Chapter One
“You cannot continue like this, Rowan.”
The words lingered in the dim study, as unwelcome as the shafts of summer sunlight straining past the heavy curtains.
Rowan Vale, Duke of Thornwood did not turn from the window where he stood—if his rigid, carefully balanced posture could truly be called standing.
One hand gripped the back of a chair, the knuckles pale beneath skin once darkened by campaign sun.
Now he was as colourless as parchment, diminished in every way since returning from the Continent eight months earlier.
“I was not aware I required your permission to conduct my life, Marcus.”
His voice emerged low and controlled, each word measured with precision. Control, that was what remained to him. Control over his expression, his tone, the careful shifting of his weight so his ruined leg would not betray him.
Lord Marcus Vale stepped farther into the room, his boots sounding softly against the floorboards. Rowan tracked the movement without looking, an old instinct from the war, when footsteps might herald either orders or death.
“Permission? No.” Marcus’s tone carried the familiar mixture of affection and concern that had marked their relationship since childhood. Raised together after Marcus’s father died, they had long since ceased to feel like cousins. “But concern? That, I fear, you cannot forbid.”
Rowan’s jaw tightened. The scar that stretched from his left temple down across his cheek and neck pulled with the movement, a constant reminder—though none was needed—of what he had become. The mirrors had been removed from his chambers months ago. He had not regretted their absence.
“Your concern is noted,” he said coolly. “And unnecessary.”
“Is it?” Marcus crossed toward the desk, riffling through what Rowan knew would be the growing heap of unanswered correspondence. “When was the last time you left this room? This house? When did you last ride your lands or meet with your tenants?”
When I could do so without disgrace, Rowan thought bitterly. When I could mount a horse without assistance. When crossing a room did not feel like a military campaign.
“The estate is managed competently,” he replied aloud.
“By your steward. By your butler. By everyone except its Duke.” Marcus’s frustration softened into something gentler. “Rowan, I have not come to quarrel with you. I am here because I…because the family… we are worried.”
The family.
Rowan nearly laughed.
They had visited twice since his return: once when he arrived half-dead from the journey, feverish and broken; and once more several months later, when duty or curiosity had demanded another display of familial concern.
They had looked upon his face, upon the ruin of what had once been called handsome, and struggled not to recoil.
He had spared them further discomfort by removing himself from sight altogether.
“The family may reassure themselves that I remain alive,” Rowan said flatly. “Beyond that, I have little to offer.”
“That is not true.”
“Is it not?”
This time, he turned, slowly and deliberately, allowing the light to strike the scarred side of his face. He had learned, during these long months of seclusion, how to use his disfigurement as a weapon. Most people flinched.
Marcus, to his credit, did not.
But Marcus had seen worse. Marcus had stood beside him through those first dreadful weeks, when pain and fever had made him scarcely recognisable, even to himself.
“You are the Duke of Thornwood,” Marcus continued steadily. “You hold a seat in Parliament. Seven hundred tenants depend upon your judgment. You have responsibilities—”
“I am aware of my responsibilities.”
The sharpness of the interruption made Marcus pause. Good. Perhaps if he proved sufficiently unpleasant, his cousin would finally retreat and leave him to the silence—the blessed silence in which no one looked at him with pity disguised as concern.
“Then you must also be aware,” Marcus said carefully, “that you cannot fulfil those responsibilities whilst hiding in this mausoleum.”
A bitter half-smile touched Rowan’s mouth.
A mausoleum indeed.
Thornwood Hall had become precisely that: a tomb inhabited by the ghost of the man he had once been.
“What would you have me do, Marcus? Parade myself through the village and terrify the children? Attend assemblies and watch young ladies flee in horror?” His hand lifted in a brief, vicious gesture toward his scarred face. “I do everyone a kindness by remaining here.”
“You do yourself an injury.” Marcus crossed the room, stopping just short of him. “Your leg, Rowan. The physician said—”
“The physician said many things. Most of them useless.”
As if summoned by the words, pain pulsed through the ruined limb. The cannon blast that had torn through his company had shattered bone and ripped through muscle alike. The surgeons had preserved the leg, but not its strength. On good days, he limped. On bad days, he scarcely walked at all.
“Then perhaps,” Marcus said cautiously, “you require a different sort of assistance.”
Something in his tone sharpened Rowan’s attention immediately.
“What have you done?”
“Nothing you will not eventually thank me for.”
“Marcus.”
His cousin raised a placating hand. “I made discreet inquiries. There is a woman—a healer—whose methods have achieved remarkable success with injuries similar to yours.”
“A healer.” Rowan’s voice flattened. “You have brought me a village mystic dispensing poultices and superstition?”
“Nothing of the sort. Miss Eliza Wyndham is the daughter of Edmund Wyndham, the surgeon. Surely you remember him? He served in the Royal Navy before establishing his practice in Kent.”
Rowan did remember. Wyndham had been spoken of with considerable respect among officers—a man reputed to save lives others would have abandoned. He had died some years earlier, though Rowan could not recall the particulars.
“His daughter,” he repeated.
“She trained under him from childhood. Her methods may be unconventional, but I have spoken with several gentlemen who credit her with restoring mobility they had been told was permanently lost.” Marcus paused.
“She is not formally a physician, but she understands war injuries in ways fashionable London surgeons do not.”
“And you have what? Engaged her services without consulting me?”
“I invited her to Thornwood Hall to determine whether she might assist you.” Marcus met his gaze directly. “She arrived this morning.”
For one long moment, Rowan could not speak.
The presumption of it—the extraordinary arrogance—stole the breath from him.
“Send her away.”
“Rowan—”
“I will not be examined by some surgeon’s daughter amusing herself with medical experiments. I will not be treated as a helpless case to be managed.” His voice dropped dangerously low. “Send her away, Marcus, or I shall do it myself.”
“At least meet her.” Marcus’s composure began to crack.
“Five minutes. If you still wish her gone afterward, I will escort her to the village myself and compensate her for the trouble. But I ask this of you as your cousin—as your friend—as the man who sat beside your bed for three weeks while you burned with fever and begged for death. Please. Give her five minutes.”
The words landed like a blow.
Rowan remembered little of those weeks beyond fragments: agony, laudanum, the sensation of being held down while delirium consumed him. But he remembered Marcus’s voice, steady in the darkness.
He owed Marcus his life.
And he hated that truth.
“Five minutes,” Rowan said at last; each word dragged unwillingly from him. “And then she leaves.”