Chapter One
Rain fell like an unrelenting penance upon the mourners gathered in St. Bartholomew’s churchyard. Each cold droplet struck with the force of some divine rebuke; persistent drumbeats softening the edges of the congregation and mirroring the tears that tracked the faces of the bereaved.
The rain hammered the crooked stones beneath their feet, bounced off the black umbrellas, ran in winding rivulets over moss-darkened graves, and struck the oak coffin at the heart of their assembly with a hollow sound that echoed the feelings of loss.
The great yew trees, ancient sentinels of death and memory, creaked and sighed beneath the weight of the storm, their dark branches dripping in time with the mourners’ quiet lamentations.
Penelope Whitmore stood at the periphery of it all straight-backed, still, and resolute in her grief.
The black veil descended from her bonnet like a curtain of mourning lace, its delicate edge plastered by rain to the modest black gown that clung damply to her figure.
Though her heart ached with a private agony, she remained upright and composed, the very picture of dutiful propriety.
Though her hands trembled beneath the black gloves, she gripped them together tightly so no one could see.
She counted, because counting gave her something to do to keep the tears at bay.
Five, ten, twenty, thirty… thirty-seven.
Thirty-seven faces, some familiar and some alarmingly strange.
Thirty-seven people had come to stand vigil over the coffin of Professor Cornelius Whitmore, who had detested society with the sort of scholarly zeal reserved for those who viewed human company as an unfortunate impediment to intellectual pursuits.
Thirty-seven.
Far too many.
Her uncle had not been a man of the world; he had been a man of parchment and candlelight, of lonely vigils over forgotten manuscripts. Why, then, did his grave attract so many?
Did he know more people than he let on, or did these so-called mourners have an ulterior motive?
Penelope’s brows knitted beneath the veil as her hazel eyes swept over the assembly. A cluster of elderly dons from Cambridge huddled together like old crows against the downpour, their dark coats soaked to the knees, as their umbrellas were no match for the sideways-lashing rain.
Two matrons, acquaintances of her uncle’s late wife stood stiffly beneath black umbrellas, lips pursed against the wet.
She spotted her cousin and family solicitor, Thomas Whitmore, who offered her a tight, pinched smile before returning to his murmured conference with a stranger.
And there were others, far too many others, men and women she had never seen before in her life, their solemn faces inscrutable.
She could not ask them. Not yet.
The rector’s voice rose over the storm, but Penelope barely heard his words.
Her mind drifted back to the last weeks of her uncle’s life, his sudden unease, the nervous way he had taken to locking the library door even when she was inside, the moments when she had caught him staring at her with something that looked unnervingly like fear.
Do not trust them, my girl, he had said one evening, his frail hand closing over hers as they sat by the library fire. Not everyone has honorable intentions.
She had thought at the time that his mind must be wandering. Surely he had always taught her that they should see the good in people? Now, she was not so certain.
The rain intensified, drumming against her bonnet with an almost punishing force.
Penelope straightened her spine against the urge to shiver.
She would not give way, not here, not before so many strangers.
She opened her umbrella to stave off the worst of the deluge.
Her mind had been too muddied by shock to think of it until now.
It was then that she saw him.
A figure apart, standing near the wrought-iron gates of the churchyard.
The Duke of Sterndale.
Adrian Sterling was a man who required no introduction. Even had she not heard the whispered tales of duels and scars, of a ruined brother and a monster who haunted the halls of Sterndale Castle and Sterling House like a vengeful ghost she would have recognized him instantly.
He stood tall, broad-shouldered beneath a long, dark coat that flared slightly in the wind, his presence commanding in a way that made the other mourners instinctively step aside out of veneration or fear.
Rain slicked his dark hair that he kept shorter than the current fashion, emphasizing the hard planes of his face and the livid scar that ran from his left temple to his jaw, a jagged reminder of some past violence, now transformed into legend by gossiping tongues.
They called him the Devil’s Duke.
