick, no boy running with a torch from post to post.”

Alice slowly slid off the cushion. Her small footfalls made no sound as she crossed the rug, coming to stand right at the edge of the desk. She placed two small hands flat on the wood, leaning her upper body forward to peer at the ink-drawn schematics of the gas retorts.

“It is a brilliant feat of engineering, certainly,” Seraphina mused, her tone sharpening as her mind pivoted to her actual column. She was writing under her usual pseudonym, preparing a scathing piece for the morning papers. “The gentlemen in Parliament are falling over themselves with awe, declaring that we are burning the air itself to banish the night. But they are missing the entire point, as gentlemen so frequently do.”

Alice’s eyes lifted from the paper to Seraphina’s face, motionless, her chest rising and falling in slow, rhythmic breaths.

“They wish to talk about the wonder of the light,” Seraphina said softly, her quill hovering over a fresh sheet of parchment. “I intend to write about who pays for the pipes. It is a question of public infrastructure and basic equity, Alice. The gas companies are rushing to lay these conduits beneath the wealthy thoroughfares. Pall Mall, Piccadilly, the private squares of the nobility, because that is where the immediate profit lies. The vestries will use public tax money, drawn from the pockets of every chimney sweep and market woman in London, to fund the paving and maintenance.”

She paused, tapping the feather against her chin, her eyes narrowing. “Why should a seamstress in the East End, who works by the flicker of a single, rancid tallow dip she purchased with her last penny, subsidize the bright, clear light outside a Duke’s town home? If a city chooses to illuminate its darkness, the light must belong to the public square first. It ought to secure the dark alleys where the poor are robbed, not merely decorate the promenades of the rich.”

Alice nodded then, and Seraphina let out a giggle. “It seems as though you understand these problems, Alice,” she noted. “If you do, then you are far smarter than I give you credit for.”

Alice leaned closer still. Her small fingers trailed across the edge of the desk, coming to rest mere inches from the technical diagram of the iron pipe network. Her rapt, undivided attention was anchored entirely to the intricate lines of ink as if she were absorbing not just the words, but the hidden, invisible current of thought running beneath them.

“Anyway, I can already tell that this will be an excellent piece. Everyone will be talking about it, so it excites me to write it.”

“Don’t you think that if you force the gas companies to lay three miles of iron pipe through the East End before they have made a single shilling of return in Piccadilly, they will go bankrupt before the first lamp is ever struck?”

Seraphina’s hand went still in mid-air as a gasp slipped from her.

William was leaning against the bookshelf at the far end, his coat unbuttoned, and his arms crossed.

“How long have you been standing there?” she asked.

“Long enough,” he answered. “Why choose such a small corner of the library to write? There’s a much bigger desk right in front.”

“I like it here. It’s close enough to the window so Alice and I can see the garden.”

He straightened, taking a step towards them.

“I like your new piece,” he said, stopping on the other side of the table, his body facing Alice, but his head turned to Seraphina where she sat.” But you are assuming the order of execution is a matter of moral apathy, Seraphina,” William said. “It isn’t. It is a matter of capital risk. A coal gas work requires immense upfront investment: the iron retorts, the lime-water purifiers, the miles of subterranean piping. It is expensive, it is loud, and half the city is convinced it will blow up in their faces. The wealthy pay for the risk first because they are the only ones who can afford the experiment.”

Seraphina set her quill down. “So the poor wait in the dark until the wealthy have decided the danger has passed?”

“They wait until the technology becomes cheap enough to scale,” William corrected smoothly. “If Parliament passes a law tomorrow demanding equal distribution of lines from day one, no private investor will put up the capital. The entire enterprise collapses under its own weight, and then no one gets light. Neither the Duke in his square nor the seamstress in her alley. Patience is what eventually delivers the pipe to the East End, Seraphina, not outrage.”

“‘Eventually,’” Seraphina repeated, her eyes narrowing as she met his gaze head-on. “A convenient word. Men of property are remarkably fond of eventually. It sounds like a promise, but it functions entirely as an indefinite delay. In my experience, when the upper classes tell the poor to be patient, it is simply a more polite way of telling them to accept never.”

William’s mouth twitched, the ghost of a wry smile brushing his lips. “A cynical interpretation, though not entirely unearned by our peers. I concede.”

He looked down at the technical schematics laid out between them, nudging the paper slightly with the tip of one long finger.

“Though I must add... only because I want to spite you. If your reform bill passes,” William added. “I trust you have made provisions in your column for the union of lamplighters. They shall be quite out of work once we stop paying men to run about with long poles all evening. Unless, of course, we retrain the lot of them to swat moths. I imagine Mayfair will be positively swarming with the creatures, the moment we’ve turned half of London into a very large, very expensive bonfire.”

The silence that followed lasted only a moment.

Then came a sound none of them had heard before. A laugh, bright and unmistakable, breaking loose from Alice all at once. Her small shoulders shook with it, and her hand came up to cover her mouth for half a second before falling away again.

Seraphina’s head turned toward her at once.

Alice was looking straight at William, her whole face open in a way Seraphina had never once seen since she’d arrived at Norwyn. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks lifted, a full smile spreading across her face, the kind that belonged entirely to a seven-year-old who had simply found something funny and let herself laugh at it.

Seraphina held very still, willing herself not to draw any attention toward the moment, not wanting to be the thing that made Alice remember herself and go quiet again.

Then she lifted her eyes toward William, to see whether he’d seen it too.

William was standing completely still, his hand resting near the edge of the desk as though he’d forgotten it was there at all. The impenetrable composure he wore like armor, the unreadable mask of the Duke of Norwyn, had simply fallen away. His eyes were wide, fixed on Alice’s face with something close to disbelief. There was no performance left in him, no restraint holding his expression in place. For a moment, he looked almost like a child too, who was just given a favorite toy, undone entirely by the sound of a child laughing.

A thrum echoed in Seraphina’s chest.

Looking at him then, seeing something so natural sitting just beneath all his practical arguments and logic, something pulled tight in Seraphina’s chest. It was an instinct that wasn’t sure where it came from, like a pull toward him, an urge to close the small distance between them and acknowledge whatever had just cracked open in his composure. This man, who spoke so dispassionately, looked so vulnerable in that moment.

Seraphina caught the thought instantly.

She slammed the mental door shut, pulling her gaze back down to the ink-stained paper before the feeling could take shape, before it could demand a name. She cleared her throat softly, her fingers tightening around the barrel of her quill.

“Moths,” Seraphina said. “Perhaps you’re right. I shall figure out something.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The knock at the door was soft and entirely unexpected for the hour of the evening.

Seraphina did not immediately rise from the armchair she had dragged into the corner of the bay window. The rain outside was beating softly against the tall diamond-leaded panes, misting the glass with a film of condensation that blurred the shapes of the gardens below. In her lap lay a dense treatise on agricultural drainage systems, the ink fading on pages she had reread twice without absorbing a single sentence.

Without turning her head from the glass, Seraphina turned a page of her book. “You may enter.”

A long beat of silence stretched through the doorway.

The door creaked open, admitting a slice of warm sconce-light from the corridor before clicking softly shut again. Then came the familiar click of boot heels against the rug, moving unhurriedly across the room.

“Before you ask, no, I have not torn apart any more of your rare editions, Your Grace. Your library is perfectly intact.”

William did not answer. He bypassed the center of the room entirely, drawing closer to the bay window where she sat.

He stopped just short of the window corner, resting his shoulder lightly against the tall carved molding of the wall. He kept his hands tucked casually into his coat pockets.

Seraphina glanced up sideways over the edge of her volume. The intimate setting of her bedchamber only underscored how different he looked tonight. He had discarded his formal neckcloth somewhere down the hallways of the estate; the collar of his white linen shirt sat open at his throat, exposing the line of his collarbone.

She hated how she always noticed his chest whenever it was exposed. Always, without fail. But she also noticed that he looked thoroughly worn down. Whatever business had taken him away from the estate and kept him brooding in his study had waned him.

He looked down at her, his eyes searching her face in the light of the single oil lamp she had lit on the side table. For a long moment, the only sound between them was the drum of rain against the windowpane.

“I have an update,” he said softly.

The teasing edge in Seraphina’s chest evaporated instantly. His tone was too flat, too careful, completely stripped of the cutting sarcasm he usually employed when sparring with her.

She closed the treatise, setting it aside on the small table beside her cup of cooling tea. She folded her hands in her lap, turning her body slightly in the chair to give him her complete, undivided attention.

“Is it about the letters?” she asked.

“In a sense,” William said. He did not elaborate further just yet. Instead, his gaze drifted away from her, turning toward the doorway. “You look tired. Did Alice wear you out?”

“I could say the same thing about you,” she answered. “She is doing better. Over the last few days, the improvement has been marked. She is far calmer in the mornings when she comes into the library to sit while I write. She sleeps through the night much more often now, and even when a nightmare does take hold, she settles again quickly once she hears the sound of a voice.”

William’s jaw tightened subtly. A faint, barely perceptible shift in his shoulders suggested a wave of profound relief washing through him, though he kept his back rigid against the wall. He stared at the crack of light in the doorway for several seconds before looking back down at Seraphina.

“I am glad to hear it,” he murmured, his voice rough. “I owe you a debt for that, Seraphina. A considerable one.”

“You owe me nothing,” she replied simply.

Seraphina held his gaze, waiting. There was a question that had been sitting at the back of her mind for days now, floating beneath every observation she made. She wasn’t entirely sure of the connection between Alice and William.

They looked too much alike, but he has never once called her his daughter, and she did not want to pry by asking the staff what they knew.

Now, surrounded by the intimacy of her private rooms, the pieces refused to fit into any logical ledger she knew how to keep.

“Your Grace,” she said. “Is Alice your daughter?”

The silence in the bedchamber stretched out instantly, taut and thick enough to weigh upon the air.

“I will understand if you do not want to say,” she continued. “I was merely curious.”

William did not startle. He did not blink. But the line between his brows deepened, and he shifted his weight off the molding, stepping away from the window alcove. He walked toward her bed behind her, and sat. Seraphina rose too, walked over and sat by his side, but not close enough that they were in each other’s space.

The silence went on for so long... ten seconds, twenty, thirty, that Seraphina began to wonder if he intended to politely excuse himself, to retreat back behind the impenetrable wall of his title and leave her in the dark.

When he finally turned to her, she held her breath.

“No,” he said quietly. “She is not.”

Seraphina did not interrupt. She did not gasp, nor did she lean forward in dramatic surprise. She simply kept her hands loosely folded in her lap, waiting.

“She is my half-sister,” William said. “My father’s child. The late duke was an unrepentant rake. He tore through half of London for decades without a second thought, leaving a trail of ruined reputations, unpaid debts, and broken promises in his wake. Truthfully, Seraphina, I would not be at all surprised if I had three or four more half-brothers or half-sisters scattered across the kingdom that I know nothing about.”

He took a slow breath, lifting one hand to rub the back of his neck, massaging the muscle at the base of his skull before he continued.

“A few months ago, I received word from a small orphan asylum,” William continued. “Alice had been found. She carried no luggage, no name on her linens, and not a single shilling to her name. All she had was a letter addressed to the Duke of Norwyn.”

He stopped to look directly into Seraphina’s eyes.

“Apparently, years ago, the late Duke had given his seal to one of his mistresses,” William explained. “He had pledged to her that if she ever found herself in desperate straits, if she ever needed assistance for the child, she was to write to him, and his family would honor the obligation. When the woman passed away, she left Alice with that letter. The managers at the orphan asylum saw the crest on the wax seal and immediately contacted me.”

“I later learned her mother had been forced to abandon her at that place only because she was terribly ill,” William continued. “She had no money, living in squalor after being ruined by my father, and she was simply too sick to care for the child any longer.”

Seraphina watched him closely, the truth hanging heavily in the room. “What of Alice herself? What do you think happened to make her... the way she is now?”

William shook his head slowly, a shadow crossing his features. “I truly do not know. When I brought her here, I asked her. I tried to understand what she had endured, but she refuses to utter a word about it. Whatever she went through before she arrived at my gates... it broke something inside her. She has had a remarkably rough life so far. I only hope that, in time, she can have a better life here. A real life.”

Seraphina stared at him, feeling a warmth bloom in her chest.

There was no distance in the way he spoke of the girl. He did not view Alice as an unwelcome burden, a stranger’s child thrust upon his household, or a stain to be managed. He spoke of her with total, unhesitating responsibility, a protective devotion that few men in his position would ever dream of offering to an illegitimate child.

“That is noble, Your Grace,” she said.

“Cleaning up after my father is hardly a new endeavor for me,” William added, a wry line touching the corner of his mouth. “Even before he passed, I was effectively managing the estate and acting in his stead. In a way, taking on his unfinished obligations is something I am already well accustomed to.”

“I suppose we shall simply have to figure it out as we go,” Seraphina said softly. “I will make it my personal project to see that she finds her footing again. That was the end of our bargain, was it not?”

William’s expression softened. “If anyone can bring her out of her shell, Seraphina, I suspect it is you. You’ll probably talk her out of it.”

He paused, clearing his throat as his tone shifted. “Speaking of bargains and arrangements... that brings me to my update.”

Seraphina straightened in her armchair, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “You found something?”

“We did. Anthony and I,” William said, turning to face her “We spent the last week traveling from one estate to the next, speaking with the caretakers, checking on the inventories, and ensuring the grounds were secure. We only made a breakthrough at one of our cottages. The caretakers there had good information for us.”

He turned his head to meet her gaze.

“Based on what Mr. and Mrs. Higgs shared, along with the paper stock and the handwriting on those notes, we are almost certainly looking at a woman of high peerage,” William explained. “Someone who had intimate access to my father’s life and holdings. Mr. Higgs promised he would personally go through the cottage records to track down the precise name, so Anthony and I are currently waiting on his update.”

Seraphina’s brows drew together as she absorbed the news. “So you’re telling me your family, or at least someone tied directly to your father, is behind this?”

“It seems highly likely that the culprit is one of my father’s former lovers,” William said bluntly. “A woman of noble birth.”

Seraphina leaned back slightly, her mind racing as she tried to piece the disparate threads together. A thick fog of confusion settled over her.

“I do not understand the correlation,” Seraphina said aloud, looking across the mattress at him with a troubled frown. “What could a former mistress of your father possibly want with you and me? Why use your family crest to send me letters? Was it so that I would look in the wrong direction?”

William shifted on the bed. “It is possible,” he explained. “Might be a coincidence as well, or it might be deliberate. I think it is deliberate, but Anthony thinks it’s just someone who doesn’t want to be found; hence they try to make it seem like the letters are coming from me.”

“But why you specifically?” she asked. “She could have just... not sent it with a seal. Why hide the crest in the paper? Did she think I would not find it, or did she want me to find it? To seek you out?”

“You do not need to wrap your head around that just yet,” William said quietly. “You are not the one who needs to carry the weight of this investigation. Anthony and I will handle the information from Mr. Higgs and figure out the missing link. Your only task is to play your part at my side, keep Alice safe, and let me do the worrying.”

Seraphina looked across the small divide of mattress into his eyes, taking a slow, grounding breath. The logical part of her hated unanswered equations, but his promise offered an undeniable sense of security.

“All right,” she agreed softly. “I will hold you to that.”

In the dusk of her bedchamber, with the rain tapping against the glass and the fire crackling low in the grate, the space between them felt suddenly, overwhelmingly small.

For several long seconds, neither of them moved.

Then, as if suddenly realizing how long he had been staring, William blinked. A faint, subtle flush touched the top of his cheekbones, and he straightened his spine instantly. He deliberately cleared his throat as he rose to his feet.

“Right,” he said brusquely, his voice instantly shifting gears. “Moving on to practical matters. We need to begin appearing in public. We must attend the upcoming social season, specifically the major balls in town over the coming weeks.”

Seraphina blinked, thrown completely off balance by the sudden, jarring turn in the conversation. She shot up to her feet too. “The balls? Why on earth would we spend our evenings in crowded ballrooms when there are actual, pressing matters to resolve?”

“Because whoever is sending you those letters is operating under the assumption that you are isolated,” William explained. “They are targeting a woman they believe is vulnerable, writing alone without immediate protection. If they see that you are no longer isolated, if they see you flanked by my title, integrated into high society at my side, it changes their calculus entirely. It forces them either to make a reckless mistake and act prematurely, or to withdraw their threats altogether.”

Seraphina frowned, an uneasy feeling settling in the pit of her stomach as she considered his words. She let her shoulders drop, staring into the corner of the room.

“That is true. I haven’t received a single letter in weeks,” she admitted quietly.

“You consider that a relief?”

“No,” she said, looking up at him. “Silence from someone who is threatening you can’t be peace. It usually means they are watching. It means they are waiting for an opening.”

“Precisely,” William said, his eyes narrowing. “Which is why we do not give them an opening. We go to the balls. We demonstrate an absolute, unshakable united front before the entire town. This is the end of my own bargain, Seraphina. Play along.”

“Very well,” she said at last, bringing her hands to her hips. “I agree with the strategy. It is sound. There is, however, one minor, tactical flaw in your plan.”

William raised an eyebrow. “What tactical flaw would that be?”

“I do not know how to dance.”

Seraphina braced herself, her breath catching slightly in her throat. Deep down, she had known this moment would inevitably come. Ever since she had agreed to step into his world, she had dreaded the day she would have to admit the reality of her upbringing to someone like him.

She held her breath, half-expecting a flash of annoyance, a weary sigh, or at least a sharp reprimand for failing to possess the most fundamental skill required of a Duchess.

William tilted his head, his eyes wide as his lips parted.

“What?” he asked mildly.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“Icannot believe you do not know how to dance,” William said, staring at her in complete disbelief.

He stood in the center of the drawing room, looking at her as if trying to solve a riddle that defied all logic. He went on talking, pacing a few steps across the wide floorboards as he listed all the ways a woman of her standing should have learned years ago: private tutors, town assemblies, seasonal balls, and family gatherings. None of it made any sense to him. How could she attend a London Season and somehow escape the most basic expectations of polite society?

Seraphina stood a few paces away, barely hearing half of what he was saying.

A sudden, strange wave of heat was rising up her neck, making her skin feel uncomfortably warm. Her heart was beating entirely too fast, fluttering in a panicked, irregular rhythm that made it hard to draw a deep breath. Her palms felt clammy, and a light flutter in the pit of her stomach made her feel slightly lightheaded.

‘A fever,’ she thought, silently cataloging the symptoms as he continued his lecture. ‘I believe I have taken a feverish chill.’

The symptoms had begun the second she walked into the room. When William had summoned her down to the drawing room, she had expected another discussion over the threat letters. Instead, she had stepped through the doors to find that the furniture had been completely rearranged. The armchairs and side tables had been pushed back against the walls, leaving the wide expanse of floorboards cleared and waiting.

The moment she realized why he had cleared the space... the instant her mind registered that they were about to dance, that he was going to hold her and step into her personal space, that sudden, overwhelming heat had flooded her veins.

She tried to convince herself that the timing was a pure coincidence. It had nothing to do with the fact that she was about to be in breath-to-breath proximity with him. No, the physical reaction was purely physiological, a delayed response to the damp air outside.

Why else would the mere prospect of dancing with him cause her heart to pound like a trapped bird? Why should the thought of his hand on her waist send such a strange, alarming flutter through her stomach? It made no logical sense.

Unless, of course, her mind was simply revolting against the danger of physical contact.

William was a Duke, burdened with the responsibilities of his estate, his family, and his standing. He could not afford to be laid low by an illness. If she allowed him to take her hand, if she permitted him to step close enough for their breaths to mingle, she risked passing her indisposition on to him. Yes... that was the rational explanation. Her body was panicking because she was trying to protect him. She was frightened of making him sick, frightened that this fever might be catching. It had nothing whatsoever to do with his physical presence rattling her.

She had spent enough time tending to her sisters to recognize the signs. A sudden rise in temperature, a racing pulse, and a strange weakness in the knees were classic indicators of an oncoming chill. It was the damp rain outside, summer finally catching up with her body. She kept her posture rigid and her face completely still so he wouldn’t notice how flustered and hot she suddenly felt standing opposite him in the expanse of the room.

“—and it is not as if you grew up in a convent,” William was saying, throwing his hands up in a gesture of exasperation. “Even if you avoided the ballrooms, what on earth did you do when you actually went out to assemblies with your sisters? How did you escape without a single partner?”

Seraphina forced herself to swallow past the dry tightness in her throat, pulling her mind back to his questions.

“I used tactics,” she said, her voice a little higher than usual before she cleared her throat. “When Euphemia dragged me to ballrooms, I either found a dark corner behind a curtain to read, or I talked to my suitors about steam engine valves until their eyes glazed over. They were so bored they forgot to ask me to dance, and I managed to slip away.”

William raised an eyebrow, as an amused twitch touching his lips. “So you were a wallflower by choice?”

“I was not a wallflower,” Seraphina countered quickly. “A wallflower wants to be asked to dance and gets left behind. I actively avoided the floor. There is a difference.”

“Society doesn’t see a difference, Seraphina,” William said softly as he stepped closer. “They just see a lady standing against the wall. But that still doesn’t explain your childhood. Most girls are forced into dance lessons by seven or eight. What were your tutors doing?”

“Euphemia was the one who insisted on dance lessons,” Seraphina explained, looking down at the floorboards between them. “She begged Lady Byron to hire a master from town when we were young. Euphemia loved the music and the dresses, and she even dragged Leonora in to learn with her. But whenever the music started, I snuck off to read in the garden or do experiments in the shed.”

William frowned, his amusement fading into confusion. “So, Lady Byron allowed that? I can’t imagine any guardian letting a young lady skip her lessons like that. Most mothers in town would have locked you in the drawing room until you learned your steps.”

“Lady Byron did not care,” Seraphina scoffed. “In fact, she enabled it. She had no interest in seeing me become an accomplished lady or making a big match in town. As long as I was out of her way, reading old books and becoming a bluestocking, she was perfectly happy. It kept me quiet and out of her hair.”

William went quiet. The teasing look left his eyes, replaced by a shadow across his jaw as he processed her words.

“She failed you then,” he said quietly.

“I don’t agree. She gave me peace,” Seraphina corrected, though the truth in his tone settled uncomfortably in her chest. She smoothed down her skirts, trying to shake off the strange, warm weakness still lingering in her legs. “In any case, it doesn’t matter now. If we are going to these balls to connect with society and figure out who is sending those letters, I cannot stand against the wall. We need to look like a proper couple.”

“My point exactly. Which is why I summoned you here.”

The most sensible option was to refuse. She could simply tell him that she needed rest, retreat to her bedchamber, and avoid the dangerous prospect of his hands on her body altogether. But declining now would require an explanation. William was far too observant. He would ask questions, probe her sudden reluctance, and demand to know why a woman who had just claimed to be ready to do her part was suddenly shrinking from a simple dance lesson. Explaining would only create an unnecessary complication, one she did not have the energy to navigate.

No, the most efficient course of action was to simply breeze through it. She would endure the lesson, keep as much physical distance between them as the steps allowed to ensure he did not catch whatever indisposition was affecting her, and get it over with as quickly as possible.

She squared her shoulders and faced him in the middle of the room. “So I am ready for you to teach me.”

William looked at her for a moment before nodding. He took a few steps toward the open center of the floor, and then stopped again.

“All right,” he said formally. “We don’t have time to make you a master at this, but I can teach you enough so you don’t embarrass yourself. We’ll start with the basic steps.”

He held out his hand to her. Seraphina hesitated for a second before placing her palm in his. His skin was warm, his hold was very firm, and the moment his fingers closed around hers, that heat shot straight up her arm again.

He stepped closer, placing his right hand gently against her back to guide her frame. The touch was completely respectable, but through the fabric of her dress, it felt like a hot iron against her skin. Her pulse spiked instantly.

“Keep your eyes on my shoulder, not my feet,” William whispered as he looked down at her. “If you look down, you’ll lose your balance. Just follow my lead.”

He took a slow step forward. Seraphina, distracted by how close he was standing and how loud her heart was beating in her ears, moved her foot a second too late. Her toe bumped right into his boot, and she stumbled forward.

“Careful,” William muttered, his arm instantly tightening around her waist to catch her before she went down.

She ended up pressed right against his chest, her hand grabbing his shoulder to steady herself. She could feel the weight of him, the rise and fall of his breath, and a subtle scent she could not make sense of clinging to his coat.

“For someone who claims to be so logical...” William said, holding her tightly. “...You’re not paying attention. Are you all right?”

“I am fine,” Seraphina said quickly, stepping back out of his hold. Her cheeks felt like they were on fire. “But I... I think I am coming down with a fever.”

William stopped, looking at her with a raised eyebrow. “A fever? You were fine yesterday.”

“Fevers come on quickly,” she insisted, pressing two fingers to her throat where her pulse was jumping wildly. “I have a sudden rise in body temperature, my heart rate is abnormally fast, and I feel lightheaded. It’s a seasonal chill from the rain.”

William stared at her for a moment. Then he reached out and pressed the back of his hand gently to her forehead, then down against her cheek.

His touch was cool, but it only made her face burn hotter.

“Your forehead feels normal,” he noted, his thumb lightly brushing her cheekbone before he pulled his hand back. “Though your cheeks are very red. Are you sure you’re not just nervous?”

“I do not get nervous,” she said stubbornly. “It is a physical illness. But we don’t have time to stop. I need to learn this.”

William let out a soft sigh. “All right. Let’s try the waltz then. It’s smoother, but you have to trust me to guide you.”

He took her hand again and placed his arm firmly around her back, pulling her just a little closer than before.

“A waltz is just a rhythm,” he explained softly, moving his feet in a slow circle across the floorboards and bringing her along with him. “One, two, three. One, two, three. You don’t need to overthink it. You just move when I move. If I step forward, you yield. You don’t have to worry about where your feet land because I won’t let you fall.”

Seraphina tried to focus on her feet, but every time she looked up, his eyes were fixed on hers. The room felt smaller, warmer, and her head was spinning far more than the slow turn of the dance warranted.

‘The fever is definitely getting worse,’ she thought frantically as he guided her through another turn.

“Now,” William murmured, his gaze locking onto hers as he built up momentum. “The turn.”

He swept her into a wider, faster rotation, but Seraphina’s foot caught the bottom of her skirt. Her ankle gave out beneath her, and she lost her footing completely.

“Seraphina!”

In a single motion, William wrapped his arm tightly around her waist, catching her before she could hit the floor again, and dipped her backward into a low swoon to keep her from falling hard.

The sudden rush of motion left Seraphina suspended, the world tilting violently as her head hung back toward the floorboards.

From the absurd angle, all she could see was an inverted expanse of the room and, directly above her, the sharp line of William’s jaw, his brows pulled together as he held her securely in the dip.

For two seconds, she hung there in his hold, her heart thumping madly. When he pulled her smoothly back up to her feet, the sweeping shift in gravity brought them far closer than they had been all evening. Her chest brushed the front of his coat, her palms resting flat against his shoulders for balance.

They were standing close... close enough that she could see the tiny flecks of gold scattered through his eyes, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath against her lips.

Seraphina stared up at him, completely frozen. William did not let her go immediately. His gaze searched her face, tracking the rapid rise and fall of her chest, his eyes lingering on her mouth before rising back to meet hers.

“That...” William said softly. “...is the second time you have nearly fallen in five minutes.”

Seraphina swallowed hard, her mind scrambling to regain control as she looked up at him. “Perhaps,” she retorted. “The fault lies with the instructor. You might simply be a terrible teacher, Your Grace.”

William froze. His eyebrow shot up toward his hairline, and his jaw slackened slightly in astonishment.

“I am a terrible teacher?” he repeated, staring at her with wide eyes. “Seraphina, I am moving at the pace of a slow walk. I have broken down every single count for you.”

“Breaking something down does not automatically make one a good instructor,” she countered, carefully placing her hands on his chest to push herself back a step. William let his arm fall from her waist, though he remained standing close. “A good instructor adapts to the student’s natural aptitudes.”

“The waltz is practically the simplest form of dance in existence!” William said, throwing his hands up in frustration. “It is three counts. One, two, three. It is a continuous, natural circle. A child of six can grasp the rhythm in ten minutes. The problem is not my teaching; the problem is that you are completely distracted. Your mind is anywhere but in this room.”

“It is not a matter of distraction,” Seraphina snapped back, her cheeks burning hotter by the second. “What comes easily to one person does not come easily to another. It is a fundamental truth of human aptitude.”

William crossed his arms over his chest, looking down at her with a mix of disbelief and budding amusement. “Are you truly trying to argue that counting to three while walking in a circle is beyond your intellectual capacity?”

“I am saying that different minds process information differently,” she argued stubbornly, smoothing down her skirts to hide the trembling of her fingers. “For instance, I can calculate the trajectory of a falling body or break down the chemical compound of soil in a matter of seconds. Most people find science completely baffling, yet it makes perfect sense to me. Dancing, on the other hand, requires an entirely different set of coordination skills that I have never cultivated. I am simply not good with my feet.”

“You are an intelligent, capable woman,” William pointed out. “I am fairly certain your feet function just fine when you are not trying to overthink them.”

“Overthinking is my natural state,” Seraphina said, her voice rising slightly.

William looked at her with squinted eyes, watching the way her eyes darted away, the way her posture remained tightly wound, and the bright, unnatural flush painting her cheeks.

“Seraphina,” he said, stepping a fraction closer. “Do I make you nervous by any chance?”

Seraphina’s eyes snapped wide, her breath locking in her throat. For a second, she just stared at him before darting her gaze away toward the windows.

Nervous? Of him?

The very idea was preposterous. It was laughable. She was a woman who had spent her entire life governing herself by logic, deliberately keeping emotional foolishness at arm’s length. She had never been one to swoon over a man, nor had she ever entertained the romantic notions of love that consumed women like her sister. She did not even know what love was supposed to feel like, nor did she care to discover it. To suggest that a single man could suddenly unravel her entire rational composure simply by standing near her was an insult to her intellect.

It was utterly ridiculous.

She forced a stiff laugh, turning her head back to face him squarely.

“You should not get ahead of yourself, Your Grace,” she said. “Just because you are a handsome, highly eligible Duke does not mean every woman who crosses your path is going to find you irresistibly charming, or that you can simply sweep any lady off her feet.”

William stopped. A lazy smile curved his lips, his eyes dancing with amusement. He took another step toward her.

“So...” he murmured. “...you are admitting that you find me handsome?”

Seraphina froze, realizing the trap she had walked right into. Another wave of heat scorched her cheeks, and for the first time all evening, her usual silver-tongued composure completely failed her.

“I... well, I merely have functioning eyesight,” she stuttered out, taking a small, hasty step back as he closed the distance. “I would never lie about an objective physical observation. A palace is imposing, a painting is refined, and you possess a pleasing... symmetry of features. That is a statement of simple fact, not an admission of being charmed.”

“An objective physical observation,” William repeated, stepping right back into her space. “I must say, Seraphina, that is the most clinical compliment I have ever received. I am flattered.”

“It was not a compliment,” Seraphina snapped, her mind whirling as she tried to regain the upper hand. “It was an assessment.”

“An assessment that required you to look closely enough to judge my... symmetry,” William countered, leaning down just an inch so his gaze was level with hers. “Which brings us right back to my original question.”

Seraphina opened her mouth to deliver a rebuttal, but the proximity of his face made her thoughts scatter like loose papers in the wind.

“I am indisposed,” she blurted out, holding up a hand to stop his advance before she lost her mind entirely. “I told you from the beginning. It is a fever. That is why I am flustered, that is why I lost my footing, and that is why I am standing here arguing with you. It has nothing to do with your symmetry, and it certainly has nothing to do with nervousness. I am simply suffering from a sudden, feverish chill.”

William stared down at her, tilting his head slightly. “You did mention,” he said quietly.

“I did,” she insisted, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. “If I remain standing here in your arms, attempting to spin in circles, I am likely to make it worse or pass the contagion on to you. A Duke cannot afford to be laid low by a fever. You have responsibilities.”

William let out a soft chuckle as he straightened. “How kind of you.”

“Which is why I think it is best if I lie down for a bit and rest for the night. We can continue this lesson when my constitution has recovered.”

William studied her face for another second before bowing his head. “If that is what you wish,” William said softly. “Though we cannot delay for too long. The first major ball of the Season is in less than two weeks. We need to have these steps down until they are second nature before we step onto a public floor.”

Seraphina looked up. “I will be ready. I am a quick study when my physical health permits.”

“I have no doubt of that,” William said. He eyed her thoughtfully. “If you prefer, I can arrange for a proper dance instructor from town to come to the estate tomorrow. Someone who can teach you.”

“No,” Seraphina replied instantly, the answer slipping out before she could stop it.

William raised an eyebrow. “No?”

“No,” she repeated more firmly. “I have no desire to embarrass myself further by letting a complete stranger know that I do not know her basic steps. You already know the truth. It is far more efficient for you to teach me.”

“Very well,” he agreed softly. “Then I shall remain your instructor. But next time, Duchess, we practice until you can complete a full turn without blaming your feet.”

“Agreed,” Seraphina said softly.

William bowed his head slightly, giving her a nod before turning toward the doors of the drawing room. He paused at the threshold, looking back over his shoulder at her one last time.

“Get some rest, Seraphina,” he said. “Drink some warm tea for that fever.”

