CHAPTER ONE
"He doesn't like visitors."
The housekeeper delivered this information with the cheerful finality of a woman announcing a death in the family.
She stood in the entrance hall of Blackthorn Hall like a sentry guarding the gates of purgatory, her ring of keys jangling at her waist as though they might, at any moment, be used as weapons.
Evangeline Harcourt smiled politely. "How fortunate, then, that we are not visitors. We are guests."
The distinction was, admittedly, a thin one. But Evangeline had learned long ago that the difference between surviving and perishing in polite society often came down to the precise deployment of nouns.
The housekeeper, Mrs. Graves, which was either her actual name or a remarkably apt pseudonym, did not appear convinced.
Her gaze swept over Evangeline with the assessing quality of a woman calculating exactly how much trouble a person might cause, then moved to Evangeline's father, who was currently attempting to peer around a marble column at what appeared to be a rather impressive collection of medieval weaponry mounted on the far wall.
"Professor Harcourt," Mrs. Graves said, in the tone of someone addressing a wayward child. "His Grace is aware of your arrival. He will receive you in the drawing room…eventually."
Eventually. Evangeline tucked that word away for later examination. It suggested many things, none of them welcoming.
"We are most grateful for His Grace's hospitality," her father said, finally tearing his attention away from what Evangeline suspected was a fifteenth-century halberd.
Professor Edmund Harcourt had the unfortunate habit of finding historical artifacts more interesting than social niceties.
It was a trait that had won him considerable academic acclaim and precisely zero friends among the aristocracy.
"The Duke and I corresponded extensively during my research on the Anglo-Saxon land charters.
A brilliant mind. Absolutely brilliant. His observations on the Kentish boundary disputes were… "
"Papa," Evangeline murmured.
"…revolutionary, truly revolutionary, and I said as much in my monograph, which I believe His Grace received, though he never responded, but then dukes are terribly busy, aren't they, with all the duking…"
"Papa."
Professor Harcourt blinked, as though remembering suddenly that he was not, in fact, alone with his thoughts. "Yes, my dear?"
"Perhaps we might save the discussion of boundary disputes for when we are not dripping on His Grace's marble floors."
This was not an exaggeration. The November rain had been merciless during the final miles of their journey, and despite the relative protection of the carriage, Evangeline's travelling cloak had achieved a state of dampness that could only be described as aggressive.
Water pooled beneath her boots. Her bonnet, once a rather fetching shade of dove grey, now resembled something that had been fished from a pond.
She looked, in short, like a drowned sparrow.
Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.
"Mrs. Graves," she said, with as much dignity as a drowned sparrow could muster, "might we trouble you for a fire? My father catches cold dreadfully easily."
This was a lie. Professor Harcourt had the constitution of a draft horse and had once delivered a three-hour lecture on monastic land grants while suffering from what his physician later described as "an alarmingly advanced case of influenza.
" But Evangeline had discovered that appeals made on behalf of elderly fathers were received far more graciously than appeals made on behalf of oneself.
Mrs. Graves's expression softened by approximately one degree. "The fire in the drawing room is already lit. If you'll follow me."
The drawing room, it transpired, was not so much a room as a cavern.
Evangeline's entire childhood home could have fit inside it with space remaining for a modest garden.
The ceilings soared upward into shadow. The windows, enormous, mullioned things that would not have looked out of place in a cathedral, rattled against the wind.
And the fire, despite being large enough to roast an ox, seemed to make almost no impression on the chill that permeated every corner.
Blackthorn Hall, Evangeline decided, was not a house. It was a monument to the principle that comfort was for lesser mortals.
"His Grace will attend you shortly," Mrs. Graves said, and withdrew before Evangeline could ask what "shortly" meant in a household where "eventually" apparently constituted a warm welcome.
The door closed with a sound like a tomb sealing.
Evangeline exhaled slowly.
"Magnificent," her father breathed. He was already examining a tapestry that hung above the fireplace, depicting what appeared to be a rather violent hunting scene. "Fifteenth century, I should think. Flemish. Look at the needlework on that boar, Evangeline. Extraordinary."
