CHAPTER ONE #2
Every eye tended to fix upon him, as was only to be expected.
Such was the inevitable consequence of a countenance like Lucian’s, one became accustomed to stares, whispers and the small involuntary sounds of horror that people made before they remembered their manners.
He had catalogued them all over the years, these reactions to his ruined face.
The pity. The revulsion. The morbid curiosity.
But Miss Harcourt's stare was... different.
She was not flinching. She was not averting her eyes. She was not doing that thing that well-bred ladies did, where they fixed their gaze on a point approximately three inches to the left of his face and pretended very hard that they could not see the scar.
She was looking directly at him, her brown eyes wide and steady, her chin lifted at an angle that suggested either remarkable courage or profound foolishness.
He could not decide which irritated him more.
"Your Grace," Professor Harcourt was saying, finally having torn himself away from the tapestry.
The man moved forward with his hand extended, apparently oblivious to the temperature in the room.
"What an honour, what a tremendous honour.
Your correspondence on the Canterbury land disputes was absolutely illuminating… "
"Professor." Lucian did not take the offered hand. He did not move at all. "Your journey was tolerable, I trust."
It was not a question. It was a dismissal, wrapped in the barest pretense of civility. Lucian had perfected this tone over years of practice. It typically sent lesser men scurrying for the nearest exit.
Professor Harcourt, unfortunately, appeared immune.
"Perfectly tolerable, perfectly tolerable, though the roads near Hartfield were quite muddy, and my daughter was concerned we might become stuck, but I assured her that the Ashborn estate would have excellent drainage…
you do have excellent drainage, don't you?
I should very much like to examine the irrigation systems while we're here, if it wouldn't be too much trouble… "
"Papa."
The single word cut through the professor's rambling like a knife through silk. Lucian's attention snapped back to the daughter.
She had stepped forward. Toward him. Her hands were clasped before her, and he noticed…because he noticed everything, because noticing was how one survived in a world determined to wound, that her fingers were trembling slightly. From cold, perhaps. Or perhaps not.
"Your Grace," she said. Her voice was steady, even if her hands were not. "I am Miss Evangeline Harcourt. Thank you for receiving us."
She dropped into a curtsey that was technically perfect and somehow, inexplicably, managed to convey the impression that she was humoring him.
Lucian felt his jaw tighten.
"Miss Harcourt." He let her name fall from his lips like a stone. "I was not aware Professor Harcourt intended to bring... company."
The pause before "company" was deliberate. He wanted her to hear the word he had not said. Burden. Complication. Unwanted addition.
She heard it. He saw the flicker in her eyes, the tiny tightening at the corners of her mouth. But she did not look away. She did not apologise or stammer or fill the silence with nervous explanations.
She simply looked at him and said, "Were you not? I am surprised. My father is not known for his attention to practical correspondence. I had assumed you would deduce that someone must manage his travel arrangements."
Behind her, Professor Harcourt made a sound that might have been protest or might have been agreement.
Lucian stared at her.
She had just implied that she was necessary to her father's functioning. She had just suggested, with absolute politeness, that Lucian ought to have been clever enough to predict her presence. She had just…
Could it be possible that she was bantering with him so boldly?
"I see," he said slowly. "And do you often manage your father's affairs, Miss Harcourt?"
"Only the ones that require being managed, Your Grace."
There it was again. That hint of something beneath the propriety. Not quite impertinence. Not quite challenge. But not quite not those things either.
Lucian became aware, suddenly, of how close she was standing. Close enough that he could see the individual droplets of rain still clinging to a loose strand of hair at her temple. Close enough that he could smell beneath the damp wool and travel dust something faintly floral. Lavender, perhaps.
Close enough that if he reached out, he could…
He stepped back. The movement was abrupt, graceless, and he saw her eye linger upon it… and the tiny crease that followed, marring her brow.
"You will be shown to your rooms," he said, his voice harder than he had intended. "Dinner is at eight. I trust you can manage to find the dining room without assistance."
It was rude. It was deliberately, calculatedly rude, and he watched her face for the reaction he wanted…the hurt, the offense, the moment when she would finally look at him the way everyone else did.
