Chapter 2
Lucien Hawthorne, Fifth Duke of Thornvale, was having what could charitably be called a trying evening.
He’d spent the better part of an hour attempting to repair a leak in the library roof, a task made considerably more difficult by the fact that he’d dismissed his entire staff and had only the vaguest notion of how roofs actually worked.
Water, he’d discovered, had an uncanny ability to travel sideways when thwarted, which seemed both unfair and physically improbable.
“Like a woman,” he muttered, wrestling with a bucket that seemed determined to tip over. “Impossible to predict and guaranteed to cause damage.”
Thunder crashed overhead, rattling the ancient windows in their frames. Somewhere in the depths of the house, a door banged repeatedly, the conservatory, most likely. He’d been meaning to fix that latch for months.
“Your Grace?” Mrs Alder’s voice drifted up from the hallway below. “Are you planning to come down for dinner, or shall I feed it to the cats?”
“We don’t have cats,” he called back, finally managing to position the bucket under the most egregious leak.
“We do now. Three of them, attracted by the mice, you refuse to let me poison.”
Lucien sighed. When he’d retreated to Thornvale, he’d imagined a peaceful solitude, just himself, his books, and blessed silence. Instead, he’d gotten Mrs Alder, who seemed to view his self-imposed exile as a personal challenge.
He descended the narrow stairs from the attic, pausing to glare at a portrait of his great-great-grandfather. The first Duke of Thornvale glared back, looking remarkably smug for a man who’d been dead for over a century.
“You didn’t have to deal with Mrs Alder,” Lucien informed the portrait. “Or cats. Or Lady Catherine Ashworth and her.”
He cut himself off. No. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t think about Catherine. Or London. Or the spectacular way his life had imploded two years ago. That way lay madness and probably more cats.
The kitchen was warm and blessedly dry, though Mrs Alder’s expression when he entered suggested storm clouds of a different sort.
“Soup,” she announced, placing a bowl before him with unnecessary force. “And don’t tell me you’re not hungry. You ate nothing at luncheon but half a piece of toast.”
“I was working.” He sat obediently, knowing from experience that resistance was futile. Mrs Alder had been with the family since he was a young boy and had never let a little thing like his ducal status interfere with her mission to mother him.
“Working,” she sniffed. “Is that what we’re calling it now? Hiding away like a hermit, letting this house fall to ruin around your ears?”
“The house is hardly falling into ruin.” A drop of water landed in his soup. They both looked up at the ceiling, where a new damp patch was spreading like an accusation.
“Of course not, Your Grace. It is perfectly maintained. Why, just this morning I found mushrooms growing in the Blue Room.”
“Mushrooms can be quite decorative.”
“They were poisonous.”
“Then we shan’t eat them.”
Mrs Alder threw up her hands, a gesture she’d perfected over many years of dealing with stubborn Hawthorne men. “You’re impossible. Your mother would be...”
She was interrupted by a pounding at the front door that could be heard even over the storm.
They looked at each other. No one came to Thornvale Hall. Not anymore. Not since he’d made it abundantly clear that visitors were as welcome as the plague and considerably less interesting.
The pounding came again, more urgent this time.
“Shall I?” Mrs Alder began.
“No.” Lucien rose, curious despite himself. “I’ll go.”
The front hall was icy after the kitchen’s warmth. He grabbed a lantern from the table and approached the massive oak door, which was shuddering under the assault from outside.
“What kind of fool is out in this weather?” he muttered, wrestling with the ancient bolts.
The door flew open, nearly knocking him backwards. Wind and rain rushed in, along with a figure so covered in mud that it was barely recognisable as human.
“Your Grace?” The muddy apparition gasped. “Begging your pardon, but there’s been an accident.”
Lucien raised the lantern higher, revealing a middle-aged man with blood on his face and desperation in his eyes. “What sort of accident?”
“Carriage overturned, Your Grace, about a mile back. The lady, Miss Fletcher, is hurt badly. I couldn’t carry her myself, not with my ribs…” He clutched his side, swaying.
“Where is she?”
