Chapter 1
T he candle had burned to a stub by the time the knock sounded.
Valeria was reading. Or pretending to. She had been stuck on the same page for the last hour. The book was from the library, one of the few rooms Gordon had not thought to lock. Dust covered the old pages. She was not reading it. She was holding it so her hands had something to do.
The room was quiet. It was always quiet. Gordon was in his study. The servants were downstairs. Just the clock on the mantelpiece, ticking.
She was thinner. She had caught a glimpse of herself that morning. She tried not to look in mirrors anymore. Her cheekbones were sharp enough to cut, and her collarbones poked through her nightshift. Her father used to call her his bright girl. She did not look bright. She looked used up.
Gordon had cut her meals again the week before. Broth and bread for two days because she laughed at something Mary said. He heard it from the hall. She was not allowed to laugh.
She was tired. Not the kind of tired sleep fixed, but bone-tired. Her hands ached. Her neck ached. There was a bruise on her wrist from where she had caught herself on the doorframe that morning, and she had pressed on it three times since sitting down just to feel something .
The book was a novel. It was about a girl and a sea captain and a chest of stolen gold. Valeria did not care about any of them. She turned the page anyway. The paper was soft and yellow at the edges.
“Come in,” she called, setting the book down.
She expected Mary. Mary came every night. Warm milk, a few minutes of talk. Gordon did not know about these visits. He never paid attention to the household schedule.
But these footsteps were too quick. Too light. Wrong breathing. Ragged. Not Mary.
Valeria sat up straighter. Earlier that evening, a maid had knocked to ask if she wished to visit the Duke before retiring.
Valeria had sent her away with the same answer she gave every night: tell His Grace that a wife who cannot give him children has no reason to visit his chambers. The maid had curtsied and left.
It was routine by now. Three years of the same exchange, the same refusal, the same lie keeping the door shut between them. Gordon had stopped coming to her room after the first year. The lie had worked. It was the one victory she allowed herself.
So when the knock came again, she assumed it was Mary with the milk.
But these footsteps were wrong.
Agnes, one of the younger maids, stepped through the door white as a sheet.
“Your Grace.” Her voice broke. “You must come. Please. Now.”
“What has happened?” Valeria asked.
Agnes could not get the words out. She tried twice. Her mouth moved, but nothing came out.
Valeria rose from the bed and put both hands on the girl’s shoulders. “Agnes, look at me. Tell me what happened.”
“It is the Duke, Your Grace. He… he has collapsed in his study. He is not breathing.”
The words did not land right away. Agnes was shaking. Valeria could see it in her hands, the apron twisting between her fingers. The girl was terrified .
So the words were true.
“Send for a physician,” she ordered. Her voice came out wrong. Too calm. “Has anyone moved him?”
“No, Your Grace. Mr. Barrett found him and came straight down.”
“Nobody touches him. Not until the physician gets here.”
Agnes nodded and fled.
Valeria stood alone in her room. Counted to five. One for the shock. Two for the disbelief. Three for the flicker of something she would not name. Four to swallow it. Five.
She reached for her dressing gown. Then she went downstairs.
The corridor was cold. It was always cold here. Three years, and she had never gotten used to it. The stone floor bit at her bare feet.
Gordon’s study was at the end of the east corridor, past the library and the music room nobody used. She knew the house in the dark by now. Which boards creaked. Which doors let a draft through.
She passed the music room. The door was open.
She could see the pianoforte in the dark, lid closed, dust on the keys.
She had asked to play it once, in the first month since their wedding.
Gordon said the noise disturbed him. She had not asked again.
She played in her head instead, fingers moving on her knees under the table at supper, running through the Haydn sonata her mother had taught her.
Gordon never noticed. It was one of the few things she had that he did not know about.
Two footmen stood outside the study. They were both gray in the face. They stepped aside. Neither said a word.
Then she went inside.
Gordon Hansley, the Duke of Thornhill, was indeed dead.
