A Duke to Reclaim Her (Regency Second Chances #8)

Chapter 1

“There was a sound at the gate last night.” The novice spoke without moving her lips, a trick Rose had seen perfected in places like this. “After Compline. Something small. Didn’t you hear it?”

“I heard it,” Rose said. “And I didn’t go to the window.”

The other girl looked at her sidelong. “Wise.”

Neither of them said anything else. Sister Agnes had turned in their direction with a birch rod tapping a slow rhythm against her palm.

Rose watched the movement from the corner of her eye, the way she’d learned to watch all dangerous things—steadily, without appearing to look at it at all.

Two years in this place. Two years of feeling imprisoned for reasons beyond her control.

Two years of trying to understand why her parents had banished her here because she hadn’t secured a husband according to their arbitrary timeline.

She was a spinster, sent away in shame to the only place where they felt she would be welcome.

She returned her attention to the flagstones and let the question of the sound at the gate dissolve into the ordinary misery of morning. She bent her head low to avoid eye contact and swept the ground, as if she could gather every shadow and tuck the weight of them into the abbey’s heart.

A damp shroud of mist coated the stone courtyard, swallowing the first rays of morning sun. Beneath the steeple of St. Clement’s, every convent wall breathed the cold, clean air with the even discipline of a sleeping giant. Only the scrape of bristles against flagstone disturbed the silence.

She worked in slow passes, though her back throbbed from the hours she had put in earlier scrubbing kitchen floors.

The broom’s worn handle pressed a raw groove into Rose’s palm, which she avoided picking while a trio of other novices floated down the far side of the walk.

Their heads were bent to their own work, each shrouded in the same pale habit, making any distinction between them flatten to one long blur. No one spoke.

Senior nuns patrolled the yard’s periphery in shapeless black habits, the long folds of fabric waving with each authoritative step. From their sashes hung birch rods. No one was more than an arm’s length away from that particular, menacing discipline.

Rose noted the way Sister Francis, the morning’s head overseer, paused to tap her birch rod against her palm when a novice on the edges stalled.

The last time Rose had heard the birch whistle through the air and towards her, it was for an infraction she could not recall, perhaps a misplaced spoon or a snuffed candle during Vespers.

They were never told what rules, precisely, had been broken. The suffering was the lesson.

A clatter broke Rose’s focus. A small girl no older than twelve trembled near the water pump, staring down at an upturned bucket.

As water seeped into the uneven stones, the novice stood, petrified, hands wrung together at her waist. All the girls around her paused, brooms poised mid-air, wary of drawing attention to themselves.

Sister Agnes strode forward. Her eyes were knifelike, cold, but almost gleeful. “Tabitha,” she called, voice slicing the yard in half. “Clumsiness is the child of inattention. You will fetch the bucket, refill it, and scrub this place until it shines.”

The young girl nodded. Her mouth pressed into a line as tears began to stream down her cheeks.

Rose felt a hot flush of sympathy and frustration. While the urge to intervene picked at her, she had had stark caution drilled into her after her years at the Whiteridge House. Every hour at St. Clement’s reinforced it.

She glanced down at her own broom, then at the slow, spreading puddle.

Before she could think better of it, the decision was made. Rose laid her own broom aside and stepped towards Tabitha, then knelt.

“Let me help,” she said, her voice soft, taking care not to meet Sister Agnes’s eye.

She righted the bucket, pressed a clean handkerchief from her pocket to the girl’s trembling fingers, and began to sop up the water with gentle movements.

“Each novice is responsible for her own misfortune,” Sister Agnes crowed, looming above, her birch rod tapping the flagstone. “You are not to assume the burdens of others.”

Rose kept her head bowed. “I thought… Perhaps it would be faster if I helped Tabitha, Sister. Morning prayers are nearly upon us.”

There was a long, taut pause, which snapped in a moment when Agnes sighed.

“You may assist,” she said. “But you will both return to the courtyard after Lauds and repeat the task until the stones are dry enough to satisfy even our Lord’s perfection.”

Rose and Tabitha answered in chorus, their voices muted, near-whispering, “Yes, Sister.”

As she worked, Rose murmured barely audible encouragement. The touch of her hand on Tabitha’s was gentle. Rose remembered, though dimly, how her closest childhood friend, Julia, used to comfort her this way when they were young. They were only tiny moments, but they had meant the world to her.