And yet, as Penelope’s gaze met his across the cemetery, she felt no chill of fear.
His gray eyes piercing, almost unnervingly so, held hers for the briefest of moments.
Something passed between them then, unspoken yet undeniably real.
Was it an acknowledgment? A recognition of shared grief, perhaps or even of shared isolation?
The rector’s words faded into silence, and the mourners began to shift, a ripple of movement that brought her back to the present. The coffin was lowered into the waiting earth. Penelope’s throat tightened as the first shovelful of soil struck the polished oak with a dull, final thud.
Cornelius Whitmore, her guardian, her mentor, and her last true family was gone.
She would not cry. Not here. But the effort to tamp down her feelings required a great deal of inner strength.
What will I do without him?
Her gloved fingers curled into the fabric of her skirts as though she could hold herself together by sheer force of will.
“Miss Whitmore.”
The low, refined voice at her shoulder startled her.
She turned to see Lord Edmund Thornfield, a man of moderate academic renowned and considerable social charm and his dark hair immaculately styled as though impervious to the storm. He reached out without hesitation, capturing her gloved hands in both of his.
“I am so deeply grieved for your loss.” His tone was perfectly measured, though his touch lingered too long.
“Thank you, my lord,” she replied, more quietly than intended, as she tried to reclaim her hand.
“Your uncle was a man of rare brilliance,” Edmund said, shifting his stance until his tall frame shielded her from the others.
The overly familiar move struck her as more territorial than protective.
“It is not only his family that mourns him today, but the whole of the academic community. Few men possessed his devotion to uncovering truths long thought lost.”
The words should have comforted her. Instead, they felt rehearsed and somewhat insincere.
“You and he worked closely together, did you not?” she asked.
“Indeed. He often shared the progress of his research with me. Though…” Edmund’s lips curved in a practiced display of hesitation. “I suppose no one was closer to him than the Duke of Sterndale.”
Penelope blinked. “The duke?”
“Oh yes,” Edmund said, following her glance toward the gates.
“They maintained a lively correspondence for fifteen years. It began with your uncle’s lectures at Cambridge and continued well after the duke’s…
withdrawal from society. They wrote of medieval matters most dismissed as mere folklore, treasures and codes, if you can imagine.
Quite an odd pairing, a reclusive peer and a don…
but then, as I’m sure you’re no doubt aware, the duke has always been somewhat…
peculiar.” He sniggered as if he had just relayed a most amusing joke rather than a jab at the duke’s and indeed, her uncle’s expense.
She did not answer, though her mind whirled. Adrian Sterling was her uncle’s pupil? She had known Cornelius kept company with former students through letters, but not once had the duke’s name ever passed his lips.
Why would he keep their friendship a secret if indeed that was what it was?
Her uncle had never been one to fall prey to the gossip of the ton, and he certainly wouldn’t hide an acquaintance he admired, no matter what other people thought, but she had never so much as heard the duke’s name pass his lips.
A strange heat rose to her cheeks at the revelation. For fifteen years, her uncle had shared the kind of intellectual companionship she so often craved with a man society had named a beast.
“Your uncle was so very proud of you,” Edmund said softly, breaking her reverie as he leaned just close enough for her to feel the warmth of his breath despite the chill. “He often spoke of your own talents with languages. He believed you might one day surpass even his achievements.”
Her throat constricted. Compliments from strangers meant little, but hearing Cornelius’s faith in her abilities repeated aloud pierced something tender in her chest.
“Thank you for your kind words,” she whispered, finally reclaiming her hand.
The cemetery had nearly emptied. Only the gravediggers lingered at a distance.
She turned for one final look at her uncle’s grave.
When she looked up, her eyes found him.
Adrian Sterling.
Standing still at the gates, rain running over his scarred face, unflinching. His gaze held hers, unspoken and unreadable, and for a moment, the storm, the grave, the whole of the world, fell away.
She inclined her head. A simple acknowledgment, nothing more.
“Penelope,” said Thomas, his tone gentle. “It is time.”