The physician came within the hour. He was a round man, ink on his fingers, with a medical bag that rattled.
Gordon’s heart had stopped. No wound. No poison. Nothing dramatic. He had died in his chair with a glass of brandy in one hand and a ledger of debts in front of him.
Ironic. The man who controlled the butter on the breakfast table could not control his own heart. It just failed. Valeria understood.
The physician was gentle with her. He spoke slowly, as though she might not follow, and she let him because correcting him would cost her energy she did not have. He smelled of pipe smoke and ink.
“Was he in pain?” she asked.
“I do not believe so, Your Grace. It must have been very quick.”
“Good,” she said, and then caught herself.
The physician looked at her. She looked back. Neither of them said anything else.
The physician said the usual things. Condolences. Laudanum, if she needed it.
“No,” Valeria uttered. “Thank you.”
He left.
She stood in the doorway and looked at Gordon. Eyes closed. Mouth slack. Signet ring catching the lamplight.
He looked smaller dead. Take the cruelty out, and he was just a man in a chair. Not tall. Not anything. She had been afraid of him for three years, and standing there now, she could not remember why.
There was a stain on his waistcoat. Port, probably. She had never seen a stain on his clothes before. He would have been furious.
The thought almost made her laugh. She pressed her lips together and held it in.
His desk was covered in papers. Ledgers, letters, bills. She had never been allowed in this room.
She walked to the desk, looked at the papers, and realized she could not read his handwriting. Three years married to this man, and she had never seen his handwriting up close.
She did not know if he pressed hard or wrote light, or if he crossed his Ts or left them open.
She did not know anything about him except the ways he had hurt her, and standing in his study for the first time, she understood that this was by design.
He had made himself unknowable so that she could never predict him. He had failed at that, too.
She felt nothing.
No. That was not true. Something sat low in her chest. Unfamiliar. Warm. She had to think about it before she knew what it was.
It was relief.
And behind the relief, pushing up hard, was what might have been anger. Not at him, though there was plenty of that. But at the years. At the wasted time. At waking up every morning in a house that was not hers.
She pressed her lips together and turned away.
The servants moved around her. Drawing curtains. Preparing the body. Sending for the vicar. Nobody wept. She noticed that too. Several years under Gordon Hansley and not a single tear in the house.
Mrs. Adler, the housekeeper, had clearly been waiting for this day. She went about things with the calm of a woman who already had a list. She caught Valeria’s eye once. Briefly. Her face said what her mouth did not.
The cook sent up breakfast without being asked. Eggs, toast, bacon, and strong tea. Valeria ate all of it. She did not count. Did not look over her shoulder. She was hungry. The food was there. Nobody stopped her.
She ate a second helping. Then, a third piece of toast with more butter than Gordon would have allowed on the entire table.
The butter was cold and pale, and it tasted like freedom, which was a ridiculous thing to think about butter, but she thought it anyway.
Mary came in while she was eating and stood quietly by the door until Valeria noticed her.
“The undertaker will arrive this afternoon, Your Grace. Mrs. Adler has prepared the blue drawing room.”
“Fine,” Valeria said, still chewing.
“And the post has come. Three letters. I believe one is from Lady Bridget.”
Valeria put down her toast. She had not received a letter from Bridget in eight months. Gordon intercepted them. He read them first and then decided whether she was allowed to receive them. Most of the time, he decided not.
“Bring it to me,” she instructed. “Now, please.”
Mary curtsied and left, then came back with the letter. Valeria held it in both hands for a long moment before opening it.
Bridget’s handwriting. Familiar and round and slightly messy because she wrote too fast and never blotted properly. The paper smelled faintly of rose water.
Dearest Val, it began. I am writing this for the fourth time because I keep crying on the page and the ink runs.
Valeria read the whole thing twice. Then she folded it, put it in the pocket of her dressing gown, and went back to her toast. She did not cry. She was done crying. But she kept her hand on the letter for the rest of the morning.