Julia Pembers had not found fortune on the marriage mart either, but she had found work as a lady’s maid shortly before Rose had been sent to the abbey.

Rose was happy for her, but she had not heard from Julia since her arrival at the abbey. The last letter had arrived water-stained and weeks late, forwarded through three different hands before it reached St. Clement’s. Even then, the Mother Superior held it for a fortnight before surrendering it.

Rose had read it so many times that the paper had gone soft at the folds. After that, there was nothing. She even wrote back twice, but no answer came. Rose told herself there were a hundred explanations, but nothing could make enough sense.

When the last drop dried and they refilled the bucket, Tabitha gave her a shy, wet-eyed smile and ducked her head in gratitude before scurrying away. Rose felt a pang of regret mixed with stubborn hope. There was still some softness left to cultivate in this place.

She returned to sweeping. The mist was thinning now, glittering, shot through with hints of gold. Overhead, gulls wheeled and shrieked. They dared to break silences no novice would risk.

“Pssst. Rose.”

Rose startled, nearly dropping her dustpan. She looked up to find another novice—Sister Margaret’s youngest protégé—hovering near the gap in the cloister wall, glancing over her shoulder with the nervous energy of someone about to be caught.

She stepped closer and whispered, “What is it?”

The girl hesitated, eyes darting to the shadows where Sister Francis stalked, then leaned in so close Rose could feel her trembling.

“I heard something,” she started. “Last night. In the kitchens.”

Rose was far from the type to indulge in convent gossip, but the look in this girl’s eyes was different. She was urgent, almost afraid.

“Tell me. But quickly.”

She swallowed. “Mother Superior was talking to Sister Agnes. They said someone left a baby at the monastery gate. And then, I couldn’t hear much else, but…” she paused, wavered. “They said your name. Your full name.”

Rose’s world tilted on its axis. “That’s hardly possible. Are you certain they said it?”

The novice’s face was pinched with worry. “I heard them. They said they were going to call you in and…”

She did not need to finish the sentence. A cold weight settled in her gut, making itself at home.

Rose looked back at the cloister, but the novice was already gone, vanishing back into the tide of sweeping girls. She stood motionless for a beat, the broom slipping from her fingers and striking the stones with a hollow echo.

A baby. What could she possibly have to do with a baby?

She abandoned her post, not minding the eyes of the older Sisters, and took off at a brisk walk across the courtyard, the question hammering deeper with every step.

Why would anyone speak her name—her name—now, when there was a baby left at the convent? When she was here, stripped of everything but a borrowed habit and a borrowed prayer?

The path to the main building was slick with dew. She mounted the steps two at a time, chest tightening.

Her mind raced. It could be nothing; a meaningless, off-handed comment or trifle. When she reached the heavy oak door, she hesitated only for a moment.

Then, she slipped inside. She didn’t bother knocking. No one could turn her away, especially not if they were seeking her in the first place.

Mother Superior’s office was faintly lit. Candlelight was blotted out by the open window, and the place smelled of tallow, old vellum, and lavender.

Her abrupt entry drew startled gasps from Sisters Victoria and Elizabeth, who clustered at the window, while behind the vast oak desk, Mother Superior presided, her posture iron and calm.

On the desk, framed by immaculate stacks of ledgers, sat a basket swaddled in fine white linen, lined with a bit of quilt.

Inside was an infant, blinking up at the sudden intrusion with serene, green eyes.

The sight was so at odds with the somber hush of the office that Rose almost stopped breathing.

Then she saw it: a letter. It was merely a single sheet, folded and sealed with wax, but the way Mother Superior pinched it between her thumb and forefinger made Rose shake.

Slowly, the angle of her hand brought the paper closer and closer to the candle at her elbow. The flame burned low, guttering.

“Stop!” The word leaped from Rose’s throat before she knew she had spoken.

Sister Victoria blinked while Sister Elizabeth looked at Mother Superior for a cue.

The older woman set the letter down on her ink blotter and pierced Rose with a stony stare. “You were not summoned, Rose,” she said. “This is none of your concern.”

“If that letter is addressed to me,” Rose said, surprising herself with how steady her voice was, “then I have a right to know what is happening.”

Sister Elizabeth inhaled sharply. “It is not our place to dictate—”

“Enough,” Mother Superior barked. She held Rose in a clear, glacial gaze. “You and the others may leave us. Now.”