Before she could form a reply, he stepped out into the corridor and closed the door behind him, leaving her alone in the room with her heart still pounding wildly in her chest.

Seraphina pressed a cool palm to her burning cheek, taking a deep, grounding breath. The physical betrayal was unacceptable. If this feverish chill was going to interfere with her composure and sabotage her, she needed to address it with scientific efficiency. She would speak to the housekeeper immediately, summon a physician from town to examine her, and follow whatever regimen of rest and tonics was required to restore her constitution.

Whatever ailment had taken hold of her body, she would have it thoroughly treated and eradicated before morning. Next time William stepped into her space to lead a dance, her physical health would be entirely sound, leaving no room for erratic pulses, clumsy footing, or any further obstacles on her path to learning.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Well?” Seraphina demanded the second the physician lifted his thumb from her wrist. “Have you determined what is causing the fever?”

Croft deliberately snapped his silver pocket watch shut, placing it back into his waistcoat pocket before taking off his spectacles to polish them with a silk handkerchief.

“Your pulse is entirely normal, Your Grace,” he began. “Sixty-eight beats per minute. Firm, and perfectly regular.”

Seraphina frowned, leaning against her pillows. “That is impossible. It was racing violently not twelve hours ago. What of my temperature?”

“Your skin is completely cool,” Croft noted dryly, gesturing toward her forehead. “Your throat is clear, and your lungs are sound. In fact, after reviewing the various cooling teas your housekeeper administered over the last two days, I am forced to conclude that you are in magnificent health.”

“I am not in magnificent health,” Seraphina insisted. “I am fine right now because I am sitting still in a quiet room. But the moment I stand up, specifically when I am in close proximity with His Grace, my body completely betrays me.”

Croft’s gray eyebrows rose a fraction. “Betrays you? Brought on by the presence of His Grace?”

“Precisely,” Seraphina said, seizing on his words. “The symptoms are conditional, yet severe. I experience a sudden rise in temperature, shortness of breath, dizziness, and an uncontrollable rush of blood to my face. I suspect it is an environmental reaction, or perhaps an acute nervous reaction brought on by the physical exertion of learning to dance.”

“Tell me, Your Grace,” he continued. “Does this occur exclusively when you are in close physical proximity with His Grace?”

Seraphina hesitated, her gaze shifting to the embroidered canopy above her bed before she looked back at him.

“Most of the time, yes,” she admitted. “However, there are instances when I am simply lying right here in bed, completely alone, contemplating recent events... and the symptoms recur without warning.”

He raised an eyebrow again. “What, precisely, are you contemplating in those solitary moments?”

“A variety of practical matters,” Seraphina answered. “The management of the estate, my responsibilities, or... or a conversation I recently had with His Grace. The point is that the physical reaction is not strictly tied to his immediate physical presence. It can be triggered... internally.”

“A sudden racing of the pulse, a sense of breathlessness, and a surge of heat,” Croft summarized, mumbling.

Seraphina gasped, remembering something she read. “Could it not be an atypical presentation of angina pectoris? William Heberden documented it in the medical journals not forty years ago: a sudden constriction of the chest and erratic pulse.”

“Angina pectoris presents with severe, crushing pain radiating down the left arm, brought on by physical exertion,” Dr. Croft countered. “You have no pain, Your Grace, and your pulse at this very second is normal.”

“Then perhaps it is a lingering manifestation of the sweating sickness,” she suggested hastily.

“The English sweating sickness has been extinct since 1551,” Dr. Croft replied, without missing a beat. “Its victims were dead within twenty-four hours. You are currently the picture of vibrant vitality.”

“Then a localized nervous affection,” she pressed, leaning forward. “A temporary disturbance of the vascular system. Medical history is replete with diagnostic errors, Doctor Croft. For centuries, physicians believed dropsy was a disease of the blood before discovering it was an accumulation of fluid caused by the heart or liver. In the 1700s, physicians dismissed the early tremors of Saint Vitus’s Dance as mere emotional agitation until it was proven to be a neurological affliction. Medical science misdiagnoses physical ailments as mere vapors or nerves all the time until the condition turns fatal.”

Croft let out a quiet breath, temporarily lost for words.

“Your Grace,” he said gently. “I am afraid Saint Vitus’s Dance does not vanish the moment a gentleman leaves the room. I have tested your reflexes, listened to your heart, and felt your pulse. You exhibit no signs of dropsy, no neurological decay, and no fatal decline. You are in good health.”

“Then why does my heart beat so rapidly? Why do my cheeks burn?”

“Because...” Dr. Croft said softly, leaning in slightly. “Well, perhaps it is not an illness of the body at all. Perhaps it is a matter of the heart.”

Seraphina blinked, her brow furrowing. “What does that even mean?”

“It means that you might be harboring certain unresolved feelings toward His Grace. Feelings that your logical mind hasn’t acknowledged, leaving your body to express what you have not.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Seraphina blurted out, her face instantly flushing pink. “That is utter nonsense. You are a man of science, Doctor Croft. You ought to return to your medical treatises and research this properly rather than making absurd leaps!”

Before Croft could answer, a knock sounded at the door.

The door swung open, and William stepped into the room. He was fully dressed for the morning in a blue riding coat.

“Ah,” William said, stopping as he noticed the physician by the bed. “Edward Croft. You’re here. How is she doing? Is she fit to leave her bed?”

“Her Grace is in good health,” Dr. Croft reported, bowing. “Her pulse is steady, her lungs are clear, and her fever has vanished. I find no physical reason why she cannot resume her normal routine, Your Grace.”

“That is wonderful news,” William said, a smile breaking across his face. He looked directly at Seraphina. “Which means we can resume our dancing lessons immediately.”

Seraphina stiffened, shooting a glare at the physician, who merely offered her a serene smile in return.

William turned back to the doctor. “Would you give us a moment? I would like a word with my wife.”

The word wife sent a traitorous skip through Seraphina’s chest. While Croft bowed low and stepped into the adjoining morning room, Seraphina subtly brought a clenched fist to her sternum, tapping her chest twice in an effort to force her erratic heart back into order. The physician was undeniably, completely wrong. This was not some foolish, sentimental agitation of the spirits. It was an uncatalogued physiological glitch, a medical anomaly that the doctor lacked the foresight to properly diagnose.

Once they were alone, the atmosphere in the room quieted. William stepped closer to the bed, resting his hands lightly on the bedpost.

“I came to tell you something,” William said softly. “Regarding Alice.”

Seraphina paused, her posture softening. “What happened?”

“She came down for breakfast this morning,” William said. “She walked right into the dining hall, pulled out her chair, and sat down at the table.”

Seraphina’s breath caught. “She did?”

“She did,” William confirmed, looking at her intently. “She did not say a word, of course, but she sat across from me, ate her toast, and stayed for twenty minutes. It is the first time she has willingly joined me for a morning meal since she arrived.”

Seraphina felt a swell of warmth in her chest, entirely separate from her phantom fever. “That is wonderful progress, Your Grace.”

“William.”

Seraphina’s eyebrows lifted, her speech momentarily faltering. “I beg your pardon?”

“William,” he repeated gently, watching her closely. “I have been thinking, and it occurred to me that you have never once called me by my name. If we are to convince society, and this household, that we are true partners in this marriage, it would be far more believable if you refrained from addressing me as though I were a stranger in a parliament chamber.”

Seraphina quickly looked away toward the window, adjusting the lace trim of her sleeve. Rationally, his logic was sound. A husband and wife of their standing calling one another by formal titles in private would certainly draw unwanted speculation from observant servants. It was a perfectly practical, reasonable adjustment.

But before she could articulate her agreement, the mattress dipped.

William had walked around the edge of the bed and sat down right beside her, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off his riding coat.

“Let me hear you say it,” he said, his voice low.

Seraphina turned her head back to him, her eyes wide. “Say what?”

“William,” he murmured, eyes holding hers captive. “My name. Address me by my name, Seraphina.”

Seraphina swallowed hard, the muscles in her throat working against a newly found dryness. She drew a breath, attempting to project absolute composure.

“That is wonderful progress... William.”

The moment the words left her lips, her body betrayed her once more. It was not merely the flutter in her pulse this time. A sensation erupted in the pit of her stomach, one remarkably like a vast swarm of bees, buzzing in a frenzied rhythm, humming in her lower stomach without a single sting.

The doctor was wrong. He had to be. Her illness was an advancing, highly volatile medical anomaly. A terrifying thought struck her in that moment. What if she was the first documented case of a new, unrecorded disease? History was filled with tragic medical firsts, individuals who contracted rare pathogens before science could give them a name or a cure. What if she was destined to be recorded in medical journals as the first documented case of this bizarre, localized condition?

Should she be concerned for her life?

“It is,” William agreed softly. “I know it is because of you. Because of the environment you’ve built here, and the way you’ve given her space. But I was wondering... what more can we do? How do we build on this without frightening her away?”

Seraphina adjusted her posture. “Direct conversation clearly causes her distress, but shared, informal activities allow her to observe us without feeling cornered,” she explained. “I was thinking... perhaps we could organize a family picnic on the estate grounds. Nothing formal. Just a blanket on the grass near the gardens, some light food, and lemonade. It will allow Alice to be near us on her own terms.”

William stared at her for a moment, a smile spreading across his face.

“A picnic,” he repeated. “That is an exceptional idea, Seraphina. Thank you. You are doing so much, and I am deeply grateful.”

Seraphina swallowed hard, suddenly finding it difficult to look directly into his eyes. “You do not need to thank me, William. It is simply my duty to ensure the household functions well.”

“Well, it is more than your duty, and we both know it,” William said gently.

They sat in silence for a fleeting moment, looking at each other across the small space between them.

William broke the silence with a breath, standing up and stepping back from the bed. “Well, I should let you finish with the doctor. We can organize the picnic for tomorrow afternoon if the weather holds.”

“Tomorrow afternoon will suit fine,” Seraphina agreed softly.

“Good,” William said, giving her one last look before stepping out into the corridor.

A second later, Croft popped his head back into the room, carrying his medical bag. “Well, Your Grace, I shall take my leave.”

“Wait,” Seraphina called out before he could reach the door.

Croft stopped, turning back.

Seraphina sat up straighter, gripping the bedsheets. “Let us suppose, purely for the sake of argument... that my physical reactions are indeed linked to a nervous disturbance triggered by proximity. Until I can find a proper scientific explanation for what is occurring, what am I supposed to do about it in the meantime?”

Croft raised an eyebrow. “In the meantime?”

“Yes,” Seraphina said, gesturing to her own face. “I am required to learn to dance with him. We must attend public balls in less than two weeks. I have very pale skin, Doctor Croft! Any sudden flush of blood transforms my face into a bright beacon of embarrassment. How do I prevent him from believing that he is... affecting me?”

“Your Grace, I am afraid that is outside my professional scope.”

“There must be a tonic or a breathing technique to stop it!” Seraphina argued.

“The only prescription I can offer you,” Croft said, his eyes twinkling. “Is to accept that your heart is functioning as nature intended.”

“What?” Seraphina blurted out in frustration.

“I shall take my leave now, Your Grace.” The physician bowed and stepped into the corridor, closing the door behind him.

Seraphina sank back against her pillows with a long groan. She pulled her legs up, sitting cross-legged on her bed, staring down at her hands.

‘Enough,’ she told herself firmly.

She had far more practical matters to attend to. She had a picnic to plan. If Alice was finally taking steps to come out of her shell, then that was what mattered most.

Seraphina swung her legs over the edge of the bed, her feet. She would plan the picnic, coordinate with the cook, and tomorrow, she would sit on the grass with William and Alice. As for the dance lessons... she would simply have to exercise complete mental discipline to keep her heart under control.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“It is a leaf, Seraphina! It was attached to a living oak branch not twenty minutes ago. You deliberately misled the inquiry.” William scoffed, a laugh bubbling in his chest despite his best efforts to maintain a stern scowl. He crossed his arms over his unbuttoned waistcoat, leaning back against the rough trunk of the oak tree.

“I answered the question as stated,” Seraphina replied. She did not so much as blink. “You asked, and I quote, Is the subject a living, breathing creature? A plucked oak leaf possesses no respiratory system, nor is it currently attached to the tree’s primary vascular trunk. Botanically speaking, the moment it was severed from the branch, cellular death commenced. It is non-living organic matter.”

William threw his hands up, his coat discarded several feet away on the wool blanket, his cravat untied and his linen sleeves rolled up past his forearms. “It is a game. We are sitting on a blanket in the shade, not defending a thesis. You knew precisely what I meant when I asked if it was alive.”

“A lawyer does not guess what an opponent means. He reads the text. A physician does not guess at a symptom. He measures it.” Seraphina offered him a victorious little smile that made his pulse do a strange, erratic jump. “If you wish to defeat me, William, you must frame your inquiries with greater care.”

William narrowed his eyes at her, though the exasperation in his chest was rapidly giving way to an overwhelming, dangerous sense of amusement. For weeks, he had lived with a woman whose mind operated like a perfectly calibrated piece of clockwork. She approached conversation the way a general would approach a siege or a scholar approached a rare manuscript.

It was exasperating. It was absurd...

...It was, he was beginning to realize, completely captivating.

“You are utterly ruthless,” William muttered, reaching for a glass of lemonade to mask the rise of blood to his face. “A tyrant.”

“I am a lover of accuracy,” Seraphina retorted, pouring herself a splash of tea. “The leaf is dead, William. It has been separated from its life source. It is no longer living.”

“It is green! It was attached to the branch five minutes ago!” William countered, setting his glass down. “If I pluck a flower, it does not instantly become a corpse the second my fingers sever the stem. It retains its vitality. Ergo, for the purpose of a game, it is alive.”

“By every law of nature, once the vascular supply is severed, it enters a state of decay. It is biologically dead.”

“It is alive,” William insisted. “You are twisting the definition simply to deny my victory.”

“It is dead,” she maintained, smiling.

“It is green, it is intact, and it is winning this argument. It is alive.”

“It is dead.”

The tiny voice cut between them like a blade.

Seraphina paused, while William sat back, completely stunned, staring at Alice as she took another bite of her strawberry. Her words were tiny, no louder than the rustle of a breeze through the grass, but he heard her loud and clear.

Beside them, tucked safely on the far corner of the wool blanket, Alice was sitting with her knees drawn up to her chin. She was holding a half-eaten strawberry in one hand, her eyes wide, clear, and fixed directly on William. There was no hesitation in her face, no shadow of the terrifying retreat that had claimed her for the past couple of months.

“It is dead,” Alice repeated.

The world seemed to shrink down to the space of that blanket. Inside William’s chest, his heart gave a massive thud, followed by a hammering rhythm. Alice had looked him in the eye and spoken directly to him.

Every protective instinct in William’s body screamed at him to throw his arms around her, to call for the servants, to sigh with relief. But months of guidance warned him that a grand spectacle would be fatal. If he made a fuss, if he treated this miracle like a fragile glass vase breaking, Alice would retreat right back into her shell like a startled snail.

So, swallowing the lump in his throat, William forced his features into a look of lighthearted betrayal. He placed a hand over his heart and glared at her.

“You too, Alice?” he grumbled, putting on his most aggrieved, grumpy facade. “You are taking her side? Is that what this household has come to? I am your family too. I buy you sweetmeats. I spent hours yesterday teaching you how to identify the constellations, and you side with the woman who abuses botanical definitions to win a silly game?”

Alice bit into her strawberry, a tiny giggle escaping her lips. She didn’t look down. She didn’t flinch. She just watched him through her long lashes, her small shoulders shaking with bubbling laughter.

“Don’t you dare attempt to bully my ally,” Seraphina interjected smoothly, as she reached out and gently patted Alice’s shoulder. “She simply possesses superior analytical reasoning, Your Grace. Accept your defeat with dignity.”

“Traitorous, the pair of you,” William muttered, though the feeling spreading through his limbs was so warm, so dizzyingly sweet, he felt almost intoxicated by it. He turned back to Alice. “Very well then, Lady Genius. Since you are so exceptionally clever at this game, it is your turn. Go pick an object, and let us see if Seraphina’s analytical reasoning can save her this time.”

Alice’s eyes lit up. She dropped the green stem of her strawberry onto a silver tray, scrambled up from the blanket without a single trace of her usual languor, and went trotting off toward the edge of the rose garden. Her small leather slippers rustled softly through the clover as she began peering under leaves and bushes, utterly absorbed in her quest for a secret object.

The very instant Alice was out of earshot, the playful air evaporated, leaving a taut, breathless quiet beneath the trees.

William turned his head toward Seraphina, his chest heaving as if he had just run a mile. “Did she just—” he spoke in an urgent, hushed rasp.

“—speak directly to you?” Seraphina finished.

“That has never happened before. Usually she refuses to meet my eye,” William whispered. He ran a hand through his hair, gripping the back of his neck.

“It was magnificent,” Seraphina whispered back. “Perhaps all she needed was time. Who knows the weight she carries? A gentleman of high standing, a powerful man of the town, may have intimidated her in the past. It would explain why she is so wary around people.”

She paused, watching Alice crouch near the rose bushes. “We read together almost every afternoon, you know. We speak of society, of rank, and... we speak of you.”

William tilted his head, a curious stillness settling over him. “What, precisely, do you tell her about me?”

Seraphina offered a conspiratorial smile. “I tell her that you are kind. I tell her that while you may carry yourself with a stern, intimidating air... the grand Duke of Norwyn, brooding over his estates... you are a true gentleman at heart. I tell her you are fiercely protective of those you love. I honestly did not know if she was truly absorbing my words, but perhaps... perhaps she was listening all along.”

William let out a quiet breath, his eyes locking onto hers with a depth of feeling he didn’t care to hide. “Then I owe this to you, Seraphina. You made her see me in a different light.”

“Do not give me all the credit just yet,” she replied gently, shaking her head. “The truth is, until Alice finds her own voice completely, until she feels safe enough to tell us what truly happened in her past, we will never fully understand why she was so frightened, or why she withdrew from the world. But for today, William...”

Seraphina turned to face him fully. “For today, we call this progress.”

He looked out toward the lawn where Alice was currently squatting near a stone urn, her small fingers carefully inspecting a piece of bark. A tangle of emotions tightened in his chest. Gratitude, immense and overwhelming, was the largest part of it. He knew, with absolute certainty, that without Seraphina’s presence over the past weeks, Alice would still be locked in her prison.

But running parallel to that gratitude was a prickle of competitive pride.

The blackmailer.

For weeks, he had promised Seraphina that he would handle it. The venomous, anonymous letters targeting her remained a looming, unresolved shadow. He had found small leads, dead ends, and cold trails, but no culprit.

She had made progress with Alice, and he had not even delivered her peace of mind.

“I will have an update on the blackmailer soon,” he said then. “I assure you. I should have found the person behind them by now.”

“Oh, I know you’re working,” Seraphina said softly. “You have made far more progress in four weeks than I made in months of searching on my own. You are investigating a ghost, and you are doing so while protecting me from the scandal.”

Just then, she reached over to place her hand on his knee, smiling with wide eyes. “I trust you with it. Completely.”

William stopped breathing.

Her words were profoundly kind. They were the words of a true partner, a woman who saw him far beyond the cold mask he wore for the rest of the world. To the ton, to society, and to his business associates, he was entirely unyielding, a man who showed no mercy, made no friends when profit or legacy was on the line, and rarely graced anyone with a smile. Yet, he had never once turned that ruthless edge upon her. He had often wondered what she had done differently to unlock this warmer, softer side of a man so widely feared.

But as much as his mind tried to absorb the grace of her speech, his physical body had completely abandoned the topic of blackmail and letters.

All of his sensory awareness had violently narrowed down to the exact five square inches where her hand still rested on his thigh.

Through the fine, dark wool of his trousers, the heat of her palm was blinding. It did not feel like a simple touch. No, it felt as though she had pressed a hot iron directly against his skin. The heat did not stay localized, either. It surged upward through his bloodstream like wildfire, racing up his torso, tightening his lungs, and burning with violence in his ears and cheeks. His pulse, which had just settled after Alice’s outburst, exploded into a frantic thud.

‘Good Lord,’ William thought.

It seemed as though he had contracted the exact same contagion Seraphina had felt days ago.

He could feel his skin burning. His chest felt constricted, as if an iron band was tightening around his lungs. His heart was hammering so loudly he was convinced she must be able to hear it through the linen of his shirt. It was an infectious, localized fever, transmitted through proximity and touch.

Driven by an instinct he could neither analyze nor control, William reached down with his hand. He didn’t push her hand away. Instead, he covered her fingers with his own, pressing his large, warm palm flat over the back of her hand where it rested on his thigh.

The moment his skin brushed hers, Seraphina went completely still, letting out a tiny, audible gasp that seemed to vibrate straight into William’s chest.

Slowly, as if dragged by a physical weight, Seraphina’s gaze dropped from his eyes down to their joined hands on his lap. William watched as the pale skin of her neck flamed pink, the color creeping rapidly up to her cheekbones and the tips of her ears.

She did not pull her hand away. Neither did he.

The glade around them seemed to fall into a vacuum-like silence. The rustle of the wind in the oak leaves, the distant chatter of birds, the hum of insects, all of it vanished, replaced by the deafening, double-time thud of two hearts beating out of sync. The space between them grew thick, heavy with a suffocating static that made William’s fingers tremble slightly against hers.

He stared at her, his mind completely vacant of logic, overwhelmed by a desire to lean closer, to trace the curve of her cheek, to demand she explain how her touch could possibly alter his physiology so completely⁠—

A rustle of grass signaled Alice’s return.

Both of them recoiled as if they had been struck by a live current. Seraphina yanked her hand back to her own lap with blinding speed, suddenly seizing a loose thread on her cuff and inspecting it. William sat up rigidly, clearing his throat so hard it hurt, his hands flying to his cravat to tug at the already loosened linen as if he were suffocating.

Alice walked back onto the wool blanket and simply sat down cross-legged, tucking her feet under her skirts, her face calm, holding both of her small hands securely hidden behind her back. She looked at William, then at Seraphina, giving a single, subtle nod.

Sensing a desperate, critical need to reclaim control over his own malfunctioning brain, William threw himself back into the game.

“Very well,” William said, sitting up straight and crossing his legs, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on Alice and away from Seraphina sitting three feet to his left. “Let us establish the parameters. Is this subject larger than a tea caddy?”

Alice shook her head.

“Is it an object derived from nature, or was it manufactured by human hands?” Seraphina asked.

Alice paused, her brow furrowing slightly in concentration. “Nature,” she said softly.

“Is it living?” William demanded, shooting a side-glance at Seraphina. “I mean currently living, with a beating heart or active sap, not decaying cellular matter.”

Seraphina let out a huff, but her lips twitched.

Alice hesitated for a second, her eyes glittering with mischief, before giving a firm, definitive nod.

“Is it a plant?” Seraphina pressed.

Alice shook her head.

“A creature, then,” William said, rubbing his chin dramatically as he leaned forward. “Does it possess legs?”

Alice nodded.

“Four legs?”

Another nod.

“Is it... a caterpillar?” Seraphina guessed.

Alice shook her head with a curve of her lips, keeping her hands stubbornly tucked behind her back.

“A beetle?” William offered.

Alice shook her head again.

“We are failing miserably at this,” William muttered, resting his elbows on his knees and staring at her in exasperation. “Is it an insect?”

Another shake of the head.

Silence fell over the blanket as William and Seraphina exchanged a baffled look. For one straight minute, they threw out every logical possibility... a lizard, a field mouse, a ladybird, and each time, Alice merely shook her head, looking increasingly pleased with herself. She sat there like a little sphinx, her expression completely serene.

William was just about to throw his hands up in defeat when a muffled, wet, unmistakable sound echoed from behind Alice’s back.

Ribbit.

William froze mid-breath. His eyes widened, his head snapping toward Seraphina.

Seraphina’s jaw dropped slightly, her gaze locking onto William’s in equal shock.

Together, as if orchestrated by a single mind, both of them turned to Alice and asked in perfect unison. “Is it a toad?”

Alice’s face split into a triumphant grin. She brought her cupped hands forward, uncurling her small fingers to reveal a fat, mottled brown toad sitting contentedly on her palm, its throat pulsating as it blinked its golden eyes at them.

Seraphina let out a loud gasp, recoiling half an inch with her hand over her chest, before bursting into a breathless laugh. “Good heavens, Alice! Where on earth did you find it?”

William leaned back, chuckling. “You’ve been holding a toad behind your back this entire time? With your bare hands?”

Alice looked immensely satisfied, her small shoulders lifting in a proud little shrug. “You both win,” she murmured sweet-temperedly, looking down at her new friend with deep affection.

“Oh, I do not think we can claim this victory,” William declared, shaking his head with a dramatic shudder as he pointed a finger at the amphibian. “I think the toad wins, purely for betraying its own hiding place. We would have been sitting here until nightfall guessing beetles if he hadn’t spoken up.”

Seraphina leaned in closer, eyeing the reptile on Alice’s palm. “Do you want to keep him?” she asked softly.

William’s head snapped toward her, his eyes wide with incredulity. “She cannot keep a toad, Seraphina.”

“Why ever not?” Seraphina countered smoothly, looking up at him with a tilt of her chin. “The Common European Toad, Bufo bufo is actually a remarkably docile creature. They are nocturnal hunters that feast on garden pests, and they possess a fascinating homing instinct, often returning to the exact same damp hollow every year. He could be a most effective guardian of the manor gardens.”

William stared at her, flabbergasted. “It is a wild, warty amphibian, not a garden ornament. It is not a pet.”

Seraphina leaned slightly closer to William, lowering her voice. “Let her have this moment. She will grow out of it in a day or two once the novelty fades.”

“We cannot bank on the assumption that she will simply grow out of it,” William whispered back. “What if she decides to raise it in her bedchamber? What if it lays eggs? Are we to host a nursery of toad babies in Norwyn Manor?”

Seraphina raised an eyebrow. “Well, unless you have a duckpond hidden beneath the floorboards of her bedchamber, we are entirely safe from an infestation.”

“That is hardly the point,” William grumbled. “It belongs in the mud.”

“No.”

Alice’s voice came again, cutting straight through their back-and-forth.

Both William and Seraphina stopped mid-debate, turning in perfect unison to look at her.

“No?” William repeated carefully, blinking in surprise.

Alice shook her head. Without another word, she gently leaned forward and placed the toad onto the soft grass at the edge of the blanket.

The toad sat frozen for a single beat, and then launched itself into the clover with a series of awkward hops.

Alice burst into a fit of giggles, watching the toad scramble out of sight into the rose bushes.

Seraphina let out a soft laugh, her eyes shining as she looked from the disappearing toad back to Alice’s face. “Well, that settles the matter. Now then, young lady, how about we wash those hands, and then we can finally eat?”

Alice gave a firm nod and rose from the blanket. William settled back, leaning on one elbow, a glass of lemonade resting in his hand as he watched the two of them scurry towards the gate.

When he had agreed to this marriage of convenience, he had envisioned a functional and highly practical arrangement. He had convinced himself that he was buying security for Alice, while giving Seraphina a sanctuary from her pursuers. He had fully intended to keep his distance, to remain buried in his ledgers, his parliamentary reports, and his boring world. He had sworn to himself that he wanted no distractions, no emotional entanglements, and certainly no domestic complications.

He was a man meant for duty, for burdens, for carrying the weight of the Norwyn legacy alone.

Yet, as he sat here on the grass watching Seraphina and Alice, William realized something.

He liked this. He liked the warmth of it. He liked the smell of crushed clover, the shade of the oak, and the utter lack of formal pretense. He liked that Seraphina had stepped into his burdened world and had effortlessly taken the reins of something that bothered him so deeply. She had eased a weight from his shoulders before he had even possessed the wisdom to admit he was drowning under it.

He had spent his whole life believing that control was something a man had to maintain through discipline, isolation, and force of will. He had believed that allowing anyone else into his inner sanctum was a vulnerability, a flaw in his armor that would eventually lead to ruin.

But William realized that letting her take control of this part of his life was the most brilliant, freeing thing he had ever done.

Moments later, the rustle of grass signaled their return from the small stone fountain near the garden wall. Seraphina settled back onto the blanket, her skirts spreading neatly around her, while Alice dropped down beside her with clean, damp hands and flushed, happy cheeks.

They began to dig into the roasted chicken, buttered rolls, and fresh summer berries, giggling to themselves.

He liked this arrangement. He liked it far more than he had ever bargained for, far more than a sensible, rational man had any right to like a marriage built on a contract.

It was changing him. It was dismantling the walls he had spent years building around his heart, stripping away his solemnity, and replacing it with something vibrant, fierce, and alive.

As if sensing his stare, Seraphina turned her head. She caught his eye, seeing him watching her. But she did not look away. Instead, she offered him a small smile, like a secret shared between two people.

William felt that skip in his chest recur, the surge of heat blooming beneath his collar. But this time, he didn’t try to rationalize it. He simply lifted his glass of lemonade to her in a silent toast, accepted the fever, and smiled back.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“William. Surely this level of physical contact is entirely unnecessary,” Seraphina said, keeping her voice strictly pitched for his ears alone.

William did not remove his hand from where it rested against the curve of her waist. He merely tilted his head, his eyes holding hers. “It is our first public appearance as a married couple since the small ceremony. We are stepping into a ballroom filled with a hundred members of the ton, every single one of them looking for the slightest tear in our seams. A husband guiding his wife by the waist is hardly extreme.”

“It is excessive,” Seraphina insisted, adjusting her fan with a brisk movement. “We can project complete unity simply by standing side by side. There is no need for you to be so... touchy.”

William’s lips twitched. He leaned back, studying her. “So, if I understand your instruction, I am not to touch you for the entirety of the evening?”

“That is not what I said,” Seraphina replied quickly. “I am merely suggesting restraint. There is a distinction between standing together as partners and clinging to one another as though we were head-and-ears in love.”

“Then tell me this...” William said softly. “...how do you propose we dance?”

Seraphina blinked. “Dancing is entirely different.”

“It is not different,” William countered smoothly. “If I stand three feet away from you all night with my hands clasped behind my back like a guard at the Tower, the tabbies will be whispering before the second set. They will say the Duke of Norwyn has already grown cold toward his bride. Do you truly want rumors of a rift circulating before the month is out?”

Seraphina opened her mouth to argue, but William cut in gently, leaning forward until his shadow enveloped her.

“Now, I could not care less about rumors, but consider the broader strategy, Seraphina,” he murmured. “We both know there is a blackmailer watching us, waiting for a vulnerability. A solid, affectionate front weakens their position entirely.”

Seraphina swallowed hard. Rationally, his logic was flawless. “Yes,” she admitted grudgingly. “Your reasoning regarding the blackmailer is sound. It is just...”

“It is just that I make you nervous,” William supplied quietly.

Seraphina snapped her head up, shooting him an irritated glare. “Why do you insist on repeating that absurdity? I have told you a dozen times that you do no such thing. I am completely comfortable in your presence.”

“I beg to differ,” William said smoothly. He leaned back, his gaze tracking the line of her throat where her pulse was visibly hammering. “I have been watching you quite closely for the nearly two months we have been married, Seraphina. I am neither blind nor a fool. When I stand within a foot of you, your breath hitches. Your cheeks alter in color instantly. You hold yourself so rigidly I fear you might snap. Those are not the actions of a woman who is entirely comfortable.”

“That is a complete misinterpretation of my actions,” Seraphina insisted in a harsh whisper. “Why does it even matter to you?”

William leaned in close again. “Because I have a theory I need to prove.”

Seraphina paused, taken aback. “A theory?”

“Yes,” William murmured. “Are you entirely certain, without a single shadow of a doubt, that the only reason your body reacts so violently to my proximity is because you are suffering from some physical ailment?”

“Yes,” Seraphina said instantly. “Of course it is. That is precisely what I have been trying to explain to you. It is an atypical physical glitch, an isolated vascular disturbance.”

“Then if it is merely a physical glitch,” William said softly, a smile curving his lips. “You should have no logical objection whatsoever to my placing a hand on your waist to guide you through a crowded room. If I have no emotional effect on you, then my touch is nothing more than a neutral physical contact. Unless, of course, you are afraid of the effect.”

Seraphina froze. He had maneuvered her into a corner using her own rationalizations. To retreat now would be a surrender of her intellect.

“You are entirely correct,” Seraphina said tightly, lifting her chin. “Precisely. You have no emotional effect on me whatsoever. None at all. My hesitation has nothing to do with you.”

William raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

“Yes,” she asserted, grasping for a plausible alternative. “If my pulse is elevated, it is simply because... because I am nervous about the room. It is our first grand ball together, and I am expected to navigate a formal dance floor for the first time. Any person would experience a heightened nervous response under such... scrutiny.”

William studied her for a moment. “I see. So it is the room, the crowd, and the dancing that makes you nervous, not me.”

“Precisely.”

“Well then,” William said smoothly. He placed his palm firmly against the small of her back again. “That is an immense relief. Since I have no effect on you, we can focus entirely on managing your nervousness regarding the crowd.”

Seraphina’s breath hitched as his hand pressed against her spine.

‘It is going to be an exceptionally long night, ‘she thought to herself.

They stepped over the threshold into the hall. Before Seraphina could fully orient herself, a familiar, joyful cry cut through the noise.