She tore her gaze from the duke’s and allowed her to cousin lead her to the waiting carriage where Charlotte, her dearest friend, sat pale and silent in her mourning clothes. Penelope greeted her with a small, sympathetic smile.
As she climbed inside, Penelope could not resist one last glance over her shoulder.
The Duke of Sterndale had not moved.
His gaze remained fixed upon her form, wholly unbroken.
***
Adrian Sterling did not follow the mourners to their waiting carriages. He remained by the iron gates long after the last umbrella disappeared into the gray blur of the storm, as unmoving as the yews that lined the churchyard.
Rain was nothing to him. It plastered his hair to his brow, ran in channels upon the sharp, sculpted lines of his scarred countenance and soaked the shoulders of his coat until the fabric clung like a second skin but he did not move.
In his pocket, the letter burned.
Three pages of trembling script, written in Cornelius Whitmore’s once-steady hand. A final plea from the only man who had managed, in those early Cambridge years, to see Adrian as something other than a title or a curiosity.
Protect her, Adrian. She is in danger. Trust no one but yourself.
That much he could not escape; those words had seared themselves into his memory.
Yet there had been more hints of matters half-explained, of work unfinished, of enemies unnamed.
Phrases such as the truth lies buried with the old kings’ and ‘those who seek it will not hesitate to kill for it’ lingered in his mind, stark and uncomfortably melodramatic for a man as rational as Cornelius.
He had read those words a dozen times and cursed them just as often.
Had the old man been losing his mind?
He didn’t want to believe it, but it had seemed so out of character for a man who had always been so stoic, and so strong. He hadn’t been failing. He had been scared.
What had he known that he couldn’t say in person?
Adrian Sterling was not one to play the hero. He had not tried to be heroic for six long years, not since Marcus’s death.
And yet, here he was.
His gaze had followed Penelope Whitmore as she stood by the grave, her black veil clinging damply to the contours of her face.
She had not been what he had expected. Cornelius had spoken of his niece often, with fondness and admiration, but Adrian had imagined a timid creature, bookish to the point of awkwardness, cowed by the weight of her uncle’s formidable intellect.
Instead, he saw a woman of quiet and resolute strength.
Even in her grief, there was a poise about her a steadiness he had not thought to find in someone so young and so recently bereaved.
She stood rooted to the sodden earth as though she belonged there, as though the storm might batter but would never unmake her.
Many women he had known would have fainted or wept with abandon, leaning upon others for support; although she had endured far too much practice at such somber events, Penelope Whitmore faced the burial of her last living relative with a dignity that was almost regal.
Adrian’s eyes had traced the delicate lines of her face where the veil had plastered itself to her skin, the graceful arch of her brows, the determined set of her mouth.
Chestnut hair, loosened from her bonnet by the weather, had clung to her cheeks in damp curls, softening features that might otherwise have been considered too composed under the circumstances.
Unlike the other simpering women who made the right noises only to whisper openly and unkindly about him, she was no painted doll of the ton offering disingenuous grief for the sake of display.
No…there was something real about her.
That truthfulness, that calm amid the deluge, stirred something within his hardened heart he’d thought long gone.
The petty beauties of London society had never failed to fill him with a decided distaste, creatures who fluttered their fans and feigned sensibilities while whispering poison behind gloved hands.
They had called him a monster, the devil, and a murderer, each name offered with wide, false eyes and honeyed tongues.
Yet here was a woman who did not glance away from his scar, whose gaze did not falter when their eyes met.
She had seen him and had neither flinched nor fled, despite the stories she must have heard.
Perhaps her uncle had given her reason to believe that he was not the beast society presented him as, but there was no reason for her to believe him.
He was well aware that the negative views of the gossipy ton outweighed the positive.
Adrian Sterling, who had long been a stranger to admiration, found it kindling unexpectedly in his chest.
He thought of Cornelius’s words…protect her and for the first time since the letter had arrived, the plea did not feel like a burden.