Chapter 28
“Your Grace,” the butler said, bowing low as Duncan stepped into the townhouse hall. “There’s something for you.”
Duncan barely heard him at first. The ride home had been quiet, the city dark and damp beneath a veil of mist.
Catherine had fallen asleep halfway through, her head resting lightly against the carriage window, and he had sat opposite her, watching the faint rise and fall of her breath.
Every time the wheels hit a rut in the road, she stirred, and he’d found himself tensing, wanting to reach out and steady her.
He hadn’t.
Now, standing beneath the familiar chandelier of his own home, he felt none of the relief he should have. The air here was clean, warm, still scented faintly with cedar and wax polish, but his chest was still tight with the acrid sting of smoke.
“Leave it on the table,” he said absently.
The butler cleared his throat. “It’s urgent, sir. A man delivered it not ten minutes before you returned. Said it was meant for your hand only.”
That made Duncan look up. The butler held out a single white envelope, unmarked. No seal. No name.
“Who was the messenger?”
“He gave no card, Your Grace. Only said you’d understand.”
The words scraped against something inside him. He dismissed the man with a nod and took the envelope, turning it over once in his hand. The paper was cheap, coarse between his fingers. It hadn’t come from anyone respectable.
He broke it open.
The note inside was short. One line, written in a neat, deliberate hand.
Meddle in my business again, and the next fire will be yours.
For a long moment, he simply stared at it. The room seemed to narrow around him, sound dropping away until all he could hear was his own pulse. Then came the anger—sharp and immediate, rising from somewhere deep. His jaw locked. The paper crumpled in his fist.
Felton.
There was no question in his mind. The timing, the audacity, the tone. He could almost hear the man’s calm, taunting voice behind the words, too sure of himself. Felton had always been reckless, but this was something else entirely.
“Your Grace?”
He hadn’t noticed his butler still standing there. “It is…nothing,” Duncan said, his voice low. “Go. Tell the staff they’re dismissed until tomorrow. I’ll not be disturbed.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Duncan cast one look of longing upstairs.
A fleeting thought of joining his wife in her bedchambers crossed his mind, but then he dismissed such a notion.
He stalked toward his study instead. When the door shut, the silence that followed was absolute.
He crossed the room in three long strides and tossed the note onto the desk, watching it land beside the silver inkstand.
For a moment, he just stood there. His reflection caught in the dark window—tall, soot-streaked, still in the same coat he’d worn at Brightwater. The man who looked back at him might as well have been a stranger.
Quieter, colder fury came next, the kind that didn’t shout. It simply settled in his bones, steady and certain. He knew what Felton was after: control. Intimidation. And it might have worked, once, before Catherine. Before he’d watched her walk through flame for someone she loved.
Felton’s mistake is simple. He does not know that I am willing to burn for her.
A soft knock broke the thought.
“Duncan?” Her voice.
He was startled by the intrusion. He had assumed that Catherine had gone straight to bed. “Come in.”
The door opened, and there she was, pale in the lamplight, wrapped in one of her thinner night robes, the faintest trace of fatigue softening her features.
She had washed the soot from her face and braided her hair loosely over one shoulder, though a few strands had already escaped. She looked fragile. Human. Real.
“Are you all right?” she asked. Her voice was gentle, but he caught the edge of worry beneath it. “While I was preparing for bed, Alice said the butler gave you a message.”
He straightened instinctively, the mask slipping into place before he’d even thought to do it. “A minor matter,” he said. “Nothing that requires your concern.”
Her brow furrowed. “You look pale.”
“I’m tired.”
“So am I,” she murmured. “But exhaustion doesn’t usually make one grip their desk hard enough to splinter the wood.”
He glanced down. She was right. His knuckles were white, the skin stretched tight. Slowly, he loosened his hold. “Old habit.”
She stepped closer. The lamplight caught the faint bruise on her shoulder, the one that made his stomach knot every time he looked at it.
He had tried not to think about how close she’d come to being crushed.
Tried not to remember the sound of the beam cracking, the way she’d shielded that boy with her body instead of moving to save herself.
“Duncan,” she said softly. “Talk to me.”
He forced a breath. “There’s nothing to talk about. The orphanage will be rebuilt. The investigation will begin tomorrow…or rather later today. Everything’s under control.”
