Chapter Two
The house had never seemed so large before.
Penelope moved through its silent corridors with the slow, deliberate tread of one walking through a dream, the muted creak of the floorboards beneath her slippers magnified in the hush that followed the day’s mournful ceremony.
Charlotte had retired some hours earlier, pleading fatigue, though Penelope suspected that her companion had wished to grant her solitude.
Solitude was precisely what she thought she wanted.
And yet now, in the darkened halls, the absence of company pressed upon her with an almost suffocating weight.
A single candlestick lit her way, its narrow flame wavering as the wind found every crack and crevice in the old house.
It sputtered once as a sudden gust rattled the windows, casting a skittering shadow across the wainscoted walls, and she gripped the brass holder more tightly, as though sheer determination could protect its glow from the encroaching dark.
The storm that had drenched the mourners in the churchyard had not entirely abated; it still hissed against the shutters and moaned through the eaves like a restless spirit.
Her destination lay ahead, its door closed as it had been since the day they carried her uncle’s body out of the house. Cornelius Whitmore’s study. His sanctuary.
She paused at the threshold, as if expecting to hear his voice from within, a wry greeting, a gentle admonishment for disturbing his work, the familiar dry humor that had been the balm of her lonely girlhood.
But no such sound came. Only the wind, the quiet drip of rainwater from the eaves, and the distant groan of the settling house.
With a breath that shivered in her throat, she pushed open the door.
The scent struck her first. The familiar mingling of pipe tobacco, old leather bindings, and the faint sharpness of ink, a fragrance that belonged to Cornelius as much as his voice or his wit.
It was as though the walls themselves exhaled his memory, as though the room resisted the notion of his absence.
The study appeared untouched, preserved as if its occupant had merely stepped out for a moment.
Books lay in carefully cultivated disarray across every surface, stacked high upon the massive walnut desk, haphazardly perched on the arms of chairs, and even balanced precariously on the sill of the tall, rain-streaked windows.
The very embodiment of brilliant disorder, expertly governed.
Ancient manuscripts with their vellum pages mottled with age, lay sprawled open beside more recent tomes.
The margins of each were crammed with her uncle’s densely scrawled academic annotations.
She could almost hear his voice in those notes, muttering his thoughts as he worked, pausing only to tamp down the bowl of his pipe before returning to whatever medieval riddle consumed his attention.
You have no idea what you have until it is gone, Penelope thought sadly, and despite the fact that she was no stranger to loss, it never got any easier. The shock was still the same time after time.
The great Persian rug that covered the floor was worn thin in the places where his restless pacing had carved faint paths.
The hearth, though cold now, bore the ashen remnants of a fire last tended by his hand, a faint, gray ghost of warmth clinging stubbornly to its edges.
Penelope couldn’t bring herself to see it cleared out.
These were the remnants of him; the last remaining part of her beloved uncle left to cling onto in this world.
His favorite chair, the high-backed, leather winged seat that had dwarfed her as a child when she sat curled in its corner still held the impression of his form, or so her grief-tired mind wished to believe.
If she closed her eyes, she could still visualize him sitting there in her mind’s eye.
If she closed the door, she could still imagine him working away in here; pretend that he was out of sight but only a whisper away.
Penelope stepped into the room, feeling as though she trespassed upon some sacred space.
The candlestick trembled slightly in her grasp, throwing erratic shadows that danced across the towering bookcases lining the walls, their shelves groaning beneath the weight of knowledge collected across a lifetime.
How many hours had she spent here, kneeling by that very desk as he guided her through some tangled translation or illuminated the subtleties of medieval iconography?
It had been within these walls that he had nurtured her mind, treating her intellect as something to be sharpened and treasured, rather than a curiosity to be subdued.
The study had been their world both hers and Cornelius’s, untouched by the expectations of society.
And now that world felt unbearably empty. She was completely alone.
Her gaze fell upon the desk, where the usual clutter had taken on an uncharacteristic disorder. Cornelius had been a man of eccentric habits, yes, but never of carelessness.
