Chapter 1
Two months later
The carriage juddered along a road that could charitably be described as neglected.
Its ruts were deep enough to swallow a man’s boot, and every third yard produced a lurch that rattled Alistair’s teeth.
Beside him, his companion braced a bracing hand against the door frame and said nothing, which was one of the qualities Alistair appreciated most about Nathaniel Beckwith.
Beckwith was a renowned estate manager whom Alistair had lured away from a profitable situation in Northumberland with the promise of a generous salary, performance bonuses, and the sort of challenge that men like Beckwith could not resist. Namely, an estate so thoroughly mismanaged it bordered on the archaeological.
They had met on two prior occasions, once at a livestock auction in Harrogate and once over supper at a Leeds coaching inn, and both times Alistair had come away with the impression of a man who reckoned the world in yields per acre and did not suffer fools.
The sort of fellow one wanted when inheriting a catastrophe.
“Your first task will be the accounting books,” Alistair said, pitching his voice above the rattle of carriage wheels on uneven ground. “Find them, assess their condition, and begin setting things in order. I want to know what is owed, what is earned, and what has vanished into the ether.”
Beckwith inclined his head. He was a solidly built man, thirty-four or thereabouts, with a square jaw softened by the kind of patient eyes that came from years of negotiating with stubborn tenant farmers and even more stubborn sheep.
His coat was well-made but practical, absent of any affectation.
“And the current steward? Am I to work alongside him, or—”
“The current steward is not to be paid any mind.” Alistair’s tone brooked no argument.
“The estate is infamous for being buried in the past. Tenants flee because the land is managed as though it were still the reign of the Tudors. Any man who has overseen this decline for more than a twelvemonth is either complicit or incompetent.”
Beckwith considered this, his gaze drifting to the carriage window where a line of elms, their bare branches like the fingers of supplicants, flanked the avenue.
“It might not be entirely the steward’s fault, Your Grace.
If the late duke was issuing impractical instructions, even a capable man would struggle to—”
“Then either he was not good at managing His Grace,” Alistair cut in, “or he was not talented enough to find a more desirable situation. Which failing do you prefer?”
Beckwith’s lips twitched. “Fair point. There is no excuse for incompetence when it affects the livelihood of tenant farmers and the people of the duchy.”
“Just so.” Alistair folded his arms across his chest, the leather of his gloves creaking in the cold. “I did not inherit excuses. I inherited obligations and responsibilities. There is no time for ineptitude when there are so many mouths to feed.”
They fell into silence as the carriage groaned past a pair of stone gateposts, their once-proud griffins now missing a wing and half a beak, respectively. Iron gates hung open at a slant, one hinge having surrendered to rust and gravity. A gatekeeper’s lodge sat dark and shuttered at the verge.
Not promising.
The avenue wound deeper into the estate, and the neglect deepened with it.
Fences sagged. A stone wall had collapsed into a mossy heap, and no one had bothered to rebuild it.
The land itself was not poor. He could see that much, even through the early March drizzle, but it had been squandered.
Alistair’s jaw tightened as the carriage lurched through another rut.
His father had told him, on the rare occasions when Edmund Oxley had allowed himself to speak of the family he had left behind, that the eighth duke, Alistair’s own grandfather, Peregrine Oxley, had been a man of iron convictions and glacial affections.
Peregrine had believed in bloodlines the way other men believed in God, and when his second son had dared to fall in love with Moira Fraser, the old man had not merely disapproved; he had severed the branch entirely.
“Sullying the bloodline.”
Those had been the words, according to Alistair’s father. As though love were a contaminant and industry a disease.
The disinheritance had been swift and merciless.
No farewell. No allowance. No acknowledgment that his second-born son existed at all.
Edmund had walked into marriage with nothing but the clothes he wore and the bride on his arm, the old duke likely having drawn a line through his name in the family Bible as though excising a tumor.
Alistair’s mother had told him this, years later, her voice free of bitterness.
Moira Fraser-Oxley was not a woman who wasted time on resentment when there was work to be done.
