Chapter 3
In her dreams, Marianne was drowning in tea.
This was peculiar for several reasons, not least of which was that she’d always been quite fond of tea. But here she was, submerged in an ocean of tea, complete with tiny cucumber sandwiches floating by like well-bred fish.
“More sugar?” inquired a voice that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
“I’m drowning,” she pointed out reasonably.
“Yes, but are you drowning sweetly enough?”
She tried to swim toward the surface, but her limbs were made of lead. Or possibly jam. It was difficult to tell in dreams.
“This is most improper,” she informed the tea ocean. “Young ladies do not drown. It’s not done.”
“Then don’t,” suggested the voice, which was beginning to sound irritatingly amused.
Marianne would have made a cutting reply, but the tea ocean suddenly turned hot, burning hot, and she gasped, struggling against the liquid fire that seemed to be consuming her from within.
“Hush now. You’re safe.”
A different voice. Deeper. Real.
She fought toward it, pushing through layers of fever dreams and confusion until she managed to crack open her eyes.
The world swam into focus slowly. A ceiling was painted with cherubs and was slightly water-stained. Firelight was dancing on faded wallpaper, and there was the scent of lavender and something medicinal.
Suddenly, she saw a man sitting beside her bed, reading a book by candlelight.
He wasn’t handsome, not in the conventional sense that young ladies giggled over at assemblies.
His face was too angular, his expression too severe, and his hair, dark as a raven’s wing, fell over his forehead in a way that suggested he’d forgotten to have it cut, or he just didn’t care. Probably the latter.
But there was something about the way the candlelight caught the planes of his face, the way his long fingers turned the pages with careful precision, that made her forget to breathe.
He had rolled his shirtsleeves to the elbow at some point during his vigil, and the candlelight painted his forearms in gold and shadow, highlighting the lean muscle beneath skin that looked warm to the touch.
His collar was open, two buttons undone, revealing the strong column of his throat and the faintest suggestion of dark hair at the hollow where his collarbones met.
Marianne’s thoughts moved sluggishly, still tangled in the remnants of fever, and without the usual fortifications of propriety to restrain them, they wandered where they pleased.
They wandered to the breadth of his shoulders beneath that rumpled shirt, to the way his dark hair fell across his forehead in a manner that begged for fingers to push it back, to the precise and rather beautiful architecture of his hands as they turned each page.
Heat that had nothing to do with her fever stirred low in her abdomen, a slow warmth that spread outward like ink in water.
When he helped her sit up and his hand settled on her shoulder, steadying her, she felt the pressure of each finger through the thin nightgown as distinctly as if he’d pressed them to bare skin.
Her breath caught. For one fevered, unguarded moment, she imagined his hand sliding lower, with the nightgown not as a barrier but as something to be removed.
She imagined that careful, precise touch tracing the line of her collarbone, the curve of her throat, the place where her pulse was now hammering so visibly that he could surely see it.
Then his voice cut through the haze, cool and practical. “Can you sit up? How are you feeling?” And the fortifications of propriety came crashing back into place, reinforced by the sudden and mortifying realisation that she was wearing nothing but a nightgown in front of a man she had never met.
“Where… Where am I?”
“Thornvale Hall. You collapsed on the moor.” His voice was cultured and precise, with an underlying note of something that might have been concern or possibly annoyance. “Your driver fetched help.”
“Mr Reed, is he...?”
“Recovering. Three cracked ribs and a collection of bruises that would make a prizefighter envious, but he’ll mend.”
The man, for surely this had to be the mysterious Duke, rose and poured water from a pitcher on the nightstand. “Can you sit up?”
Marianne tried. The room spun alarmingly, and she would have fallen back if he hadn’t steadied her with a hand on her shoulder. His touch was impersonal, careful, but her skin burned through the thin nightgown.
Nightgown. She was wearing a nightgown. Which meant…
“My clothes,” she said, heat flooding her cheeks.
“Were ruined beyond redemption. Mrs Alder, my housekeeper, found something suitable.” He helped her sip the water, his expression giving nothing away. “Your modesty has been preserved, I assure you.”
