Chapter 1
The first thing Edward James Cavendish, the Duke of Ravensmoor, noticed upon returning was that the house had not missed him.
It stood at the end of the long avenue with all its old severity intact, pale stone and black windows set against a sky the color of tarnished pewter. The rain had ceased only an hour before, and now, every branch along the drive held a trembling bead of water.
Edward looked out from the carriage and felt, to his irritation, seven years old again. The sensation lasted no longer than the space between one breath and the next.
He put it aside with the efficiency by which he had put aside grief, uncertainty, and most other inconveniences of the heart. A duke who allowed old stones to trouble him had best not return to his own estate.
When the carriage drew up before the great steps, the household was assembled as if for a royal visitation.
Edward descended without haste. He was tall enough to make movement seem deliberate even when it was not, and handsome in that inconvenient way which had caused other people more concern than it had ever caused him.
Then, the doors opened. His mother came out first. Eleanor Cavendish, the Duchess of Ravensmoor, had returned to the estate some months before him and had, by the evidence before him, already subdued it.
She wore dove-gray silk, very little ornament, and an expression of such composed satisfaction that any son less acquainted with her would have mistaken it for welcome alone.
“My dear Edward.”
She extended both hands. He bowed over them, and she kissed his cheek with the warmth of a mother and the precision of a general receiving a valuable officer.
“Mother.”
Her eyes searched his face. “You look well.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I am relieved. There is a difference.”
Before he could reply, a deep voice called from the doorway. “There is not, in my experience, when your mother is speaking.”
Benedict Cavendish stepped forward with a smile that had both amusement and affection in it. He was his late brother’s younger shadow in some respects, though less handsome, less severe, and infinitely more inclined to find mankind entertaining.
He had been guardian, trustee, steward, advisor, and, on several occasions, the only man in the family who could speak truth without turning it into a declaration of war.
Edward took his uncle’s hand. Benedict’s grip was firm.
“Welcome home, dear boy.”
Edward inclined his head. “I trust you haven’t let the place fall to ruin in my absence.”
“Entirely.” Benedict grinned. “I have spent the revenues on Italian singers and experimental livestock. Your mother has returned just in time to save us.”
His mother’s mouth tightened in the faintest possible smile. “You will find, Edward, that very little ruins itself when properly supervised.”
“And less still when you are within ten miles of it,” Benedict added.
Edward looked past them into the hall. The portraits of Cavendish men and their dutiful wives watched from the walls, each ancestor apparently offended that the present duke had kept them waiting. His father’s portrait hung halfway along the staircase. Edward did not look at it long.
Inside, the house received him with warmth and polish and expectation. Fires had been lit in rooms not ordinarily used in October. Flowers had appeared in bowls. Every corridor had been made to seem effortless, which meant his mother had been at work since dawn.
He was ushered in the morning room with tea before him, his mother opposite, and Benedict by the fire with the dangerous air of a man prepared to be amused by anything.
“Now,” his mother spoke, taking up a folded paper from the table beside her, “as you have come home to assume your responsibilities, it is best you begin with the county as it is, not as you left it.”
Edward looked at the paper. “Am I to understand that the county has changed beyond recognition?”
“No,” she replied. “It has married, died, inherited, quarreled, produced daughters, concealed debts, inflated fortunes, and mismanaged sons.”
Edward leaned back. “Proceed.”
“Sir Lionel Ashcombe is dead.”
“I heard.”
“His eldest has inherited the baronetcy and acquired a wife with thirty thousand pounds and an unfortunate laugh. Miss Ashcombe is engaged to Mr. Hurst, despite having declared him intolerable for two seasons.”
“A hopeful foundation,” Edward observed.
“For some marriages, intolerance is the nearest thing to attention.”
Benedict laughed outright.
His mother continued. “The Weston girls remain available, though the eldest is very pretty and very dull, the second tolerably clever and regrettably aware of it, and the youngest is still at the age where enthusiasm is mistaken for character.”
Edward accepted his tea. “You have been industrious.”
“I have been observant,” she corrected. “Industrious people interfere. Observant people are merely prepared when interference becomes necessary.”
