Chapter 9
Three days after the first rendezvous, three days of avoiding the duke, trying to wrap her head around what she had done at the orangery, what she had felt, Caroline was strolling idly down the gallery.
She paused when she heard the murmur of unfamiliar tones, men’s voices, deep and roughened by years of labor.
The voices were coming from the Duke’s study.
She hesitated, curiosity tugging her closer. The door to Richard’s study was half open, and from the shadows within came the scent of pipe smoke and parchment.
Through the crack, she saw him.
Richard sat at a massive desk of dark oak, his posture straight but not rigid, his expression one of cool concentration. Around him stood three men—farmers by their clothes, their hats in hand, their boots worn from fieldwork. Their tones were deferential but not fearful.
Caroline had expected the famous Devil of the Ton to treat his tenants with the same icy distance he offered everyone else. Instead, what she witnessed startled her.
One of the men, his face weathered and earnest, spoke anxiously about a boundary dispute—two tenants claiming the same stretch of grazing land.
Richard listened without interruption, one hand resting on the desk, his fingers tapping thoughtfully.
When the man faltered, the Duke’s voice emerged, quiet but firm.
“Then you will share the field until the matter is settled. Mr. Crawley, you will pay no rent on it this season; Mr. Hales, you will bear the tithe for both. If either man cheats the other, he answers to me.”
The men nodded, murmuring thanks. Richard dismissed them with a curt inclination of his head, and they left with relief in their eyes.
Caroline sat in silence as the door closed behind them. He exhaled slowly, leaning back in his chair. The morning light struck across his face, touching the scar that marred his cheek—and for once, it did not seem menacing. It was simply there, part of him, like the shadows in the room.
For a moment, she could almost see what others did: not a monster, but a man who carried too much upon his shoulders.
When the next petitioner entered—a young woman with a frightened expression and a folded letter—Richard rose from his chair and motioned her toward the window where the light was better. “You’re Mrs. Denby’s niece, are you not?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” the girl stammered.
“She’s ill again?”
The girl nodded. “The fever took her last night. She has little firewood left.”
Richard turned toward his steward, a silent man named Corbin who stood by the wall with a ledger. “See that the Denby household receives what they need. Add the expense to my account.”
The steward bowed and noted the order.
Caroline felt her chest tighten. This was not the man society feared. This was not the cold strategist of their chessboard or the battle-hardened devil of gossip. This was a man quietly mending the cracks of a world others overlooked.
When the girl curtsied and left, Caroline entered the room, her steps light but deliberate.
“I do believe you missed your true calling,” she said, resting a hand upon the doorframe. “You might have made an excellent magistrate—or a benevolent tyrant.”
Richard’s eyes lifted, the faintest glimmer of surprise breaking through his composure. “You were listening.”
“Observing,” she corrected, stepping further inside. “There’s a difference.”
“I see little distinction.”
“That is because you are accustomed to command, not conversation.” She smiled faintly, perching on the edge of a nearby chair. “I had half expected to find you terrifying your tenants into obedience. Instead, you are—what was it the old man called you?—‘fair as a judge.’”
He gave a small, humorless sound that might have been a laugh. “They obey because they trust I will act without favor. Not because they like me.”
“Perhaps not,” she allowed. “But I think they respect you. There’s power in that.”
He leaned back in his chair, studying her. “Respect is a fragile thing, Lady Caroline. Easier to lose than love, and infinitely harder to earn.”
She tilted her head, intrigued. “And yet you’ve done so. Even your scar doesn’t seem to frighten them.”
His gaze darkened slightly. “It should.”
“Because it frightens you?”
The question hung in the air. His jaw tightened, and for a heartbeat, Caroline thought he might send her from the room. But then he only said, “Because it reminds them that power has a cost.”
She considered him, her teasing expression fading. “Or that pain doesn’t always destroy a man.”
Their eyes met—steady, searching—and for the first time, Richard looked away.
The door burst open before either could speak further. A tall man entered without ceremony, his stride confident, his coat dusty from the road. His grin was a slash of white against sun-browned skin.
“Belford, you damned ghost! I thought you were rotting in some godforsaken corner of the world!”
Caroline started at the intrusion. Richard, however, rose from his chair with a rare smile—faint, fleeting, but genuine.
“Edmund.”
“Alive, then,” the newcomer said, clapping him hard on the shoulder. “By God, I half believed the rumors. I’d have bet half my estate you’d been eaten by cannibals.”