“Seraphina!”

Out from the edge of the crowd burst Euphemia, gliding across the polished parquet floor.

“Effie!” Seraphina gasped, her composure melting away.

The two sisters came together in a long embrace. “Oh, I have missed you so horribly,” Euphemia murmured, pulling back to grip Seraphina’s hands. “How are you? You look magnificent!”

Beside them, Nathaniel stepped forward and exchanged a firm handshake with William. “Carlton,” Nathaniel said, nodding. “Surprised to see you at a ball.”

“Darington,” William replied smoothly. “I could say the same about you.”

Seraphina caught Euphemia’s sleeve, leaning in close. “Effie, I must speak with you. Privately. It is a matter of the utmost urgency.”

Euphemia blinked in concern, then turned to her husband. “Darling, would you mind terribly if I stole Seraphina away for a few moments before the dancing commences?”

“Of course, my love,” Nathaniel agreed easily.

William glanced at Seraphina curiously, but simply bowed. “Do not wander too far. The opening set will begin shortly.”

Euphemia steered Seraphina away from the central staircase and down a corridor into a secluded picture gallery. The moment they were alone, Euphemia turned. “All right, what is going on? You look... flushed.”

“It has been happening way too often, Effie. I have no control over it.”

“Did William do something?” Euphemia’s eyes widened.

“No.” She shook her head. “William has been... extraordinarily accommodating,” Seraphina said, pacing a small circle. “Euphemia, I am coming to you because I need someone else to work this out for me. To... investigate. You have access to books and a vast library; you can help.”

“Help with what?” Euphemia asked, watching Seraphina closely. “What is the matter, sister?”

“For weeks now, I have been experiencing a most peculiar, distressing set of physical symptoms whenever I am in William’s presence.”

Euphemia’s brow furrowed. “Symptoms?”

“Whenever he comes within close physical proximity, when he speaks in a low register, or touches my hand... my body undergoes a complete physiological collapse,” Seraphina explained rapidly. “My pulse accelerates to a dangerous rate. A sudden, intense heat floods my chest. My breathing becomes shallow, and my stomach feels as though it is infested with insects. I cannot focus my thoughts.”

Euphemia listened with furrowed eyebrows.

“I have considered several hypotheses,” Seraphina continued. “At first, I believed it was an atypical presentation of angina or a localized vascular glitch. But now, I have a better hypothesis. I might be having a reaction to his cologne. His scent. Have you ever encountered a medical condition like this? What do you think it is?”

Euphemia stared at her in stunned silence for three seconds before letting out what sounded like a scoff. “Seraphina, are you telling me you dragged me into a private corridor to ask if you have a rare medical disease?”

“It is not a laughing matter!” Seraphina protested. “My body is behaving like a malfunctioning steam engine.”

Euphemia stepped closer. “Tell me this, sister. Does this disease also make it impossible to look him in the eye when he smiles at you?”

Seraphina stiffened. “Well... yes, on occasion.”

“Does it make your heart hammer when he says your name?”

“...Yes.”

“Does it make you feel breathless when he looks at you?”

Seraphina swallowed. “Yes. You seem remarkably familiar with these exact diagnostic parameters. What are you thinking?”

Euphemia shook her head. “Seraphina, out of all three Byron sisters, you have always been the most brilliant one. You read the most books, know more than Leonora and I combined when it comes to science. But are you truly telling me that you believe you are suffering from a medical condition... as opposed to simply having feelings for your husband?”

Seraphina let out a defensive laugh. “What? Feelings? Love? Euphemia, do not be absurd.”

“You are describing the textbook symptoms of falling desperately in love with a man!” Euphemia laughed.

“No, absolutely not.” Seraphina said, waving her hands. “I analyzed that option weeks ago and dismissed it entirely. We are completely incompatible. We argue constantly. I do not have the urge to spend every waking moment in his presence, in fact, I actively avoid him half the time precisely because his presence triggers this ridiculous glitch. Is that how a woman in love behaves?”

“Yes!” Euphemia countered. “When she is in massive, catastrophic denial. Good heavens, Seraphina, you are the most stubborn, brilliant fool in all of England! You are falling in love with the Duke of Norwyn!”

“Effie, please listen to me,” Seraphina pleaded. “I know my own mind. Romantic affection is not in my nature. I have never allowed my emotions to override my reason. Therefore, this reaction to William must be a physical anomaly, not an emotional one. Now, I know that’s what you want for me. But stop projecting. Just... look at this rationally.”

“I am looking at it rationally.”

“You are not.”

Euphemia groaned. “Love does not present itself in only one manner, Seraphina. You are human, no matter how many books you read to convince yourself otherwise.”

“It is not love,” Seraphina insisted stubbornly. “I am certain of it.”

“You are playing a dangerous game,” Euphemia whispered, leaning in so close her floral perfume brushed Seraphina’s cheek just before a tread sounded behind them. “You cannot analyze your way out of a heart that has already surrendered.”

“I am analyzing the facts,” Seraphina retorted. “You cannot possibly know me more than I know myself.”

“Yes, I can. I am your sister. I know you like the back of my hand.”

“Did you know I was E.R Voce?”

“That is a low blow, Seraphina,” Euphemia said. “Which reminds me that I am still profoundly upset with you for not telling me that.”

“I am sorry to interrupt,” William’s voice cut cleanly through their exchange as he stepped into the gallery. “But the orchestra is tuning their strings. I believe it’s time.”

Euphemia blinked, her lips curving into a smile as her gaze darted between them. “Time? Time for what, precisely?”

“The opening dance,” Seraphina said quickly, stepping forward to put a physical boundary between her sister and William. She offered Euphemia a look. “We shall continue this discussion later. In private.”

“Oh, I am afraid we will not have the chance tonight,” Euphemia replied. “Nathaniel and I must slip away early; he has an urgent meeting with the Cabinet secretary. But you must call on me at Mayfair as soon as possible. I feel we have barely scratched the surface of your... unique inquiry.”

Seraphina swallowed hard, her cheeks burning as William’s eyes narrowed.

“A unique inquiry?” William asked softly, bowing to Euphemia before turning his full attention back to his wife. “Should I be concerned?”

“Not in the slightest,” Seraphina said briskly. “Euphemia exaggerates.”

Euphemia merely offered another smile, and with a gentle brush against Seraphina’s shoulder, she slipped past them, exchanging a glance with her sister before vanishing down the corridor.

Seraphina turned to follow, but William moved before her, his frame smoothly blocking her path down the same corridor. He did not touch her, yet his presence felt as imposing as a stone wall.

He glanced upward, his eyes fixing on a massive oil painting hanging in a frame above a marble console table. “It is a fine piece, is it not?”

Seraphina forced her gaze away from his face and followed his line of sight. Hanging before them was an expansive landscape, a classic work by George Lambert depicting a dramatic English countryside at sunset, complete with rolling hills, a winding river, and a distant, storm-darkened sky catching the last golden light. It was precise, imposing, and impeccably regal.

“It is a Lambert,” Seraphina murmured, glad to anchor herself in objective knowledge rather than the erratic rhythm in her chest. “A grand landscape. I suppose one should expect nothing less on the walls of Lord Lansdowne’s townhouse. A man of high office and deep pockets would naturally display art that reflects absolute order and authority.”

William turned his gaze slowly from the canvas to her face, studying her beneath the warm glow of the sconces. “Are you keeping something from me, Seraphina?”

Seraphina blinked, taking a half-step back. “What do you mean?”

“Your conversation with your sister,” William said, his tone remarkably gentle. “It was hushed. Urgent. I am not a man given to prying, nor am I curious about ordinary gossip. But if you are facing a problem, if something is weighing upon you, I want you to know that you may bring it to me.”

Seraphina opened her mouth to speak, but he held up a hand, cutting her off before she could formulate a denial.

“I know you share a deep bond with your sisters,” he continued, stepping closer. “I would never ask you to sever that, nor would I stop you from seeking their counsel. But in every legal, practical, and personal sense, I am your husband. If there is a burden to be carried or an issue to be resolved, it is my duty, and my preference, to handle it for you. You only need to ask.”

Seraphina swallowed. “William... why would you assume something is wrong?”

“Because you look troubled,” he said simply. His brow furrowed slightly as he searched her eyes. “You have seemed flustered and on edge for days. Tell me, is it still the matter of the letters? Is the threat of the blackmailer what is keeping you so restless?”

Before she could answer, his expression hardened. “If that is the cause, you can set your mind at ease. I am making progress. Anthony went back to the country estate near the cottage yesterday morning. The housekeepers, Mr. and Mrs. Higgs, informed me that they recovered a scrap of paper that may bear the name of our suspect.”

“We are closing in,” William continued. “We should have definitive news soon. Furthermore, I have placed men at print shops in town. No one will publish a single word mentioning your name or your family without my knowing it first. I have covered every angle, Seraphina. You can be at ease.”

Seraphina stood utterly frozen, the words dying in her throat.

She felt so safe in his shadow that an absurd, desperate urge seized her, an impulse to step forward, wrap her arms around his waist, and bury her face against his chest. She felt as though she had struck gold in a world of shallow appearances, finding a man who treated her honor as his own.

But she could not move. She could barely breathe. She simply stared at him, her lips parted in wonder.

William reached out then. His fingers brushed against her cheek, feather-light, as he gently took a stray lock of hair that had slipped from her pins and tucked it behind her ear. His palm lingered, cupping the side of her jaw for a fleeting second. His thumb lightly traced the high line of her cheekbone, his thumb warm against her cool skin.

Seraphina held her breath, completely captive to the gentle weight of his hand.

Then, just as suddenly, William withdrew his hand, his eyes shifting toward the far end of the gallery.

“My apologies,” he said smoothly, a polite smile touching his lips. “Lady Greville just turned the corner. A relentless gossip, that one. I thought a small display of affection might give her something romantic to report to the rest of the room.”

The sudden drop in temperature felt like a splash of ice water.

Seraphina’s chest tightened, a pang of disappointment twisting in her gut. She swallowed hard, looking down at the carpet to hide the heat in her eyes. Before she could process the ache in her chest, the opening chords of the waltz swelled from the main hall, floating down the corridor.

William turned back to her, extending his elbow. “Shall we?”

Seraphina swallowed the lump in her throat, forcing a small nod. She placed her hand over his sleeve, letting him guide her out of the gallery and back toward the lights of the dance floor.

As they walked, her mind spun in erratic circles, leaving her to wonder whether she was truly terrified of her first public dance, or utterly terrified of dancing it in the arms of the man beside her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“So you three really are not related at all?” William asked, his voice cutting through the swell of the violins as he guided her smoothly into the first turn of the waltz. “Not even distant relatives?”

One, two, three. One, two, three.

Seraphina kept the rhythm marching like soldiers through her mind, her eyes fixed firmly on the pin nestled in his cravat. To her immense surprise, navigating the floor in his arms was vastly simpler than she had anticipated. In fact, once she surrendered to the cadence of the steps, it was remarkably easy.

Easier than the lessons had been.

“No,” Seraphina answered smoothly, executing a seamless pivot as he effortlessly steered her around a lingering couple. “We are not related by blood. But blood is merely a biological marker, William. In every metric that truly matters, Leonora, Euphemia, and I are sisters. The affection between us exceeds that of many biological families.”

“That is remarkable. Your bond is quite something,” he said.

“Well, it is not difficult to forge a bond when you are forged in the exact same furnace of misfortune,” she replied. “You may have heard whispers, but our fathers were business associates. They pooled their entire fortunes into a single, high-risk merchant venture.” She paused as he drew her through a sweeping turn. “The venture collapsed overnight. Total ruin.”

William’s expression softened. “Yes. I heard of it back then. It was all everyone really talked about for a while.”

“One night, they stayed out,” Seraphina murmured, looking past his shoulder into the expanse of the ballroom. “Drinking away the shock, I suppose. It happened to be one of the most brutal blizzards in London’s recorded history. The cold was unforgiving and they spent the night, drunk and out in the street. All three of them perished on the same night, leaving three separate households thrown into utter chaos.”

“Good God,” William muttered softly.

“Lady Byron stepped into the wreckage,” Seraphina continued. “She knew my mother before she passed, and when the creditors seized my father’s estate, I had no close relatives to claim me. I was facing an asylum or a parish workhouse. Lady Byron took me in. She did the same for Euphemia and Leonora through similar connections. We grew up under one roof, bound by shared ruin and salvaged by one woman’s formidable, if eccentric, benevolence.”

William watched her face closely. “It sounds like an extraordinary, taxing way to grow up.”

“I will admit it was unconventional,” Seraphina said, a fond smile warming her expression. “If I were to detail the chaos of our childhood, we would be dancing until dawn. But I am profoundly grateful. Lady Byron gave me unrestricted access to her vast library. I fell in love with reading because she refused to lock her study doors. Most importantly, I gained my sisters. I would do anything to protect them. For years, they were my entire world.”

“You say ‘were’,” William noted, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Has something changed?”

“Well... my world appears to be expanding. There is you. There is Alice. There is Norwyn Manor and the staff. I can no longer claim that my sisters are my only anchor.”

The softest of smiles laced William’s face. His hand resting at the small of her back tightened noticeably... almost possessively as he pulled her a fraction of an inch closer against his chest, sweeping her through a long glide across the parquet.

“I am glad to hear you say that,” he murmured softly.

Seraphina cleared her throat instantly, her cheeks suddenly aflame as she hurriedly resurrected her mental cadence.

One, two, three. One, two, three.

“Tell me, Seraphina,” William said, breaking her focus once more, a dangerous smile playing on his lips. “Are you not the least bit curious about the theory I mentioned earlier? The one I intend to prove?”

Seraphina tilted her head, maintaining her posture. “Ah, yes. I don’t think you told me exactly what that theory is.”

“I believe you are attracted to me,” he stated plainly.

Seraphina’s foot caught the hem of her inner petticoat. Her knee buckled, a gasp slipping from her lips as her balance completely vanished.

Before she could fall, William’s grip turned to iron. His hand on her waist caught her weight seamlessly, his arm locking her against his frame so smoothly that to any onlooker in the ballroom, it appeared as nothing more than a dramatic, swooping flourish of the dance.

“Careful,” William murmured near her ear, his breath warm against her skin as he effortlessly restored her to her feet without missing a single beat of the music. “I anticipated you might lose your footing at that declaration, so I was already prepared to catch you.”

Seraphina opened her mouth, her eyes wide with mounting indignation, but William cut her off before she could speak.

“I know precisely what you are about to say,” he continued smoothly. “You are about to deliver a highly structured lecture denying it. You will claim it is environmental stress, or nerves, or the size of the crowd. But I am a businessman, Seraphina. I did not rebuild the Norwyn fortunes by ignoring clear, recurring patterns.”

He looked down at her with penetrating intensity. “I took full control of my father’s estate when I was barely out of my youth, so much so that men called me the Duke in all but title long before his passing. A man does not succeed at that level without an exceptional ability to read human behavior. I know when a person is pulling away out of dislike, and I know when they are pulling away because they are terrified of what they feel. I strongly believe you are developing an acute interest in me, and your vehement denial of it only confirms my hypothesis.”

Seraphina stopped trying to march her feet to one, two, three. She stared up at him, her mind completely reeling under his relentless, confident scrutiny.

“So, what are you saying?” she asked.

“You are attracted to me,” he answered, searching her eyes.

As soon as the words left his mouth, a blinding light shattered the confusion in her brain.

‘Of course!’ she thought, a wave of relief washing over her internally. ‘What an utter fool I have been!’

As a woman dedicated to the application of empirical science, she had committed the most cardinal error a scholar could make.

Bias.

She had been so terrified of breaking her personal vow, so utterly consumed by the dread of falling into the illogical, messy trap of romantic love, that she had locked herself into a binary line of thinking. She had assumed it was either a terminal heart ailment or romantic love.

It was neither.

She had completely overlooked the intermediate biological phase.

Attraction.

According to standard natural philosophy and human behavioral texts, human interaction progressed through distinct, measurable stages. Initial sensory attraction, emotional bonding, and deep attachment. She was not in a state of romantic love at all. She was simply experiencing high-level physiological attraction. An entirely basic, primal bodily function triggered by an exceptionally well-built male specimen.

It explained everything. It explained why she had felt the sudden urge to hug him when he promised to protect her. It explained why her pulse spiked when his hand rested on her waist. Attraction was merely a temporary reaction, an involuntary response to a handsome man. The best part about simple physical attraction was that it was finite. It was an urge that could be acknowledged, managed, and eventually neutralized.

“I think you are right,” Seraphina interrupted clearly.

William’s eyebrows pulled together, a look of profound shock breaking through his usual cool demeanor. “I beg your pardon?”

“I think you are entirely correct,” Seraphina reiterated, a radiant smile blooming across her face as they drifted toward the edge of the floor. “I do find you attractive.”

William blinked, his grip on her hand slackening slightly as he stared at her, utterly caught off guard. “You... you admit it?”

Merely thinking he was handsome or appreciating his gentlemanly character would never account for the severity of her physiological reactions. But a strong, baseline physical attraction? It accounted for the elevated heart rate, the localized heat beneath her skin, and her subconscious impulse to maintain distance simply to avoid sensory overload.

She had been jumping to absurd, dramatic conclusions, terrifying herself with the dread of emotional entanglements when the simple answer had been right in front of her all along. It was not love, nor was it some mysterious heart ailment. It was a transient pull. It was completely temporary, and like any other physical phase, it would pass in due time.

She took a deep, utterly euphoric breath, feeling as light as air. The suffocating weight that had rested on her chest for weeks vanished completely. She was not losing her mind, nor was she falling in love.

“Thank you, William!” she said earnestly, taking his hand and giving it a vigorous, grateful squeeze. “You have no idea what a profound service you have just rendered me! You diagnosed it brilliantly. You truly are remarkable!”

William stood utterly frozen in the middle of the ballroom, looking down at her with an expression of baffled bewilderment. “I... I am confused.”

“Oh, do not be confused at all! You solved it!” Seraphina beamed, patting his arm cheerfully. “Now, if you will excuse me, all this revelation has made me terribly parched. I am going to procure a glass of punch.”

Without waiting for his reply, Seraphina turned on her heel and scurried toward the refreshment tables with a light, bounding step, leaving William standing alone on the edge of the dance floor, entirely speechless.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“Iam confused,” Anthony said, setting his tumbler down onto his desk. He leaned back in his armchair, searching William’s face. “Let me ensure I have captured the exact... architecture of this. You confronted your wife with the declaration that she is physically attracted to you... and she simply admitted it?”

“Yes!” William barked, turning sharply at the edge of the rug and pacing back to the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

His shoulders were tight beneath his coat, his jaw set in a line so rigid it looked carved from granite. He was practically ranting, his voice rising in an uncharacteristic, agitated pitch that filled every corner of the room.

“She did not hesitate, Anthony. She did not flinch. It was not news to her. Seraphina is a woman of exceptional intelligence; anyone with a fraction of a brain could have deduced the situation weeks ago. She reacts to me. She cannot hide it. It is written in the elevation of her pulse, the way her eyes dart away when I step into her space, the undeniable tension that electrifies the room whenever we are within five feet of one another. It was obvious.”

William stopped near the window, thrusting a hand through his hair, a chaotic gesture that sent several strands falling out of their usual alignment.

“Usually, when a woman is confronted with a truth of that magnitude, there is a predictable, human sequence of events,” William continued, gesturing sharply toward the ceiling as if appealing to the heavens. “She ought to have been flustered. She should have blushed, stammered, or launched into a spirited, illogical denial! I expected an argument. In fact, I was prepared for one.”

He resumed his pacing. “I have confronted her about being nervous around me before, Anthony. Whenever I tell her that I make her heart race or that she is hyper-aware of my presence, we bicker. It’s funny. She constructs elaborate, defensive theories about heat, or bad tea, or the pressure of the social calendar. She fights back. But last night? Nothing! No resistance whatsoever.”

William threw his hands up in disbelief. “She looked me dead in the eye, agreed that she finds me visually and physically attractive, and moved on as if she were ticking a box on an inventory ledger. As if she were stating that the weather was mildly overcast or that the soup required a pinch of salt. A minor, entirely unremarkable observation. She was also happy. Did I mention that? Relieved even. I do not understand it.”

Anthony tilted his head, a smirk spreading across his features as he put his elbows on the armrests of his chair, joining his fingers in a steeple. “Tell me this: why, precisely, is that a catastrophe, my dear William? The woman finds you attractive. It is hardly an insult. So what? Are you attracted to her?”

“That is entirely beside the point,” William declared instantly, waving off the question with a dismissive flick of his wrist as if swatting away a persistent fly. He didn’t even pause in his stride. “That is not what we are discussing here. Do you have any idea what a development like this does to our arrangement? Do you have any concept of how thoroughly it threatens to ruin everything we meticulously planned?”

He paused near the corner of Anthony’s desk, planting his hands flat on the wood and leaning in, his eyes flashing with intensity.

“She cannot afford to harbor feelings for me, Anthony. The entire foundation of this marriage rests upon its eventual, seamless dissolution! A time will come when we must quietly, discreetly annul this union. That is another reason we have refrained from consummating the marriage in the first place.”

William stood up straight again, running both hands over his face, dragging his palms down his jaw with a long exhale that sounded almost like a groan.

“If she develops an emotional attachment to me, it complicates every single variable in the equation. What if the time comes for us to sever ties, and she refuses to go? What if she wishes to remain? What if she looks at me with those wide, trusting eyes and tells me she wants a real marriage? What am I supposed to do then, Anthony? I cannot simply throw her out into the street if she does not wish to leave. I am a gentleman, not a monster. It puts me in an impossible position.”

Anthony let out a rumbling chuckle, raising his hands in a calm, placating gesture. “William. My good friend. Take a breath. I fail to see the issue here.”

“If she falls in love with me, what am I supposed to do then?” William demanded.

“But she never said she was in love with you,” Anthony pointed out. “She said she was attracted to you. There is a vast, expansive gulf between physical attraction and love.”

“No, there is not,” William countered instantly, spinning on his heel to face him. “They are two sides of the exact same treacherous coin. Attraction is merely the gateway, the inevitable, slippery slope before a person succumbs completely and admits they are in love. It is a sequence. First comes the physical awareness, then comes the emotional investment, and finally, total, unmitigated attachment. Trust me on this, Anthony. I know how human nature operates. This physical attraction will lead directly to emotional entanglement; it will complicate our lives beyond repair, and it is entirely, disastrously contrary to everything we agreed upon.”

Anthony sighed deeply. He set his tumbler down, leaned forward, rested his forearms on the desk, and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Look, William,” Anthony said, his tone shifting from light amusement to bone-deep exhaustion. “We have been in this room for nearly an hour. For sixty minutes, I have listened to you pace holes into my carpet, and frankly, I am entirely exhausted from hearing Seraphina, Seraphina, Seraphina.”

William halted mid-step, blinking as if he had just been doused with cold water. “What do you mean?”

“I mean...” Anthony said, rising slowly from his chair and rounding the desk, “...that you have spent the last hour dissecting her thoughts, analyzing her motives, complaining about her reactions, and mapping out her future emotional states, yet you have not allowed a single, solitary word to cross your lips about what you are feeling.”

Anthony stopped a few feet away, folding his arms across his chest and looking at William. “Every time I bring up your internal state, every time I ask how you view her, you dismiss it as beside the point. Well, I am sick of that excuse. Now I want an answer, William. What is the point? What do you feel for her?”

The room fell into a short silence. The only sound was the crackle of the dying fire in the hearth.

William stood motionless, taking a deep breath in through his nose, forcing his lungs to expand, forcing his racing pulse to steady. He closed his eyes for a brief second, calling upon every ounce of his discipline to erect the stone walls of his composure once more.

He would not lie. He was a man of absolute facts, and he refused to deceive himself, nor would he deceive Anthony, who had known him since they were boys chasing stray dogs through the muddy alleys of Eton.

Of course there was an attraction on his side. It would be pure, cowardly delusion to deny it. Seraphina was breathtakingly beautiful. She possessed an ethereal, striking elegance that made every other woman in a ballroom look like a faint watercolor sketch standing beside an oil painting. But it was more than her physical form. She was fiercely, terrifyingly intelligent. She possessed a mind that moved like a rapier, cutting through fluff and nonsense with precision.

He loved listening to her talk. He loved the way her eyes lit up with a fiery, passionate spark whenever she debated a point of philosophy or science. He loved the way she refused to bow to his intimidating title or his imposing posture. She met his gaze as an equal, challenging him at every turn.

However, William reminded himself harshly, it was nothing he could not master.

William had spent his entire adult life cultivating absolute, unshakable control over his mind and body. He was not a slave to his impulses. He possessed an internal switch, a cold, mechanical off-and-on mechanism that allowed him to compartmentalize his desires, his worries, and his attachments.

There was only one enduring, sacred priority in his life. The management, expansion, and protection of the Norwyn estate and legacy. He had built an empire of shipping lines, land holdings, and political influence through unyielding discipline. While Seraphina was a fascinating, mesmerizing, and highly welcome distraction... she was ultimately just that. A distraction. He could flip the switch. He could turn it off. He could walk away from her tomorrow if required, and his world would not tilt on its axis.

Anthony was watching him silently, a smirk lingering at the corners of his mouth.

“I believe I have my answer,” he said.

William narrowed his eyes. “What? I am certain you have compiled some clever, insufferable retort in that head of yours, but let me assure you before you speak. Whatever conclusion you have arrived at, you are completely wrong.”

Anthony did not laugh. Instead, he leaned against the front of his desk, crossing his ankles and folding his arms over his chest.

“Like I said before, we have been in this study for an hour, William,” Anthony began softly. “In that time, you have spoken faster than I have ever heard you speak in the entire duration of our friendship. In fact, you have deployed more words in the past sixty minutes than you typically utter in a fortnight. If I were to sit back and remain silent, you would continue to rant for another two hours, dissecting a problem that does not require a single grain of this hysterical analysis.”

William opened his mouth to object, but Anthony shook his head.

“Examine your own behavior for a moment, my friend,” Anthony said. “Let us look at the evidence. First, your hair.”

William’s brow furrowed. “My hair?”

“You have worn your hair impeccably styled in the exact same side-swept, structured, perfectly tailored fashion every single morning since we were twelve years old,” Anthony said, gesturing toward William’s head. “It is your signature. You look as though you were born wearing a cravat and a perfectly combed pompadour. Yet right now, you are standing in my private quarters with your hair falling into your forehead, thoroughly disheveled, because you have spent the last hour running your fingers through it like a madman.”

William froze. His right hand, which had been unconsciously twitching upward toward his brow, halted mid-air. He slowly lowered it, his jaw tightening.

“Second,” Anthony continued, ticking a finger off on his hand. “You do not pace. Ever. The Duke of Norwyn does not march back and forth like a caged tiger. You stand completely motionless. You plant your feet, you place your hands behind your back, and you exude an aura of iron authority whether you are addressing a stable boy or the King himself. Yet for the past sixty minutes, you have worn a visible trench into my expensive Persian rug.”

William shifted his weight, stiffening his posture, but he said nothing.

“Third,” Anthony pressed on, ticking off another finger. “You are deploying vocabulary and phrasing that I have never heard cross your lips in casual conversation.”

William glared at him. “I have done no such thing.”

“Fourth,” Anthony said, ignoring the denial completely. “You took your ward and your wife on a picnic.”

William’s chest expanded as he drew in a sharp breath. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking my family for an afternoon on the lawn.”

“You have spent your entire adult life despising outdoor leisure.” Anthony laughed, shaking his head. “I distinctly recall two summers ago when Lord Harrington invited us to a garden party, and you spent a long time lecturing him on how dining on grass was an inefficient, unsanitary, and frivolous waste of daylight. You claimed the outdoors was meant for horses and agriculture. Yet ever since Seraphina entered your home, you have been gallivanting through meadows with baskets of sandwiches.”

Anthony’s smirk faded. He stepped forward, placing a hand on William’s shoulder. “Lastly, William... in all the years I have known you, through every trial and crisis, I have never once seen you affected by any human being on this earth. Nothing fazes you. Do you remember three years ago, when the merchant fleet out of Barbados was lost in the hurricane? Do you remember that afternoon?”

William’s eyes shifted downward slightly.

“Half the underwriters were weeping, two of your partners were threatening ruin, and a fortune was sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic,” Anthony said softly. “But you? You sat at the head of the table, entirely calm, dipping your quill in ink and calculating our recovery strategy without so much as a tremor in your hand. That was the day I realized you were made of iron. I believed nothing on this earth could rattle you.”

Anthony tapped William’s chest gently with his knuckles. “Look at yourself right now, William. Look at you. You are utterly, completely, helplessly rattled. It leads me to one undeniable, glaring deduction. You are falling in love with her. Only love makes a man like you do these things.”

The stillness returned to the room, thick enough to cut with a blade. William stared at his friend, his eyes darkening until they looked like storm clouds over an icy sea.

“If you had accused me of being merely attracted to her,” William said, his voice dropping into a register so low and dangerous it was barely more than a growl. “I might have conceded to your judgment. I might have admitted that she is a stunning woman who occupies my thoughts more than she ought to. But love? Do not be ridiculous, Anthony.”

“I know your stance on the matter,” Anthony countered, refusing to back down. “I know what your father did to you. I know how that man ruined your perception of human devotion. He taught you that love was a fickle, useless emotion designed to make strong men foolish and bankrupt. When you live with someone like that all your life, that is what you learn. Because of him, you built walls around your heart so high that no one could ever reach you. I know the vows you made to yourself never to succumb to that madness.”

Anthony leaned in. “But the human heart does not obey contracts, William. It does not care about your vows, nor does it care about your neatly organized business plans. You are exhibiting every classic, textbook symptom of a man who is desperately in love. I would know.”

“It is impossible,” William said. “My heart is not built for such sentimental drivel! I have a vow to uphold, a vow I made to myself when I took over this estate. I do not break my word. I am in complete control of my life.”

Anthony crossed his arms again. “Is that so? Tell me, William... did you not just inform me ten minutes ago that physical attraction is merely the precursor to love?”

William froze.

“You stated it yourself,” Anthony reminded him triumphantly, leaning in. “You claimed that once attraction takes root, love is merely the next logical step waiting to happen. You said they are two sides of the same coin. So let me ask you your own question. Do you truly intend to stand there and wait for love to overtake you completely before you have the courage to admit it has already begun?”

William stepped back, taking a physical step away from Anthony as if the words had landed like a punch against his chest.

He couldn’t help but think back, as memories from the past month flooded his consciousness. He thought back to the picnic, to the overwhelming, almost unbearable magnetic pull he had felt while sitting beside her on the grass, watching the sunlight play through the dark curls of her hair. He thought of the late-night hours in the library, how he actively sought her out, inventing excuses to debate her just to hear the cadence of her voice. He thought of how he deliberately provoked her, teasing her simply to watch her eyes flash with fire.

He had been behaving like a man possessed. He had been acting entirely outside his nature.

The most terrifying realization of all hit him. He had enjoyed it. God help him, he had loved every single second of it.

He was playing a dangerous game.

He had to stop it. Flip the off switch. He had to drag himself back to reality before he destroyed everything he had built. Soon, massive commercial ventures, political negotiations, and enterprise expansions would demand his absolute, undivided attention. He would be thrust back into his relentless, unforgiving cycle of endless work, and he could not afford a single point of vulnerability. He could not afford a compromised heart.

Anthony was right about the diagnosis, even if he was wrong about the prognosis. The attraction was real; it was potent, and it was spreading like wildfire. But William was the master of his own destiny. He would not allow a temporary distraction to mutate into the catastrophic weakness known as love. He had to extinguish the flame before it consumed the house.

Anthony watched him quietly. “Looking at the fire in your eyes, I’m starting to recognize the William I know. That terrifies me for some reason. What... are you going to do now?”

William reached up, deliberately smoothing down the lapels of his coat. He adjusted his linen cuffs and cleared his throat. He ran a hand through his hair, forcing every stray strand back into its proper place.

The warmth vanished from his eyes. He reached deep within himself and slammed the internal switch firmly, decisively to off.

“What else is there to do?” William said. “I shall stay away from Seraphina. I will keep as far from her as humanly possible until this absurd attraction starves and dies.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

ONE WEEK LATER...

“You came all the way here to Mayfair to see Euphemia and me simply because you have not seen your husband in a week?” Leonora asked, leaning back against the settee and tilting her head in disbelief.

Seraphina paused, her teacup hovering mid-air halfway to her lips. She looked down into the swirling liquid, unable to immediately construct a suitably rational reply.

She had no clue how her reality tilted so violently on its axis in the span of seven short days. A mere fortnight ago, she had been actively engineering methods to avoid William altogether. She had calculated his daily routine, mapping out his movements through the Manor, simply to ensure she did not cross his path. She had sought to protect her nervous system from him.

Yet now? The situation had inverted into something far more dangerous, far more destabilizing.

Avoiding him by her own conscious choice was one matter; being systematically excluded from his presence was an entirely different trial. Over the past seven days, it felt as though she had lost a vital piece of her own structure, as if an essential structural rib had been excised from her side, leaving her balance utterly compromised.

The absence of him was actively unraveling her.