“Maybe a quarter mile? She collapsed, sir. I didn’t want to leave her, but…”
Lucien was already reaching for his greatcoat. “Mrs Alder!” he bellowed. “Prepare a room and heat water. We have an injured guest.”
To his credit, the housekeeper appeared without asking questions, taking one look at the situation and nodding grimly. “The Rose Room’s the warmest. I shall have it ready.”
“Can you walk?” Lucien asked the man.
“Aye, Your Grace. It’s the lady I’m worried about.”
They plunged into the storm, Lucien following the coachman’s stumbling lead.
The wind tried to tear the lantern from his grip while the rain seemed determined to drown them where they stood.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d ventured out in weather like this.
Probably because he wasn’t typically foolish enough to do so.
“There!” The coachman pointed to a dark shape barely visible through the rain.
Lucien thrust the lantern at him and knelt beside what he’d initially taken for a pile of wet fabric but which proved to be a woman. She was unconscious, soaked through, and alarmingly pale where the mud hadn’t claimed her.
“Miss Fletcher?” He touched her cheek, ice cold. “Can you hear me?”
No response. He slid his arms beneath her, one beneath her knees and the other cradling her back, and tried not to notice how perfectly she fit against him.
She was light, almost worryingly so, but there was nothing frail about the way her body curved into his.
Her head fell against his chest with the boneless trust of the unconscious, and even through layers of soaked wool and mud, he was aware of her warmth.
The shape of her. The way her waist narrowed beneath his arm, the press of her hip against his ribs, the soft exhalation of breath that dampened his shirt in a circle of heat just above his heart.
He tightened his grip and looked away, jaw set against the storm and against himself.
She was injured, half-drowned, burning with the beginnings of fever, and he was cataloguing the curve of her body like some lecherous footpad.
Whatever remnants of gentlemanly conduct remained in him after two years of self-imposed exile, he summoned them now.
She stirred, turning her face further into his chest, and her fingers curled into the wet fabric of his coat as though anchoring herself to him. The gesture was unconscious, instinctive, and entirely devastating.
Not your concern, he told himself, adjusting his hold. Get her to shelter. That’s all. That is the entirety of what you are doing.
But as the rain hammered down and her breath warmed a steady rhythm against his throat, he could not stop his traitorous mind from noting that she smelled of rainwater and something faintly sweet beneath the mud, and that her hair, dark and heavy with the storm, lay against his arm like silk.
Standing with her in his arms proved more challenging than anticipated. The coachman tried to help but nearly fell himself, clutching his ribs with a pained grunt.
“Just… keep the light steady,” Lucien ordered.
The journey back to the Hall was a nightmare of wind, rain, and an increasingly heavy burden. Not that the woman herself was heavy, she remained worryingly limp in his arms, but the mud clinging to her skirts seemed to add stone after stone with each step.
Halfway there, she stirred slightly, mumbling something against his chest.
“What?” He bent his head closer, trying to catch her words over the storm.
“Said… terrible… angel.”
Despite everything, the storm, the situation, the fact that his boots were likely ruined beyond redemption, Lucien felt his mouth twitch. “I’ve been called many things, madam, but ‘angel’ is decidedly not among them.”
She made a sound that might have been a laugh or possibly a death rattle, but then she tried to say something that to his ears must have been a complaint.
Then she went limp again, leaving him to wonder what sort of woman complained about the quality of her rescue while potentially dying.
An interesting one, a traitorous voice whispered in his head, but he decided to ignore it.
Mrs Alder was waiting at the door, her usual composure cracking slightly at the sight of him carrying an unconscious woman. “Heaven, help us. The Rose Room’s ready, Your Grace. Shall I send for the physician?”
“In this weather?” Lucien shook his head, water flying from his hair. “He’d never make it. We’ll have to manage ourselves.”
He carried Miss Fletcher up the main staircase, trying not to drip too extensively on the carpet. Behind him, Mrs Alder fussed over the coachman, exclaiming over his injuries in a tone that suggested she held him personally responsible for the weather.
The Rose Room was one of the few bedchambers they still kept habitable. A fire crackled in the grate, casting dancing shadows on walls that had once been pink but had faded to a sort of dusty salmon. He laid his burden on the bed, stepped back, and got his first proper look at her.