At one time, Penelope had no doubt that Cornelius would have been able to lay his hands on anything in this room in no time at all.
Although he had become less ordered in recent months, she knew he had a system.
To the outsider, it made little sense, but to Cornelius, everything here had its place.
His papers, though abundant, were always arranged according to some private logic, his work always methodical despite its apparent chaos.
Tonight, however, she saw no method ,only disruption. Scattered notes lay atop one another without discernible order, as though they had been abandoned in haste. Several books gaped open, their spines cracked and pages dog-eared in a way her uncle would never have tolerated.
And there, placed atop the disarray as if demanding her attention, lay a single envelope.
Her breath caught.
Even before she touched it, she recognized the familiar hand, the sharply slanted, economical script of a man who had written more words in his lifetime than some had spoken.
Her name, Miss Penelope Whitmore, stared back at her in black ink, each letter firm yet somehow weaker than his usual definitive quill strokes.
The wax seal, once a mark of her uncle’s dignified precision, told a different story. It had been pressed in haste, its edges smudged by fingerprints. Crooked. Imperfect. Cornelius Whitmore had been many things, but careless was not one of them.
Dread coiled in her stomach as she reached for the letter.
The paper was cool against her fingers, slightly crumpled at the edges as though it had been handled more than once before it reached her.
Her thumb traced the broken impression of the seal, a hastily pressed emblem that bore the unmistakable tremor of its maker’s hand.
He had been frightened. Truly frightened. What was happening to you, Uncle Cornelius, and why didn’t you tell me?
She sank into his chair, which felt too large and empty without his presence. She drew a long, steadying breath before breaking the seal. The candlelight trembled across the page as she unfolded it, the scratch of the paper unsettlingly loud in the quiet room.
My dearest Penelope,
Her eyes blurred, though she blinked the tears away.
If you are reading this, then my time has come sooner than I had hoped, and I am sorry for the situation in which you now find yourself. I had prayed for the luxury of more days to prepare you, but providence has not seen fit to grant them.
Her fingers clenched the page.
You must not trust those who come to you with smiles and soft words, my girl.
Dangerous men seek what I have spent my life pursuing.
They are relentless, and they will show you no mercy if they believe you possess even a fragment of what they want.
Guard yourself well, for their reach is long, and their patience longer still.
Her heart pounded painfully against her ribs.
There is one, and only one, whom you may trust should darkness gather.
Go to Adrian Sterling, the Duke of Sterndale.
Of all men, he alone possesses both the strength and the honor to protect what matters most. You know him by reputation, no doubt, society has named him a beast, but it couldn’t be further from the truth.
I tell you, Penelope, they are wrong. He is the only nobleman I have met who values knowledge above title, and who can be trusted to do what is right when all others would turn away.
Her eyes darted back to the first line, as though by reading the words again she might make sense of them. The Duke of Sterndale. Adrian Sterling.
The Devil’s Duke.
Society called him a monster. She had seen him with her own eyes only hours ago, a figure cut from storm and shadow, his scarred face and forbidding presence enough to chill the marrow of even the boldest of souls.
And yet Cornelius, her Cornelius, who had judged men with an astuteness few could rival, had written of him with respect. Even admiration.
Her hand tightened around the page.
The work is unfinished, but you are ready. More ready than you know. Continue where I have left off, but do not do so alone. Trust no one else, Penelope. No one but him.
The rest of the letter dissolved into references she could scarcely comprehend at first glance, phrases about the old kings and the truths buried with them, fragments of research that sounded more like the opening lines of one of her uncle’s beloved Arthurian texts than a dying man’s plea.
She pressed the letter to her lap and stared into the candle flame, her thoughts a tangle of grief, fear, and disbelief.
What work was he referring to and why hadn’t he clarified what he needed her to do? Was he so afraid that he didn’t dare record his thoughts in case they fell into the wrong hands?
And the Devil’s Duke? Her uncle had entrusted her safety and his life’s work to the very man polite society crossed the street to avoid?