He did not come down for breakfast. The head of the long table sat empty morning after morning, his silver cutlery lying untouched beside an unread copy of The Times. He did not appear for lunch. He was absent from dinner, leaving Seraphina to pick silently at her roast fowl in a dining room that felt vast, cavernous, and devoid of warmth. Even when she spent her afternoons with Alice, guided by a swelling sense of pride as the girl began to speak in clearer, more confident sentences, the victory felt hollow. Seraphina had caught herself constantly glancing toward the door, desperately hoping to hear his footsteps in the corridor so she could share the news of his ward’s remarkable progress.

She could not find him anywhere. She had tiptoed past his private study at all hours of the night, only to find the room dark, the grate cold, and the air heavy with the scent of old leather and lingering tobacco, but no William. She had walked past the library, the morning room, the stables, and even the manicured gardens where they had once shared that fateful afternoon. Nothing. Not even a shadow of him remained in the spaces of the estate.

She knew he had not left the manor. The footmen confirmed his presence; papers were brought to his desk, trunks were not packed... He was simply existing in the periphery, executing an invisible, flawless campaign of absolute evasion. He was hiding from her within his own home.

It was driving her mad.

On one hand, she was utterly disgusted with herself for seeking him out. Why did her feet naturally gravitate toward his quarters whenever she let her concentration slip? Why did her eyes automatically scan every hallway, every doorway, every archway in search of his frame? It was an embarrassing, involuntary compulsion.

On the other hand, the logic of it collapsed under its own weight because she was the one who had started this ridiculous game of avoidance in the first place! She had wanted distance. She had explicitly declared that her physical attraction was a transient phase that required management and space.

So why did the spatial distance feel less like a managed experiment and more like an open wound?

Seraphina set her teacup back down onto its porcelain saucer. She smoothed the folds of her day dress and looked up at her two sisters.

“It is not as though it is bordering on an obsession,” Seraphina stated smoothly. “I merely find the circumstantial shift unusual. I have not seen William in a full week, and I naturally began to wonder if I had committed some unforeseen breach of social protocol, or if some grave matter of state had gone awry.”

She paused, shifting her gaze across the small tea table toward Euphemia.

Euphemia was sitting forward, her soft blue eyes wide with an expression that Seraphina recognized all too well. It was a look of intense, romantic speculation, a look that practically vibrated with the urge to weave a grand, dramatic narrative of star-crossed lovers and hidden longing.

Seraphina held up a hand, nipping the impulse in the bud before Euphemia could utter a single syllable.

“Effie, please,” Seraphina said firmly. “If you are preparing to deliver a lecture on the romantic notions of love, or if you intend to launch into a speech declaring that my heart is secretly aching for my husband, I must ask you to refrain. Now is truly not the time. I love you... I love you both more than life itself, but you are an utterly hopeless romantic, Euphemia. You live in a world of poetry, courtly devotion, and dramatic sighs, and I simply cannot allow your sentimental romanticism to rub off on me.”

Euphemia gasped softly, crossing her arms over her light pink bodice, a playful yet genuine pout settling on her lips. “Why, pray tell, should my romanticism not rub off on you? Is it really such a terrible fate to view the world with a bit of warmth, Seraphina?”

“For me? Yes, it is,” Seraphina countered swiftly. “It would compromise my entire analytical framework.”

“Oh, hogwash!” Euphemia declared softly, leaning across the table. “You insist on viewing yourself as this rigid, cold, unshakable creature who is entirely immune to the human heart. You think you are the sister who must remain uptight, pragmatic, and fiercely focused at all times. The living reincarnation of Lady Byron! You wear her stoicism like a suit of armor.”

Seraphina tilted her chin up slightly. “Lady Byron is a woman of intellect and extraordinary discipline. I am proud to emulate her principles.”

“Lady Byron took in three girls out of the goodness of her soul,” Euphemia reminded her gently. “She was not a stone statue, Seraphina, and neither are you. I am not trying to mock your logic. I am worried about you. I am terrified that if you do not allow yourself to open your heart to the possibility that your feelings are changing... that you are changing, you are going to end up profoundly heartbroken.”

Euphemia reached across the table, taking Seraphina’s hand and giving it a gentle squeeze.

“Consider the reality of your arrangement with William,” Euphemia continued. “You entered into a business agreement, a transactional marriage designed to achieve specific goals for both of your estates. But time moves forward, Seraphina. What happens when your goals are achieved? What happens when the threat against your name fades, the time passes, and you are expected to part ways? If you spend all your time fighting what you feel right now, you are going to look back when he is gone and deeply regret that you never took the chance to see what this could have been.”

Seraphina pulled her hand back gently, straightening her spine even further as a wall of denial slammed down over her thoughts.

“I will regret nothing, Euphemia,” Seraphina asserted. “Because what I am experiencing is fleeting. It is a baseline impulse, a temporary biological surge that will pass in due time. I will not look back with regret because I am not operating under an illusion.”

Euphemia looked at her for a moment. She leaned back in her chair, folding her hands in her lap.

“Very well,” Euphemia said softly. “If you will not listen to poetry, then listen to the science you love so dearly. Let me offer you a factual observation, one that even you cannot debate.”

Seraphina narrowed her eyes slightly, instantly on guard. “Oh, dear.”

“Have you ever studied the natural phenomenon of heliotropism in botany?” Euphemia asked. “You read every text in Lady Byron’s study on botanical biology, so you know precisely what it is. It is the natural, involuntary orientation of a plant toward the sun. Consider the common sunflower, Seraphina. It does not possess a mind to calculate energy expenditure. It does not draft a logical treatise on whether it ought to turn. You can plant it in the richest soil, place it in a sheltered greenhouse, and shield it from every harsh wind, but the moment the sun rises in the east and moves across the sky, the plant’s stem, leaves, and face bend to track its trajectory.”

Seraphina opened her mouth to interrupt, but Euphemia held up a hand, her gaze locked onto her sister’s.

“The plant does not choose to turn,” Euphemia explained smoothly. “It turns because it requires the light and warmth of the sun to sustain its biological structure. It is an instinctual, innate response to a vital external force.”

Euphemia leaned forward. “From all that you have said. Look at yourself over the past month, Seraphina. Every time His Grace steps into a room, you tilt toward him. Your eyes track his movement across the floor. Your focus shifts to his location without a single conscious command from your brain. You are seeking his warmth and his presence just as naturally as that plant tracks the sun. You call it a transient bodily phase, but I don’t think it is a temporary glitch in your system. It is heliotropism of the heart. You are turning toward him because your nature recognizes that he has become your light.”

Seraphina sat frozen, her mind working furiously to dismantle the analogy. It was an exceptionally accurate description of heliotropism, but the application was entirely flawed.

It had to be flawed.

“That... that is an entirely poetic misuse of a biological mechanism,” Seraphina finally sputtered. “Effie, I completely understand why you are so fiercely insistent on this narrative. You see me restless, you see me troubled, and you naturally want to help. I understand all of that.”

Seraphina took a deep breath, placing both hands flat on the table as if anchoring herself to reality.

“I will admit that I am at the absolute threshold of an intense physical reaction,” Seraphina conceded, looking Euphemia dead in the eye. “I will even admit that the sensation is overwhelming at times. But I am certain, absolutely, scientifically certain, that it is not love. Love is a deep, emotional, spiritual commitment. What I am experiencing is a baseline attraction, and physical attraction can always be managed, all right? It can be controlled, mitigated, and dissolved.”

Seraphina turned to Leonora, then back to Euphemia, leaning in to press her point. “Euphemia, admit the truth of human nature to me right now. Is it not true that attraction can fade? Is it not true that a simple, instinctual urge can completely disappear once the initial novelty of it wears off?”

Euphemia let out a resigned sigh. “Yes, Seraphina. Physical attraction, on its own, can fade.”

“Precisely,” Seraphina declared, a victorious spark returning to her eyes as she slapped her hand lightly against the table. “It is fleeting. It will pass.”

“But do you really want it to pass?” Euphemia asked. “Because as Leonora pointed out, you traveled all the way from Norwyn Manor to Mayfair today just to tell us that you have not seen your husband in a week. From the moment you sat down on that settee this morning, you have looked utterly, profoundly disappointed. Is that truly what you want, Seraphina? Do you wish for this feeling to simply die away?”

“Yes!” she answered almost immediately. “I really do. With all of my heart.”

“Does that disappointment not mean something to you, sister?”

Seraphina slumped slightly against the cushions, the wind completely taken out of her sails. She looked down at her lap, her fingers twisting the fabric of her skirt as she confronted the truth of her own frustration.

“I... I do not know why I am so disappointed,” Seraphina confessed quietly, her defense finally cracking to reveal the confusion beneath. “It makes no sense. Perhaps... perhaps it is simply because we had developed a habit of speaking to one another.”

She looked up at her sisters then. “We talked about everything. Whenever I had a new idea for my column, whenever I was drafting a complex argument regarding natural philosophy... I would tell him about it. He would not brush me off. He would sit across from me in his study, or in the library, listen to every word, and counter my theories with brilliant logic of his own. He challenged my mind and I liked that a lot. Because of him, I had to do a lot more reading.”

Seraphina let out a breath that was half-sigh, half-laugh. “Did you know that he is actually a fan of my published work?”

Euphemia smiled back, nodding her head. “Yes, you did mention.”

“He really is,” Seraphina murmured, a small, fond smile touching her lips despite her best efforts. “He keeps copies of my column in his study. He admitted to me that he reads them because he admires the way I think. He respects my mind. He does not view me as a delicate, foolish creature to be managed or sheltered. He treats me as an intellectual equal.”

She looked between her two sisters, and then shook her head.

“A person who engages my mind like that, who respects my intellect and stands toe-to-toe with me in debate, is important to me,” Seraphina explained softly. “He had become a friend to me. A true friend. I suppose... I suppose I was simply eager to speak with him this week.”

She gestured helplessly with her hand. “My latest edition was published three days ago. Before he began this ridiculous vanishing act, he had actually recommended a specific advisory for me to include. I took his advice. I incorporated his recommendation into the text, and the final print turned out extraordinarily well. People really like it. It’s funny. I simply wanted to show him the published copy. I wanted to tell him that his suggestion... though a joke at the time, was brilliant, and that I was grateful for his input.”

She looked down at the table. “But I have not seen him, to give it to him. That is why I am distracted. That is why I am annoyed. I am simply missing the presence of an intellectual colleague.”

Euphemia’s expression softened completely, the teasing light in her eyes vanishing. “Perhaps you simply miss your friend.”

Seraphina looked up, meeting Euphemia’s eyes, a wave of relief washing over her. “Yes... yes, exactly. That is all it is. I miss my friend.”

The tension in the room dissipated, leaving a sweet moment of understanding between them. Seraphina took a deep breath, feeling as though she had finally anchored her chaotic emotions back onto solid ground.

It was a good idea to seek her sisters out.

As the silence settled, Seraphina turned her head to look at Leonora, who had remained unusually quiet throughout the entire debate.

Leonora was leaning back against the settee, her gaze fixed entirely on the cold, empty fireplace. Her hands were folded tightly in her lap, her knuckles white, and her expression was distant, shadowed by a troubled cloud that had nothing to do with Seraphina or William.

Seraphina narrowed her eyes, studying her sister’s rigid posture.

“Leo?” Seraphina asked gently, breaking the quiet. “You have barely uttered a dozen words ever since we began this conversation. You look completely distracted again.”

Seraphina gave her a knowing look, her keen observational skills instantly switching focus. “Are you still conducting that... search of yours? The search you promised us you would put aside?”

Leonora flinched slightly, her eyes snapping toward Seraphina. She straightened her back instantly, pulling an impenetrable mask of composure over her features.

“I am fine, Seraphina,” Leonora said smoothly. “I am certainly not doing anything foolish. We are discussing your marriage today, not my private endeavors. Let us keep the focus where it belongs.”

Seraphina did not buy the deflection for a single second. She turned her head slightly to exchange a quick, knowing look with Euphemia across the table. Euphemia met her gaze, a worried, anxious expression crossing her face, confirming Seraphina’s suspicions.

Leonora caught the unspoken communication between them instantly.

“Oh, stop it!” Leonora snapped softly, throwing her hands up in exasperation. “Stop looking at each other like that. I see precisely what you are doing, and I am telling you both to leave it alone.”

“Leonora, we only care about your safety,” Seraphina insisted gently, leaning across the table toward her. “You know how dangerous this path is. How many times must Euphemia and I remind you of the risks? We do not want to see you get hurt if you keep relentlessly chasing this.”

“I said, no, Seraphina, please,” Leonora said, defensively. She paused, taking a quick, shuddering breath. “Please... can we please not discuss me today? I am not feeling particularly cheerful at the moment, and dwelling on it will only make my mood far worse. I beg of you... leave it be.”

Seraphina and Euphemia exchanged another glance. Recognizing the pain in Leonora’s voice, Seraphina yielded, letting out a soft sigh.

“Very well,” Seraphina murmured gently. “We will leave it be for today.”

Euphemia, seeking to banish the clouds hanging over the room, clapped her hands together with a sudden enthusiasm. “Right then!” she declared, forcing a brilliant, cheerful smile onto her face as she stood up from her chair. “This room has become entirely too serious. We have debated biology, we have argued over husbands, and we have brooded over secrets. I propose an immediate change of scenery!”

Leonora looked up, a skeptical smile touching her lips. “What do you have in mind, Effie?”

“Ices!” Euphemia announced. “We are going to Gunter’s in Berkeley Square. We shall sit under the trees, order an absurd amount of raspberry ice, and pretend for one glorious hour that none of us have a single care in the world.”

Seraphina couldn’t help but laugh, the lingering weight in her chest lifting slightly. “Ice in the middle of the afternoon? Lady Byron would thoroughly disapprove.”

“Which makes it an absolute imperative,” Euphemia laughed, grabbing Seraphina’s hands and pulling her up from the chair. “Come along, both of you. I will not accept a refusal.”

Leonora let out a small laugh, rising to her feet and smoothing her skirts. “Very well. Ices it is.”

As the three sisters gathered their bonnets, pelisses, and parasols, laughing and chatting as they made their way down the staircase of the Mayfair house, Seraphina walked a few steps behind them, her mind drifting backward once more.

She pulled her bonnet ribbons tight, tying a neat bow beneath her chin, but her thoughts were miles away, anchored securely back at Norwyn Manor.

Perhaps Euphemia was right about one thing.

She had spent weeks analyzing William as a Duke, as a business partner, and as an overwhelming presence that threw her bodily functions into chaos. But she had never truly paused to evaluate the fundamental transformation that had occurred beneath the surface of their verbal sparring.

‘Has it really come to this?’ she asked herself silently, watching her sisters laugh as they boarded the carriage. ‘Have I reached a point where I view William Carlton not as a threat to my independence, but as my closest friend and confidant?’

If he was merely her friend... why did his week-long absence leave a cold, hollow ache in the center of her chest, as though a vital piece of her soul was missing?

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“The stars do not actually flicker, you know,” Seraphina murmured, her voice barely louder than the soft tapping of rain against the windowpane.

“Yes, they do,” Alice answered, leaning into Seraphina on the bed.

“They don’t.”

“I’ve seen them. They do,” she countered quietly.

The trip to Mayfair had done nothing to calm the storm in her thoughts. If anything, her sisters’ observations had only made the silence of Norwyn Manor more overwhelming. Her eyes kept wandering toward the window, as if she could pierce the dark and see into the west wing where William’s study sat empty and silent.

She took a breath, seeking refuge in the tranquility of the moment.

“It is merely an illusion caused by the earth’s atmosphere,” she continued softly. “The light travels through layers of air of varying temperatures and densities, bending the rays before they reach our eyes. The star itself remains perfectly steady. Completely undisturbed by the turbulence through which its light must pass.”

“So... the star is not afraid of the dark?”

“It is not. It holds steady.”

Seraphina paused and looked down to find Alice’s eyes open, watching her attentively. The child had not been asleep at all, or perhaps the sound of Seraphina’s voice had gently pulled her back to consciousness.

It never ceased to amaze Seraphina how naturally Alice gravitated toward natural philosophy. When Seraphina was a girl, her own devotion to science had been a slow, deliberate burn. A discipline cultivated over years of study rather than an instant passion.

Yet Alice was entirely different. They had tried reading classic children’s stories, English fables, and simple poetry, but the girl remained largely indifferent to them. It was always the mysteries of the physical world... the stars, the tides, the mechanics of the earth, that held her captive.

In the beginning, whenever Seraphina had started speaking to her about science, Alice would drift off to sleep almost immediately. Seraphina had worried that she was boring the poor girl into unconsciousness with dense lectures. But lately, the dynamic had shifted. Alice was staying awake longer, her eyes wide with curiosity as she asked thoughtful questions.

It was then that Seraphina realized that Alice wasn’t sleeping out of boredom; she had always been listening, fascinated by the world Seraphina described. It was an immense relief, and a source of wonder, to realize that science had become their shared language.

For the first time since Alice had been brought to the estate, she was sleeping entirely alone now. Without nursemaids hovering in the corner, without a guard at her door, and without the violent thrashing of night terrors. Her small face was pale but peaceful.

Seraphina offered a reassuring smile, closing the book on her lap. “The star is not afraid of the dark,” she continued. “It is the source of its own light. No matter how vast or cold the night around it may seem, its brightness comes from within itself.”

Alice shifted beneath the covers, turning onto her side and propping her cheek against her small, folded hand. “Like His Grace?”

Seraphina’s heart gave an unexpected flutter. “His Grace?”

“He stays steady,” Alice whispered, her articulation clearer than it had been in all the weeks prior. “When he came to the asylum. He was... strong. Like the place did not scare him.”

“Did the place scare you?”

Alice nodded. “A little. It was cold. Everyone was... yelling most of the time. But they did not yell at him.”

Seraphina felt a tight sensation in her throat. She tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear, leaning closer to snuggle Alice. “Well, it would be strange for him to falter, Alice. He can be quite... commanding. His Grace protects those he cares for, and he cares for you.” She paused. “I must say, Alice, you are speaking so much more clearly tonight. Does your chest not feel tight when you talk anymore?”

Alice shook her head slowly. “No.”

“That’s good,” Seraphina beamed. “I am so happy to hear that. You can talk all you want about anything. No one will ever stop you from speaking.”

“It is because you sit here. You read the books with the big words. It makes the room feel... heavy. Like a blanket.”

A swell of tenderness spread through Seraphina’s chest, so poignant that it caught her entirely off guard. “I am glad my big words can be of some use, then.”

They lay in silence for a few minutes, listening to the rain. The peace in the room was tangible, a fragile sanctuary built slowly over weeks of patience.

“Your Grace?” Alice asked.

“Yes, my dear?” Seraphina replied gently, shifting closer on the edge of the mattress.

“I am sorry for waking up so many times,” Alice whispered, looking down at the edge of the quilt as her fingers picked at a loose thread. “I am sorry for making so much noise at night with the nightmares. I know I am supposed to be good and sleep quietly.”

“Oh, Alice, no,” Seraphina said, shaking her head. “You must never apologize for that. You are a child, my sweet girl. You are allowed to be frightened. You are allowed to cry, to call out, or to simply need comfort when the dark feels too vast. It is not your duty to manage your fears alone so as not to disturb the house. It is the responsibility of the adults around you to make room for your feelings, to shelter you, and to keep you safe until the morning comes. Do you understand me?”

Alice looked up at her, blinking slowly as if digesting a concept entirely foreign to her. “Even if the dreams come every single night?”

“Even if they come every single hour,” Seraphina promised softly. “There is no limit on the patience here.”

Alice swallowed hard. “Where Mama and I lived... before... it was always... loud,” Alice murmured. “It was a small room that we lived in. People were always shouting, or breaking things, or banging on the doors. It was hard to sleep because of the noise, so in my dreams people were always banging. Mama would hold my hand until the sun came up.”

She paused, staring past Seraphina toward the window glass where the rain tapped incessantly.

“But then one day, Mama got very quiet,” Alice continued. “When she got very sick. She went to sleep on the bed, and she didn’t wake up when the sun came up. I tried to shake her shoulder, but she was very cold. I thought she was just having a very deep dream because of the noise outside.”

Seraphina went entirely still as she processed Alice’s words. Her breath hitched in her throat, her grip on Alice tightening involuntarily, though she forced herself not to pull away.

“I stayed in the room with her,” Alice said simply. “I sat on the floor with my doll. I stayed there for days waiting for her to wake up. But... but by the third day, Mama didn’t really look like Mama anymore. Her skin started to turn a strange color, and her eyes stayed half-open, but she wasn’t looking at me. She didn’t look pretty or nice anymore. She looked... wrong. Nobody came to open the door for a very long time.”

Alice let out a shuddering breath, her chin quivering just a fraction. “That is why I didn’t like the dark, Your Grace. That is why I used to be so afraid to close my eyes. Whenever I went to sleep, I didn’t see nice things. I saw Mama lying on that bed, cold and quiet, looking so wrong. I thought... I thought I was going to see her like that forever.”

She paused. “But lately... it is not like that anymore,” Alice whispered softly. “When I lay down now, I try to think about the things you read to me. I think about how big the stars are, or how the rain turns into clouds and falls back down, or how the earth spins around without falling over. I think about the books with the small print, like the ones by Mr. Newton you told me about. My brain gets so busy thinking about it that there isn’t room for the bad things.”

She squeezed Seraphina’s hand.

“Even when Mama does come into my dreams now... she is not scary anymore,” Alice added gently. “She looks pretty sometimes, like she used to when she was... not dead. I thought the nightmares would never end. I thought they would stay inside my head forever. But the stories fixed them.”

Horror at what the child had endured, mixed with an overwhelming wave of profound reverence, surged through Seraphina’s entire being. That ordeal... a toddler trapped in a room with her deceased mother, entirely abandoned to the dark before anyone had realized what had happened. It was a trauma so profound, so devastating, that it rendered all of Seraphina’s theories about human resilience completely useless.

Yet here was this fragile girl, using the very scientific principles Seraphina held dear to piece her own shattered world back together.

Seraphina, who prided herself on detachment and analyzing life through the cool lens of reason, felt her logical defenses shatter into dust. Tears burned fiercely behind her eyelids, spilling over her lashes before she could stop them.

Without a word, she pulled Alice flush against her chest.

Alice gasped softly in surprise, but then her arms reached around Seraphina, burying her face into Seraphina’s shoulder.

“I am so proud of you, Alice,” Seraphina wept softly, holding the child with an iron strength, her hand gently cradling the back of Alice’s head. “I am so, so proud of how brave you are. But listen to me now. You are never, ever going to be left alone in the dark again. It is a big house. With a lot of people.”

She pulled back just enough to frame Alice’s small face in her hands, forcing the child to see the truth shining in her eyes.

“Whenever the dark grows too quiet, whenever those memories try to creep back in, you do not have to stay silent,” Seraphina declared, her voice trembling. “You call out. You shout, you ring your bell, or you send for me. I will come to this room every single time. William will come. We will bring every book in the library if we must! You are safe here. I am sure your Mama wants to be here too, but just... try to live with the assurance that your mother is at peace, and no bad dream can reach through these walls to harm you.”

Alice stared at her, and slowly, she nodded. “Can we read more about the stars tomorrow?” Alice snuffled, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

“Yes, we can,” Seraphina said, giggling. “We shall read every treatise, every diagram, and every volume on the universe until you know every constellation by heart.”

A long sigh escaped Alice’s chest. She sank back into her pillows, her heavy eyelids fluttering as the exhaustion caught up with her.

Seraphina stayed there, gently brushing soft curls away from Alice’s forehead, smoothing her hand over the quilt until the child’s breathing evened out into a slow cadence.

Just as Seraphina reached out to turn down the small nightlamp, Alice moved slightly beneath the covers. Her eyes opened just a sliver, misty with impending sleep.

“Your Grace?” Alice murmured, her voice barely a whisper.

“Yes, dear?”

“Will you be here forever?” Alice asked softly, her tiny hand reaching out to weakly clasp a fold of Seraphina’s dress. “You will stay?”

Seraphina froze. Her mind instantly spun backward to the reality of her life, the contract, the arrangements, the transactional marriage she had forged with William. They were bound by a temporary agreement, a functional alliance designed solely to protect her, safeguard his ward, and unmask a blackmailer. The terms had been crystal clear from the beginning. Once their goals were accomplished, once Alice was healed and the mystery solved, the marriage would be annulled. They would part ways.

She was not meant to stay. She was merely a temporary guardian, a passing figure in a grand house, destined to leave once her duty was done.

“Alice...” Seraphina began softly, her throat constricting so tightly that the words tasted like ash.

She opened her mouth to construct a rational, careful response that would soothe the child without uttering a lie. But the words died before they could form.

How could she speak of annulments and contractual timelines to a child who had just laid bare the horrors of her past?

How could she tell this fragile little girl that the woman promising to protect her from the dark was already preparing her own exit?

Seraphina stared down into Alice’s heavy-lidded eyes, entirely paralyzed by her own deception. Her vast academic vocabulary, her brilliant logic, her years of studying philosophy... none of it offered her a single sentence that was both honest and merciful.

Before Seraphina could force a word past her lips, Alice’s eyes drifted fully closed. Her grip on Seraphina’s skirt loosened, her hand falling limply onto the mattress as she slipped completely into a deep rest.

Seraphina sat motionless beside the bed for a long time, the silence of the room pressing heavily against her chest.

Slowly, carefully, Seraphina stood up on trembling legs. She pulled the quilt over Alice’s shoulders, lingering to brush a soft kiss against the top of the child’s head. Then she turned and walked to the door, stepping out into the corridor.

As the door shut behind her, Alice’s unanswered question settled deep into Seraphina’s soul. For the first time since she had signed her name to the marriage register, Seraphina stood alone in the dark, questioning not her logic, but her heart, and wondering how she could ever bear to walk away.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Just do it. Just do it, Seraphina. Just knock.

Seraphina stood in the corridor outside William’s primary study, her knuckles hovering an inch above the wood. Her pulse rattled. For weeks, this wing of Norwyn Manor had been plunged into darkness, as William retreated into whatever impenetrable corners of his mind he inhabited when he decided to.

But tonight, a thin sliver of light bled out from beneath the doorframe.

He was inside.

She swallowed hard, trying to smooth down the front of her purple dressing gown, though her fingers were trembling so violently the fabric rustled. She had spent the last hour beside Alice’s bed, watching the rhythm of the child’s breathing. She had wanted so desperately to share it with him. But now, standing at his threshold, the brave momentum that had carried her down the hall faltered into panic.

Just knock, you absolute fool.

Before her nerve could desert her entirely, she rapped her knuckles against the door. The sound echoed loudly in the hall.

A beat of silence followed, so prolonged that she thought he might ignore her altogether. Then came his voice, deep, raspy, and stripped of all softness.

“Enter.”

Seraphina turned the handle and slipped inside, pulling the door shut behind her. “Good evening... William.”

He did not look up.

He was seated behind the desk, illuminated only by the glow of a single brass desk lamp and the embers of the hearth. Spread out before him were stacks of ledgers, yellowed correspondence, and documents bearing wax seals. In his right hand, he held a crystal tumbler filled with what looked like scotch.

He did not offer a greeting. He did not ask her why she was out of bed at such an hour. He kept his eyes fixed on the ledger before him, an unforgiving shadow casting over the high planes of his cheekbones.

Seraphina hovered near the doorway, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. The words she had rehearsed on her way down the corridor vanished. She could not simply stride in and begin complaining about his weeks of absence, nor could she burst out with the news of Alice when he looked so entirely consumed by whatever lay before him.

The man sitting at that desk was not the dryly humorous, surprisingly patient man who bantered with her over the littlest things. This was the Duke of Norwyn. Severe. Formidable. Cold. He looked terrifyingly untouchable, surrounded by an aura of authority that made the spacious room feel suddenly very small.

Uncertainty warred with Seraphina’s pride. She needed a bridge, a neutral subject that belonged to their transactional reality, something that would force him to engage without demanding emotional intimacy.

“Is there... has there been any lead with the investigation?” she asked softly, her voice cutting through the silence. “Have you found anything?”

For a moment, he remained motionless. Then, he set the glass down on the desk.

“I was going to inform you tomorrow,” he said. “We have a name. Several names, actually.”

Seraphina took a tentative step forward, resting her hands on the back of one of the armchair choices facing his desk. “Names? What does that mean?”

“The Higgs conducted a more thorough search of the secondary quarters. They discovered a hidden compartment in the secretary desk containing letters and ledgers detailing financial disbursements.”

He turned a page. “Several individuals are now implicated,” he continued. “But the mistress is still the most promising lead regarding the physical possession of the signet. However, the letters left at the cottage suggest a second actor, a former business associate of my father, a distant cousin whose estate was ruined by my father’s legal maneuvers a decade ago. He would have ample motive to attempt extortion, and the handwriting matches the syntax of the blackmail notes.”

“So you have actual suspects,” she breathed, a spark of excitement lighting up her chest. “Real leads... names, at last.”

“Three potential leads,” he corrected. “Yes. Anthony and I depart at first light. We intend to track down each individual, press them systematically, and determine who the blackmailer is.”

The prospect of action made her chest expand with relief. After weeks of waiting, the wheels were finally turning. “Let me go with you,” she said quickly, leaning across the desk. “I can help. I could observe, ask discreet questions —”

“No,” William cut her off.

She blinked, taken aback by the rejection. “William, I am entirely capable of assisting. It is my reputation on the line as much as yours —”

“I will handle it,” he said. “It is my duty to resolve this issue. You will remain here at the manor. When I have a concrete suspect or the blackmailer in custody, I will inform you.”

A prickle of frustration flared in her chest. She stared down at the top of his dark head, watching him reach for his glass once more. He hadn’t looked at her once. Not when she entered, not when he explained the leads, and not when he issued his outright refusal.

“William,” she said seriously. “Would you look at me?”

He did not move.

“Is there something wrong?” she pressed, taking another step closer to the edge of the desk. “Why will you not look at me?”

Slowly, almost painfully, William lifted his head and sighed... almost as if he was reluctant to do so.

When his serious gaze finally met hers, the air was instantly sucked from Seraphina’s lungs. That terrifying flutter deep in the pit of her stomach. Her breath caught in her throat.

It hadn’t gone away. Weeks of distance, weeks of silence and empty halls, but the moment his eyes locked onto hers, that absurd, electrifying current flared back to life. It was infuriating. It was illogical. It defied every rational framework she had built to protect herself.

Yet as she stared at him, the initial spark of irritation dissolved into a troubling realization. There was something deeply wrong. The shadow in his eyes was not merely fatigue. It was a brooding intensity that felt dangerous. He looked at her not with that familiar, dry affection she had over time come to expect, but with a guarded, almost resentful distance.

She opened her mouth to ask if she had offended him, to inquire if she had made a mistake in assuming they had built a friendship amidst this bizarre arrangement.

Before she could utter a single word, William spoke.

“Seraphina... you cannot fall in love with me.”

The world seemed to halt on its axis.

Seraphina froze, her jaw slackening. The silence that followed was deafening.

What?

Her mind scrambled, racing through a dozen different interpretations of what he had just said. Had she misheard him? Was this some twisted, bizarre joke? Was she wearing her awareness of him so blatantly on her face that he felt compelled to issue a warning? They had already acknowledged the physical tension between them, had they not? They had agreed it was an attraction that would pass with time.

A nervous, disbelieving scoff escaped her throat before she could stop it. She let out a laugh, trying desperately to lighten the oppressive weight in the room.

“Where on earth is this coming from?” she demanded, crossing her arms tightly over her chest to hide the frantic beating of her heart. “I thought we had thoroughly established the nature of our dynamic, William. We acknowledged a mutual... physical awareness at the ball, remember? A temporary chemical response... to proximity. I am most certainly not in love with you.”

She began to pace the edge of his desk, her voice rising in pitch as her defensive instincts kicked in full force. “To suggest such a thing is utterly preposterous. Finding a man visually pleasing and intellectually engaging is hardly a precursor to tragic, romantic devotion. Science dictates that physical attraction is a sensory response to... familiarity. It is not a crime, nor is it a sentence of eternal adoration. I am a rational woman. I do not swoon, and I most certainly do not fall into unrequited love like a heroine in a foolish penny-novel!”

William did not interrupt her. He simply sat back in his chair, resting his chin on his steepled fingers, watching her pacing with an unreadable expression on his face.

His silence only fueled the fire beneath her pride.

“Is that what this has been?” she exploded, throwing her hands up in the air as the pieces suddenly clicked together in her mind. “Is that why you have been hiding away in this room for weeks? Avoiding meals? Slipping through the corridors like a ghost? Because you manufactured this delusional notion in your head that I was pining for you?”

She stopped in front of his desk, her cheeks burning hot with a mixture of embarrassment and anger. “You must think remarkably high of yourself, Your Grace. You assume that because I enjoy our conversations, I am lying awake at night weeping into my pillow over a... temporary marriage contract?”

She knew, deep down, that her dramatic tirade was slightly exaggerated. She knew her heart was hammering not just from anger, but from the truth that his words had struck far closer to a tender, vulnerable nerve than she dared to admit. But she was in no state of mind to dissect her own emotions. She just needed to defend herself. She needed to tear down his arrogant assumption before it destroyed whatever dignity she had left.

“You are being entirely absurd,” she added, her arms crossing tightly. “William, do not make this awkward. You are making things incredibly weird.”