Edward met Benedict’s eye and found his uncle looking into the fire with suspicious innocence. His mother consulted her paper again.
“Miss Eliza Bell has a good fortune, weak health, and a mother who would sit in your lap if she thought it would secure an introduction. Miss Carrow is accomplished at the harp, the pianoforte, watercolors, and insincerity. The younger Miss Fairfax is sensible, though plain.”
Edward felt the first true amusement of the day threaten his composure. “I am grateful the county has preserved its priorities.”
“You will be more grateful when you realize that other men have married on less information.”
He took a sip of tea. It was too hot, fragrant with bergamot, and faintly bitter.
“There is also the ball at Pemberton House in four days’ time,” his mother informed him.
“Ah,” said Benedict softly. “The campaign advances.”
She ignored him. “It will be a useful opportunity for you to observe many of the eligible young women of the neighborhood without the tedium of individual calls.”
“And I shall make a general impression,” Edward mused, “of the county’s unmarried daughters, their mothers and their deficiencies.”
Edward looked at his mother with more attention. His mother had never wasted effort. If she had returned to Ravensmoor months before him and if she had gathered social intelligence with military thoroughness, then she had already moved beyond hope into arrangement.
“Is there,” he asked, “some particular young lady whose qualities you have reserved for dramatic effect?”
She folded the paper. “There are several young ladies whose qualities will be better judged in person.”
It was an answer so exact that it concealed more than an evasion would have done.
Edward didn’t come home to be managed, though he knew better than to suppose this would prevent anyone from attempting it.
He came home because a duke could not remain forever in London while his own tenants spoke of him in the tense reserved for weather and taxation.
And he came home to marry.
That thought produced no romantic disturbance in him. It sat in his mind like a line in an accounts book. He required a duchess. Ravensmoor required an heir. Therefore, a wife was not an indulgence. She was a decision he intended to make competently and without unnecessary drama.
The social briefing ended only when his mother had exhausted the county’s marriages, deaths, fortunes, and matrimonial possibilities. Benedict then took her place with a different stack of papers and a less decorative subject.
“The northern farms require drainage before winter,” he revealed, spreading a map across the desk in the library.
“We have delayed twice. A third delay will cost more than the work itself. The mill lease expires at Michaelmas next year. There has also been trouble on the road near Whitcombe. Petty theft, mostly, though it unsettles tenants more than the value of what is taken.”
Edward stood beside him, listening. Beyond the windows, rain began again, fine and silver against the glass. He took the report Benedict offered and glanced at it swiftly.
“How long has the drainage been delayed?”
“Since last spring.”
“Why?”
“Because your steward believed the repairs to the west wing more urgent.”
Edward frowned. That didn’t make any sense. The west wing housed no one. He moved through the remaining matters with the efficient attention that had made men in London call him cold when they meant formidable. When at last Benedict closed the final ledger, the afternoon had sunk toward evening.
“You aren’t required to repair everything in a day,” Benedict told him.
“I suppose not.”
Benedict’s face softened in a way Edward disliked because it resembled pity, though Benedict was too wise to offer such a thing openly.
“Your father would have been proud to see you take it up.”
The words struck with no violence and yet landed where violence might have done less harm. Edward turned toward the window. Across the wet lawn, the last light clung to the trees, and the grounds stretched out in a dark, familiar sweep toward the stables.
“My father,” he replied, “isn’t here to approve or object.”
The silence between them was not uncomfortable. It was worse. It was honest.
Edward reached for his gloves. “I shall ride before dinner.”
“An excellent idea. The horses have been better company than most of us and less inclined to ask questions.”
“Then I shall prefer them at once.”
He found his valet, Thomas Chesterton, in the corridor before he had sent for him. This was not unusual. Thomas had a talent for appearing where he would soon be required, a quality which, in another man, might have seemed supernatural, but in Thomas was plainly the result of ruthless observation.
He was of an age with Edward, dry in manner, neat in person, and so steady in loyalty that Edward had long ago ceased to think of him as merely a valet.
“Your Grace,” Thomas said, bowing. “Your riding coat is ready.”
“You anticipated me. Saddle Orion.”
“Already done, Your Grace.”