Chapter 2 Welcome to 1817 #2
The duke’s footman steps forward and places the folded cloak over the back of a chair with quiet competence.
The duke does not look at me when he says, “Cover yourself.”
Heat floods my face. I grab the cloak and wrap it around my shoulders. The wool is heavy, warm, and smells faintly of cedar.
Kitty’s hand brushes mine—a quick touch. “Go,” she whispers. “Don’t look back.”
I swallow. “Kitty—”
“Go,” she repeats, fierce.
I hesitate, then lean in and whisper, “Thank you. For the bread.”
Her eyes flash. “Don’t die.”
It is, oddly, the nicest thing anyone has said to me since I left the lab.
The duke places coins on the constable’s desk without ceremony. The constable scoops them up as if afraid they’ll vanish.
“Your Grace,” he says again, attempting dignity. “If the lady causes further disturbance—”
“She will not,” the duke says. And then, in a slightly lower voice, “She is with me.”
The words land like a chain and a lifeline at the same time.
He turns, and I follow because there is no other direction that does not end in misery.
The watch-house outer door opens, and cold morning air hits my face like a slap.
London is gray and alive. The street outside is narrow and slick, the stones damp. Horses stand hitched near a carriage, their breath steaming. Men in coats and hats stride past, faces set. A woman in a bonnet glances at me and looks away quickly, as if my very existence is contagious.
The city smells like coal smoke and damp wool and something frying in the distance that makes my stomach ache with longing.
This is real.
The duke’s carriage waits at the curb—black, polished, intimidating. His footman opens the door. Plush interior. Leather. Brass fittings that catch the weak light.
The duke pauses beside me.
“You will get in,” he says, not unkindly, “and you will try very hard not to say anything else that will have me regretting this.”
I clutch the cloak tighter. “I didn’t mean to—”
“I believe you,” he says, and it startles me because it sounds like he does not, in fact, believe me at all. “But you are…fortunate that Lady Hartford is soft-hearted and that I have no desire to see a woman punished for a lack of imagination in her tailoring.”
I blink. “You don’t like trousers?”
His gaze flicks to my legs with something like resigned exasperation. “Miss Hart, I do not believe my preferences are the issue.”
I open my mouth, then shut it, because he’s right and also because my stomach chooses that exact moment to lurch.
I sway.
The duke’s hand comes up, steadying my elbow without actually gripping me—firm, careful, and oddly respectful. It makes my throat tighten.
“You are ill,” he observes.
“I’m…fine,” I lie.
My stomach answers with another twisting growl, loud enough that the footman looks down in alarm as if I’m about to explode.
The duke’s eyebrows lift a fraction. “When did you last eat?”
“Yesterday,” I admit.
His expression sharpens. “Get in.”
I climb into the carriage. The seat swallows me, soft and shockingly comfortable. My body tries to melt into it out of pure exhaustion.
The duke follows, sitting opposite me with the controlled grace of someone who has been trained not to fidget even when his life is inconvenient.
The door closes. The world outside muffles. The carriage lurches forward.
For a moment, I just breathe. Leather. Wool. Clean soap. Not straw and damp and terror.
The duke studies me over the space between us. His eyes are gray, I realize—stormy in a way that makes romance readers write paragraphs. His jaw is clean-shaven. His gloved hands rest on his knees, still and contained.
He looks like he belongs in this century.
I do not.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask, trying for steady.
“Home,” he says simply.
My pulse spikes. “Your home.”
“Yes.” He pauses, then adds, “You will not be alone. My sister is there, and my housekeeper. You will be attended.”
It’s meant to reassure me, and it does. A fraction. Still, my stomach tightens.
“Why?” I ask, because the question burns. “Why help me?”
The duke’s gaze holds mine. “Because a woman in your state would be devoured by this city.”
I flinch, because he says it like fact, not metaphor.
He continues, voice quieter. “And because I saw you last night.”
I blink. “You—”
“From my window,” he clarifies. “You were in the street. Alone. Shouting for someone who did not answer. You looked…” He stops, as if searching for a word that does not make him vulnerable. “Desperate.”
Heat stings behind my eyes.
I look away, biting the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood. I refuse to cry in front of a duke. I refuse. I will die before I cry in front of a man with that cravat.
The carriage rocks over cobblestones. The motion, the warmth, the sudden safety—it all conspires against me.
My vision blurs.
“Miss Hart,” the duke says, sharper now. “Emma.”
Hearing my name from his mouth is strange. Intimate in a way I did not consent to, and yet not unkind.
I try to answer. I really do.
But my stomach flips hard, and the world tilts again, sliding sideways.
“I’m—” I start, and then the sentence ends because my body decides it is done pretending.
Darkness rises fast.
I feel myself tip forward, falling off the seat like a badly stacked suitcase.
Hands catch me—strong, steady. The duke’s gloves scrape my sleeve. His arm braces my back. For one impossible second, I am pressed against him, the fabric of his coat solid under my cheek, his breath warm near my hair.
“Bloody hell,” he mutters, and it’s the first truly modern-sounding thing he’s said.
My hoodie sleeve rides up as he adjusts his grip, and cold air brushes my forearm.
He stills.
Even through the haze, I feel it—the shift in his attention, the sudden focus.
His gloved fingers hover over the pale line of my scar, the neat, straight mark that crosses my skin like a surgeon’s signature.
I hear him inhale, a quiet, startled sound.
“Those stitches…” he whispers, not to me but to the world.
Then the darkness swallows everything, and the last thing I register is his voice, low with something that sounds suspiciously like uncertainty.
“What are you?”