William’s jaw clenched. A muscle ticked rhythmically beneath his cheek. He slowly lowered his hands, resting his palms flat on the desk as he leaned forward.

“I am a practical man, Seraphina,” he said. “I live my life by hard, unyielding parameters. Men in my position, men who navigate the viper’s nest of political society, survive by anticipating risks. I am not a man who acts on impulse, nor am I a man who tolerates variables he cannot control.”

He stood up, his frame towering over the desk, casting a shadow across the floor. “People think twice before crossing me. They calculate their words around me. But ever since you walked into this house, the dynamic has shifted into something I do not recognize. I find myself distracted. I would really hate to give you a false notion of what this is.”

He stepped around the desk. “I like it less when I cannot read the person sitting across from me. I prefer clarity. You did not give me that clarity at the ball.”

Seraphina took a deep breath, willing her hands to stop shaking. She forced herself to stand her ground as he approached.

“Fine,” she said. “If clarity is what you require, then let me give it to you clearly. I can see your point. You are protective of your boundaries, and you fear that emotional entanglements will complicate our ultimate goal. That is fair.”

She looked him dead in the eye, trying to project absolute confidence. “So let me reassure you, Your Grace, it is entirely harmless if I happen to find you handsome. I am human. I have eyes. But you can rest completely assured that it will never pose a problem to our agreement. When the time comes for the blackmail to be resolved, and for us to seek our annulment, I will walk away without a single tear, a single protest, or a single pathetic plea for you to keep me. You will not have a swooning, heartbroken woman on your hands.”

As the words left her mouth, a strange, hollow ache echoed in her chest. A whisper inside her mind asked if she was truly as prepared to walk away as she claimed to be, knowing the question she had left unanswered with Alice. But she crushed the thought instantly.

William stopped a few paces away from her. His eyes searched her face.

“You speak with incredible certainty for someone who is contradicting herself with every breath,” he said softly.

“I am doing no such thing!” she countered. “Why do you think you know it all? That you know what I am feeling? It is frustrating.”

“You frustrate me!” he said. “You stand there and tell me you find me attractive, you admit without hesitation that you are drawn to me, yet in the very same breath, you claim it means absolutely nothing,” he said, stepping closer still. “You offer direct confessions wrapped in academic detachment, and you expect me to sit back and accept that those two realities can comfortably coexist. It is confusing. It is contradictory, and frankly, Seraphina, it frustrates me to no end.”

“There is no contradiction whatsoever!” Seraphina insisted, holding her chin high. “Attraction is a physical sensation. Affection and commitment are choices of the mind. Why are you making such a tragedy out of this? We have talking about this for weeks now, it is driving me mad. I am telling you that I am in complete control of myself. Why can you not simply take my word for it and cross that bridge when we come to it?”

“Because I do not leave the stability of my life to chance,” he growled lightly.

“Well, what about you?” she fired back, her frustration boiling over. “Why is this entire interrogation focused exclusively on me? Why are my theoretical feelings the primary threat here? What about your own line in the sand?”

“Because I know how to draw a line,” William answered instantly. “I have drawn my line, Seraphina. I simply need to ensure you are standing on the same side of it.”

“Why do you assume I am incapable of doing the exact same thing?” she demanded, stepping directly into his personal space, her pride blinding her to the danger of their proximity. “Is it because I am a woman? Do you believe my mind is so fragile, so governed by hysteria and romantic sentiment, that I cannot enjoy an intellectual and physical appreciation of a man without losing my senses? If I tell you I can draw the line, why is my word not enough for you?”

William stared down at her, his eyes ablaze with a scorching intensity that made the air between them crackle.

“Because words are cheap...” he whispered, taking one final step forward until he was standing directly in front of her. “...And I do not trust them.”

“Then what would it take?” she challenged, her voice trembling slightly despite her best efforts. “What ridiculous task must I perform to satisfy your relentless skepticism? Do you want me to sign a legal affidavit? Jump off the balcony? Name it, William. Name it, and I will do it just to prove how entirely wrong you are.”

William stared down at her mouth, his chest rising and falling in short breaths.

“Kiss me,” he said.

Seraphina’s eyes widened. Her heart gave a violent thud against her chest. “What?”

“You heard me,” he rasped. “You want to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you feel nothing for me? That this is all just empty attraction, and meaningless biology? Then kiss me, Seraphina. Kiss me, and feel nothing.”

A wave of heat rushed to her face, painting her cheeks a fiery crimson. Her pulse roared in her ears, so loud it threatened to drown out the crackle of the fireplace. He had backed her up slightly, her skirts brushing against the edge of a side table, trapped between the solid wall of his chest and the furniture behind her.

Her mind scrambled wildly.

He is bluffing. He is trying to force me to back down.

‘Fine,’ her pride screamed back. ‘Let him see. Just do it and get it over with. End this ridiculous argument once and for all.’

“Fine,” she breathed, her voice barely a whisper.

Seraphina shut her eyes tight. Reaching up, she grabbed both sides of his face with her hands, leaned up on her tiptoes, and slammed her lips against his in a brief, hard, terrible kiss.

It lasted less than two seconds.

She immediately snapped her head back, stepping down, her heart thrashing wildly against her chest. Her face was burning, her breathing ragged, but she forced a triumphant, defiant glare onto her face.

“There,” she panted. “See? Nothing. Absolute —”

William looked down at her lips. Then his eyes flicked up to meet hers, dark and completely unimpressed. He let his gaze slide down to the frantic rise and fall of her chest, before settling back on her eyes.

“That...” he murmured softly. “...was not a kiss.”

“I did precisely what you asked. I am tired of these endless, arrogant games —”

Before she could finish her sentence, William moved.

His hand shot out, wrapping securely around her waist, while his other hand slid up the back of her neck, his fingers threading deep into the soft hair at the nape of her head. With effortless strength, he pulled her flush against his body.

“This...” he whispered against her skin. “...is a kiss.”

Then, his mouth came down on hers.

Any lingering thought of logic, reason, or detachment shattered into a million invisible pieces.

His kiss was a fierce, commanding, overwhelmingly passionate collision that swept through Seraphina’s entire nervous system like wildfire. His grip on her waist tightened, pulling her so close she could feel the beating of his own heart against her chest. His hand at the back of her head anchored her to him, his fingers digging gently into her hair, holding her right where he wanted her.

A soft, helpless sound escaped the back of Seraphina’s throat as his lips parted hers, taking the kiss deeper. The sensation was so intoxicating, it made her knees feel entirely like water. Instinct took over, completely overwhelming her intellect. Her hands, which had been meant to push him away, instead flew to the lapels of his shirt, gripping the fabric for dear life as if he were the only grounded object in a world spinning rapidly off its axis.

He shifted his weight, walking her backward with slow steps until her back bumped softly against the wall. His hand shifted to cushion the back of her head against the hard surface, protecting her even in the midst of his absolute storm.

There was a contrast to it. The chill of the wall at her back, the searing, magnificent heat of his body pressed against hers, sent a shiver cascading down her spine. Her senses were completely overwhelmed. She tasted the rich smokiness of his drink, heard the low, ragged breath he drew as she began to kiss him back, abandoning all pretense of restraint.

It was a fire, wild and uncontained, consuming every rational thought she had ever possessed. It opened up a vast, terrifying abyss of curiosity within her, a hunger not for books, or theories, or knowledge, but for... him. For the touch of his hands, the weight of his body, the feeling of his lips on hers.

The sensation built and built, a tight, electric coil winding in the center of her chest until her entire body began to tremble.

Panicked by the overwhelming intensity, Seraphina forced her hands flat against his chest, pushing against him with all the strength she possessed.

“William...” she managed to gasp out against his lips.

William paused instantly.

He didn’t pull away far. His hand slid from the back of her head down to her chin, his thumb gently holding her face in place. As she pulled her head back, his tongue lightly grazed the curve of her bottom lip, a final, agonizingly sweet contact that sent a fresh wave of butterflies frantic in her stomach.

He stayed right there, hovering inches above her, his eyes staring intently down at her parted lips.

Seraphina ducked under his arm, stepping swiftly to the side to put physical distance between them. She backed away until the far side of the desk blocked him from her path, her hands coming up to cover her chest as she drew in gulps of air.

She felt dizzy, lightheaded, as if the air in the room had been stripped of oxygen. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably.

William didn’t move for a long moment. He stood by the wall, his hair delightfully rumpled where her fingers had tangled in it. Slowly, he reached down, adjusting the front of his shirt and smoothing down his sleeves.

‘We shouldn’t have done that,’ Seraphina’s mind screamed into the silence. ‘Dear God, we shouldn’t have done that.’

It hadn’t proved he was wrong. It hadn’t proved she was in control. It had proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a dangerous fire existed between them, one that threatened to burn their neat, transactional agreement to absolute cinders.

She needed to run. She needed to escape to the safety of her bedchamber and spend the rest of the night trying to logically dissect the terrifying earthquake that had just shattered her foundation.

She turned toward the door, trying to make her escape.

Then, she froze.

She couldn’t leave. Not like this. She had come down those stairs with a purpose. If she fled now, she was admitting defeat. She was letting him win.

Seraphina took one more long, shaky breath, smoothing her hands over her gown before turning back to face him. Her voice was still slightly breathless, her pitch uneven, but she forced the words out into the room.

“Alice is speaking,” she said.

William, who had walked back toward his desk, paused. He looked up at her, his brow furrowing slightly in confusion. “What?”

“Alice,” Seraphina repeated, taking a small step forward, clutching her hands tightly together to hide their trembling. “She is speaking. Not just single words or nods. She is speaking in full sentences. Real... real conversations.”

William stood still for a moment, letting the words settle between them. Slowly, he pulled out his chair and sat down, resting his elbows on the desk. She could see the slight rise and fall of his shoulders. He, too, was still trying to catch his breath, his eyes unusually bright in the dim light.

“That is... that is wonderful, Seraphina,” he said softly.

“Yes,” she panted lightly, resting her hand against her stomach. “Also... did you know? Did you know she was the one who found her mother’s body when she passed?”

William’s expression softened. “No. I did not know that. The authorities merely reported that the child was found wandering in the village.”

“She was with her for days,” Seraphina said quietly, her eyes dropping to the pattern of the rug beneath her feet. “Trapped in a... cold room before anyone realized what had happened. She suffered horrors we cannot even begin to comprehend.”

She glanced back up at him, caught off guard by the sorrow that washed over William’s features. His eyes held an empathy that made her heart ache in an entirely new, but still dangerous, way. She looked away quickly, terrified that if she looked at his sorrow for a moment longer, her carefully constructed emotional walls would crumble entirely.

“But... but she is healing,” Seraphina added quickly. “We are reading together. We are doing activities in the garden. She is getting happier by the day, William. She is reclaiming her life.”

She took a breath, driving the point home. “Which means... which means our agreement is working. She will be well soon. We can seek the annulment on schedule, just as we planned. Everything is moving forward precisely as it ought to.”

She stared at him, desperately searching his face for agreement, for validation, for anything that would restore the comfortable, orderly reality they had established before he had pulled her against his chest.

William said nothing. He simply stared at her.

It was too much. The heat of the room, the lingering taste of him on her lips, the weight of his gaze. It was suffocating her.

“I must go,” she whispered abruptly.

She turned on her heel and practically fled toward the entrance. She grabbed the handle and pulled the door open, desperate to plunge back into the hallway.

Then, she stopped again.

She needed what just happened between them categorized. She needed to put a label on it so she could file it away and regain her composure.

Seraphina turned back slowly, keeping one hand firm against the doorframe as if it were the only thing holding her upright. She looked across the room at him, her chest still heaving, her chin tucked slightly low.

“That...” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. “What just happened... That... does not count as consummating the marriage, does it? It does not legally or... biologically alter the parameters of our arrangement, right? We can still proceed with the annulment?”

William went entirely still. Then slowly, his features softened. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips, a warmth coming into his eyes as he looked across the room at her.

“Is that what it felt like?” He tilted his head, his gaze trailing down to her flushed cheeks before resting back on her eyes. “Did it feel as though we just consummated our marriage?”

Yes. It felt entirely like that. Yes, absolutely, terrifyingly yes.

“No,” she blurted out aloud, the word rushing out of her mouth far too fast, far too shrill. “No, of course not. That would be... absurd. I was just... I don’t know why I asked.”

She couldn’t stay a second longer. If she stayed, her mouth would continue to betray her shattered logical defenses.

“Good night,” she stammered, backing up hastily into the corridor. “Good night, Your Grace.”

Before he could offer another word, or another look, Seraphina pulled the door shut and ran all the way back to her wing, ready to bury her face in a pillow and never lift it again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“We leave within the hour,” William said.

Seraphina held her breath as she nodded. William was already dressed for the road in a black traveling cloak, his boots polished, his hair damp from the morning wash.

“You really think this is it?” she repeated. “You have found the blackmailer?”

“The address Anthony located is on the outskirts, past the marshes,” William said, stepping just inside the threshold, his posture rigid, his hands resting on his riding gloves. “It is a full day’s ride if we push the horses, longer if the weather turns. If we leave now, we can reach the village before nightfall, secure quarters at the inn, and confront the woman at first light tomorrow.”

“The woman...” Seraphina murmured. “You are certain it is a woman?”

“As certain as we can be without putting the signet ring in her hand ourselves,” he replied. “As I suspected, she was one of my father’s later... acquaintances. Does the name Amada Higgins ring any bells?”

Seraphina thought for a moment. “None at all.”

William nodded. “That is her name. She has the background, and she had access to my father’s estate. We have ruled out everyone else. It is her. I have also confirmed that she still possesses one of my father’s rings.”

Seraphina swallowed against the lump in her throat, taking a tentative step toward her wardrobe. “I see. Then I shall get ready to leave immediately.”

“I have already instructed that they prepare the closed carriage.” He paused, his gaze lingering on her face for a fraction of a second before dropping to the ground. “Are you sure you are ready for this, Seraphina? I can go, confront her myself, and have her arrested if that is what you wish.”

“No, I want to go. I want to find the culprit,” she said. “I have to be there when she explains why she did all of this. I want this finished.”

“As do I,” he said. He gave a single, stiff nod. “I will be waiting in the courtyard.”

He turned and strode down the corridor, his footsteps echoing into the hall.

Seraphina stood frozen beside her bed, her hands clutching the edge of the post.

It was the first time they had spoken directly to one another in nearly a week. Seven agonizing days since that night in his study, since the heat of his body against hers, the feeling of his lips on her, and the humiliating, desperate babble of her own voice at the door. Seven days in which he had effectively vanished, retreating into the depths of the estate or riding out before dawn, leaving her alone with her books, her thoughts, and the realization that everything was hurtling toward an inevitable, crushing end.

She sank slowly back onto the bed. It did not, however, take her seven days to accept that she was wrong. That she did not recognize herself anymore. That she felt... different now.

Euphemia had been right. God help her, her sweet, sentimental sister had been entirely right.

All her life, Seraphina had treated human emotion as a flaw in the human apparatus, a flaw that could be studied, categorized, and ultimately dismissed by a mind disciplined enough to master it.

When Euphemia had warned her, weeks ago, that matters of the heart did not obey the laws of physics or logic, Seraphina had scoffed. She had believed herself superior to the foolish, swooning heroines of circulating-library novels. She had believed her intellect was an unassailable shield.

How spectacularly, pathetically stupid she had been.

Logic was failing her now. It was failing her woefully. Ever since that kiss... nothing made any sense. Logic did not account for the way her hands trembled when she tried to write her columns, her mind continuously wandering back to that night... that beautiful sensation of his mouth moving over hers.

The books had lied to her. The medical journals, the philosophical treatises, the scientific volumes... none of them had adequately described what it felt like to fall. They spoke of affection in vague, elevated terms of moral alignment and mutual respect. They said nothing of the helpless gravity that pulled a person toward another until standing apart felt like breathing poison.

Euphemia had warned her that love was not a problem to be solved. Leonora had warned her that an arrangement like theirs could never end cordially, that someone always bled in the end, and William...

William had known.

That was perhaps the most humiliating truth of all. William, with his calculating mind and his mastery of human nature, had seen straight through her defensive posturing weeks ago. He had read her like an open ledger before she had even dared to admit the truth to herself. He must have seen the way her eyes lingered on him, the way her composure fractured whenever he drew near, the way she tilted toward him like a flower desperately turning toward the sun.

He had known, and he had tried to draw the line to protect them both, while she had stood there like a fool, shouting about science and chemistry, arrogantly proclaiming her own absolute control.

Science had utterly failed her. Her intellect had abandoned her. She was not a master of logic; she was simply a hypocrite who had fallen in love with a man who had bargained for a business partner.

Concentrate, Seraphina. Now is not the time.

It took her maid nearly an hour to get Seraphina ready for the journey. The morning air was crisp as she descended the stone steps toward the courtyard.

William was standing beside the traveling carriage, speaking in low tones to the head groom. As Seraphina approached, he turned then to look at her before dismissing the groom.

“Seraphina,” he said, stepping toward her. He gestured toward another carriage parked near the stables. “If you would prefer... we can take separate conveyances. I know the ride will be long, and if you require space —”

“No,” she interrupted quickly. The thought of sitting alone in a carriage for hours, staring at the upholstery and drowning in her own self-pity, was unbearable. But more than that, she refused to let him think she was cowering. She refused to look like a frightened child avoiding her instructor. “No, that is entirely unnecessary. Taking a single carriage is far more practical. It reduces the strain on the horses and allows us to make better time.”

William searched her face for a second before bowing his head slightly. “As you wish.”

He offered her his hand. Seraphina hesitated for a fraction of a second before placing her palm in his. Even through two layers of leather, his touch sent a tremor straight up her arm. She stepped into the carriage, her skirts rustling, and took her seat against the squabs. William climbed in after her, ducking his head beneath the low frame, and sat on the bench opposite her.

With a snap of the whip and the clatter of hooves on gravel, the carriage lurched forward, leaving Norwyn Manor behind.

For the first few hours, the silence between them was oppressive. William kept his face turned toward the window, watching the frosty fields of the countryside sweep past.

“It will be over soon,” he said quietly, breaking the silence without looking at her. “If this woman confirms she is the culprit, or yields who hired her, we can hand the matter over to the magistrates by the end of the week. The threat to your reputation will be entirely neutralized.”

“Yes,” Seraphina said, staring down at her tightly clasped hands in her lap. “I am eager to have it resolved. I want to return to my work without feeling as though an invisible hand is waiting to destroy everything I have built.”

“How is the work progressing by the way?” he asked, finally turning to her.

Seraphina blinked, surprised by the shift in topic. She looked up to find him watching her, curiously.

“It... it goes well,” she said tentatively. “The latest edition was published about two weeks ago.”

A ghost of a smile touched the corner of William’s mouth. “I know. I read it.”

Her breath hitched. “You did?”

“I did,” he murmured, shifting slightly in his seat, leaning his elbow against the window frame. “I noticed you included a rather specific proposal regarding the union of lamplighters.”

Seraphina smiled. “Ah. Yes. Well... the technical transition naturally demands a discussion regarding displaced labor. Someone had to suggest something. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“It was my joke,” William said, his smile widening. “I believe I suggested retraining the lot of them to swat moths with their poles, given that turning London into a giant bonfire would attract half the insects in the county.”

“It was not your joke,” Seraphina defended, her competitive spirit flaring up despite her aching heart. “It was a serious economic consideration regarding the absorption of manual workers into post-industrial infrastructure. You merely phrased it with your usual absurd cynicism.”

“I recall distinctly saying that Mayfair would be positively swarming, and that swatting moths was the only logical outcome for men with long poles,” he countered coolly. “Lo and behold, your column includes a brilliant, sharp commentary on reallocating civic workers to manage evening nuisances created by the new light. You stole my humor, Seraphina. Admit it.”

“I adapted it,” she scoffed. “I elevated banter into respectable journalistic commentary. Besides, I hear that the line was quite well received by the readers. They found the satire exceptionally astute.”

“Then I expect a commission,” William said dryly. “Or at the very least, an acknowledgment in your next column. If you ever require additional wit to liven up your treatises, you need only ask. I can be remarkably entertaining when the mood strikes.”

Seraphina let out a short soft laugh, shaking her head. “Oh, that is rich! Remarkable entertainment from the Duke of Norwyn? You are many things, William, but funny is hardly the first adjective that comes to mind.”

“I am hilarious,” he stated. “I am simply selective with my audience.”

“You are sarcastic,” she corrected, leaning back against her seat. “There is a profound difference between wit and sarcasm.”

“You cut me to the quick,” he said, resting a hand over his heart with exaggerated dismay.

For a brief, fleeting moment, the suffocating weight between them vanished. The carriage felt light, warm, and safe, filled with the familiar banter that had once drawn her to him in the first place.

Then William turned his head back to the window, the smile fading from his face as his gaze drifted back to the passing trees, and the silence returned.

Seraphina’s smile slipped away. She turned her face toward her own window, staring out at the gray, bleak horizon, an aching sadness settling back into her bones.

Euphemia’s voice echoed in her mind again. ‘If you spend all your time fighting what you feel right now, you are going to look back when he is gone and deeply regret that you never took the chance to see what this could have been.’

The regret was already here. It was sitting right beside her in the space of the carriage, choking her.

Once they reached the coast, once they confronted this woman and reclaimed the signet, the contract would be fulfilled. The blackmail would end. The path to their annulment would be clear, smooth, and legally sound. He would return her freedom, her independence, exactly as they had agreed. They would part ways cordially, two sensible adults who had conducted a successful transaction.

But she would spend the rest of her life utterly miserable.

She stared at her reflection in the glass. Could she truly live like that? Could she go back to her home, her books, her scientific journals, and pretend that she hadn’t been completely rewired? Could she pretend that her heart hadn’t woken up?

She had spent her entire life priding herself on her honesty, her courage, and her refusal to back down from the truth, no matter how uncomfortable or inconvenient it might be. She was a woman who faced facts. She observed the evidence, reached a conclusion, and stood by it.

Yet here she was, clinging to the cowardice of her pride, hiding behind a lie because admitting the truth meant risking the total destruction of her composure.

She looked across the carriage at William. He looked so severe, so composed. He was a man who lived by unyielding parameters, a man who had already drawn his line.

If she spoke... if she laid her shattered heart entirely bare before him... would he cast it aside? Would he look at her with pity, or worse indifference?

Seraphina squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her hand against the cold glass of the window, the silence of the carriage wrapping around her like a shroud. She didn’t know the answer. But for the first time in her life, the fear of remaining silent was far, far greater than the fear of being broken.

Curse that kiss. Curse that stupid kiss.

“My apologies for keeping you waiting,” William said, adjusting his cloak as he took his seat in the carriage. “I needed to check that the horses were properly shod for the remaining leg of the journey.”

The second day of their journey dawned in a cold mist that hung low over the frost-bitten fields.

Seraphina had been seated in the traveling carriage for nearly ten minutes, her hands tucked neatly inside her fur-lined muff, watching the light slowly turn the horizon to silver.

“It is no matter,” Seraphina replied softly. “I was quite comfortable.”

“I trust you had a restful night?” he asked, his eyes sweeping over her face.

“Yes,” she lied smoothly. “Quite restful.”

The carriage lurched forward, the iron wheels grinding over the cobblestone yard of the inn where they had retired for the night, the day before. It had been too late to continue the journey, so they had taken shelter there.

In truth, Seraphina had not slept a single wink.

She had spent the hours in her small chamber at the inn staring at the ceiling, listening to the distant creak of the floorboards and the whistling of the wind. Her mind, usually so neat and orderly, had thrashed against the walls of her own stubbornness until the early hours of the morning.

In that darkness, she had reached her final, unavoidable conclusion.

She was going to tell him.

She would lay it all bare. It was the only logical... the only honorable way forward. For years, she had wrapped herself in the armor of intellectual superiority. She had been the rigid, uptight, insufferable person who always insisted she was right, who reduced every human warmth down to a chemical reaction or a flaw in logic. She had scoffed at Euphemia’s romantic sensibilities, she had ignored Leonora’s warnings.

She had been wrong. About everything.

Admitting it was terrifying, but it was also the only way she could leave this arrangement with her dignity intact. If their marriage was to end in an annulment, if she was to walk away from Norwyn Manor and return to her solitary life of books and her columns, she refused to do so as a coward. She had grown. Alice had softened the edges of her spirit, William had completely rewritten the geography of her heart. The least she could do was face the truth with the same courage she demanded of the world in her writing.

Seraphina smoothed the wool of her skirt, her fingers trembling slightly within her muff. The nerves in her stomach were a wild, chaotic swarm, but her mind was set.

William sat opposite her, his face turned toward the window as he watched the hedgerows slip by in the light. He looked quiet. Too quiet.

“William,” she began, her voice barely louder than the creak of the carriage springs.

He turned his head, looking at her with an inquiring tilt of his brow. “Yes, Seraphina?”

“Before we arrive at our destination... there is something I must say to you.”

William looked at her for a long moment, then reached into his coat and withdrew his silver pocket watch, clicking it open. “We should be less than an hour away now. The house lies just beyond the next turn of the valley, nestled among the old orchards.” He snapped the watch shut and met her gaze, his expression softening slightly. “If it is about the woman, if you are anxious about what we might find, you need not fear. I will handle it. Already I have contacted the magistrates in the area. A rider had gone ahead of us yesterday to make sure they were alerted to our arrival and prepared to issue a warrant the moment we secure the evidence.”

“It is not about this blackmailer,” she said quietly.

Seraphina drew a deep breath, gathering every ounce of her resolve.

“William... do you know of the heliotrope mechanism in the sunflower?” she asked.

William blinked, a puzzled smile touching his lips. His brows pulled together and he squinted. “The sunflower? I cannot say I have spent my mornings studying botany, Seraphina, but I know it follows the sun.”

“It tracks the sun,” she explained, looking down at her hands. “From dawn until dusk, regardless of the cloud cover or the chill in the air, the young flower steadily pivots its stem to face the light. It does not choose to do so. It is simply its nature. It cannot grow in any other direction.”

“Yes,” William said gently, watching her closely. “Why do you bring it up now?”

Seraphina swallowed hard, her pulse hammering against her throat. She forced herself to look up, meeting his eyes directly.

“I reckon I have become the sunflower, William, and you... you have been the sun.”

William went still. The curiosity on his face vanished. His brows softened and his eyes went wide. The look in his eyes told her instantly that he understood. He knew precisely what she was laying at his feet.

Seraphina’s chest ached, but now that the floodgates were open.

“You know, I have spent my entire life trying to be different from my sisters,” she said, her voice shaking slightly. “Effie was always the gentle one... so lively, so warm, the very heart of any room she entered. People love her effortlessly. Leonora... Leonora is a mystery even to me. But she is brilliant and guarded. She possesses a profound strength. Then there was me.”

She let out a laugh, looking out the window for a fleeting second before returning her gaze to him.

“I was the rigid one. The uptight, impossible girl who could not hold a simple conversation without dragging logic, mathematics, or natural philosophy into it. People found me... tedious. They found me cold. But the truth is... science was never just an interest for me. It was my shield.”

William leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees, his eyes fixed entirely on her face. “Seraphina, you do not...”

“When my papa died...” she continued, her voice cracking slightly at the mention of him. “...it broke something inside me. I loved him more than anything. He was the most wonderful, brilliant man I ever knew. My passion for writing, my curiosity about the world, it all came from him. My very pseudonym is a play on his name, and when he vanished from my life... when my mother died before I ever truly got to know her... the pain was a little overwhelming.”

She pressed her hand to her chest, feeling the frantic beat of her heart.

“Philosophy and nature became a refuge. If I could reduce the world to observable facts, if I could classify every feeling as a biological function, then nothing could ever hurt me again. I thought that if I studied the world hard enough, I wouldn’t have to feel it. I thought I could shield myself from loss.”

She looked at him. “So when I grew up, I stayed trapped in that armor. I refused to acknowledge change. I refused to recognize my own heart. I convinced myself that logic was supreme, and that anyone who fell prey to emotion was simply weak.”

“Seraphina,” William said again, softer this time. “Where is all of this coming from? You do not need to explain yourself to me. In fact, I am the one who has explaining to do.”

“I do need to,” she insisted, leaning forward, her hands coming out of her muff to grip the edge of the seat. “I must say it, William. I need to take responsibility for my own foolishness. You were right. Euphemia was right. Leonora was right. Everyone saw what was happening except me.”

She swallowed against the tightness in her throat.

“I am sorry,” she whispered. “I am so terribly sorry for being so stubborn, and for refusing to admit what was... growing between us. If I had not been so afraid, if I had simply been honest weeks perhaps we would not be sitting in this awkward silence today. Perhaps I would not have made things so difficult for you.”

William stared at her, his jaw set tightly.

“I have come to care for you, William. Deeply,” she said. “It is a foreign, terrifying thing, and it completely defies every law of logic I have ever lived by, but it is the truth.”

Seraphina felt a strange, profound sense of peace wash over her, even as her heart bruised. She had said it. The truth was out in the open air, clear and undeniable.

“You do not need to say anything,” she added quickly, giving him a smile. “I know our contract. I know the parameters of our arrangement, and I am a woman of my word. I will not ruin this. Like I have said, I will not demand anything of you, nor will I stand in the way of the annulment when this is finished. I simply... I wanted to become a better person than the arrogant girl who walked into Norwyn Manor. I wanted you to know that I am no longer hiding.”

William parted his lips, his hand moving across the gap between their seats, reaching toward her.

“Seraphina...” he began. “I am so sorry that I made you feel the need to apologize.” He shook his head, leaning closer. “I have not been truthful with you either. I thought we could have this conversation later... when all of this is done. I was... cruel.”

“No, that is... you were not —”

“Yes, I was,” he interrupted. “I made it seem like it was your burden to bear. Like you had to handle the matters of the heart because I was this master of detachment.”

Overwhelmed, her breath trembling in her chest, Seraphina looked away, unable to hold his gaze a second longer. She turned her face toward the window, intending only to collect her shattered composure as the carriage began to slow down, turning off the main road onto a drive flanked by tall, overcast trees.

Her gaze drifted casually past the glass, and then froze.

A rush of confusion hit her in that moment, and Seraphina could have sworn she was seeing things. Her brow furrowed, as her mind violently recoiled against what her eyes were seeing.

What on earth...?

Whatever William said next turned into hollow, meaningless noise. His voice faded into a muffled, distant hum, like water rushing over stone, entirely drowned out by the pounding of her own blood in her ears. She wasn’t hearing a single word he was saying anymore.

Her hands moved on instinct, pushing the curtain further aside, her face coming inches from the cold glass as the carriage rocked smoothly along the gravel drive.

The house beyond the wrought-iron gates was sprawling and grand, flanked by ancient weeping willows and manicured gardens sleeping under the winter frost. It was a silhouette etched into her very bones. She could drawn every room inside it in her sleep.

She knew every brick. She knew every curve of the ironwork. She had spent over a decade of her life running through those gardens.

“Wait...” she whispered, cutting right across whatever he was saying, the word slipping past her lips.

William looked at her, rising slightly from his seat to fetch his cloak. “What is it?”

“Where are we?” she demanded, turning to him, her eyes wide with bewilderment. “I mean, I know where we are, but why are we here?”

“We are at the address,” William said, frowning as he looked out the window. “This is her home. To be honest, I did not expect such a grand estate⁠—”

“William, this is not...” Seraphina interrupted, her voice rising as she shook her head. She pressed her face closer to the glass. “You must be mistaken.”

William froze, snapping back to look at her. “What are you talking about?”

“This is my home.” Seraphina gasped, turning to him. “This is Lady Byron’s estate. What are we doing here?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“That is impossible,” William whispered. Only loud enough for Seraphina to hear in the drawing room.

“I assure you, William, it is not only impossible, but it is downright ludicrous,” Seraphina countered, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. “The woman who resides in this house is Lady Byron. She is a widowed Viscountess. She is most certainly not an Amanda Higgins.“

“The information provided by my inquiry is beyond reproach,” William insisted, stepping toward the hearth and adjusting his coat. “Amanda Higgins was the daughter of an Earl. She vanished from London society over twenty years ago under circumstances so thoroughly obscured that even the parish registers lost trace of her. She was a mistress to my late father.”

Seraphina stared at him as though he had begun speaking in ancient Greek. “A mistress to the late Duke? William, have you lost your senses entirely? Lady Byron is a woman of virtue! She took in my sisters and me when we were left with nothing. She raised us. She provided us with a home, an education, and a sanctuary. She has lived in this valley for years as a respectable dowager.”

“Which is precisely why she was so difficult to track,” William said. “A complete disappearance into the countryside, a sudden assumption of a minor, obscure title, and an utterly impenetrable private life. Of the three individuals who had direct, historical access to my father’s personal signet ring, Amanda Higgins was the only one whose existence could not be verified by public record. She went off the radar completely, Seraphina. It is the only logical thread that holds.”

“It is a thread made of cobwebs.” Seraphina scoffed, throwing her hands up in exasperation. “There is no Amanda Higgins in this house! There has never been an Amanda Higgins in this house. Unless you are suggesting she is hiding in the pantry alongside the preserves, your informant has handed you a fiction. We ought to return to the carriage this instant. If Lady Byron finds us standing in her drawing room making wild, scandalous accusations against her honor, she will have us both thrown out, with very little regard for who you are.”