“Only nearly,” Richard replied dryly.
Their laughter filled the room, rough and familiar. Caroline had never heard Richard laugh like that—not the measured chuckle of amusement, but something freer, warmer.
Edmund turned, catching sight of her. “And who is this vision? Have you gone and married while I was away?”
Caroline arched a brow, her tone cool but amused. “Not yet. Though I appreciate the promotion.”
Richard’s gaze flicked to her, warning and protective all at once. “Lady Caroline Hughes, my guest. Lady Caroline, this is Duke Edmund Grant—once my friend, now an insufferable meddler.”
Edmund laughed, unoffended. “A pleasure, my lady. You must have remarkable patience to endure his company. I’m still trying to recover mine.”
Caroline smiled. “We have an arrangement. I test his temper; he pretends not to be irritated.”
“Ah,” Edmund said, glancing at Richard with open mischief. “So, she is the one.”
“The one what?” Richard asked, tone edged.
“The one who might finally teach you how to smile.”
Richard’s expression shuttered instantly, his good humor vanishing like a candle snuffed by wind. “We have work to discuss,” he said flatly. “If you’ll excuse us, Lady Caroline.”
Caroline inclined her head gracefully. “Of course, Your Grace. And Your Grace.”
As she swept from the room, she could feel the weight of Richard’s gaze upon her back—not soft, not cruel, but filled with something she couldn’t name.
When the door closed behind Caroline, the air in the study shifted.
The warmth she carried seemed to leave with her, replaced by the familiar stillness Richard found both comforting and suffocating.
Edmund paced to the window, hands behind his back, whistling low through his teeth as though reacquainting himself with the very stones of Ashwood.
“Three years,” he said finally. “Three bloody years, and you vanish like smoke. Do you know how many rumors I’ve heard about you?”
“I can imagine,” Richard replied, his tone clipped but not unfriendly.
“Oh, you’ve no idea.” Edmund turned, his grin wry. “They said you’d been murdered in Spain. Then someone swore you’d turned pirate in the Caribbean. And one fellow swore you’d married a sheikh’s daughter in Arabia and built yourself a palace of gold.”
“Pity,” Richard said dryly, “none of them true. Though the palace sounds preferable to this.”
Edmund laughed, crossing the room to clap him on the shoulder again. “Still the same damn man. Grimmer, perhaps. But alive. I’ll take that.”
The laugh faded as he stepped back, studying him more closely. “Though God above, Ashwood—you look like you’ve been through the fire.”
Richard poured two glasses of brandy from the decanter on his desk, sliding one across. “Not fire,” he said. “Just the world.”
Edmund accepted the glass but did not drink. “You never sent word. Not once. You let us all think you were dead.”
“I was, in all but body,” Richard said quietly.
The silence that followed was not the comfortable kind that came with old friendship but something heavier, filled with unspoken things. Edmund sipped the brandy, his eyes never leaving Richard’s face.
“When you disappeared, I searched for weeks,” he said finally. “No trace. Then the reports came—‘press-ganged,’ they said. A nobleman taken among the common ranks.”
Richard’s expression hardened. “I was careless.”
“You were betrayed,” Edmund corrected. “There’s a difference.”
Richard looked away, jaw tightening. “It no longer matters.”
“Like hell it doesn’t.” Edmund set his glass down with a sharp clink. “Whoever did it is still breathing, I’ll wager. Men like that don’t stop at one act of treachery. You can’t simply–”
“Let them come,” Richard said, his voice quiet but cutting through Edmund’s protest like a blade.
“You mean that,” Edmund said softly. “Good God, you actually mean that.”
“I’m tired of ghosts,” Richard said, his eyes fixed on the fire. “If they wish to haunt me, they know where to find me now.”
Edmund sank into a chair opposite, his usual bluster gone. “And what then? Another duel? Another grave? You think vengeance will give you peace?”
“No,” Richard said. “But it will silence the noise.”
For a long time, neither spoke. The only sound was the faint crackle of the hearth.
At last, Edmund exhaled and leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees. “You’ve changed, Ashwood. You used to speak of duty, of honor. Now you speak like a man waiting for the world to strike so you might strike back.”
Richard’s mouth curved in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Perhaps I’ve learned that honor is the armor of fools.”
Edmund shook his head. “And yet, you’re here—holding court like some sainted duke, mending quarrels, feeding widows. That’s not the act of a man who’s forsaken honor. It’s guilt.”