Bound to the Scarred Duke of Thornwood (“The Search for Grace” #3)

Chapter One

“I know,” Benjamin said quietly. “I would not trust me either.”

The grey cat regarded him from beneath the overgrown boxwood hedge, its eyes the pale green of old glass bottles.

It did not blink. It did not move. It simply watched, as it had done every morning for the past three months, while the Duke of Thornwood knelt in the damp grass of his own garden like a man in quiet supplication.

The dish of kitchen scraps sat precisely where he always placed it—three feet from the hedge, angled so the cat could eat without turning its back upon the open lawn.

Benjamin had learnt, through trial and error, that strays did not survive by carelessness.

They survived by assuming everything that moved was a threat.

Sensible creature, he thought. More sensible than most.

The morning mist clung to the grounds of Thornwood Park, softening the edges of the world into something almost gentle.

At this hour, before the household stirred, before the weight of correspondence and duty descended, Benjamin could almost forget what he was.

What he had done. What he had failed to do.

Almost.

He rose slowly, his left leg protesting the movement with the familiar grinding ache that had become as constant as his own heartbeat.

The surgeons had told him he was fortunate to keep the leg at all.

They had not mentioned that keeping it would mean feeling the ghost of fire each time the weather turned, nor that he would learn to predict rain with greater accuracy than any barometer, merely by the depth of his own discomfort.

Fortunate, he thought, and did not smile.

The cat’s ears flattened as he straightened to his full height.

He was aware, distantly, that his height was among the many things that made people uneasy.

Six feet and three inches of scarred, silent duke tended to clear a room more swiftly than a declaration of plague.

He had ceased to mind. He had ceased to mind most things, in truth, save the small rituals that kept him anchored to something resembling purpose.

Feeding the cat was one such ritual.

“I shall leave you to it,” he told the animal, keeping his voice low and even. Strays startled at sudden sounds. So did soldiers, though he endeavoured not to dwell upon that. “Same time tomorrow.”

The cat did not acknowledge this. It simply waited, motionless as stone, until Benjamin had retreated a full twenty paces toward the house. Only then did it creep forward, belly low to the ground, and begin to eat.

He watched from the terrace. He always watched.

There was something deeply satisfying in seeing a hungry creature fed, even one that would never trust him sufficiently to eat from his hand.

Perhaps especially one that would never trust him.

It felt honest, somehow. A transaction without pretence: he provided sustenance, the cat accepted it, and neither of them pretended the arrangement was anything more than it was.

If only all relationships were so simple.

The thought arrived unbidden, and he dismissed it with practised efficiency. There was no use in dwelling. There was never any use in dwelling.

“Your Grace appears contemplative this morning.”

Benjamin did not turn at the sound of his valet’s voice.

Dawson had served him for eleven years—first as his batman during the war, now as the only servant permitted to address him without first being spoken to.

The privilege had been earned in blood and silence, during nights when Benjamin had woken screaming and Dawson had simply sat beside him until the shaking subsided.

They did not discuss those nights. They did not discuss much of anything, in truth. But Dawson noticed things. He always noticed things.

“I was feeding the cat,” Benjamin said.

“I am aware, Your Grace. The kitchen has begun setting aside scraps expressly for that purpose. Mrs Holloway has taken to calling it ‘the Duke’s charity work.’”

A muscle twitched near Benjamin’s jaw. “Has she?”

“She means it kindly, I believe.” Dawson’s tone was perfectly neutral, which meant he was amused. “The staff find it… humanising.”

Humanising. As though he were some Gothic creature from a circulating library novel, requiring evidence of a soul. Then again, perhaps that was precisely what they thought. He had given them little reason to believe otherwise.

“The post has arrived,” Dawson continued when Benjamin did not respond. “There is a letter from Mr Thornton—”

“No.”

“Your Grace?”

“The solicitor’s name.” Benjamin turned at last, and Dawson’s expression flickered—only for an instant—at the full view of his face in the morning light. Eleven years, and the man still flinched. Benjamin did not blame him. He flinched at mirrors himself. “I dislike it. Find me another solicitor.”

“Your Grace, Mr Thornton has managed the Thornwood affairs for thirty years—”

“Then he has had an admirable career. Pension him off.”

Dawson hesitated. It was unlike him to hesitate. “The letter, Your Grace. It concerns a matter of some… urgency.”

Benjamin’s hand tightened upon the terrace railing. The scarred skin across his knuckles pulled uncomfortably, a reminder that even simple gestures came at a cost. “What manner of urgency?”