William looked at her with a maddening amusement that only heightened her irritation. “You are remarkably anxious to flee, Duchess.”

“I am anxious to avoid a humiliating scene,” she snapped back, though her voice dropped to a fierce whisper as she glanced nervously doors. “Lady Byron married a very old Viscount two decades ago, an impoverished man who passed away less than a year into their union, leaving her the small estate and the title. She has been the Dowager Viscountess Byron for as long as anyone in this county can remember.”

“Does that brief, conveniently timed marriage to an elderly, dying nobleman not strike your mind as even slightly suspect?” William asked, tilting his head. “A young, penniless woman of good birth disappears from London, abruptly reappears in the north as the bride of a dying Viscount, inherits a small estate, and buries herself away from the world?”

“It strikes me as the sensible maneuvering of a woman with few financial options,” Seraphina declared, though a treasonous prickle of doubt began to itch at the back of her mind. She quickly suppressed it. “Are you truly so stubborn that you cannot admit your men made an error? There is no one by that name here. None of her staff, none of her acquaintances, no one!”

“Then let us ask the owner of the house directly,” William said smoothly.

“We cannot do that!”

“Why not?”

Before Seraphina could offer another furious rebuttal, the doors swung open, and a figure stepped into the room.

Lady Byron had not changed in the months Seraphina had been away. She remained a woman of imposing, immaculately preserved elegance, clad in her customary black gown with a lace cap resting atop her silvered hair. Her eyes swept over the drawing room, taking in the space before coming to a rest upon the two uninvited visitors standing near the hearth.

For a long second, no one spoke. Seraphina caught her breath, her heart pounding as she watched her face.

Lady Byron’s mouth thinned into a curve. “Well...” she murmured, her voice as dry as autumn leaves as she curtsied. “What an unexpected, remarkably unannounced honor, Your Grace.”

William bowed. “Lady Byron. Good to finally meet you.”

“Your Grace,” she said, inclining her head just an inch to Seraphina as well. She folded her hands over her waist, scanning her from head to foot. “How remarkably gracious of you to bless me with your presence on this auspicious afternoon.”

“Lady Byron —” Seraphina began, taking a half-step forward.

“I assume...” Lady Byron interrupted, lifting an eyebrow. “...that you have finally dragged your new husband all the way from your estate to crave my formal blessing? Like your sister had done? A bit tardy, is it not? You managed to marry the Duke of Norwyn without so much as a line of advance notice to the woman who raised you, much like Euphemia before you. Now you stand in my drawing room, expecting me to beam upon your late-blooming domestic bliss?”

She let out a dismissive tsk, turning her back on them to adjust a porcelain vase upon a side table.

“If that is the purpose of this pilgrimage, Seraphina, I am afraid you have wasted your time,” Lady Byron continued coldly. “I gave my blessing to Euphemia’s sudden match, but I certainly see no reason to bestow it upon yours. You made your choices in London. You preferred the noise of Mayfair and the company of gentlemen to your duties here. You cannot simply drop in when the mood strikes you and expect open arms.”

“We are not here to seek your blessing, Lady Byron,” Seraphina said, stepping around William so she stood directly in her line of sight. “That’s not why we came.”

Lady Byron turned back around slowly, her eyebrows rising. “Oh? Then pray enlighten me. Why have you invaded my home?”

“We are here because threatening letters have been sent to my residence in London,” Seraphina said, knowing she couldn’t keep the truth hidden anymore. “Letters threatening to expose my column. Letters stamped with the crest of the Duke of Norwyn’s family. William’s inquiries have led him directly to this address.”

Lady Byron did not flinch. Not a single muscle in her face twitched. “Threatening letters?”

“Yes,” she answered. “I am sorry that I am only telling you so late that I was being blackmailed. But I had a handle on things and did not want to disturb you.”

Seraphina turned to William, skeptical to continue. “The letters were sent by a woman named Amanda Higgins,” Seraphina pressed, watching her eyes intently, desperate to see a flash of denial that would prove William wrong. “A woman who went off the public registers decades ago. William is convinced that Amanda Higgins resides within these walls.”

Lady Byron blinked slowly. “Amanda Higgins? I have never heard a more mundane name in all my days. Is she a housemaid you suspect of pilfering your stationery? Because I assure you, my staff is entirely honest.”

“I know that,” Seraphina said. “I told him the notion is absurd.”

William stepped forward then. “I do not think now is the time to play the ignorant dowager with me, Lady Byron,” William said.

“William!” Seraphina whispered to him.

“I am a thorough man,” he continued. “When I set my mind to investigating an anomaly, I do not stop until I have unspooled every thread. Amanda Higgins was the daughter of the Earl of Fenwick. She vanished from London following a scandal involving my father, the late Duke of Norwyn. Coincidentally, remarkably so, her disappearance aligns precisely with the period in which a young unknown woman arrived in this northern valley, married an ailing Viscount, and assumed the title of Viscountess Byron.”

Seraphina’s breath hitched in her chest. She looked sharply at Lady Byron, waiting for the outrage that ought to follow such a claim.

Lady Byron merely stood there. Her expression remained entirely smooth, a porcelain mask of perfect calm.

“You are an Earl’s daughter?” Seraphina whispered. “Lady Byron... is that true?”

“It would be exceptionally easy for me to bring the parish records, the registry of the Fenwick estate, and three living witnesses who can identify you from Mayfair to this room within a week,” William added coolly, crossing his arms. “If you know something, I think it is best to tell us.”

Lady Byron remained still, fiddling with the vase on the side table. Then, slowly, the posture of her spine relaxed just a fraction. A strange sound escaped her lips. It sounded like a dry, bitter laugh that was hollow.

She shook her head, turning away from them to walk toward her armchair near the window. She sat down, refusing to look at them.

“Fine,” Lady Byron finally said.

Seraphina felt the room tilt slightly beneath her feet. “Fine? What do you mean, fine?”

“I mean, fine,” Lady Byron repeated, looking up at Seraphina with an expression that was devoid of remorse. “Yes. I sent the letters. But it was not blackmail, Seraphina. Don’t be so ridiculously melodramatic. It was a test.”

“A test?” Seraphina repeated, her voice cracking slightly.

“A test of your fortitude,” Lady Byron said, waving a hand dismissively. “I wished to see how you would handle true pressure. You have spent years hiding behind your intellectual hubris, writing your clever articles, convinced of your own absolute invulnerability. I wanted to see if you would fold the moment a real threat presented itself. I wanted to see if you possessed the resilience to protect your work, or if you would run whimpering to a corner the moment London society bared its teeth.”

Seraphina stared at her, utterly speechless. She felt as though the air had been knocked from her lungs. “A test... You put me through weeks of terror, you made me think my life, my reputation, my very identity was about to be destroyed, to test me?”

“You passed, did you not?” Lady Byron remarked coolly. “You did not burn your manuscripts. You did not cease writing.”

“That cannot be the entire truth,” William interjected, stepping between Seraphina and Lady Byron. “If this was merely a trivial trial of her character, why was my family’s signet ring involved? Why drag my name and my estate into your game?”

Lady Byron looked up at William, her eyes hardening.

“Who is Amanda Higgins?” Seraphina also asked. “I take it that part is true as well? You are not who you say you are?”

“I was Amanda Higgins,” Lady Byron corrected and let out a sigh. “Over two decades ago, before I buried that pathetic, foolish girl in the shadows of the countryside and assumed the title of a dead Earl’s widow. I stripped away that name, that identity, and every miserable memory attached to it.”

“Why?” William demanded. “Why abandon your name entirely?”

“Because your father ruined me,” Lady Byron snapped, her composure suddenly shattering into a venomous spark. She stood up from her chair, her hands fisted. “Your father ruined my name, my standing, and my future. He whispered promises of marriage while I was a young, naive girl in society. He used me for years; he disgraced me, and then he tossed me aside like a worn glove. I was cast out of society. My own family could barely look at me. I could not remain in London as Amanda Higgins, a ruined, pity-object for the ton to mock.”

She took a shallow breath, her chest heaving before she forced her composure back over her features. She sat back down, turning to the window.

“I found an elderly, dying Earl who needed a caretaker and was willing to leave me his title and this forgotten estate in exchange for my companionship in his final months,” she continued. “I changed my name. I rebuilt my life out of the ashes your father left behind.”

Silence fell over the room. Seraphina looked from Lady Byron’s face to William, whose jaw was set in a tight line.

“So when I began sending those letters...” Lady Byron murmured, looking down at her hands. “...it was not you I was targeting, Your Grace. When I first embossed that paper with your father’s signet ring, which I had kept for years, I believed your father was still alive.”

Seraphina’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I thought the old Duke was still breathing his privileged air in London. I thought he was alive,” she revealed. “I knew Seraphina’s nature, or at the very least, I thought I did. I raised her. I figured that if a mysterious threat appeared seemingly... accidentally stamped with the Duke of Norwyn’s crest, she would not cower. Seraphina does not hide behind sentiment or emotional vapors; she seeks the truth. She lays things bare. I thought she would use her column, her intellect, and her quill to investigate the crest, expose the man behind it, and drag the Norwyn name into the public mud.”

She looked at Seraphina with a faint smile. “I saw myself in you, Seraphina. You were the only one of my girls with the ruthless, logical mind required to expose a powerful man. I intended to use your column as the instrument of my revenge against the man who destroyed my youth. It was only after I sent the third letter that I learned the old Duke had died years ago, and that his son had inherited the title.”

William let out a mocking laugh. “Sounds like a flawless scheme, Lady Byron. I take it you failed to anticipate that Seraphina would break into my private study at Norwyn Manor in the middle of the day to search my desk for evidence and confront me.”

Lady Byron’s head snapped toward Seraphina. “You... you did what? You broke into a Duke’s residence? Have you lost your mind entirely? That is how you met him? I have always wondered how you got married so quickly. What happened in that study?”

“Nothing!” Seraphina blurted, still trying to make sense of everything.

“Is that how I raised you?”

“You raised me never to fail,” Seraphina shot back, her voice rising as the suppressed anger and frustration finally broke through her reserve. “You raised me never to disappoint you! Did you truly think I would sit by and watch our column, the work we spent years building, be burned to the ground by a blackmailer? Did you think I would fold up my parchment and run away? You taught us to be relentless. You taught us that knowledge is power. I did what was necessary to solve the mystery and protect what was ours.”

She began pacing the length of the rug again.

“I cannot believe this,” Seraphina said, shaking her head in disbelief. “I cannot believe you were willing to risk everything: our reputation, our security, the entire future of the column just to launch a petty, vindictive ghost-strike at a man who has been in his grave for years! It is not like you. The column was making us independent. It was providing for this house. It was ensuring that my sisters and I would never have to rely on the whims of men, and you were ready to burn it all to ashes.”

“You think that was all it was about?” Lady Byron snapped back. “You truly believe I reignited my hatred for the Duke of Norwyn after so many years, just because I felt like it?

“You just said — Then what was it about?” Seraphina demanded, stopping in her tracks. “Why else would you do something so monstrously irrational?”

Lady Byron glared at her, her hands gripping the wooden arms of her chair tightly.

“Because I missed my girls!” Lady Byron blurted, the fierce volume of her voice echoing.

The drawing room fell instantly, deafeningly silent.

William did not move. Seraphina froze, her breath catching in her throat as she stared at the woman who had been an unemotional monolith for her entire life.

Lady Byron closed her eyes, breathing heavily, a weary crease appearing between her brows.

“I missed you,” Lady Byron whispered, her voice cracking with a vulnerability that looked utterly terrifying on her face. “I am a bitter, lonely old woman. I sat in this empty house and watched all three of you march off to London. I was certain that the ton would be cruel to you like it had been to me for years. I thought society would mock you, that Mayfair would reject you, and that you would come running back through those doors where I could protect you, where we could continue our life together.”

She opened her eyes, looking at Seraphina. “But you didn’t come back,” Lady Byron said, then scoffed. “Euphemia married and then fell in love. She is raising a big family now. Leonora doesn’t let me know what she is doing with her time, and you... you were the one who was supposed to be like me. You were the one who cared only for books and for science. You were my companion, and then you went to London, and you married a Duke. Your letters grew fewer and fewer until they stopped altogether.”

She looked away, staring into the empty fireplace.

“I thought that if a scandal threatened you, if you were faced with the notion of ruin in London, you would have no choice but to abandon that place and flee back home to me,” Lady Byron admitted softly. “I knew it was wicked. I knew it was selfish. But I wanted my daughters back. London took everything from me. My name, my honor, my happiness. Then London took you.”

Seraphina stood frozen, her mind struggling to reconcile the stern matriarch of her youth with the lonely, broken woman sitting before her.

The anger that had been burning so fiercely in Seraphina’s chest began to cool, replaced by an ache. She knew what it was to be terrified of abandonment. She knew what it was to build an impenetrable fortress around one’s heart to keep the pain of loss at bay. Lady Byron had done the exact same thing, until the fear of losing her girls had driven her to a desperate, irrational act.

Seraphina took a step toward the armchair.

“You could have simply written to me,” Seraphina said gently. “You could have told me you were lonely.”

Lady Byron let out another scoff. “I don’t beg for company, Seraphina. You know that as well as I.”

“It would have been much better if you did,” William chimed in and crossed his arms. Seraphina looked at him then, seeing the annoyance plastered all over his face. “Seraphina could not sleep peacefully for a long time. You tormented her. If she wasn’t so terrified of failing you, she never would have taken the risk of sneaking into my home. What if something awful had happened to her simply because you couldn’t just write a letter asking your daughters to visit you?”

Before Lady Byron could retort, Seraphina stepped forward, placing herself between the both of them. She gave William a look, the particular kind she reserved for moments when he was entirely right and entirely unhelpful at the same time, and then she turned back to Lady Byron.

“I did not go to London to abandon you,” Seraphina said softly. “I went because Euphemia needed me. Because Leonora needed me. Someone had to look out for them. I wasn’t too excited about the prospects of marriage when I went to London, you know this.” She paused, glancing briefly at William, who was watching her. “I did not write to you because I was confused, and overwhelmed, and... and I did not know how to explain what was happening to my heart without feeling as though I was failing the standards you set for me.”

Lady Byron looked up, her eyes searching Seraphina’s face. “You have not failed anyone, child. Except perhaps in your choice of husband’s family history.”

A tiny, breathless smile touched Seraphina’s lips. She looked down at her hands, taking a deep breath as a realization settled over her.

The blackmailer was not a sinister enemy plotting her demise. It was not a figure waiting to destroy her life. It was merely the desperate, misguided scheme of a lonely woman who loved her. A tragedy born of old wounds and misplaced fear. The nightmare that had haunted her for months was over.

William, however, seemed far from pacified. He stepped forward; the tension in his shoulders had not eased an inch. If anything, his eyes burned with a defensive fury.

“I notice that I have not yet heard a proper apology,” William said.

Seraphina blinked, turning to look at him in astonishment.

“You put Seraphina through months of torment,” William continued, glaring down at Lady Byron with this fierce protectiveness in his eyes that made Seraphina’s chest tighten. “You watched her panic, you watched her doubt her own mind, and you drove her to absolute desperation, all for the sake of your own loneliness. Seraphina deserves a proper apology, Lady Byron.”

Seraphina stared at him, as a warm sensation blooming inside her. Throughout the entire course of this confrontation, William had grown increasingly, furiously upset strictly on her behalf. He was standing up to Lady Byron, a woman who had intimidated half the county for decades, without a single shred of hesitation, shielding Seraphina. It made her feel cherished, a feeling so sweet and overwhelming that she had to force herself to suppress a breathy laugh. She tried desperately not to let it get to her head, but she could not deny how good it felt to have someone fight for her.

Lady Byron looked at William for a moment, then turned her gaze back to Seraphina. Surprisingly, there was no anger in her face.

“It is without a reasonable doubt, Seraphina, that I am deeply, truly sorry,” Lady Byron said. “I stopped sending those letters weeks ago because I realized what a mistake I was making. The moment I learned you had married the Duke, I knew my foolish plan had failed entirely. I knew the day would inevitably come when you figured out the truth, either on your own or with the help of your new husband.”

“I have been preparing my apology to you ever since,” she murmured. “I know I do not deserve your forgiveness immediately. But it would be... exceptionally nice if you were to visit from time to time. We could have our old discussions on politics. I have acquired several new volumes that I have been saving to show you. I should like very much for us to return to old times, even if only for a little while.”

She let out a sigh, looking down at her hands.

“I suppose it is old age creeping up on me,” Lady Byron added softly. “It brings out a strange loneliness, and a recklessness in action that my younger self would have thoroughly despised. In my youth, I would never have resorted to such underhanded schemes. But time makes cowards of us all, I fear.”

Seraphina felt the final remnants of her anger melt away. “Lady Byron,” she said quietly. “There are things... parameters of my marriage to William... that you do not yet know.”

William shifted slightly behind her, but remained silent.

“I cannot explain everything today,” Seraphina continued smoothly. “But I will not be living in Mayfair forever. In time... perhaps very soon... my duties will conclude. When they do, I will return here. I will come home to this estate, and we shall resume our work on the column, just as we always did. Would one daughter suffice, if you cannot have all three?”

“Yes,” Lady Byron whispered, her voice barely audible. “One would suffice remarkably well.”

Seraphina let out a long breath, a weight lifting from her shoulders that she hadn’t realized she was carrying. She turned slowly to face William.

He was standing near the hearth, watching her with an expression she had never seen on his face before. He looked baffled, his dark brows furrowed, and he was not blinking as he stared at her. Seraphina couldn’t help but archer eyebrows too. The look on his face was... puzzled, intense, and questioning. Like she had said something he did not agree with.

Seraphina offered him a smile, one of pure relief. But he did not smile back.

It was over. The threats, the fear, the shadow hanging over her pen, it was all gone, and as she looked into William’s searching eyes, she knew that whatever lay ahead of them on the road back to London, she was no longer afraid to face it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“Jameson will file the initial petition with the Consistory Court before the week is out,” William said, his voice quiet in the expanse of Seraphina’s bedchamber.

He stood near the tall sash window, staring out at the courtyard, his hands clasped tightly behind his back. Every line of his own posture felt too rigid, a desperate attempt to anchor himself while his mind churned in turmoil.

Seraphina paused mid-step near the foot of her bed, a silver-backed hairbrush held loosely in her hand. “I see. How long does Jameson estimate the process will take once the paperwork is submitted?”

“It varies,” he replied, his tone devoid of any warmth. He hated how clipped he sounded, but if he let his voice soften for a fraction of a second, the weight of what he was doing would crush him. “A matter of months, typically. Though if the court’s docket is clear, it could move faster. Once the formal claim of non-consummation is lodged, the ecclesiastical authorities move quickly.”

“Yes,” she said, setting the brush down upon her dressing table. “I read up on the legalities of the matter over the past few days.”

William turned slowly from the window, fixing his gaze upon her. A sharp knot twisted in his gut as he watched her composure. “Do you? Then you understand that they will require your formal, sworn statement too. Jameson will come to the house on Thursday to draft the document. You will need to confirm the... physical parameters of our arrangement under oath.”

“I am entirely prepared to do so,” Seraphina replied, holding his gaze with a smile he did not return. “Whatever Jameson requires of me to ensure the petition is granted smoothly, I shall provide.”

A muscle in William’s jaw twitched violently. He stared at her, his brows drawing together into a scowl.

Smoothly.

“Is there something else, William?” she asked gently, taking a step toward him. “You look as though you are swallowing glass.”

“You are remarkably eager... that is all,” he said, the edge in his tone slipping out before he could catch it.

Seraphina blinked, taken aback by his bitterness. “Eager? The blackmailer has been dealt with, Alice is thriving, and the purpose of our marriage has been fulfilled. I am simply trying to facilitate the next logical step without unnecessary delay. Besides, you came into my bedchamber to tell me about the process.”

“Logical,” William repeated, massaging his nape as frustration surged through his veins. “It seems as though that is your favorite word. Always logic. Always pragmatism.”

Silence settled between them. William turned and began to pace the floorboards. He could feel her eyes tracking his movement, observing his shoulders and the furious energy he could no longer contain. Ever since they had stepped out of Lady Byron’s house four days ago, the anger had been clawing at his chest, a chaotic storm of fury at her guardian, at the arrangement, and most of all, at himself.

She let out a soft sigh, folding her hands over her waist. “Why are you so angry, William?”

William stopped dead in his tracks, turning his head to glare at her. “I am not angry.”

“You are furious,” she countered directly, stepping closer to him, entirely unbothered by his intimidating frame. “You have been in an absolute rage ever since we returned from the countryside. You barely speak at breakfast, you avoid Alice in the afternoons, and you stalk through the corridors like a thundercloud. I thought... well, I thought after I confessed my feelings to you in the carriage, and after we cleared up the matter of the letters, that things between us might become less awkward. Instead, you are more rigid and upset than ever. Why?”

William stared down at her, his chest heaving under his coat. Looking at her face, her curious eyes, and the lack of panic in her demeanor, something inside him simply snapped.

How could she stand there so unaffected while his entire world was tearing apart at the seams?

“Do you even have any true conception of what filing for an annulment entails, Seraphina?” he asked, stepping into her space, his voice tight, like he was clenching his teeth as he spoke.

Seraphina frowned, her brow furrowing slightly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean the actual, physical reality of the process,” he said, his eyes burning into hers. “It is not merely Jameson writing ink on parchment. To annul a marriage on the grounds of non-consummation, the Consistory Court does not simply take our polite word for it. You will be required to appear before a panel... a matronly tribunal appointed by the court. Strangers. Strange women. You will be subjected to an invasive, humiliating physical examination by strangers to verify your... status.”

He broke off, the words catching in his throat. He gripped his hips, his breath ragged, waiting for the shock or indignation to finally break through her calm exterior.

Seraphina did not flinch. Her expression softened, though her gaze remained entirely unbothered. “I read about the medical inspection, William. I know what the law demands. It will be uncomfortable, yes, and entirely tedious, but it is a legal necessity. I am prepared to endure it.”

William let out an incredulous noise, turning his face toward the ceiling. He felt as though he were screaming into a void. “You are prepared to endure it. Of course you are.”

“Why does that upset you?” she asked, genuinely bewildered now. She took another step toward him, her hand reaching out as if to touch his arm before pulling back. “What is going on with you, William? Why are you so fine with nothing, yet so terribly furious with everything?”

“Because you are so fine with everything!” William said loudly.

Seraphina recoiled slightly, her eyes widening. “What?”

“You are maddeningly fine with every monstrous thing that happens to you,” William declared, pacing toward her with broad strides. “First, it was Lady Byron. That woman put you through weeks of absolute hell. She made you panic, she made you fear for your livelihood, she drove you to break into my house, and when you discovered it was all a selfish, manipulative game to force you home, what do you do? You forgive her. You comfort her. You promise her that the moment our annulment is granted, you will pack your trunks and spend the rest of your days living with her.”

“She is an old woman who is lonely, William,” Seraphina defended, her own voice rising to meet his energy. “I understand her. I know what it is to be terrified of losing the people you love, to build walls of coldness around yourself. I understand why she did it, even if her methods were deeply flawed. It is my place to forgive her if I choose to.”

“What about us?” William demanded, stopping inches from her, his breath falling warm against her forehead. His heart slammed violently in his chest. “What about me? We have not talked, Seraphina.”

“About what?” Seraphina questioned, her chest heaving as tears of frustration pricked at the corners of her eyes. “I am tired of talking, William. Nothing will change, will it? You are confusing me. I don’t know why you seem so angry. Is it pride? Would you rather have me beg you to keep me? To crawl at your feet? Is that what this is? You cannot imagine that I will leave quietly because who in their right mind annuls a marriage with the Duke of Norwyn? This is what you wanted!”

William froze. He stared down at her... at her trembling lips, the fierce shine in her eyes, and the courage radiating from her small frame.

A suffocating wave of realization crashed over him. Every defense he had built, every piece of practicality he had hidden behind, crumbled into dust. He wanted to reach out and seize her by the shoulders. He wanted to pull her against his chest, crush his mouth to hers, and obliterate every inch of the distance between them.

He was terrified. He wanted to lay his soul bare, to confess that ever since the night she had come into his study, ever since that breathless, desperate kiss, he had been hopelessly undone by her.

The house felt alive only when her voice echoed through its halls. Alice no longer looked at her as a guest, but as the mother she had longed for, and the thought of Norwyn Manor reverting to its hollow silence filled him with agony.

He wanted to scream at her that he didn’t want an annulment anymore... not since that kiss they shared that had confirmed to him that he cared deeply for her.

But as he looked at her expectant, fragile face, the words choked him.

How could he say any of it now? She had given her solemn word to Lady Byron, a promise to the woman who had raised her. Seraphina was bound by an unshakable sense of honor. If he forced her to choose between her duty and a husband who had dragged her into a transactional marriage, he would only inflict more pain.

He remembered how arrogant and unyielding he had been when he had confronted her about her attraction to him. He must have made her feel foolish and exposed.

If he spoke now, she would never believe him. She would see it as pity, or convenience, or a bout of madness. He had handled her heart with the hands of a brute, and he had no one to blame for this ruin but himself.

Seraphina watched him, her chest rising and falling rapidly as she waited for his response, her eyes searching his face.

William swallowed hard, his fists clenching tightly. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bear to see her hope shatter when she realized how completely he had botched everything between them.

“Fine,” William ground out, his voice choked, defeated.

He turned on his heel before he could break entirely, crossing the room. He yanked the bedchamber door open and stepped into the corridor, pulling it shut behind him.

William walked away, his heart still hammering. He figured he had built this cage with his own hands, and now he had no choice but to watch the only light in his world walk away forever.

Seeking any anchor to steady the storm raging in his chest, his footsteps instinctively turned toward the nursery wing. He needed to see Alice. He needed her chatter, her laughter, anything to pull his mind away from the devastating reality of what he was about to lose.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

“Your Grace, do you realize that King Henry VIII had six wives, and two of them lost their heads entirely?” Alice swung her legs off the edge of her bed, gesturing wildly with her feather quill. “Miss Peyton says it was all rather chaotic, but I think if a man requires six attempts at a marriage, the fault lies entirely with his own disposition. Don’t you think? What do you think? I want to know what you think.”

Seraphina sat on the chair beside the small bed, her hands folded neatly in her lap. “Indeed, sweet girl. A most tumultuous period.”

In truth, Seraphina had barely heard a word Alice said. Her mind was a stormy sea.

‘Why must love be so thoroughly, maddeningly inconvenient?’ she thought, staring blankly at the floral pattern of Alice’s wallpaper.

She recalled a passage from an old French philosopher she had read in Lady Byron’s library... something about love being a gilded madness, a poison that made wise men fools and women reckless. It was absurd. How could a single human being invoke such an overwhelming, bone-deep affection within her, while simultaneously inspiring a burning urge to strangle him with his own cravat?

She had sacrificed everything for his peace of mind. She had accepted his rules, protected his household, kept his secrets, and swallowed her own desires because he insisted upon drawing lines. She had agreed to leave, to go back to the suffocating solitude of the countryside because she thought it was what he truly wanted. Yet, he walked around his own home looking as though he wished to tear down the timber with his bare hands.

Truly, there was no pleasing a man so determined to be miserable.

She needed to write to Euphemia. She needed to write to someone who possessed a semblance of romantic wisdom, if only to ask why love had to feel like navigating a minefield blindfolded.

“—and so I told Miss Peyton that if I were Queen Catherine, I simply would have locked the palace gates,” Alice finished, looking at her expectantly. “What do you think, Your Grace? What would you have done?”

Seraphina blinked, snapping back to the present. She offered the girl an apologetic smile. “Forgive me, Alice. My mind wandered for a moment. It is getting quite late, and it is past time for sleep.”

She had originally come into the nursery to begin the task of preparing Alice for her departure, to gently ease the child into the reality that she would not be here forever. But looking at Alice’s face, her courage failed her.

“You are behaving just like His Grace,” Alice noted, pulling her blankets up to her chin with a put-upon sigh.

Seraphina paused. “What do you mean?”

“He came in here this afternoon, and he was just as distracted,” Alice said, plumping her pillow. “He didn’t hear a word about King Henry either.”

“Oh,” Seraphina murmured softly. “Was he... talking to you about history?”

“No,” Alice replied innocently. “He just sat right where you are sitting, and told me that if I could convince you to stay for a very, very long time, he would buy me the pony with the white spot on its nose that we saw at the market when I went with Mary. But I told him you weren’t going anywhere anyway, so it was a very silly bribe.”

Seraphina froze, the air leaving her lungs in a sharp gasp. “He... he said what to you, Alice?”

“He said I should ask you to stay,” Alice repeated, yawning sleepily. “I can sleep alone tonight, Your Grace. I don’t have nightmares anymore.”

“Of course, my dear,” Seraphina whispered, her heart beating a little too fast. She rose to her feet, leaned in, and placed a kiss on Alice’s forehead. “Goodnight, dear Alice.”

She stepped out into the corridor, her mind spinning in circles.

Without stopping to think, without allowing her mind to construct a single objection, Seraphina marched down the hallway directly toward the Duke’s private bedchamber. She didn’t knock. She pushed the door open and strode inside.

William stood near his side table, a cup held to his lips. He was stripped of his formal coat, cravat, and waistcoat. His white linen shirt was unbuttoned, exposed and loose, revealing his chest.

At the sound of the door crashing open, he froze, his eyes widening in stunned shock as he looked at her.

“Did something chase you?” he asked, setting the cup down.

“What did you tell Alice?” Seraphina demanded, her chest heaving as she closed the distance between them.

William went completely still. “What?”

“What did you tell Alice?” she repeated, stopping just a few paces from him, her cheeks flushed. “Did you tell her to convince me to stay? Did you offer her a pony to ask me not to leave? Did you, William?”

He stood motionless, his silence stretching.

“Say something!” Seraphina asked, her voice trembling. “Stop with the mystery! Stop with the silence and the cold stares. I have laid my heart open to you twice now; I have confessed things I swore I would never say aloud, and you stand there like an impenetrable fortress. If you do not say something meaningful to me in the next five seconds, William, I am walking out of this house and I am never coming back.”

He stared at her. She could see it happening, the shift in him, the way his hands unclenched at his sides and the breath he drew in slowly as though he were steadying himself against something. She could see his jaw working. She could see the stillness that came over him.

“I am not a man who explains himself easily in many words,” William said softly. “So it is... exceptionally difficult for me to explain to you just how hopelessly I have fallen in love with you.”

Seraphina gasped, taking a step back. The declaration settled into the room, and she did not know what to do with it.

“Is this a ploy?” she asked, her voice breathless as she searched his face. “Is this some sort of game? What is your motive, William? Because this does not sound like the man who drew lines.”

He did not answer her with words.

He breached the space between them in two steps, framing her face in his hands. The heat of his palms pressed against her jawline while his thumbs rested softly on her cheekbones, a stroke so tender it defied the volatile storm that had driven her into his room. Tilting her chin upward, he brought his lips down on hers.

It was nothing like their collision in the study, which had been pure friction, heat, and the panic of two people fighting an inescapable pull. This was deliberate. He claimed her lips patiently, intentionally, grounding the kiss with a devotion so absolute that hot tears pricked the backs of her eyes. The feeling rippled straight through her, piercing the precise emotional vault she had spent months fortifying.

When he broke the contact, his thumbs brushed over her skin. Seraphina fluttered her eyes open.

The look in his eyes defied every label she possessed. She had never seen this face. It was vulnerable, a sight so unprecedented that it robbed the air straight from her lungs.

“I am terrified,” he whispered against her skin.

Seraphina blinked, her hands resting against his bare chest, feeling the wild, rapid beat of his heart. “Terrified?”

“I am terrified, Seraphina,” he repeated, letting out a ragged breath. “That is how I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that what I feel for you is real. Nothing frightens me. When you grow up under the shadow of a man like my father, you learn never to panic. You learn to make yourself cold and untouchable.”

He rested his forehead against hers, his eyes closing for a brief moment.

“Before you walked into my life, I was a bitter, terrible man,” he confessed softly then let out a light chuckle. “I was rigid. I was callous. I did not care for anyone’s feelings. I barely tolerated my own. Jameson is a saint for not abandoning me years ago. But then you arrived with your wit, your brilliant mind, and your refusal to be intimidated by me.”

A soft smile touched his lips as he looked down at her. “Suddenly I found myself wanting to learn how to laugh again. I wanted to speak to Alice without watching her recoil. I wanted to feel warmth. I was already spellbound by the mind of E.R. Voce. Then I met you, and I like the feisty, logical Seraphina more than I like the mind of E.R Voce. How could I possibly not fall in love with you? What man alive could resist you?”

Seraphina felt as though the floor beneath her had turned to water. Her throat felt tight, her eyes stinging with tears. “Do you truly mean that?”

“With every breath in my body,” William murmured. “I always believed that love was a weakness. A poison that made wise men foolish and ruined every life it touched. I saw what my father’s hollow promises did to the women around him, and I swore I would never let anyone close enough to hurt me, or let anyone close enough that I hurt them.”

“Me too,” Seraphina whispered, a tear slipping down her cheek. “I swore the very same thing.”

