Chapter Three
Nathaniel mounted the broad staircase slowly, his hand brushing the polished oak of the banister.
The surface felt warmer than the air, as though it remembered every hand before his.
It was as if he were climbing through memories.
Above him, the vaulted ceiling disappeared into shadow, and portraits crowded the walls as though drawing close with each step.
He remembered racing up these steps as a boy, Adrian beside him, laughter echoing until Eleanor’s sharp voice called them to order. The faces on the walls had glared even then. Now, in the shifting lamplight, they looked sterner still, watching each footfall as though judging his right to pass.
A crack of thunder shook the glass in the leaded panes.
Nathaniel paused, his gaze caught by one portrait larger than the rest. Uncle Charles, the late Duke of Hartleigh.
The painter had softened the lines of his mouth, granting an illusion of warmth to features otherwise severe.
Nathaniel’s throat tightened. Charles had been kind on those childhood visits, distant, yes, but not unfeeling.
Now his likeness gazed down like an accusation.
Percival’s tread was steady behind him, allowing no pause for hesitation. “Your chambers are ready, Your Grace.”
They passed into the long gallery that spanned the south wing. Lamps sputtered at intervals, their glow breaking unevenly through long corridors of gloom. The air was cold here, faintly scented with damp stone and wax. Shadows stretched along the floor, climbing the walls like living things.
At the gallery’s end, Percival opened a door and bowed him through. “The duke’s apartments, sir.”
The words struck with finality. The title fit uneasily on his shoulders, borrowed from another man. These were his uncle’s rooms, and now they were his.
Inside, a fire leapt in the grate, throwing warmth against the chill. A small table had been set with decanters and cut glass. On a sideboard, a tray of bread, cheese, and cold meat waited. Curtains, drawn heavy against the storm, muffled the rain yet could not silence the groan of the wind.
A man waited there, tall and spare, his hair touched with gray at the temples. He bowed with quiet precision.
“Your Grace.”
The name surfaced in Nathaniel’s memory even before Percival spoke it. Chillingworth. His uncle’s valet. The same man who had once fastened his cuffs before a family dinner when his fingers fumbled with the buttons.
“Mr. Chillingworth,” Percival confirmed. “He will attend you.”
Nathaniel inclined his head. “Thank you, Percival.”
The butler withdrew, leaving Nathaniel alone with the valet and the storm pressing at the walls.
Chillingworth approached without hurry, his expression calm and reserved. He laid out a fresh coat, trousers, and linen with practiced care. “I have prepared your uncle’s chamber for you, sir. A bath has been drawn. If it pleases you, I will see to your riding clothes.”
The words were proper, the tone even, but Nathaniel heard the faintest hesitation before your uncle’s chamber. The reminder hung between them, thin as parchment. This was his Uncle Charles’s place, not his.
Nathaniel shed his riding coat, letting the chill of the road fall away. Chillingworth received it with gloved hands, his movements so controlled that they betrayed nothing of his thoughts. And yet Nathaniel sensed eyes upon him, judged as surely as by the portraits in the gallery.
As the valet laid out dry linen, Nathaniel studied the man in turn. How many years had he served? How much had he seen? Loyalty was written in every line of his bearing, but grief lingered too.
Nathaniel’s voice was quiet. “You were with my uncle for a long time.”
“Since his marriage, Your Grace.” A pause. “He was a good master.”
Nathaniel gave a short nod, unsure what reply courtesy required. The words fell between them final and heavy as the close of an oath. And what am I to you, then?
He changed quickly, the warmth of fresh cloth seeping into his skin. Yet the unease did not lift. Even though he was donning his own clothes, he wore the mantle of another, stitched with expectation and judgment.
When Chillingworth bowed himself out with the wet clothes, the chamber seemed too close, the fire too hot.
Nathaniel’s gaze lingered on the closed door, a memory rising unbidden.
His boyhood-self stood awkwardly in this same chamber, cuffs undone, while Chillingworth’s precise fingers fastened the buttons.
How strange that nothing in the man had changed, yet everything in Nathaniel had.
The years between seemed to collapse, leaving him caught between past and present, child and duke, all within the same suffocating walls.
Restlessness stirred. He poured a measure of brandy but did not finish it, setting the glass aside. The library called to him with its ledgers, books, and its memory. If the house expected him to be its master, then he would begin with its mind, written in ink and bound in leather.