“I could not say. The seal was intact.”

“Then how do you know it is urgent?”

“Because Mr Thornton dispatched it by express at four o’clock this morning, Your Grace. The rider pressed his horse to its utmost in reaching us.”

The mist was beginning to burn away. Somewhere in the garden, a thrush began to sing—bright, oblivious music that felt almost offensive in its cheerfulness.

“Bring it to my study,” Benjamin said. “And have Cook send up coffee. Black.”

“Very good, Your Grace.”

“And Dawson?”

“Your Grace?”

“Find me another solicitor. I mean it.”

***

The study at Thornwood Park had once been a warm room.

Benjamin remembered it from childhood: his father seated behind the great mahogany desk, sunlight streaming through windows that were never curtained, the scent of pipe tobacco and old books mingling into something that had seemed, to a boy of eight, the very essence of safety.

Now the curtains were drawn. The desk lay buried beneath correspondence he could not bring himself to open. The only light came from a single lamp, positioned to cast shadows rather than illuminate, because shadows were kinder to a face like his.

You are being maudlin, he told himself. Read the damned letter.

He broke the seal.

The contents were, as Dawson had suggested, urgent. They were also, in their own tedious fashion, inevitable. Benjamin had known this moment would come eventually. He had merely hoped—foolishly, it now seemed—that eventually might stretch a few years longer.

To His Grace the Duke of Thornwood, the letter began, I write with regret to inform you of a matter pertaining to the terms of your late father’s will...

He skimmed the preliminaries. Legal language possessed a singular talent for burying simple truths beneath mountains of verbiage, but Benjamin had spent sufficient years reading military dispatches to recognise obfuscation when he encountered it.

The essence was this: his father, in his infinite wisdom, had included a clause requiring the heir to marry before reaching the age of five-and-thirty, or forfeit a significant portion of the estate—including the dower properties, the London house, and controlling interest in three profitable mines—to a distant cousin.

Benjamin was four-and-thirty. His birthday lay eleven months hence.

Clever man, he thought, without affection. His father had been many things, but never a fool. He had known, even then, that his scarred and silent son would resist marriage. He had merely constructed a trap elegant enough to spring years after his own death.

The letter continued with suggestions—lists of eligible ladies from respectable families who might overlook certain deficiencies in exchange for a ducal title. The phrasing was delicate. ‘Deficiencies’ was not the word employed. But Benjamin could read between the lines well enough.

Women sufficiently desperate, the letter truly meant. Women with no better prospects. Women who would not object that their husband resembled something drawn from a nightmare and spoke perhaps twenty words in a day.

He set the letter down.

Outside, the thrush was still singing. The cat had likely finished eating by now and retreated to whatever hidden corner it claimed during the daylight hours.

The household was stirring—he could hear the distant sounds of servants beginning their work, the rhythms of a great house coming to life around a master who wished, above all things, simply to be left in peace.

Marriage.

He had considered it, of course. One could not be a duke without considering marriage. The title required an heir; the estate required management; society required a hostess. These were facts, immutable as gravity, and Benjamin had always known he must address them eventually.

But knowing and doing were entirely different creatures.

He thought of ballrooms. Of crowded drawing rooms and dinner parties, and the endless, exhausting performance demanded by polite society.

Of women who would smile at his title and flinch at his face.

Of the whispers that would follow him—poor creature, trapped with that monster—and the pity that was somehow worse than disgust.

He thought of sharing his home. His silence. His carefully constructed solitude.

He thought of someone seeing him in those moments when the mask slipped—when the nightmares came, when the old guilt rose like bile, when he was nothing more than a broken man in a house too large for him, pretending at wholeness.

No.

The refusal rose at once—absolute and instinctive. For a moment, he allowed himself to rest within it, to imagine the matter settled by that single, resolute denial.

But the comfort was fleeting. The reality followed close behind, cold and inescapable.

Refusal would not alter the terms of his father’s will.

It would not preserve the estate. It would not shield the legacy entrusted to him across three centuries of Thornwood stewardship.

And whatever else Benjamin might be, he was not so selfish as to permit his own cowardice to bring ruin upon his family’s inheritance.

The denial faded, leaving only inevitability in its wake.

He reached for a pen and paper.

***

The letter he composed was brief. His letters were always brief. He saw no merit in wasting words when fewer would suffice.

Mr Thornton, he wrote, then crossed it out. The solicitor would need to be informed, but Benjamin found he could not bear the name.

He began again.