“But the thought of living the rest of my life without you... The thought of this house returning to the cold, silent tomb it was before you arrived... that fear is infinitely greater than any terror of opening my heart. I want you to stay, Seraphina. I want us to be the family we were meant to be. I refuse to let this be a lie.”

Seraphina let out a trembling laugh, her chest bursting with warmth. “Me too.”

William pulled back to meet her eyes. “You... you do? I thought... I thought all you wanted was to return to the countryside to live with Lady Byron.”

“That was a last resort.” she laughed softly, shaking her head. “I only said that because I thought you were desperate to be rid of me. As much as I love Lady Byron, there is no life for me there anymore. I have entirely outgrown it.”

William beamed, a sight so breathtakingly rare that Seraphina’s heart skipped a beat. He wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, lifting her slightly off her feet as he pulled her into a tight embrace, burying his face in the crook of her neck. When he set her down, he captured her lips once more in a slow, lingering kiss that calmed the last of her nerves.

“So,” William murmured, pulling back just enough to look into her eyes. “Do we live our lives together, then? Forever?”

“Yes,” Seraphina replied softly, resting her cheek against his chest. “I would like that very much.” She paused, a small frown touching her brow. “Though... I do still worry for Lady Byron. I do not wish for her to be completely alone.”

William hummed thoughtfully, smoothing his hand over her hair. “Then we shall make it a rule to visit her every three months. Or better yet... we shall invite her to stay here. The estate is vast enough for her to have her own wing, and she may debate politics with you to her heart’s content.”

Seraphina looked up at him, her eyes beaming. “That is a wonderful idea, William. I would love that.”

“However,” William added. “I would strongly prefer that we take a proper honeymoon before any of that occurs.”

Seraphina squinted her eyes at him suspiciously, a playful smile tugging at her lips. “A honeymoon? What, pray tell, would be different about this honeymoon compared to our last?”

William leaned in close, his voice dropping. “Well... I could properly show you how to consummate a marriage. Since you were so delightfully curious in my study the other night, I believe it is only right that I demonstrate how it is done... the proper way. Together. In our bed.”

Seraphina’s cheeks flushed crimson, her eyes widening as she looked up into his handsome, unrepentant face. “William!”

He merely chuckled, pulling her against his body and pressing a soft kiss to her temple. “I promise to show you everything, my love.”

EPILOGUE

“Do you know about King Henry VIII, Lady Byron?” Alice asked, her hands clasped behind her back as she stood before the older woman. “He had six wives, and two of them lost their heads. Miss Peyton taught me about it, and then Seraphina told me even more.”

Lady Byron nodded slowly. She had barely made it through the threshold of the estate when Alice had accosted her. “I am well acquainted with King Henry. A most tumultuous sovereign. Did this Miss Peyton happen to mention his first wife, Catherine of Aragon?”

“Yes!” Alice nodded eagerly. “She said King Henry wanted to set her aside because she didn’t give him a son, but Catherine fought him for years.”

“Indeed she did,” Lady Byron said dryly. “Though few people bother to mention that before she ever married Henry, Catherine was betrothed to his elder brother, Arthur, who died when he was merely fifteen. She was left stranded in English court for years, speaking barely a word of the language, surviving on grit before she ever wore the crown.”

Alice’s wide eyes grew impossibly larger. She shook her head softly. “No... Miss Peyton didn’t tell me that at all.”

“Most history texts written by men tend to leave out the resilience of the women involved,” Lady Byron noted calmly. “If this estate possesses a half-decent library, we might look for the chronicles of the Spanish court. I could show you her actual letters.”

Alice beamed, nodding vigorously. “I would like that very much! The library is up the stairs, just down the hall!”

With that, Lady Byron offered a curt nod, and Alice eagerly led the way.

William stood near the stairs, his elbow resting against it, watching their retreating backs. Beside him, Seraphina folded her hands over her waist, her gaze tracking them.

“They just met,” she mumbled. “How did they get along so quickly when they met ten seconds ago?”

“I think you are in a better position to answer that question, Seraphina,” William answered. “You made Alice the inquisitive young lady she is now.”

William took her hand into his. “How do you think Lady Byron will take the news that you are not returning to the countryside with her?” William asked softly, turning his head to look at his wife.

Seraphina exhaled, gently squeezing his hand. “I have no idea. But the fact that she accepted our invitation to come to Norwyn Manor must count for something, doesn’t it? I was terrified she would refuse. Though... I can already see that Alice is quite taken with her. That’s a good thing. I do not think there is a single question Alice could ask that Lady Byron would not know how to answer. She is the answer to all of Alice’s inquisitive questions, even the ones I struggle to explain. That is a wonderful thing.”

William chuckled. “Right. That should be a great help.” He glanced up the stairs toward the library. “I suppose I ought to join them. Who better to navigate the collection than the one who has lived here the longest?”

“Go on, then,” Seraphina said, smiling up at him. “I shall go check with the kitchen staff to ensure the guest wing is properly prepared and dinner is set according to her preferences.”

As Seraphina turned to walk toward the domestic wing, William made his way toward the library.

He was the happiest he had ever been in his entire life. Months ago, his work had been his only refuge, an endless cycle of ledgers, files, and estate management that he used to numb the silence of his existence. Now, work had lost its hold on him entirely.

His true refuge was Seraphina.

He found himself lingering in bed every morning, wrapped in the warmth of the sheets, simply talking with her for hours while the sun filtered through the curtains. He never wanted to get up. The endless demands of his duchy could wait, spending those sacred hours wrapped around his wife was the only thing that mattered.

William pushed open the doors of the library and stepped inside. Lady Byron stood near one of the tall bookcases, running a finger along the spines.

“Your Grace,” she murmured, hearing his footsteps. “You have a lovely manor. It is quite magnificent, much larger than I had anticipated.”

William paused, his brow furrowing slightly. “You have never been here before?”

Given her past connection with his late father, he had assumed she had set foot in the house at least once.

“No,” Lady Byron replied smoothly, turning to face him. “This is my very first time visiting.”

“Fascinating,” William admitted, crossing his arms over his chest. “Does that mean the only place my father ever met you was at the cottage?”

“Yes,” she said placing both hands behind her. “That cottage was the only place he ever allowed us to exist. I suppose I should have realized much earlier that he was never going to take me seriously, keeping me hidden away in a small dwelling where society could never see us.”

William’s expression sobered. He lowered his head, not wanting to continue the line of conversation so as not to upset her any further.

“I have not forgotten what you did, Lady Byron,” William said, changing the subject. “I haven’t forgotten how you frightened my wife. I understand how Seraphina was able to forgive you. She possesses a heart far kinder than mine, but I do not like the idea of what you put her through. Even if it is not my place to grant forgiveness on her behalf, I am not sure I can simply let it pass.”

He took a small breath, looking at her directly. “However... I am bound to admit one thing. I am grateful those letters brought us together. If you had not sent them, Seraphina would never have broken into my study, and I would never have met her. For that outcome alone, I am profoundly glad.”

Lady Byron turned her head, her sharp stare fixing upon him with an intensely strange, calculating gaze.

William frowned slightly beneath her scrutiny. “What is it? What are you thinking?”

“Seraphina is not coming back to live with me in the countryside, is she?” Lady Byron asked plainly.

William did not offer a verbal response. He simply met her gaze, giving her a knowing look.

Lady Byron let out a resigned sigh. “I figured as much the moment I received her letter inviting me here. A blind man could have seen that what existed between the two of you was far from a mere arrangement. When she looked at you... it was the way I once looked at your father. I know that look all too well, and you were far too defensive of her that day in my drawing room. It did not take much to put two and two together.”

“Are you upset about it?” William asked directly.

“I do not get upset over such things these days,” Lady Byron replied. “Though I will admit... I do not particularly care for the fact that one of my girls has married a Carlton.”

William raised an eyebrow. “Why is that?”

“It is nothing personal against you,” she said softly. “I do not know you well enough to judge your character. It is simply the memory attached to the name.”

“I am not my father, Viscountess,” he said.

“I can tell,” she answered. “If Seraphina is happy, that is truly all that matters to me. I trust her completely, and I know she will keep in touch. Receiving her invitation proved to me that the door will always be open for me to visit whenever I wish. Perhaps it is time I face my own fears and re-enter society a bit more, now that my girls have paved the way.”

William felt a knot of tension uncoil in his chest. “I am glad you see it that way. Seraphina was remarkably nervous to tell you.”

“I would expect nothing less from her,” Lady Byron said, her tone softening. “Out of all three of my girls, Seraphina is the one who cares most deeply about what I think and feel.”

William nodded in understanding. “So, what will you do now? Will you return to the countryside, or stay with us for a while? You are welcome to remain as long as you like.”

“No.” Lady Byron shook her head. “I will stay only a few days. Seraphina is still a newlywed, and I shall give her the space to enjoy her new family life. I intend to go stay with Leonora at Lord Sterling’s estate. His health is deteriorating quickly,” Lady Byron explained. “Euphemia, his niece, is with child, so she cannot make the travel to see him as often, and Leonora is the only one in that big house, watching over him. I wish to be there to assist, and I want to spend time with Leonora as well. She is the last of my girls who remains unmarried, and we need our time as a family. Besides... she is getting closer and closer to the truth.”

William’s brows drew together in confusion. “The truth? What truth?”

Lady Byron titled her head. “You will know in due time, Your Grace. Or you may simply ask your wife.”

Before William could press her further, Alice came running towards them, her governess, Miss Peyton trailing at a distance behind her.

“We found it! We found the book!” Alice declared triumphantly, holding up a dusty, leather-bound volume. “You must tell me the story now, Lady Byron! Please.”

Lady Byron smiled, taking the volume from the child’s hands. “You are an eager one, aren’t you? I like that. Your mind is ripe for knowledge. Very well, let us see what Catherine of Aragon has to teach us.”

“We can sit near the window, where Her Grace always writes,” Alice said, leading her away.

William gave them a polite nod and withdrew from the room, leaving them to their own world. He walked down the long, sunlit hallway, searching for his wife. He found Seraphina standing near the dining hall, speaking animatedly to the housekeeper about the evening menu.

“—and please make sure the tart is not overly sweet,” Seraphina was saying, her hands gesturing lightly. “She does not care for heavy sugars, so perhaps a light lemon preserve would be best... Oh, and we should check the guest chambers once more⁠—”

William stepped up behind her, wrapping his arms gently around her waist and pulling her back against his chest.

“Calm down, my love,” William murmured into her hair, his chin resting on her shoulder.

“I should be calm, should I not?” she whispered, shutting her eyes as she leaned back into him.

“Yes. Let the staff do their work,” he said and placed a peck on the side of her neck. “She already knows.”

Seraphina went still in his arms, turning her head to look up at him in surprise. “She... she knows?”

“She claims she figured it out the moment she received your letter,” William said, a smile touching his lips. “She knows you’re not going back.”

Seraphina let out a long breath, a chuckle bubbling up from her lips as she leaned back against him. “Of course she knows. She isn’t a child. Was she upset?”

William shook his head. “She understands. She wants to stay a few days, and then go see your sister, Leonora, and take care of Lord Sterling.”

“He is quite sick,” Seraphina sighed. “I should visit him too. He really helped the three of us when we first arrived in Mayfair. He was accommodating, not taking into consideration the fact that, technically, he is only related to Effie. He treated all of us well.”

“I’ll go with you,” William said, pulling her back into his embrace. She wrapped her arms around his neck. William held her tight, his heart brimming with joy that filled every corner of his soul.

He leaned forward, propped her head up and captured her lips in a sweet, short kiss. It was a kiss full of promises, untethered joy, and the certainty of their future.

“I love you, Seraphina,” William whispered against her lips, his hands framing her face. “Forever.”

Seraphina smiled, her cheeks turning their usual pink. “I love you, William. Forever.”

William looked down at her, taking in the small, triumphant tilt of her chin. For a man who had spent his entire life measuring safety in terms of distance and control, surrender had once seemed like a terrifying prospect. Yet here, in the swell of her presence, he felt no loss of footing, only the happiness of a man who had finally stopped running.

Slowly, he let out all the breath in his lungs, resting his cheek against Seraphina’s hair, content to let the rest of the world keep its logic while he held the only truth that mattered.

The End?

EXTENDED EPILOGUE

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PREVIEW: TWO BLESSINGS FOR HIS DUCHESS

Turn on to the next page to read Two Blessings For His Duchess, the previous book in this series!

“Of all the beds in this house, you were caught in mine. And I will protect my daughters from this scandal, Euphemia.”

Caught with a lady in his bedchamber, Duke Nathaniel cannot allow scandal to threaten his daughters' futures. Marrying Euphemia is the only solution... and the most alluring one.

CHAPTER ONE

“How is your dear uncle keeping?” Mrs. Pembrook asked with a warm, solicitous smile.

Euphemia smiled back. She was, if she was honest with herself, simply grateful for anyone who approached her with a smile rather than a studied avoidance of eye contact. “Quite well, thank you. He rarely leaves the house at present, but he is comfortable, and the physicians seem pleased with his progress.”

“Yes, yes.” Mrs. Pembrook patted her hand. “And you are managing? All on your own? I mean, without... well.” She tilted her head. “It must be terribly difficult.”

“Not especially,” Euphemia said.

It was a lie. However, she had been telling it for long enough that it came out smooth and even. In her experience, a smooth lie was the next best thing to the truth.

“You are so brave,” Mrs. Pembrook said. Her eyes were very bright and very warm. “I always said so to Lady Alderton. Whatever one might think of the circumstances, Miss Vane has remarkable composure.”

Whatever one might think of the circumstances?

Euphemia swallowed, the muscles in her throat tight enough to ache. For a brief moment, she had been silly enough to forget that she was the talk of the ton. That ever since she walked into the ballroom, eyes had been following her into every corner of the room. It was the reason she was standing tucked away like a wallflower. She had been silly enough to think that Mrs. Pembrook had approached her truly out of care, rather than a predatory need to pick at the scabs of a scandal.

She was an incurable idiot.

“How very kind,” Euphemia managed to say, her voice tightening even more. Her hand dropped to her side. Her index finger found a fold of her silk dress and began to twist the fabric into a tight, nervous coil.

“One does wonder, of course.” Mrs. Pembrook leaned closer. She lowered her voice just enough to ensure that everyone nearby would listen harder. “Whether Lord Finch had any warning. About the family situation. Your father’s affairs, I mean. One hears things.”

“Right,” Euphemia said, scanning the ballroom for an escape. Her finger twisted harder into her skirt.

“Only that it must have come as rather a shock to him. If he had been misled, in any way, about what he might expect,” Mrs. Pembrook added. “Or did something else happen?”

Euphemia thought about Lord Finch. She did this rarely, and when she did, she did it with a careful, gingerly touch one might use on a festering wound. She remembered the way he had looked at her at the end, how the warmth in his eyes curdling into a cold, sharp disgust as he spat the word tricked as if it were a stone he was shooting directly onto her chest.

A surge of heat climbed her neck. Her hand flew from her skirt to her throat, her fingers beginning a rhythmic, desperate rub against her collarbone.

“Mrs. Pembrook, what a lovely brooch. Is that new?” she asked, a fickle attempt to change the subject.

Mrs. Pembrook blinked. “I... yes, actually. But as I was saying, about Lord Finch. I mean, it is true that he left you at the —”

“Charming. The Brooch,” Euphemia cut her off. “You must excuse me, I think Lady Merrick needs my attention.”

“Oh, but you must not rush off.” Mrs. Pembrook’s hand closed around Euphemia’s wrist. “I only meant to say that I don’t blame you, naturally. Your father’s situation was hardly your doing. I mean, his death was so awful, and the...”

“Why would you blame me?” Euphemia blurted, feeling the heat rise in her throat. “What does that have to do with Lord Finch?”

Mrs. Pembrook’s smile did not disappear exactly. It thinned, and something more sinister took its place. “So, did you trick him?” She asked. The sweetness was gone from her voice, replaced by a cold, clinical curiosity. “Was that truly what happened? Because that is what everyone is saying, my dear.”

“Euphemia.”

A hand touched Euphemia’s shoulder before she could react. She turned to find Emily Merrick standing by her side. Emily was the Duchess of Carrowell and her close friend who had navigated her own share of societal minefields, Emily possessed an uncanny sense for when the atmosphere turned predatory and Euphemia was very thankful for it.

“There you are, I have been searching all over for you.” Emily beamed, then turned to Mrs. Pembrook. “I am so sorry to steal her, Mrs. Pembrook. I am afraid I’m in dire need of Miss Vane’s assistance with some arrangements. Hosting is quite the work.”

Emily tucked her arm through Euphemia’s and pulled her away. She steered Euphemia firmly through the drawing room, past the fireplace, and toward the shadows near the library door.

“Thank you,” Euphemia whispered. She felt as though she had been holding her breath for an hour.

“How long had that been going on?” Emily asked.

“Long enough for my blood to boil.” Euphemia let out a long breath. Her hand was still at her throat, her fingers rubbing the skin red. “I thought she had come over to talk about my uncle. Her husband works for him, so I thought she was concerned.”

Emily looked at her with pity. “Oh, well. I cannot blame you. But Mrs. Pembrook can be vicious when she is fishing for gossip.”

“I know that now.” Euphemia looked out at the room. She was scanning the crowd in segments to see who was watching. It was exhausting. “She is not wrong, you know. That is the most irritating part.”

“She is wrong about quite a lot of it,” Emily insisted. “You have to stop thinking about it, Effie. It happened months ago.”

“I shall be fine. I am only tired.”

Emily blinked slowly and angled her head, her gaze sweeping over Euphemia. She reached out and gently caught Euphemia’s hand, pulling it away from her collarbone. “There is no sense in giving those vultures the satisfaction of seeing you so flustered, Euphemia Vane.”

“I am not flustered,” Euphemia lied, though her heart was drumming a fast rhythm against her ribs.

“You are a terrible liar. It is one of your most endearing and inconvenient traits.” Emily let go of her hand but remained close, her presence a shield against the curious glances drifting their way. “You have to stop thinking about it. Lord Finch doesn’t deserve your peace.”

“He does not have my peace,” she argued further.

“Effie...”

“I will be all right.” Euphemia laughed awkwardly. “It was months ago, Emily. Trust me, I am fine. Why else would I have agreed to attend your wonderful ball?”

Emily nodded. “Come then. There is syllabub on the buffet, and Lord Hartfield has just arrived. He is considerably more handsome than any man has a right to be at this hour. You should at least look at him, it might improve your mood.”

Euphemia laughed despite herself. “I have no interest in Lord Hartfield.”

“You have no interest in anything at present, which is precisely the problem.” Emily steered her gently away from the window and back toward the warmth of the room. “You are at a ball, Effie. There is music and good wine and people who are very pleased to see you.”

“There are people who are very pleased to discuss me,” Euphemia corrected. “That is a different thing.”

“Then ignore them.”

Euphemia did not answer. She wanted to say that ignoring them was considerably easier as a suggestion than as an undertaking. That she could not simply decide not to hear a thing when the thing was happening at a volume designed to be heard, that composure was not the same as comfort no matter how convincingly she wore it. She wanted to say that she had been ignoring them for three months and it still bothered her that everyone always had something to say.

She said none of this. Instead, she took the glass Emily pressed into her hand and she looked out at the room. She did the thing she had become very good at, which was to arrange her face into an expression that bore no resemblance whatsoever to what was happening behind it.

Across the room, a woman she did not know leaned toward a woman she did and said something behind her fan. The woman she did know laughed. Neither of them looked at Euphemia directly.

She was so very tired of people not looking at her directly.

“You cannot hide in corners forever,” Emily said softly.

“I am not hiding. I am merely... conserving my resources.” Euphemia’s hand dropped to the side of her gown, her finger immediately diving into a fold of her dress to twist.

“You say that now, but you are the lady who came to London almost a year ago with stars in her eyes,” Emily reminded her, leaning closer. “You were the one who told me that you wouldn’t settle for anything less than a love match. You wanted the poetry and the grand gestures. You didn’t want to be like your sisters, who have given up on the idea of love. Which I think is preposterous given how young they are.”

Euphemia flinched. “I was young a year ago. I was also quite stupid.”

“You weren’t stupid. You were sincere. I would like to think that Lord Finch saw that. Even though he might have taken advantage of it.”

“He saw a target,” Euphemia corrected. “He saw a girl who was so desperate to believe in a fairy tale. He acted the part of the devoted suitor because he knew exactly what I wanted to hear. He took my sincerity and used it to hide what he was truly after.”

She looked away, her eyes fixed on the heavy library door across the hall. The memory of the wedding morning felt like a physical weight on her body. She could still feel the phantom itch of the lace veil she had worn while sitting on the edge of her bed, watching the clock.

“I spent three hours in that room,” Euphemia said, her voice trembling slightly. “Did I tell you that? Waiting for a man who had already fled the city. Now, I am living in my uncle’s house, playing nursemaid to a man who barely recognizes me, and trying to avoid women like Mrs. Pembrook who think my ruin is a dinner party story.”

“How is your uncle?” Emily asked, patting her on the back.

“The same.” Euphemia’s voice softened. “He is comfortable. He does not leave the house now, and I think he has stopped expecting to. Dr. Harwell comes on Tuesdays. We read together in the evenings when he is well enough.” She smiled... a real one, small and unguarded in a way the others had not been. “He pretends not to enjoy the novels. He has opinions about every character and voices them at considerable length.”

“He sounds exactly like you.”

“He is considerably more stubborn than I am,” Euphemia said. She straightened her spine, forcing the vulnerability back down. “I don’t know, Emily… I thought I could find something real here. But the only thing real about the ton is how quickly they turn on you when the money runs out.”

She swallowed hard and downed the content of her glass before looking back up again. “I do not think I am fine.”

“I know,” Emily whispered.

“I think… I’m scared,” Euphemia said and shook her head. “I… all of this… Lord Finch jilting me at the altar, and the rumors that I am a desperate huntress trying to trap a man to save us from ruin.. It is going to affect my sisters. They have done nothing wrong.”

Euphemia tried to take in a deep breath but found the air was too heavy. “My sisters only came to London because I asked them to. Seraphina gave up her research, Leonora left behind a perfectly comfortable life in the country, and they did it because I wanted company and I was too selfish to come alone.” She stopped. “Now everything that follows me follows them too. That is what I cannot forgive myself for.”

“Neither of them even wants a husband,” Euphemia continued, her voice dropping to a low, jagged whisper. “They have made that perfectly clear, but I foolishly thought I could change their minds about love.”

“You can!” Emily chimed in. “Euphemia, you are speaking as though you’re running out of time.”

“I am,” she said. “What if Lady Byron comes to London and sees all of this? Hears all the rumors? She will force us back to the country. I would have failed.” She turned her glass slowly in her hand. “Just last week, Seraphina went to Lady Holt’s literary gathering and three women she had been close with suddenly found reasons to be elsewhere in the room. Then Leonora, who could charm the very birds from the trees if she wanted to, confided in me that Mrs. Cavendish’s daughter has stopped calling altogether.”

She paused. “Their lives are changing because of me, and the worst of it is that they will never say a word. They are too loyal and far too proud to admit they are being iced out, preferring to pretend nothing is wrong rather than let me see the damage I’ve caused.”

The music played on. Someone laughed too loudly near the fireplace and the sound landed wrong, too bright against what Euphemia had just said.

“The rumors are the cruelest part,” she said. “That I was desperate. That I knew about my father’s debts and concealed them to trap a wealthy man, because what other explanation could there be for a woman of my circumstances pursuing a husband? What happened to my father was awful, but I never lied to anyone. I never deceived anyone. If anything I am the deceived. Everything is all a lie. Lord Finch was a lie. London is a lie. Love is a lie. Redemption is a lie. It’s all a lie. Everything!”

“Effie!” Emily’s voice was quiet but firm, cutting through the frantic spiral of Euphemia’s words. She reached out, grabbing Euphemia by the shoulders and giving her a firm, grounding squeeze. “Calm yourself. Breathe.”

Her touch broke through the hot, embarrassing momentum of what had just come out of Euphemia’s mouth in the middle of a ball, in a room full of people, where she had spent the entire evening performing composure.

Euphemia blinked, her chest heaving as she sucked in a lungful of the cool air. She hadn’t realized she was shaking. She hadn’t realized her voice had risen to a pitch that could easily carry through the room and straight into the ears of the very vultures she was trying to avoid.

“Forgive me,” she said, very quietly.

“There is nothing to forgive.” Emily shook her head. “You’re frustrated and you have every right to be.”

“I am fine,” she said, which was so obviously untrue that Emily did not even dignify it with a response.

She was not fine. She had not been fine for some time, and the effort of pretending otherwise had accumulated in ways she had not fully accounted for until this moment.

She thought about where she had come from. Not London... not the borrowed rooms near her uncle’s house, but before all of that. She thought back to the quiet, sun-drenched halls of their country estate where she had grown up under Lady Byron’s firm but fair hand. It was the only house she had ever truly thought of as home, with its crooked garden gate, its library that smelled of old paper and its particular quality of quiet that London did not have and never would.

She thought about growing up there with Seraphina and Leonora. They weren’t sisters by blood, but by a shared circumstance that had forged a bond stronger than any family tree. They had been happy in their own little district, a trio of companions who needed nothing from the world but each other’s company and a good library.

Lady Byron had taken them in when they were children and given them a life that was small by London’s standards but complete by every other measure, and it had been enough.

It had been more than enough.

It had been Euphemia’s idea to leave it all behind.

She had been the one who had read too many novels and believed too firmly in the idea that there was something waiting for them beyond Lady Byron’s garden gate. She had been the one to convince them that they deserved a debut, that they shouldn’t spend their lives hidden away because of the shadows their fathers had left behind. She had been so sure she could protect them. She thought that if she played the game perfectly, if she found a love match that would secure their status, the ton would forget the past.

‘I made a mistake’, she thought. ‘A massive, arrogant mistake.’

She had expected the talk about the Byron sisters returning after so many years. She had prepared herself to fend off the questions about how their fathers had passed away and the state of their inheritance.

She had known, walking into it, that people would talk about her family. The late Lord Vane’s daughter, raised by Lady Byron with two other girls, after her father’s spectacular financial collapse and death, coming to London after years in the country. She had known that would be the story, had prepared herself for it, had told herself it was manageable.

A curiosity, nothing more. People would remark upon it and move on to the next thing.

But she hadn’t prepared for Lord Finch.

No… Nothing had prepared her for Lord Finch. She hadn’t prepared for a man to look her in the eye, speak of devotion, and then systematically dismantle her reputation by leaving her at the altar.

Now, every room they entered felt like a battlefield they were losing.

“Maybe we should just go back,” Euphemia said, her voice small and hollow. “Growing up, all I ever wanted was to leave the country home, dreaming of love. Lady Byron was strict with us, and sometimes, unbearable, but it was not as terrible as this. Maybe I should just pack our trunks, crawl back to the country with my tail between my legs, and admit to Lady Byron that she was right. We should never have come to London. It’s a cruel place.”

“Is that truly what you want?” Emily asked.

“No,” Euphemia answered after a short pause, her eyes flying open. “I don’t know what I want.”

“Then don’t think about it right now.” Emily squeezed her hand once and released it. “We will figure it out, Effie. But for tonight, you’ve done enough fending off of vultures.”

Emily squeezed her hands one last time. “I have to return to the ballroom. I’m certain, His Grace will be looking for me, and if I’m gone too long, he’ll likely start a search party. If you find you’ve had quite enough of the ton for one evening, don’t feel obligated to return to the floor. We can have own little party tomorrow. Just the two of us. Retire to your room in the West Wing. The guest suites there are quiet, and the staff has already prepared the hearths. I’ll try to check on you before I go to bed, or first thing in the morning. Is that all right?”

Euphemia felt a surge of gratitude that threatened to bring back the very tears she had just suppressed. “Thank you, Emily. For letting me talk and talk until I made sense of the noise.”

“You can always talk and talk… to me,” Emily assured her with a wink. “I’ll talk to you later.”

Euphemia watched her go, threading her way through the room, and then she was gone into the crowd and the party closed around the space she had left.

Euphemia walked towards the other direction until she found a stray bottle of wine on a side table and poured herself a glass. Then another. The wine was crisp, cold, and did a magnificent job of dulling the sharp edges of the whispers that still seemed to echo in the hallway.

By the time the clock struck midnight, the fatigue had settled deep into her marrow. She couldn’t stay a moment longer. Every laugh from the ballroom felt like a needle prick, and every shadow looked like it was watching her.

She set her glass down and began the long trek toward her room. Her head felt heavy, her thoughts drifting like autumn leaves in a stream. She passed the grand staircase and navigated the labyrinth of corridors, her footsteps muffled by the thick Persian rugs. She was so focused on the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other that she barely noticed the change in the decor, the way the portraits on the walls grew older and the air grew stiller.

She turned a corner, her hand trailing along the wainscoting as she made her way toward the East Wing of the house. The silence here was absolute, save for the distant, rhythmic ticking of a longcase clock. She found the first door that looked familiar, turned the handle, and stumbled inside.

She didn’t bother with the lamps. She didn’t even call for a maid. In the dim moonlight filtering through the drapes, she kicked off her slippers and collapsed straight onto the bed, sinking into the velvet coverlet.

She was asleep before her head fully hit the pillow, unaware that the room smelled not of lavender and guest linens, but of sandalwood and old books.

CHAPTER TWO

“You are in my bed.”

Euphemia did not open her eyes. She was warm, the pillow was exceptional, and the voice… though severe, was also rather nice. It carried a low-frequency rumble that seemed to vibrate through the mattress and settle right in Euphemia’s marrow.

It was a lovely way to wake up, truly.

Instead of opening her eyes, she drifted in that hazy, golden space between sleep and reality, a small, tired smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

‘How vivid’, she thought. Most of her dreams involved the likes of Mrs. Pembrook chasing her with a giant ledger, or Lady Byron, her godmother warning her not to ruin everyone’s life, but this… this was new.

A man with a voice like aged brandy telling her she was in his bed.

“Miss? Would you like to explain yourself?”

Euphemia’s brow furrowed. The dream-man was remarkably surly. She forced one eye open, then the other, blinking against the light that flooded the room.

A figure was silhouetted, standing over the edge of the bed. He was tall. Impossibly tall. She really was dreaming of men now. That was new. That was a development. Three months of spectacular romantic failure and her mind had apparently decided the solution was to manufacture one while she was unconscious, which said something about her current circumstances. She appreciated the effort. She did not appreciate the tone.

She pulled the blanket up, feeling, a pang of profound self-pity. ‘Oh, Effie’, she thought, “You really have reached a pathetic new low. You are dreaming of exceptionally large, brooding ones who look like they’ve been sculpted out of granite and bad intentions.’

She blinked again, trying to clear the wine-induced fog. But as her vision sharpened, the dream didn’t dissolve. In fact, it became alarmingly detailed. She could see the crisp white of a linen shirt, unbuttoned at the throat. She could see the shadow of a jawline that looked sharp enough to draw blood.

Euphemia blinked at him.

Well, she thought. If she was going to imagine a man, at least she had imagined a good one. Her subconscious, apparently, had standards.

She blinked again.

He was still there.

“You’re a man,” she mumbled, her eyebrows furrowing.

“And you are a woman, in a man’s bed,” the dream-man responded.

“Is this a dream?” she asked, still unsure if her mind was playing tricks on her. She had never drunk that much wine before.

“Would you like me to pinch you?”

Euphemia squinted, her pulse giving a sluggish, confused thrum. In her defense, the wine had been excellent, and the sunlight was doing very generous things to the stranger’s silhouette. He was broad… excessively so, and the way he loomed over her felt less like a threat and more like a haunting.

He reached past her and gripped the bedpost. The wood cracked against his palm, and he shook it, the vibration moved through the mattress and directly through Euphemia.

Euphemia sat up, clutching the covers to her chest. “Good heavens, what on God’s green earth are you doing in my room?”

The fog lifted immediately. She was not dreaming... had never been dreaming, and was in fact standing in front of a man with her hair in her face and her sight still a little blurry.

The man stood exactly where he was, looking down at her with a puzzled look on his face.

“You’re Miss Vane,” he said, tilting his head as he studied her.

Euphemia’s brain stalled for a second, and then the indignation hit her like a bucket of ice water. There was only one reason a man would have the effrontery to barge into a lady’s room so early in the morning and show such a blatant disregard for propriety. He must have heard the rumors. He must have listened to every whispered lie about her imminent ruin or her desperate search for a match, and assumed that her circumstances gave him the confidence to treat her like common prey.

Of all the insufferable, presumptuous, small-minded⁠—

She threw the blanket down and huffed, turning to glare at him.

“I am indeed Miss Vane!” she snapped. “Who let you in here?”

The man didn’t flinch. He didn’t even look surprised. He just watched her with a heavy, unblinking gaze that made her feel even more hysterical. “I⁠—”

“What did you think?” Euphemia climbed to her knees on the mattress, her hair spilling over her shoulders in a wild tangle. “Did you think it would be easy? Did you truly believe that a lapse in my social standing equated to a lapse in my cognitive functions?”

“Cognitive functions?”

“Did you think that because a man of consequence decided I was dispensable, that made me so? Did you think a woman’s value is so dependent on whether some title-bearing coward chose to honor his word that the moment he didn’t, any other man could simply walk through her door and find her grateful for the attention?”

