Chapter Two
“She is stirring, Your Grace.”
The voice seemed to come from somewhere far away—or perhaps from directly beside her; Fiona could not quite determine which.
Her head felt packed with wool, her thoughts wading through treacle, and a dull, insistent throb in her left ankle forced the unwelcome acknowledgement that the accident had not been a dream.
The carriage. The cliff. The storm.
The man.
Fiona’s eyes flew open.
She was not, as she had half-expected, lying in a ditch upon the Yorkshire moors.
She was in a bed—an enormous, canopied bed draped in faded blue velvet, heaped with pillows that carried the faint scent of lavender and old linen.
Weak grey light filtered through heavy curtains, and somewhere nearby a fire crackled steadily in the grate.
And at her bedside sat the largest man she had ever beheld.
He was even more formidable in daylight than he had been in the storm.
Though seated, he appeared to command half the chamber, his shoulders stretching the seams of a dark coat plainly cut by an excellent tailor and worn by a man utterly indifferent to fashion.
His hair—that untamed dark mane she recalled—had been drawn back into a queue, though several defiant strands had already escaped to frame his face.
That face. Stark, angular, uncompromising—hard lines and a harder jaw, softened only by the unexpected fullness of his lower lip.
He regarded her with studied composure, yet his hands—large, long-fingered hands presently encircling her wrist—betrayed a tension that suggested he awaited some verdict.
Fiona screamed.
It was not, she would later concede, her most dignified moment.
She was not a woman prone to hysterics; she valued composure, practicality, the ability to remain calm in circumstances that sent others into vapours.
But there was something about waking in a strange chamber to find an enormous stranger clasping one’s wrist that bypassed reason altogether and went straight to instinct.
The man released her at once.
He rose so abruptly that his chair scraped sharply across the floor, and for one fleeting, absurd instant, Fiona thought he looked almost—wounded. Then his expression closed, composure settling over him like stone.
“This,” he said evenly, “is precisely why I avoid people.”
And he left.
The door shut behind him with quiet finality, leaving Fiona alone with her racing pulse, her aching ankle, and the mortifying awareness that she had just screamed in the face of the man who had saved her life.
“Oh, miss.” Molly hurried forward from the fireside—where she must have kept watch through the night. Her maid’s face was pale but unmarked, and she moved without the stiffness of serious injury. “Oh, miss, you have done it now.”
“Done what?” Fiona attempted to sit up, wincing as the movement jarred her ankle. “Who was that man? Where are we? And Mr Briggs—?”
“Mr Briggs has broken his arm, but he will mend. We are at Thornwick Castle, miss—the Duke of Thornwick’s seat.” Molly’s voice dropped to a whisper, as though the very walls might overhear. “That was the Duke, miss. The one they call the Beast of Thornwick.”
The Beast of Thornwick.
Fiona closed her eyes briefly. Of course. Naturally she had screamed at a duke. Not merely a duke, but one furnished with a melodramatic epithet—always an ominous sign.
“Why do they call him that?”
Molly cast a nervous glance toward the door before leaning closer.
“They say he was born… marked, miss. That he bears a great stain upon his skin—across his chest and up his neck. Wine-dark and spreading. They say his mother could not bear the sight of it, and that is why he lives out here, removed from polite society.”
“A mark.” Fiona recalled the high collar of his coat, the way he had kept his throat covered even amidst wind and rain. “What sort of mark?”
“A birthmark, miss. That is what they say. The servants speak of it only in murmurs. They claim he never removes his coat in company, never allows anyone to see—”
“That will do, Molly.”
Her maid fell silent at once. Fiona stared up at the velvet canopy and endeavoured to reconcile gossip with memory: the man who had carried her through a storm without hesitation, who had barked orders with crisp efficiency, whose arms had been the only steady thing in a world turned sideways.
A birthmark. That was sufficient to render him a beast in the eyes of society—not cruelty, nor violence, nor vice, but the accident of his skin.
And she had rewarded him with a scream.
“Help me up,” Fiona said abruptly.
“Miss, your ankle—”
“Is sprained, not severed. Help me up, Molly. I must apologise to the Duke.”
Molly’s eyes widened. “Apologise? Miss, you cannot mean to seek him out. He is—they say he is—”
“He is a man who pulled me from a shattered carriage and bore me through a storm to safety.” Fiona pushed back the covers, suppressing a sharp intake of breath as pain flared in her ankle. “Whatever tales are told of him, I owe him better than hysteria.”