She tilted her head, studying him the way she always did, with that infuriating tenderness that made him feel transparent. “That’s not what I asked.”
He met her gaze.
“I’ve got some things to attend to before morning,” he said instead. “You should rest.”
Her lips parted as if she wanted to argue, but she caught herself. “Very well,” she said quietly.
When she turned to leave, he almost called her back. The words lodged in his throat. He wanted her near, wanted to feel her hand against his, to let the warmth of her chase away the cold settling in his chest. But he couldn’t risk the distraction. Not tonight.
She paused at the door, looking back at him. “If it’s something that troubles you,” she said softly, “you don’t have to bear it alone.”
He held her gaze for a long moment. “Go to bed, Catherine.”
Something in her eyes flickered—hurt, perhaps, or disappointment— but she nodded once. “Goodnight, Your Grace.”
When the door closed behind her, he turned back to the desk. The note still lay there, half-crumpled, the words glaring up at him like a challenge.
He picked it up again, smoothing the paper flat. His hands were steady now. The initial rage had cooled to something harder, the kind of focus that had built his fortune and broken anyone who thought to cross him.
Felton wanted to frighten him. To draw him out. But he had chosen the wrong weapon.
Duncan poured himself a drink, the crystal clinking softly against the decanter. The brandy burned its way down, a poor substitute for calm.
His gaze drifted toward the door where Catherine had stood moments ago. He could still smell her faintly in the air, lavender and smoke, soft and human against the cold scent of ink and glass. He pressed a hand to his chest, the ache there deeper than before.
He should tell her Lord Felton was to blame for the destruction of Brightwater. She had the right to know what the man had done. But the thought of fear in her eyes was unbearable. He’d keep this to himself. Handle it the way he handled everything else: decisively, quietly, without emotion.
And yet, as he sat behind his desk, the letter open before him, the memory of her voice refused to fade.
He set the brandy aside and leaned back in his chair, rubbing a hand over his jaw. Sleep would not come. His mind ran circles, tracing possibilities, strategies, retaliation. But beneath it all, one image remained: her face in the firelight, eyes wide and fearless.
If Felton thought to threaten her—to threaten them—he’d learn what kind of man he was dealing with.
“Good morning, Your Grace.”
Duncan looked up briefly from the papers spread across his desk.
“Good morning,” he said.
She could see that he was preoccupied with some matter of business, but that did not stop her from proceeding.
A full three days had passed since the incident at Brightwater, and she was eager to be of use to the children once more.
“I thought we might go to Belgrave House this morning,” she said after a pause. “Mrs. Simms wrote that the older children have begun their lessons again. She says it comforts them to have a routine.”
“Very well,” he said, eyes still on the letter before him.
“I can go alone if you prefer,” she offered.
He looked up then, briefly meeting her gaze. “I’ll accompany you.”
“Of course,” she murmured.
The morning light filtered faintly through the tall windows, cold and gray, catching on the dust still floating in the air from their hurried return.
Somewhere down the hall, a clock struck eight, its steady rhythm filling the silence they left behind.
Servants moved quietly through the house, speaking in hushed tones, as though afraid to disturb whatever fragile peace lingered between their masters.
Catherine wrapped her shawl tighter around her shoulders, following Duncan out into the pale day, her heart heavy with words she hadn’t found the courage to speak.
The carriage ride to Belgrave House was quiet. Too quiet.
Catherine sat opposite him, her gloved hands clasped tightly in her lap. The London streets passed outside the window, gray morning light filtering through thin mist. Duncan’s gaze was fixed on the glass, his expression unreadable.
Once, she would have filled the silence with talk of the children, of plans for rebuilding Brightwater, of anything to draw him nearer again. But she’d learned enough of him to know that when he withdrew, words only pushed him further.
Still, the distance hurt.
“Have you been sleeping?” she asked softly.
He blinked, as though pulled from a long way off. “Well enough.”
That was a lie. She could see it in the shadows beneath his eyes.
“And eating?”
He inclined his head, polite, detached. “You’d do well to worry about yourself for once.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not,” he said quietly. “You’re pale.”
“And you,” she countered, “are clearly tired.”
For one fleeting moment, something in his eyes softened. Then it was gone, shuttered as quickly as it appeared.