Prologue #3
Alistair sank back into his chair, rubbing his temples where a headache brewed. Beyond the window, the mill floor hummed on without him, indifferent to the upheaval taking shape in this small room.
Fortunestone Hall.
A crumbling relic, by all accounts, buried in debt and outdated traditions.
He had heard whispers over the years. Poor management under Jerome, fleeing tenants, a dowager duchess clinging to faded glory with her granddaughters in tow.
And now it was his? Responsibilities he had not sought, estates to manage, tenants to house, a family of aristocratic relatives to navigate.
“Damn him for getting himself killed. The fool probably deserved it, hunting like some dandy without a care.”
“Perhaps,” Franklin allowed, a flicker of amusement crossing his face. “But the solicitors are insistent. It could be a boon, Alistair … land, rents, influence in Parliament.”
Alistair snorted derisively. “Influence? I would sooner dance a quadrille at Almack’s than rub elbows with those powdered prigs.
This mill is my domain. The deal with Hollingford & Goss …
that is our future. Not some dusty title.
” Yet even as he spoke, a flicker of pragmatism stirred.
The Oxley lands bordered their wool suppliers.
Integrating them could consolidate production, ensure a constant supply immune to market fluctuations.
But no.
The aristocracy had shunned their father, called him vulgar for his trade. Why embrace that world now?
Franklin watched him, perceptive as ever. “At least speak to the solicitors. When you can spare the time, of course.”
Alistair grumbled, leafing through another letter to distract himself. “Fine. When I can spare it. But do not get ideas, Lord Franklin. You are now the brother of a duke. Does that make you a lordling?” He infused the words with mock scorn, a rare attempt at levity to quell his anger.
Franklin laughed outright, the sound rich and genuine, easing the tension in the room.
“Lord Franklin? Sounds ridiculous. I would rather be second at Fraser & Oxley than first in some drafty hall. But suit yourself, Your Grace. Just do not let it go to your head.” He clapped Alistair on the shoulder, a brotherly gesture that grounded him.
Alistair shot him a glare, but there was no heat in it, only the familiar camaraderie that had seen them through business slumps and family losses. “Out with you. Draft that response to Hollingford. And tell no one of this nonsense. Not yet. The last thing we need is gossip disrupting the workers.”
As Franklin departed, his footsteps fading down the stairs, Alistair moved to the window, his palm pressed against the cool glass.
The mill floor stretched below him in its familiar choreography …
spinners feeding carders, weavers inspecting bolts, dyers stirring vats.
This was his world. Tangible, productive, a testament to ingenuity over inheritance.
A dukedom was a chain, binding him to a past he neither wanted nor needed.
The solicitor’s letter lay on his desk like an unspoken challenge, its wax seal cracked in implication.
He would deal with it in time. On his terms.
Alistair donned his coat and descended to the floor, immersing himself in the work. Inspections, adjustments, a word here and there. These were his anchors.
By evening, the shifts had changed, and lanterns flickered to life, casting a warm glow over the cooling machines.
The daytime workers filed out in clusters, their voices carrying the easy warmth of people heading home to families, to hearths, to the small comforts of the lives they had built beyond these walls.
Alistair watched from the doorway of the mill as the last of them disappeared into the January dusk—Tom, walking alongside his father who ruffled his hair, and Mrs. Wilkins, linking arms with a daughter who had come to meet them.
The silence outside settled around him with the frost that crept along the riverbank.
He closed the great doors, his breath a pale cloud in the night air, and stood for a moment in the empty yard.
The mill’s silhouette rose behind him, the sound of the evening shift working muted by the thick walls, but even its solidity could not fill the quiet that followed him home each evening.
It was always this way, these last steps of the day.
The work fell away, and there was only Alistair, walking alone through the cold toward a home where no one waited, the one he kept close to the mill while his mother and Charlotte lived in a much grander one on the outskirts of Irving.
He did not dwell on it. Could not. There was too much to be done to indulge in maudlin sentimentality. But tonight, the silence felt heavier than usual, sharpened by the weight of a title he had never sought and a life that suddenly refused to remain the orderly thing he had built.
The unanticipated duke.
What a farce. The stars wheeled above, indifferent, as he turned up his collar and quickened his pace against the wind.