The attempt to rise proved ill-advised. Her ankle, neatly bound in fresh bandages, had swollen alarmingly. The moment she placed weight upon it, a searing bolt of pain shot up her leg, and she sank back onto the mattress with a gasp.
“You see, miss?” Molly fluttered anxiously. “You are in no condition—”
“Then procure me a walking stick. Or a crutch. Or a sufficiently sturdy broom handle.” Fiona glared at her treacherous ankle as though moral authority alone might compel obedience.
“I will not languish in this bed like some overwrought heroine awaiting the brooding master of the house to determine my fate.”
“But miss, that is precisely what occurs in chapter six of—”
“Molly. The broom handle. At once.”
***
Christian had retreated to his study, which was where he always retreated when the world proved too much to bear.
It was the only chamber in Thornwick Castle that felt wholly his own—not merely inherited from his father, not shadowed by his mother’s disappointed sighs, not peopled by the silent expectations of generations of Hales who had contrived to be born unmarked.
Every volume upon the shelves had been selected by his own hand.
The leather of the great chair had been worn to suppleness by years of solitary evenings.
The decanter upon the sideboard was kept filled, the fire laid without fail, and no one disturbed him here unless the house itself were in peril.
Which was why the knock at the door made him spill his tea.
“Your Grace.” Mrs Blackley’s voice carried through the wood, carefully composed. “Miss Hart requests a word.”
Christian stared at the door. “Miss Hart is injured. Miss Hart ought to be resting.”
“I ventured to suggest as much, Your Grace. She was quite… resolute.”
A pause. From beyond the door came a muffled exchange that suggested resolute might be a charitable description.
“I am not receiving callers, Mrs Blackley. Inform Miss Hart—”
The door opened.
Christian rose at once, irritation colliding with something far too akin to alarm.
In the doorway stood Miss Fiona Hart, one hand braced against the frame, the other gripping a fireplace poker pressed into service as a makeshift crutch.
She wore an overlarge nightgown—clearly borrowed from the servants’ stores—and a woollen shawl draped about her shoulders.
Her hair hung loose in a tumble of chestnut curls that caught the firelight and glowed copper at the edges.
She looked, he thought with incredulity, like a determined lunatic who had stormed his defences armed with hearth equipment.
“Miss Hart.” His voice came out strangled. “What, precisely, are you doing?”
“Apologising.” She advanced one uneven step into the room, winced, and caught herself against a bookcase. “I screamed at you. It was unforgivably rude. I am sorry.”
Christian opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
No one apologised to him. People avoided him. Whispered about him. Stepped aside when they glimpsed him upon the road. They did not traverse corridors on injured limbs to beg pardon for a perfectly natural fright.
“You were startled,” he managed. “You had suffered an accident. Your reaction was… understandable.”
“It was not.” She took another step, and he had to clamp down upon the instinct to cross the room and steady her. “You saved my life. You carried me through a storm. And I repaid you by shrieking as though you were some sort of—”
She stopped.
Her gaze had shifted to the mirror above the mantel. In its glass, she could see what he had not thought to conceal: his reflection, coat unfastened, cravat loosened, the dark edge of the birthmark visible where he had tugged impatiently at the collar.
He watched her face in the mirror. Waited for the recoil. The flinch. The confirmation of what he had long ago learned to expect.
Miss Hart turned to him.
“Is that it?” she asked quietly. “The mark they speak of?”
His throat tightened. He ought to close his coat. Dismiss her. End this absurd exchange before it cut any deeper.
“You have been listening to servants’ chatter.” His tone sharpened despite himself. “I should have thought a lady above indulging such nonsense.”
“I was curious,” she replied, without defensiveness. “They call you the Beast of Thornwick. I wished to know why.”
“And now you do.” He turned away, drawing his coat about him with practised efficiency. “A mark at birth. A convenient superstition. Choose whichever dramatic explanation you prefer—the conclusion is the same. I was born… different, Miss Hart, and society has never permitted me to forget it.”
Silence followed.
He finished fastening the buttons and turned back, half-expecting to find her gone—retreated to the safety of distance and propriety.
She remained where she was, leaning against the shelf, the poker planted upon the carpet, studying him with an expression he could not decipher.