Beneath the mud and general dishevelment, Miss Fletcher appeared to be a woman in her twenties with dark hair escaping from what had probably been a severe style.
Her face, while not classically beautiful, had what his mother would have called “character”, a stubborn chin, determined mouth, and cheekbones that suggested she’d been missing meals.
“I’ll need to get her out of these wet things,” Mrs Alder announced, appearing at his elbow with an armload of towels and one of her looks. “If you’ll excuse us, Your Grace?”
It was not a request.
Lucien retreated to the hallway, where he found the coachman slumped against the wall, looking marginally less likely to expire.
“Reed, Your Grace,” the man offered. “Thomas Reed. I drive the public coach from York.”
“And Miss Fletcher is your passenger?”
“Aye. On her way to take up a position as governess. Insisted on the shortcut across the moor, despite my warnings.” He shook his head. “Begging your pardon, but she’s a stubborn one.”
“So I gathered.” Lucien studied the man. “These ribs of yours…Do you think they are broken?”
“Cracked, most likely. I’ve had worse.”
This was a reply which told him more about Reed’s life than the man probably intended. “Mrs Alder will see to you once she’s finished with Miss Fletcher. There’s a room above the kitchen where you can rest.”
“That’s very kind, Your Grace, but…”
“It wasn’t a suggestion.”
Reed subsided, apparently recognising the tone of a man unaccustomed to argument. It was ironic, though, considering how much argument Lucien actually encountered from the only other person who still lived at Thornvale.
Speaking of which, Mrs Alder emerged from the Rose Room looking grim.
“The ankle’s badly sprained, possibly broken.
She is feverish already, after all that time in the rain and cold.
And far too slight beneath those garments.
” She fixed him with a look that suggested this was somehow his fault.
“When she wakes, if she wakes, she’ll need careful nursing. ”
“Then nurse her.”
“With what help? These old bones aren’t what they used to be, Your Grace. I can’t be running up and down stairs all hours, fetching and carrying for a person in need.”
Lucien pinched the bridge of his nose. He could feel a headache building, the sort that came from dealing with practical matters he’d spent two years avoiding. “What do you suggest?”
“Hire back some of the staff. Mary Pruitt would come, and perhaps...”
“No.” The word came out sharper than intended. “No staff. We’ll manage.”
Mrs Alder’s expression suggested several things she’d like to say about his definition of “managing,” but she held her tongue. “As you say, Your Grace. Though if the girl dies for want of proper care...”
“She won’t die.” He said it with more confidence than he felt. “I’ll help with the nursing if necessary.”
The housekeeper’s eyebrows rose toward her cap. “You, Your Grace? Tending a sickroom?”
“I’m perfectly capable of carrying trays and… whatever else is required.”
“Changing beds? Washing a patient? Dealing with the indelicacies of illness?”
Each word was a calculated jab at his pride. The woman knew him too well.
“If necessary, yes.”
Mrs Alder studied him for a long moment. “Well then, I suppose we’ll see what you’re made of, Your Grace.” She turned to Reed, who’d been following this exchange with obvious fascination. “Come along, Mr Reed. Let’s see about those ribs.”
Left alone in the hallway, Lucien found himself staring at the closed door of the Rose Room. Behind it lay a stranger who’d literally collapsed on his doorstep, or near enough. A woman who, according to her coachman, was stubborn enough to insist on a dangerous route to save money.
He should feel annoyed and inconvenienced. Perhaps even angry at this disruption to his carefully maintained solitude.
Instead, he felt something he hadn’t experienced in two years: curiosity.
Who was Miss Fletcher? What circumstances had reduced her to travelling by public coach to take up employment? And why did the thought of her lying pale and still in that bed make his chest tight with something that felt alarmingly like concern?
No, he told himself firmly. Absolutely not. You’ll ensure she recovers, then send her on her way. No involvement. No complications. And definitely no curiosity about stubborn women who argue with their rescuers.
Thunder crashed overhead, and somewhere in the house, a door banged again.
Lucien had the sinking feeling that the storm had brought more than just rain to Thornvale Hall.