"Yes, Papa. The boar is lovely."
"And the detail on the disembowelment…"
"Lovely, Papa."
She moved closer to the fire, extending her frozen fingers toward the flames.
The heat was almost painful after the bitter cold of the journey, but she welcomed the sting.
It reminded her that she was still alive, still standing, still here in this great grey fortress where they were very clearly not wanted.
He doesn't like visitors.
Well. The Duke of Ashborn could join the lengthy queue of people who did not particularly want Evangeline Harcourt in their drawing rooms. She had extensive experience with being unwanted.
Her mother's family had made their feelings on that subject abundantly clear after Mama's death, when they had declined to acknowledge Evangeline's existence with a thoroughness that bordered on the artistic.
The daughter of a gentleman scholar and a minor baronet's disowned daughter was not, it seemed, worthy of the Whitmore family's attention.
Evangeline had weathered many storms and she would not be overcome by this one.
But oh, how she wished she were not quite so damp.
"Do you know," her father mused, still examining the tapestry with the intensity of a man who had forgotten that anything else existed, "I believe this may be from the workshop of Pasquier Grenier. The composition is remarkably similar to the Tournai pieces, though the colour palette suggests…"
The door opened.
It did not creak, or groan, or announce itself in any way. One moment the room contained two people; the next, it contained three.
Evangeline turned slowly and her very breath caught in her throat.
The Duke of Ashborn stood in the doorway like something out of a gothic novel, the kind that Evangeline read in secret, hidden between the pages of more respectable texts.
He was tall. Unreasonably, almost aggressively tall, with shoulders that seemed designed to block doorways and a presence that swallowed all the air in the room.
But it was not his height that stopped her lungs.
It was his face.
The scar began just above his left eyebrow and carved a devastating path downward, across his eye, which had somehow survived intact, over the sharp blade of his cheekbone, ending just above the corner of his mouth.
It was not a neat scar, not a romantic silvered line that might add mystery to an otherwise handsome face.
It was a savage mark as the flesh puckered and raised in thick, irregular cords pulling at the corner of his eye.
The fire caught it as he stepped forward, turning the damaged skin to something that looked almost molten.
Gracious me… Evangeline thought, as the truth settled upon her with a cold and piercing lucidity.
He was terrifying.
He was beautiful.
The thought arrived without permission, slicing through her shock with the precision of a blade.
She should not be thinking that. She should not be looking at this man, this scarred, looming, glowering man and feeling anything other than appropriate intimidation.
But there it was, settling into her chest like a coal: the undeniable, inexplicable awareness that the Duke of Ashborn was the most striking man she had ever seen.
The beauty was brutal. His features, beneath and around the scar, were hewn from granite, a strong jaw, dark brows, a mouth that looked as though it had never learned to smile.
His eyes were pale grey, the colour of winter storms, and they swept over the room with the cold assessment of a predator surveying prey.
When they landed on Evangeline, she felt the impact like a physical blow.
Don't look away, she told herself. Don't you dare look away.
She didn't.
Lucian Ashborn, the sixth Duke of Ashborn, known in whispered drawing room conversations as the Ravaged Duke, the Beast of Blackthorn, the Monster in the Moors, had prepared himself for this meeting.
He had prepared himself for Professor Harcourt's academic bumbling, for the inevitable staring, for the poorly concealed flinches and the hastily averted eyes. He had prepared himself to feel, once again, like a creature on display in a menagerie.
He had not prepared himself for the professor's daughter.
She stood by the fire like a half-drowned kitten who had somehow wandered into a wolf's den, small, soaked, and entirely out of place.
Her travelling dress, dark blue and practical, clung damply to a figure that was pleasant enough, if unremarkable.
Her hair, what he could see of it beneath a truly tragic bonnet, was the colour of honey.
Her face was pale from cold, her cheeks pink from the fire's heat, her lips…
He stopped that thought before it could fully form.
She was staring at him.