Alistair had inherited that pragmatism, along with his mother’s auburn hair and his father’s stubborn jaw. He had also inherited his ducal grandfather’s relentless drive, though he would sooner have thrown himself into the Irwyn than admit to the resemblance.
From his exile, Edmund had built something finer than anything the Oxleys had managed in generations. Fraser & Oxley Textile Mill stood as testament to what men could achieve when they chose merit over inheritance, grit over gilt.
The mill had belonged to the Fraser family, and when Edmund Oxley married the owner’s daughter, he entered the business to work as a partner.
Even after Grandpapa Alistair passed from the world, the maternal name remained first in the firm’s title.
It was a deliberate mutiny, a declaration that the Fraser-Oxleys were not ashamed of trade. On the contrary, they were proud of it.
And now, by the perverse arithmetic of inheritance, all that Edmund had rejected was being heaped upon his eldest son.
For Alistair’s entire life, he had lived just two miles from the ducal estate but had never seen the manor before this day. Not as the grandson of a duke. Nor as the nephew of a duke. Nor … well … nor as a duke.
It was still difficult to comprehend that he now held the curst title, even while he attempted to list out his unwanted responsibilities in a notebook.
He would dispatch them swiftly, then head to London to sign the contract with Hollingford & Goss.
The new partnership with the mercantile house would elevate Fraser & Oxley Textile Mill to unprecedented success, and those funds would be needed to modernize this behemoth of antiquated land management, amongst his other far more invigorating projects.
As the carriage rattled along the bumpy avenue to reach the hall, Alistair considered the disrepair he had already noticed.
The estate was lost in the mists of time.
As if fate itself wished to laugh at his new circumstances, the carriage chose that moment to break free of the line of trees that had obscured the view, and Alistair caught sight of the manor for the first time.
Medieval, refurbished in the 1500s, and perched on the edge of a dramatic gorge, the stone towers were wrapped in early morning mists as if to punctuate the phantasy elements of his journey. It was as if he were traveling back in time to a bygone era.
Fortunestone Hall.
Or Fortune’s Fall, as the locals preferred to call it.
A cutting commentary on both its location so near the gorge and the dreadful mismanagement of the ducal estates, infamous throughout the region.
The previous Dukes of Oxley were not renowned for being good stewards, and certainly, his uncle’s recent fatal plummet down its cliffs had served to only cement the sobriquet.
The entire estate was physical evidence of high-minded noblemen caught in a bygone era, oblivious to changes in the practical world where lessor humans lived.
Fortune’s Fall, indeed.
His new title was an albatross, and Alistair needed to make arrangements to divest himself of its weight lest it drag him under.
“Handsome pile,” Beckwith observed, leaning forward to take it in, though his tone carried cautious reserve. He was likely already calculating the cost of maintaining a roof that size.
“It is a millstone.” Alistair pulled the notebook from his coat pocket. He added roof beneath gatehouse and fencing and snapped the book shut. “I intend to be in London within the week. Whatever arrangements need making, we are to make them swiftly.”
Beckwith said nothing to that, which again Alistair appreciated. The man understood priorities. He understood that the mill was not merely a business. It was the engine that kept an entire community breathing. Fortunestone Hall, by contrast, appeared to be a monument to financial entropy.
The carriage clattered across a stone bridge whose balustrades were chipped and stained with lichen, then rattled up the final stretch of the drive toward the hall’s entrance.
Up close, the decay was plain. One of the great oak doors stood slightly ajar, as though the house itself had given up the effort of keeping the world at bay.
As the coachman reined the horses to a halt, Alistair drew a deep breath.
The air smelled of wet stone, damp earth, and the faintly vegetal tang of moss.
It was the scent of a place that had been slowly surrendering to nature for decades.
Right, then. In and out. Assess, instruct, arrange, depart. You are here to untangle a mess, not to adopt one.
He stepped down from the carriage, his boots meeting gravel with a satisfying crunch, and looked up at Fortunestone Hall.
The sheer scale of it pressed against him.
Towers, chimneys, a roofline that seemed to stretch the width of a small village.
For a moment, the weight of what he had inherited settled upon his shoulders like a physical thing.
He shook it off. He had not come here to be awed.