The water was heaven on her parched throat, but she couldn’t help noting the irony. Her modesty might be preserved, but her dignity had clearly been left somewhere in the mud of the moor.
“Thank you,” she managed when the cup was empty. “Your Grace.”
His eyebrows rose slightly. “You know who I am?”
“A duke who lives alone in a Gothic monstrosity of a house, dismisses all his servants, and reads engineering texts by candlelight?” She was pleased her voice came out steadier than her pulse. “You’re either the Duke of Thornvale or a very elaborate Gothic novel come to life.”
Something that might have been amusement flickered in those winter eyes. “And if I said I was the latter?”
“Then I’d ask which chapter we’re in, so I know whether to expect ghosts or merely dark family secrets.”
“Both, naturally. All the best Gothic novels have both.”
Despite everything, the fever still burning under her skin, the pain in her ankle, the sheer impropriety of the situation, Marianne found herself almost smiling. “How disappointing. I was hoping for at least one mad wife in the attic.”
“Fresh out, I’m afraid. We do have mice, if that helps.”
“Mice are hardly Gothic. Now rats, perhaps…”
“I’ll make a note to import some.”
They looked at each other for a moment, and Marianne had the strangest sensation of recognition, as though they had stumbled into an unexpected kinship. Of course, that was absurd. She was a merchant’s daughter turned governess, and he was a duke. They inhabited different worlds entirely.
The moment stretched too long, becoming something else, something that made her acutely aware of her state of undress and the intimacy of the situation. She dropped her gaze, plucking at the coverlet.
“I should go,” she said. “I’m already late for my position, and I’ve imposed enough.”
“You’re going nowhere.”
The authority in his tone made her chin lift instinctively. “I beg your pardon?”
“Your ankle is either badly sprained or broken; we won’t know until the swelling goes down. You’re running a fever. And in case you hadn’t noticed, the storm has washed out every road for miles.” He stood, suddenly seeming to fill the room with his presence. “You’ll stay until you have recovered.”
“I can’t simply...”
“You can and you will.” He moved toward the door, then paused. “Unless you’d prefer that I carry you back to where I found you? I’m sure the mud would be delighted to see you.”
Marianne opened her mouth, then closed it. What could she say? That she couldn’t afford to lose this position? That every day she delayed was another day closer to complete destitution? That accepting charity from a strange duke went against every principle her mother had instilled in her?
“I don’t even know your name,” she said instead.
He glanced back, and for just a moment, that severe expression softened. “Lucien Hawthorne, at your service. Though I believe you’ve already decided I’m the villain of this particular Gothic novel.”
“Oh no,” she said before her sense could catch up with her tongue. “The villain would never read engineering texts. Too practical. You’re clearly the brooding hero with a dark secret.”
“Am I?” He seemed genuinely taken aback. “How disappointing. I’d rather fancied being the villain.”
“Perhaps you could be both? Gothic novels are very flexible about these things.”
That almost-smile flickered again. “Get some rest, Miss Fletcher. We shall discuss my literary role in the morning.”
He left, closing the door with a soft click that seemed to echo in the sudden silence.
Marianne sank back against the pillows, her mind whirling despite her exhaustion.
She was trapped in a duke’s home, wearing nothing but a borrowed nightgown, with no idea how long she’d be forced to remain.
Her position was almost certainly lost, and her reputation would be in tatters if anyone discovered she’d spent even one night under a bachelor’s roof.
And yet…
And yet she couldn’t quite summon the appropriate level of distress. Perhaps it was the fever. Perhaps it was the sheer exhaustion of weeks of worry and uncertainty. Or perhaps it was the memory of winter-sea eyes and the way he’d said her name, as if it were a title worthy of respect.
“You’re being ridiculous,” she told herself firmly. “He’s a duke. You’re nobody. And this is not a novel where the governess wins the brooding lord of the manor.”
But as she drifted back toward sleep, she couldn’t quite shake the feeling that somewhere in the house, the universe was laughing at her certainty.
After all, the best stories were always the ones that started with a storm.