Euphemia took in a breath. “I believe it was Mary Wollstonecraft that wrote that women are rendered weak and wretched not by nature but by circumstance, sir, and I will not be your convenient circumstance.”

“Why on earth are you bringing Wollstonecraft into this?” he questioned.

She pointed at him. “She also wrote that it is vain to expect virtue from women until they are in some degree independent of men, which I intend to be, at the earliest possible opportunity, so whatever conclusion you have drawn from whatever you have heard about me, I suggest you revise it immediately because I am not broken, I am not desperate, and I am not remotely interested in being anyone’s opportunistic consolation prize!”

He looked at her for a long moment then he let out a loud breath. “Are you familiar with Mary Wollstonecraft personally, or only through correspondence?”

Euphemia stared at him. “She is dead.”

“That would explain the correspondence, then.”

“Are you making a joke?” She squinted her eyes.

“I am...” he started to say. “... trying very hard not to.” He tilted his head, his gaze sweeping over her wild hair and her indignant, flushed face. “Actually, I had one question. Is it a frequent occurrence for your mental faculties to completely desert you at sunrise, or is this a special performance curated just for me?”

Euphemia froze. Her hand dropped an inch. “I would like you to leave, sir.”

“I cannot do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because this is my room,” he announced. “And you’re in it.

Euphemia opened her mouth to deliver a stinging retort about the absurdity of his claim, but the syllable died in her throat. Her gaze, previously fixed on his irritatingly handsome face, finally slipped past his shoulder to take in the rest of her surroundings.

There were no dainty watercolor landscapes on the walls like she had seen when she had arrived the day before. Instead, massive oil paintings of stern-faced ancestors stared down at her with open disapproval. The delicate chintz curtains she remembered from the night before were actually heavy, emerald-green velvet, and on the mahogany nightstand beside her sat a half-empty glass of sweet wine was a silver pocket watch.

“This…” she said, in a voice that had lost a considerable amount of its earlier authority. “…is not my room.”

“It is not.”

He looked down at her... at the desperate way she was clutching his coverlet to her chin, then looked away and scoffed.

“You can drop the theatrical display of bewilderment, Miss Vane. The performance is entirely unnecessary.”

Euphemia blinked, her throat tightening. “Performance?”

“Let us not insult each other’s intelligence,” he said. “I know exactly who you are. One hears things.”

The vague edge in his voice made her completely alert. She slowly slid her legs out from under the heavy coverlet, standing up from the bed. She kept her chin high, though she was intensely aware of her bare feet on his polished floorboards and the state of her hair.

“Then since you know who I am,” she said. “You will understand that I have had quite enough scandal to last me several lifetimes and have absolutely no interest in manufacturing more.” She clasped her hands in front of her. “Because whatever conclusion you have arrived at is entirely false. Last night, I drank a rather excessive amount of very sweet wine. I did not realize it possessed such a... delayed potency. When I left the ballroom, I simply made my way upstairs, found a door, set my glass down, and went straight to sleep. I did not light a lamp. I did not summon a maid. I was simply too exhausted to notice the decor. This morning is the first time I have opened my eyes since midnight, and frankly, I am quite astonished that it is already dawn. I had not expected to sleep so well.”

The man shifted his weight, crossing his arms over his broad chest. His expression unyielding.

“So,” he said. “I am expected to believe that you did not come here to camp out on my bed and wait for my return in the dark? That you had no grand design to ensure I found you here? That you did not plan to be discovered in this room when I returned.”

“That is precisely what I am telling you.”

“That the entire thing was an accident?”

“Yes.”

“You lost your way?”

“Yes.”

“Do I look like a fool, Miss Vane?” he asked and squinted his eyes. “You expect me to believe that?”

“Do you honestly believe I did this deliberately?” She took a step forward, her hands curling into small fists at her sides. She knew how terrible this looked. She understood that a strange woman in a gentleman’s bed chamber required an explanation, and she had been entirely prepared to offer a dignified, deeply contrite apology. But his complete refusal to grant her even a shred of benefit of the doubt was infuriating.

“Sir, I would never rope any man into a scandal,” she said, her voice tight. “It is entirely against my principles.”

“Do you want to know what I think?” he asked.

“No, Sir. I do not.”

“I’ll tell you anyway,” he continued, glancing down at the floor before meeting her eyes. “I think that a cornered woman will resort to remarkable logic to justify an insane plan. I am not a man who trades in gossip, Miss Vane, but even I could not escape the whispers at the ball last night. Everyone was talking about it. I know you are ruined. I know about Lord Finch, and I know you find yourself in an incredibly desperate position. But trying to trap a man of my standing in a scandal to force a marriage? It is a cruel thing to do.”

He took a slow step toward her, looking down at her like a strict schoolmaster addressing a particularly disappointing pupil. “No matter how desperate your circumstances are, no matter how much the world has backed you into a corner, one does not use these tactics. It is low. It is a thoroughly unprincipled way to navigate society.”

Euphemia stood entirely bewildered. What could she possibly say to defend herself? To an outside observer… to a judge as severe as him, the evidence was damning.

Yet, the absolute arrogance of his lecture made something fierce snap inside her. Desperate? Yes. Clumsy with directions? Clearly. But she was raised by Lady Byron, and she would not be lectured on morality by a man who looked at her as if she were a common thief.

“A low thing to do?” she echoed, her voice dropping as she took a step toward him, matching his stare. “How comforting it must be, Sir, to view the world from a height where a simple wrong turn is elevated to a malicious conspiracy. I assure you, if I were going to compromise a man of the ton for his fortune, I would have been more strategic with my pick. You would most certainly not be on the list.”

Before he could even process the remark, Euphemia snatched up her stray slippers from the floor, turned sharply on her bare heel, and marched directly toward the door.

She reached the heavy oak paneling, her fingers wrapping around the cold brass handle, desperate for the hallway and the sanity it promised. But right as she began to turn it, a sudden movement cut off her escape.

A hand clamped gently but firmly around her forearm.

The touch was a shock to her system. After the biting winter chill of his words, his skin was incredibly, inexplicably warm through the thin fabric of her sleeve. Euphemia held her breath as his fingers closed around her arm. The heat of him sent a violent shiver straight up her spine. It was a tremor so pronounced she knew for certain he must have felt it vibrate against his palm.

Panic flared in her chest. She turned her head sharply, ready to demand her release, but the words died instantly on her tongue. Up close, without the room’s vastness separating them, she was forced to peer directly into his eyes.

They were green. A striking, dark, but vivid green, flecked with brilliant amber patterns that seemed to catch the morning sun like crushed emeralds. She found herself studying the fine, sharp lines around his mouth, the dark sweep of his lashes, and the nearly perfect symmetry of his face.

He didn’t look like a real person. He looked like an illustration brought to life. She had read, in the novels she kept on the highest shelf so that Seraphina could not raise her eyebrows at them, about heroes who looked like this. She had thought those descriptions fanciful. She had thought the authors were performing.

Specifically, he looked like the brooding, tempestuous anti-heroes found within the pages of Mrs. Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho or the dark, magnetic figures in Lady Caroline Lamb’s Glenarvon, the very books she had devoured in the quiet libraries of the country, dreaming of a world filled with grand, tragic passions. He had that same dangerous, poetic beauty, the kind that popular writers used to ruin the senses of sensible young women.

For a terrifying second, she simply stared, entirely paralyzed by the sheer aesthetic perfection of the man holding her captive.

Then, the absurdity of the moment rushed back, shattering the spell. Her jaw tightened, and she wrenched her mind back from the dangerous territory of romantic poetry.

“What do you think you are doing?” she demanded, her voice shaking as she tried to pull her arm from his grasp. “Release me at once!”

“So you could do what?” he asked.

“Leave,” said Euphemia. “Which is what a person does when they wish to no longer be somewhere.”

“You would be executing a social suicide,” he revealed. He didn’t let go of her hand, almost as if he didn’t trust her not to bolt the second he released her. The proximity between them was absurd, she was practically pinned between his chest and the door, the sharp scent of his sandalwood soap warring with the lingering aroma of the disastrous wine. “Are you still intoxicated? Perhaps that’s the reason you’re not thinking properly.”

“I am thinking!” she hissed, though her eyes were still traitorously darting to the flecks in his emerald gaze. “I am thinking that you are incredibly rude!”

“Well, I am thinking of my own peace of mind,” Nathaniel countered. “Do not think I am stopping you to be nice, Miss Vane or that I have fallen for your schemes. If you want to ruin your own life, that is your choice. But you will not drag my name into the mess with you.”

Euphemia’s anger paused, replaced by shock. “Your name?”

“My name,” he repeated, his jaw tightening as he looked down at her. “If anyone sees you leaving my bed chamber looking like this, society will not just blame you. I would be forced to be involved. High society loves nothing more than forcing a duke into marriage over a scandal. By tonight, I would have your family knocking on my door, demanding that I marry you just because you took a wrong turn after too much wine. If that is truly what happened.”

He leaned a bit closer, using his height to keep her from moving. “Or perhaps, this is your end goal?” he asked, looking at her suspiciously. “You want people to see you leave my bedchamber?”

“You are delusional,” she retorted, fuming.

“I have spent years avoiding women who scheme, Miss Vane. You will stay right here until I tell you it is safe to leave. If you ruin your life out there, that is your business. But if you ruin it in my hallway, it becomes my problem too.”

The complete selfishness of his logic was so shocking that Euphemia could only stare at him. “You are a deeply selfish man,” she whispered, feeling insulted but knowing he was completely right. If she walked out now, they would both be caught in the same disaster.

She forced herself to take a deep, calming breath. The hot anger in her chest began to fade, replaced by a cold, hard dose of reality. He was right. If even a single maid saw her stepping out of the Duke’s private hallway at this hour, the gossip would spread like wildfire. The ton would instantly brand her a ruined woman, and she simply could not survive another scandal. Her family could not take another public humiliation after what happened with Lord Finch.

She needed to get back to the West Wing, and she needed to do it immediately, before Emily woke up and sent someone to look for her for breakfast.

Euphemia swallowed her pride and looked up at him, her voice much softer now. “Very well. Instead of standing here throwing insults at me, what do you suggest we do? We need a proper plan.”

He let go of her arm, though he stayed close. “A plan requires cooperation, Miss Vane. Can you manage that without quoting any more dead authors?”

“If you can manage to stop acting like a tyrant, yes,” she shot back. “Here is what we will do. You will step out into the hallway first. Walk down to the corner, check the grand staircase, and make sure the coast is entirely clear. If there are no maids and no guests, you give me a signal, and I will run straight back to the West Wing. No one will ever know I was here.”

Nathaniel looked at her, his eyes calculating. “What if my valet comes up the back stairs while I am checking the front?”

“Then tell him you dropped something! Make up an excuse,” she whispered impatiently. “Do you always overthink simple logistics?”

“Only when a strange woman invades my bedroom,” he remarked dryly. He smoothed down his shirt and took a step toward the door handle. “Stay here. Do not move. Do not breathe loudly. If the coast is clear, I will return, if I see someone coming this way, I will... also return.”

“Great plan,” she said.

He gave her one last strict look, turned the brass handle quietly, and stepped out into the long, carpeted corridor.

Euphemia waited behind the cracked door, her heart hammering against her ribs. She held her slippers tightly against her chest, her bare toes curling against the floorboards. She watched through the small gap as he walked a few paces down the hall, looking left and then right toward the staircase.

Suddenly, she heard the rapid, muffled thud of his boots on the carpet as he marched straight back to the room.

Euphemia peeked through the opening as he arrived.

“It is clear,” he murmured, his voice low and clipped. “Go now. Move quickly straight down the corridor, and do not look back.”

“Thank goodness,” she breathed.

Desperate to escape, she practically threw herself out of the room, stepping so close to him that her shoulder brushed the crisp linen of his shirt.

But she didn’t even make it two steps past his shoulder.

Right as she drew level with him, a door halfway down the very same corridor clicked and swung wide open. It wasn’t the staircase they had been watching, it was a guest chamber they hadn’t accounted for.

Out stepped Lady Jersey and Lady Cowper — two of the most formidable, sharp-tongued matrons of the ton — flanked by two housemaids carrying fresh towels.

The entire group stopped dead in their tracks.

Euphemia gasped, her blood turning to pure ice. Lady Jersey’s gaze dropped instantly to Euphemia’s bare toes, traveled up her wrinkled dress, to her blonde, tangled hair, and then snapped directly to the man, who was standing a mere inch away from her. He was only half-dressed... no cravat, no coat, just a white shirt unbuttoned at the collar.

The silence in the hallway was loud enough to shatter glass.

Euphemia slowly turned her head toward him, her eyes wide with a mixture of terror and furious disbelief. “Did you not check the hallway?” she hissed under her breath.

“I checked the staircase,” he muttered back through teeth that didn’t move. “I did not anticipate guests occupying the storage suites.”

“And you asked if I was intoxicated?” she whispered frantically, her voice trembling. “Clearly, you are the one who is drunk! You cannot even clear a straight line.”

The two grand matrons didn’t say a word. They didn’t need to. Lady Cowper merely raised a single, perfectly sculpted eyebrow, while Lady Jersey’s lips curved into a slow, terrifying smile. The maids were already whispering.

Euphemia felt the walls of the corridor closing in on her. The slippers in her hands felt heavier than lead, and her chest heaved as she stared at the witnesses to her doom. There was no explanation for this. There was no excuse in the world that could erase a ruined woman standing barefoot outside a man’s bedroom at dawn.

The world around her began to crumble, the last shreds of her family’s reputation dissolving right before her eyes. There was absolutely no coming back from this.

“Oh no,” she whispered to the empty air.

CHAPTER THREE

“Nathaniel Darington... the Duke of Greymoor?” Seraphina asked.

“Nathaniel Darington,” Seraphina said again, as though saying it a second time would make it make more sense than it had the first time. It did not. “The Duke of Greymoor.”

She stopped pacing for precisely the length of time it took to look at Euphemia, confirm that the situation was exactly as bad as it had sounded, and resume pacing. “You are telling me that you slept in his room. That you were found. In the corridor. With your slippers in your hands. By two women and two maids.”

Euphemia gazed blankly into space, wondering when exactly everything had gone so thoroughly wrong.

She sat completely frozen in her chair, tuning out her sister’s hysterics as she reviewed her own life choices. It was a mathematical marvel, really. Euphemia considered herself a rational woman, someone who believed in logic, cause and effect, and the proper alignment of household ledgers. Yet, looking at the trajectory of her recent luck, she was forced to conclude that the universe had simply selected her as its personal source of entertainment.

First, Lord Finch had abandoned her at the altar. Now, a mere wrong turn in search for a warm bed had branded her a predatory huntress of dukes.

The sheer logistics of her ruin were completely devoid of grace. If a woman was going to be thoroughly ruined, it ought to involve a midnight elopement on horseback or a dramatic confession in a rain-soaked garden. It should look like the pages of Glenarvon. It should not look like a woman tiptoeing past a guest suite looking like an untamed hedge-witch, arguing with a half-dressed Duke about who was more intoxicated.

“Oh, do stop drilling a hole into the floorboards, Seraphina,” Leonora chimed in from the chaise lounge. The youngest Byron sister was currently spreading marmalade onto a piece of toast, composed. “It is early yet. Surely we can find a way around it. Perhaps we can say Euphemia was simply sleepwalking? Or that she was looking for the library to study the architecture? People know she reads too much. They might believe she was confused by a particularly compelling shelf of history books.”

“They found her outside his bedroom door wearing the same dress she wore the night before, Leonora!” Seraphina shrieked, throwing her hands in the air. “Holding her slippers! There is no defense in the world that can save us!”

Euphemia wondered if the best decision she could make was to stop leaving the house. She could go back to the country, and sit in the drawing room, read improving literature and never attend another party as long as she lived. The ton could discuss that as enthusiastically as it liked because at least it couldn’t make things worse.

“Everyone needs to calm down,” Emily announced, her voice instantly cutting through the rising panic. She was sat by Euphemia’s side, having followed her back to Mayfair after the incident. “Seraphina, being agitated is not going to benefit anyone, least of all Effie. The best thing you can do right now, is for you to sit down, calm yourself, and allow us to work through this logically.”

Seraphina paused her pacing, though she looked entirely unconvinced.

“I truly do not see what the grand issue is,” Leonora said from the chaise lounge, completely unbothered. “Sure, lots of people are currently talking about the fact that Effie was caught outside the Duke of Greymoor’s chambers. But if we simply give it a bit of time, people will forget all about it and move on to the next big scandal. They always do.”

“That is not how the world works, Leonora, and you know it!” Seraphina retorted sharply, turning on her. “The ton never forgets a disgrace like this. There is absolutely nothing we can do to scrub it clean. By this afternoon, people will be avoiding us like the plague. We will be completely isolated.”

“They might be talking...” Emily interrupted smoothly, trying to anchor the room before the sisters could descend into a shouting match, “...but my husband, Theodore, is already out working on laying the groundwork to handle the rumors. He is already working on delaying the scandal sheets.”

While Emily offered her assurances, Leonora stood up from the chaise lounge. She drifted across the room to Euphemia’s side. She reached down, gently patting Euphemia’s arm.

“Effie, you have not eaten a single thing since you arrived yesterday,” Leonora said softly, her charming smile entirely intact as she extended the half-eaten piece of marmalade toast in her hand. “You cannot face a social execution on an empty stomach. Eat something.”

It was typical behavior for Leonora, the youngest of the three Byron sisters. While all three girls had grown up under the strict, intellectual roof of Lady Byron, Leonora was the one who loved books the absolute most. She swallowed romances and histories whole, yet the literature had cured her of any desire to participate in them. Leonora did not believe in love, she did not believe in marriage, and she had zero intention of ever letting a man dictate her life. She was incredibly charming, beautiful, and witty, but beneath that pleasant exterior lay a brilliant mind that was exceptionally difficult to trust. She viewed the marriage mart as a ridiculous game she had no interest in playing.

Seraphina, on the other hand, was a different creature entirely. As the oldest of the Byron sisters, she was much stricter and more structured. She took heavily after Lady Byron herself. She was confident, sharp-tongued, and fiercely protective of the family unit. Seraphina was an intellectual bookworm in her own right, but her refusal to marry came from a completely different place than Leonora’s.

The three of them were a strange collective. Even Euphemia had no doubt about it. They called themselves the Byron sisters, which confused people at first and then made sense when explained. They had been taken in by Lady Byron when they were young, at different ages but similar circumstances, with different surnames. The name was not legal. It was not formal. It was simply what they were. Sisters… raised by Lady Byron.

It began with their fathers, three friends who entered a business partnership that collapsed in the dead of winter. On the night the financial ruin became undeniable, the three men went out together to escape the wreckage, or perhaps simply to breathe. They stayed out too long. On the coldest night of that unforgiving winter, they froze to death.

As each household crumbled, Lady Byron took the girls in one by one. She gave them her name completely, determined that tragedy would not define them.

The Byron sisters.

Euphemia, sitting dead in the middle as the second daughter, had always been the pragmatist, the one who tried to balance Seraphina’s rigid standards with Leonora’s cynical detachment. Yet, ironically, Euphemia was the only one who believed in love among them. She was the only sister who had actually wanted the fairy tale, the true partnership, the grand romance written in the stars. But after the public humiliation of being left at the altar by Finch, and now this current disaster, she had started to lose hope too.

Now, she was simply the sister who was ruined.

Euphemia looked from Leonora’s offered toast up to Emily’s face, and sighed. “I have no idea what to do,” she admitted.

She took the toast from Leonora and took a small bite. “I owe you both an apology,” she said.

“You do not,” said Leonora immediately.

“I do. I brought you here, I have made everything worse and —”

“Euphemia.” Emily’s voice stern. “We are not doing that today. Today we are solving the immediate problem.” She looked around at all three of them. “Are we agreed that we are solving the immediate problem?”

Euphemia sighed. “I don’t think there is any way we can come back from this, Emily.”

“There are always ways to save a situation,” Emily insisted, sitting up. “We have options. Theodore can ensure the newspapers print nothing. We can bury the story entirely by keeping you out of the public eye for a few weeks, or we could perhaps create a distraction, a larger scandal involving someone else.”

“None of that will work,” Seraphina interjected. “The only definitive way to save this situation is if Euphemia marries the Duke.”

The room went completely silent. Leonora paused, her hand hovering near her mouth.

Euphemia looked at Seraphina as if her sister had lost her mind. Marry him? Marry the arrogant, cold, deeply selfish man? She knew she would never marry him. The very idea was absurd.

“No.” She said and shook her head. “Absolutely not.”

“Think about what it would mean,” Seraphina pressed. “If you were to marry the Duke of Greymoor, the story changes entirely. No one spreads rumors about a duchess. No one whispers about a woman who has secured one of the most prominent titles in England. What people saw yesterday morning becomes, in retrospect, two people who were already developing an attachment. It becomes... romance, I think. It becomes exactly the kind of story the ton loves to tell, and they will tell it gladly, because it is a far better story than the alternative.”

Emily bit her lower lip. “She is not wrong, Effie,” she said, slowly, as though the words were being extracted from her against her better judgement.

“She is completely wrong,” said Euphemia.

“Euphemia, he is a duke,” Seraphina added. “A very wealthy one, and quite handsome from what I hear. There are worse fates.”

“Stop,” Euphemia said. “I am not marrying him. Besides, he already dislikes me, and he made it perfectly clear that he guards his bachelorhood like a fortress. He would never offer for me, and I certainly will not beg him to save my reputation with a ring. What are we even talking about? He is a stranger. I met him just yesterday.”

Leonora shrugged her shoulders. “Well, you have already been in his bed…” Leonora mumbled.

“Leonora!” Euphemia cautioned her.

“Sorry,” she whispered in response. “It was a joke.”

“Nothing is funny.”

Seraphina was about to say something, when a firm, synchronized knock sounded at the drawing room door.

The sisters all snapped their heads toward the sound. The door opened, and the butler stepped into the room, holding a silver tray.

He walked directly toward Euphemia, lowering the tray. Upon it sat a thick, cream-colored calling card, stamped with a heavy crest in green wax.

“A gentleman has arrived, Miss Vane,” the butler announced. “He requests an immediate audience with you in the morning room.”

Seraphina, Leonora, and Emily all leaned forward at the same time, their eyes locking onto the green wax crest.

“Who is it?” Emily asked.

The butler took a slight breath. “The Duke of Greymoor, Your Grace.”

All three Byron sisters spoke entirely together, their voices echoing in perfect, panicked unison.

“The Duke?”

“I would have preferred to speak with your legal guardian, Miss Vane, rather than you,” the Duke said without preamble. He stood by the tall windows of the morning room, the harsh daylight catching the sharp lines of his face. “Is there any way the master of this house might be summoned, or am I to be denied the basic courtesy of a proper intermediary?”

Euphemia sat stiffly on the velvet settee, her fingers laced so tightly together that her knuckles were white. She stared at him, still thoroughly shocked by his sudden appearance in the house. Her mind raced with questions.

She had spent the ten minutes between the butler’s announcement and that very moment attempting to prepare herself, which had involved Leonora pressing her into a clean dress, Seraphina re-pinning her hair ng, and Emily straightening her collar and assuring her that she looked perfectly composed. Euphemia had walked down the stairs telling herself she was prepared for whatever he came to say.

She was not prepared.

‘Why is he here?’ she wondered frantically. ‘Has he come to blame me further for the disaster in the hallway? Is he here to deliver a formal threat, or perhaps to demand that my family pack our bags and flee the capital before the first morning calls begin?’

She was not mentally prepared to banter with him. She lacked the armor for his dry wit and his cutting remarks, and she was entirely unsure of what his presence meant for her already fragile future.

Swallowing the lump of anxiety in her throat, she forced herself to offer a standard, polite nod. “Good morning, Your Grace,” she managed, her voice remarkably steady despite the drumming of her heart. She took a breath to address his question. “I am afraid my uncle, Lord Sterling, is my legal guardian here in Mayfair. However, he is quite ill and barely leaves his bedchamber. He is entirely unfit to receive visitors.”

Nathaniel turned away from the window, his gaze locking onto her. “That is inconvenient,” he remarked flatly. “But it cannot be helped. Since the head of your household is unavailable, I shall have to address the matter directly with you.”

Euphemia tilted her chin up, bracing herself. “If I may ask, Your Grace... why exactly do you wish to speak to my uncle? If you have come to lecture me again about my lack of direction, I assure you, my sisters have already done a thoroughly efficient job of it.”

“I am not here to lecture you, Miss Vane,” Nathaniel said. “I am here to propose marriage.”

The words seemed to hang in the air between them, heavy and absurd.

Euphemia froze, a profound shock rippling through her system. “I’m sorry?” she said, wanting to be certain she heard him correctly.

“I am here to propose, Miss Vane.”

Her eyes widened.

But right behind the shock came a sharp wave of disappointment that tasted like ash. It was terrifying, really. She knew she was in the middle of a ruinous scandal. She knew Lady Jersey’s tongue would dismantle her life by noon. Yet, even though she had spent the last hour panicking over her future, she had never imagined that the Duke would actually show up to offer for her.

More than that, she had never imagined that the reason she would finally marry someone would be to save herself from a social execution. The reality of it crushed her. Despite everything that had happened with Lord Finch, a small, hidden part of her had still hoped for a love match. She had wanted the grand, romantic poetry of the books she loved. To have that dream officially replaced by a transactional arrangement born of a clumsy mistake was a bitter pill to swallow.

Nathaniel watched her closely, his eyebrow twitching slightly at her prolonged silence. “You are remarkably quiet, Miss Vane. I had expected a lecture on my arrogance, or perhaps another quote from your library.”

“I am thinking,” she whispered, her gaze dropping to the floor.

“You think a great deal, it seems,” he countered, his voice softening just a fraction, though the edge remained.

“I know,” she replied softly.

Sensing the sudden shift in her demeanor, Nathaniel closed the distance between them. His boots clicked softly against the hardwood floor as he walked up to her side. Euphemia lifted her head, her blue eyes meeting his brilliant emerald gaze as he looked down at her.

A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched the corner of his mouth. “You seem disappointed.”

Euphemia let out a small, weary breath. “Is it so obvious?”

“Extremely,” Nathaniel said. “Though I must say, it should come to you as a profound relief, not disappointment. This is a win-win scenario for both of us, Miss Vane. It saves your reputation from absolute ruin, and it ensures that no one can accuse me of compromising an innocent woman. We are simply solving a problem.”

“I know,” she said simply. “It is the most logical response to this.”

“Then why do you look like you’re facing an executioner?”

A heavy, suffocating silence fell between them. Nathaniel remained standing right in front of her, his tall shadow completely eclipsing her on the settee as he looked down at her. Euphemia swallowed hard, the muscles in her throat tight and dry.

She stared at the polished leather of his boots, her mind spinning into absolute disbelief.

‘How did my life become this?’ she thought wildly. It felt entirely unreal. Just yesterday morning, she hadn’t even known what the Duke of Greymoor looked like. Now, twenty-four hours later, the very same man was standing in her morning room, casually appointing himself her husband.

Who actually was this man?

She barely knew a single thing about him. It felt completely absurd that the most important decision of her entire life was to marry a person she knew absolutely nothing about, save for his grand, intimidating name. She hadn’t done any research. She hadn’t consulted Lady Byron. For all she knew, he could be a wicked, cruel tyrant who locked his wives in the attic, or he could be a perfectly noble gentleman. He was an absolute enigma, wrapped in armor, and frankly, he was more than a little scary.

As she sat there, practically drowning in the sheer weight of her own thoughts, Nathaniel leaned down just a fraction. His eyes narrowed, losing their sharp, defensive edge for a brief moment.

“Did you really stumble into my room by mistake, Miss Vane?” he asked quietly.

Euphemia lifted her head, her gaze meeting his. “Yes,” she said, her voice small and traitorously shaky. “Yes, I did.”

Nathaniel studied her face for a beat, as if checking her features for any sign of a lie. Satisfied by the terror in her eyes, he let out a short, breathy exhale that was almost a laugh. “Then you have the most spectacularly foul luck of any woman alive. Two scandals, in one season?”

A faint, ironic smile tugged at the corner of Euphemia’s mouth, despite her panic. “Funnily enough, I was just reviewing that exact cosmic failure with my sisters this morning.”

“Splendid,” Nathaniel remarked dryly. “Then we already have something in common. We both agree that your sense of direction is a threat to the realm.”

Euphemia lowered her head, looking down at her hands to hide the blush warming her cheeks.

“Now, to the logistics,” Nathaniel continued. He straightened up, adjusting his cuffs. “My mind is entirely made up about this matter. We will be married in a week. I will handle the procurement of the special license myself, and I will handle the scandal sheets too, to ensure the announcement looks like a long-standing, mutual affection rather than a desperate cover-up. You do not need to trouble your head with any of it. I also do not require a dowry. You can do with it as you wish. I only want your hand.”

Euphemia could only nod. The sheer speed at which her life was being rearranged by this man left her completely breathless.

“Very well,” Nathaniel said. “I shall take my leave and allow you to break the news to your family.”

He turned on his heel, his coat sweeping behind him as he began to walk toward the morning room door, clearly ready to put this uncomfortable conversation behind him. But right as his fingers touched the brass handle, he stopped.

He froze, his shoulders tensing, before he slowly turned back around to look at her.

“There is one detail that still puzzles me, Miss Vane,” Nathaniel said, his brow furrowing as he studied her posture. “You do not want to marry me. I can see it in the way you hold yourself, and frankly, I am unaccustomed to it. A marriage to a man of my standing usually heals all social wounds, yet you look as though I have just sentenced you to the gallows. I am a man who requires absolute clarity, and your profound misery confuses me.”

Euphemia slowly rose to her feet, meeting his sharp gaze. She couldn’t very well admit that she was a romantic at heart, or that she had spent her life dreaming of a genuine love match that had now been thoroughly crushed.

“People simply have different reactions to news, Your Grace,” she replied quietly, keeping her tone respectful but completely honest. “Please do not mistake my demeanor for ungratefulness. I am fully aware of the situation, and I know your offer saves me. In fact, I should apologize to you. I am deeply sorry for roping you into this disaster.”

Nathaniel stared at her, genuinely intrigued. “Your disappointment is an unexpected variable, Miss Vane,” he murmured, stepping back into the room by a single pace. He looked as though he wanted to ask more, to dig deeper into the mind of the strange woman standing before him. Then, he shook his head slightly, his mask clicking back into place. “However, I shall not probe any further. I have never been a man who meddles in unnecessary mysteries.”

He paused, adjusting his gloves, his expression turning entirely serious. “Before I take my leave, there is one final matter you must know. I have two young daughters.”

Euphemia blinked, her lips parting in surprise.

“I felt it only proper that you learn this from me rather than the gossip columns,” Nathaniel continued flatly. “They reside at my country estate, and their upbringing will remain a priority.”

Euphemia managed a tight, polite nod. “I understand, Your Grace.”

“Good. I shall send my solicitor to your uncle’s estate tomorrow with the papers. Good day, Miss Vane.” With a final, decisive bow, he turned, opened the morning room door, and stepped out into the foyer.

The door clicked shut behind him, leaving Euphemia alone in the sudden, ringing silence of the room.

She sat completely still, the Duke’s final words echoing in her mind. Suddenly, a wave of clarity washed over her, and the pieces of the puzzle fell perfectly into place.

That was why he had proposed so incredibly fast. It all made sense now. She had been sitting there wondering what on earth a powerful Duke had to gain from marrying a heavily gossiped-about woman like her, but his sudden urgency wasn’t about her reputation at all. It was about his girls. He could never allow a sordid bedroom scandal to ruin his own daughters’ futures before they were even old enough to enter society. He was protecting them.

A small, unexpected warmth blossomed in her chest. ‘He must be a remarkably good father,’ she thought to herself, her opinion of the arrogant man shifting just a fraction.

He was entirely willing to shackle himself to a complete stranger, to sacrifice his own precious bachelorhood, simply to ensure that his children’s names were never stained.

Euphemia let out a long, shaky breath and sat down on the velvet settee. The dread in her stomach had softened into a strange, surreal acceptance. The fairy tale was officially dead, but her family’s survival was secure.

Now came the truly terrifying part of the morning. Breaking the news to her sisters, and praying she survived their reaction.

Want to know how the story ends? Tap on the link below to read the rest of the story.

My Book

Thank you very much!

ALSO BY TIFFANY BATON

Thank you for reading The Duchess' Little Miracle!

I truly hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!! heart suit

Some other best-sellers of mine:

His Duchess to Remember

Two Blessings For His Duchess

The Auctioned Duke

A Highly Unlikely Duchess

Thirty Days with the Duke

His Unsuitable Duchess

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Tiffany Baton

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Like all true romantics, Tiffany had always been fascinated by the great love stories of the past. The only child of two historians, she had always felt a pull towards British History and the epics that it spawned. But, instead of following in her parent’s footsteps, Tiffany chose to express her love of history in her own way: by writing about her favorite era.

After obtaining a degree in English Literature, Tiffany decided to write her first book and never looked back. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys spending time with her own Prince Charming, and their two beautiful children, enjoying Massachusetts’ natural wonders.

Hop on for a unique journey in Regency England, filled with intensity and heartwarming romance. Let Tiffany’s words bring the enchanting heroes of an era long gone back to life and charm their way into your heart!