The solicitor arrived the following morning. Mr. Pemberton was a thin man with spectacles that kept sliding down his nose. He cleared his throat before every sentence.
“Your Grace,” he said, perched on the edge of a chair, papers everywhere, “I must be frank. The situation is complicated.”
“Simplify it for me, Mr. Pemberton.”
He blinked. He was not used to being told what to do by women. She could see him deciding whether to be offended. He chose not to be.
Smart man .
He blinked and then pushed up his spectacles.
“The Duke left no living heirs. The title of Thornhill will become extinct, and the estate will revert to the Crown. However, as the Dowager Duchess, you will retain your jointure. The difficulty is that a woman of your age and position, unmarried, with substantial holdings…” he trailed off.
She did not finish the sentence for him.
He cleared his throat. “There will be interest, Your Grace. Men who see opportunity in a young, wealthy, unattached duchess. Men who will not wait for an invitation. You should consider your options quickly, before someone else considers them for you.”
Valeria’s stomach clenched.
Someone else considering her options for her… That was exactly how she had ended up here.
Not again. Never again.
She looked at her hands. Dry skin, cracked from three winters without hand cream. She had needed Gordon’s permission to use hand cream.
“My sister Caroline held an auction for her hand,” she said.
Mr. Pemberton’s eyebrows flew up. “An auction, Your Grace?”
“A house party. With games and trials, so that a woman can judge a man’s character before agreeing to marry him. Instead of the other way around.” She had been thinking about this all night. “I intend to do the same.”
“Your Grace, I must say that such an arrangement, while not unheard of, would attract considerable attention from the ton. The gossip alone would be… and your reputation…”
“My reputation survived three years of marriage to a man who starved me, Mr. Pemberton. It can survive a party.”
Mr. Pemberton opened his mouth, then closed it. He gathered his papers. Tapped the edges square against the table.
Valeria watched his hands. Steady. Careful. Hands that did not belong to a man who would hurt her.
“I will see to the necessary arrangements,” he declared, standing. “After the mourning period, of course.”
“Of course,” she agreed, folding her hands.
He paused at the door. “Your Grace. Your grandmother would have been proud.”
That landed somewhere she was not ready for. Somewhere tender. She managed a nod.
She waited for the door to close, then pressed her hand to her mouth.
She rang for Mary. The maid came with tea and a plate of shortbread. Valeria stared at it. Golden. Crumbly. She had not been allowed shortbread for two years.
“The servants want you to know,” Mary said, setting down the tray, “that whatever you decide, we stand with you, Your Grace. Every one of us.”
Valeria picked up a piece and bit into it. Butter and sugar on her tongue. Her eyes stung. Not from sadness. She used to love shortbread. Every Sunday, her father’s cook made it. She used to steal pieces off the cooling rack. Her mother would scold her. Her father would pretend not to see.
Gordon found out. He told the kitchen to stop because he could.
She did not cry.
She ate two more pieces. Then she set down her tea and looked out the window at the garden. She had not been allowed out there alone.
“Mary,” she said.
“Your Grace?”
“How long have you been planning this?”
Mary set the teapot down very carefully. “Planning what, Your Grace?”
“The shortbread. You had it ready. You had the tea ready. You knew before I rang.”
“The kitchen has been baking since midnight, Your Grace.”
Valeria looked at her. Mary looked back. She had brown eyes and a face that gave nothing away, but right now she was giving this away on purpose.
“You knew he was going to die,” Valeria concluded.
“I knew he was not well, Your Grace. The brandy. The hours. Mr. Barrett mentioned chest pain last week.”
“And you said nothing,” Valeria said, very quietly.
“There was nothing to be done, Your Grace. And forgive me, but I daresay we would not have wanted anything to be done.”
The room was very quiet. The clock ticked. Mary stood with her hands folded and her face steady.
This woman has been protecting me for three years, and I did not know half of it.
“I will choose someone honorable and worthy,” Valeria said. “And no man will ever steal my choice from me again.”