Taking a lamp from the sideboard, Nathaniel stepped back into the corridor, leaving the warmth of Charles’s chamber behind, and made his way to the library.
The library was a cavern within the cavern, lined with shelves that rose to the dark rafters.
The air carried the dry, sharp scent of vellum and leather mingled with damp stone.
Nathaniel stood in the dimness, lantern light flickering across rows of volumes, the gold letters on their spines dulled by years of neglect.
He brushed his fingertips along one row, leaving faint streaks in the dust. The books seemed untouched for decades, their subjects sprawling from theology to travel, from poetry to law.
His hand paused on a series of estate ledgers bound in brown calf.
The bindings cracked when he opened them, the pages filled with neat columns of ink of rents collected, tithes paid, and debts marked.
He bent closer, the solicitor in him quick to read the language of accounts, yet the scale was beyond him.
One margin note caught his eye, faint and cramped.
It was an unfamiliar name beside a sum paid out year after year.
No tenant, he recalled, no clear tithe. He traced the entry with his thumb, as if pressure might conjure its meaning, but the ink remained mute.
Secrets hid between the columns of figures, waiting for a hand willing to uncover them.
The numbers stretched back generations, a burden of obligation that no writ or deed could reduce. He had traced heirs through tangled codicils, unraveled claims across oceans, yet now he stood as the heir himself, bound not by parchment but by blood. His jaw tightened.
I know how to prove a man belongs to Hartleigh. But how do I prove I am worthy to lead it? Worthy to stand among the dukes of Hartleigh as their peer?
A gust rattled the tall windows. The flame in the nearest lamp flared and then dipped, leaving shadows that crept closer. Nathaniel rubbed at the page, though no smudge marred it. The unease was not in the ink. It lived in him.
*
Clara hesitated at the library’s threshold, half wishing Eleanor had sent Edith instead. The corridor behind her held its breath, warning her to turn back. She opened the door. The air tightened around her. He was a solicitor, and such men missed nothing.
She entered with light, her steps precise. He stood alone at the desk, bent over a ledger, the lamplight throwing his shadow large across the shelves. She waited a heartbeat.
“Excuse me, Your Grace. My lady asks that you join her in the smaller dining parlor for supper,” she said, curtsying.
Nathaniel closed the ledger but left his hand resting on it, as though reluctant to surrender its secrets. “The smaller parlor?”
“It’s warmer,” she answered. “The great hall never holds heat.”
His gaze shifted from her to the volumes spread on the desk. “You have lived here some years, haven’t you, Miss Whitmore?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
She watched as he tapped the ledger. “Then perhaps you can tell me. What else lies buried in these accounts?”
Color rose in her cheeks. Was he speaking of her?
Did he know? Had Lady Eleanor warned him of her father’s ruin, the debts and disgrace that clung to the Whitmore name like mildew?
The scent of vellum and damp leather seemed suddenly sharper, suffocating, carrying her back to the counting house where her father once stood accused.
Nathaniel’s gaze across the desk was as steady, the gaze of a man accustomed to judgment, and for one dreadful instant she felt the floor tilt beneath her, as though the verdict had already been pronounced.
“I see only figures, sir,” she replied, hands tightening on the folds of her gown. “Rents and dues, nothing more.”
His gaze did not leave her. She forced her hands to remain still, though her voice betrayed her with a faint tremor. Heat prickled at the back of her neck as though she stood before a magistrate again, accused of sins she had not yet committed.
His scrutiny landed on her. Surely, he saw through her. Had he judged her already?
The silence stretched until it pressed against her ribs. He leaned back slightly, his gaze steady, his thoughts sealed away. Did he find her answer lacking? Was he evaluating her, as a judge would evaluate a witness? She lifted her chin a fraction, holding tight to what remained of her dignity.
She was acutely aware of his stillness. His hands rested easily on the table, broad and steady, so unlike her father’s restless, careless gestures at the gaming tables. Nathaniel’s intensity unsettled her, yet some part of her could not look away.
A flicker passed between them, awareness, swift and sharp. She caught her breath, and he narrowed his eyes. Then both covered it at once.
“You may tell Her Ladyship I shall attend directly,” Nathaniel said, his tone clipped.
Clara inclined her head, her own voice cool. “Very well, Your Grace. Though I see the ledgers earn quicker obedience than people.”