Miss Evangeline Harcourt looked at him for a long moment, her brown eyes unreadable.
Then she smiled.
It was not a large smile. It did not reach her eyes, did not transform her face into something radiant. It was small, controlled, and somehow more devastating for its restraint.
"I'm certain we shall manage, Your Grace," she said. "I am quite good at finding my way."
She turned, collected her father with a gentle touch on his elbow, and allowed Mrs. Graves, who had materialised in the doorway with suspicious timing, to escort them from the room.
Lucian stood very still for a long moment after they had gone.
His hands, he realised, were clenched at his sides.
"Well," Professor Harcourt said, as they followed Mrs. Graves up a staircase that seemed determined to go on forever. "That went splendidly, I thought."
Evangeline made a noncommittal sound.
"He seemed pleased to see us. Did you think he seemed pleased? I thought he seemed pleased."
"Papa, he looked at us as though we were something unpleasant he had discovered on the bottom of his boot."
"Nonsense, nonsense. That's simply how dukes look. Very serious business, being a duke. All those responsibilities. All those tenants. I'm sure he's perfectly delighted to have company." Professor Harcourt paused to examine a painting on the landing. "Oh, I say. Is that a Holbein?"
"It is a door, Papa. We need to keep moving."
They kept moving.
The corridor they entered was long, dim, and decorated with the kind of stern ancestral portraits that seemed specifically designed to make visitors feel inadequate.
Evangeline felt the painted eyes following her as she walked, judging her damp dress, her bedraggled bonnet, her presumption in existing beneath this hallowed roof.
I don't belong here, she thought… and he is fully aware of it.
The Duke of Ashborn. The Ravaged Duke. The man with the storm-grey eyes and the terrible scar and the voice that could freeze water.
She should be frightened of him. Everyone else clearly was, she had seen the way Mrs. Graves held herself, the careful blankness in the housekeeper's face, the tension in the footmen who had taken their luggage.
The entire household moved through Blackthorn Hall like prey animals navigating a predator's territory.
But Evangeline was not frightened.
Unsettled, yes. Aware of him in a way that made her skin feel too tight and her breath come too shallow…yes, that too. But not frightened.
There had been a moment, when he had stepped back from her so abruptly, when something had flickered across that harsh and rugged handsome countenance… Something that looked almost like…
No. She was not going to think about that. She was not going to analyse the expressions of a man who had made it abundantly clear that he wished her elsewhere. She was here for her father, to ensure that this visit resulted in the funding he needed for his research. Nothing more.
The fact that the Duke's voice had settled into her chest like a physical weight, low, rough, with an edge that scraped pleasantly against her nerves, was irrelevant.
Entirely irrelevant.
"Here we are, Miss Harcourt." Mrs. Graves stopped before a door that looked identical to every other door in the corridor. "Your room. Professor, you are just next door. Dinner is at eight. Do not be late. His Grace does not appreciate tardiness."
"His Grace," Evangeline said, before she could stop herself, "does not appear to appreciate very much at all."
The words hung in the air.
Mrs. Graves's expression did something complicated, a twitch that might have been disapproval or might, possibly, have been the suppressed beginnings of a smile.
"No, Miss Harcourt," the housekeeper said quietly. "He does not. But then, he has had very little in his life worth appreciating."
She turned and walked away before Evangeline could respond.
The room was large, cold, and decorated in shades of blue that had probably been fashionable during the reign of some long-dead monarch.
The bed was enormous, canopied in fabric that looked older than Evangeline's grandmother.
The fireplace held a small, struggling fire that seemed personally offended by its task of warming such a cavernous space.
Evangeline stood in the center of the room for a long moment, dripping onto a carpet which must have cost a princely sum.
He has had very little in his life worth appreciating.
What did that mean? What could the Duke of Ashborn, master of this vast estate, holder of one of the oldest titles in England, possessor of wealth that Evangeline could not even fathom… what could such a man find himself lacking?
She thought of his face. That brutal, beautiful face, with its terrible scar and its cold grey eyes and its mouth that looked as though it had forgotten how to curve upward.
She thought of the way he had stepped back from her, as though her proximity was dangerous.
She thought of the way he had looked at her, in that first moment, when she had refused to flinch.