Chapter One

London was grey and wet. White fog swirled in the air, softened the edges of chimney pots, and settled into Miss Helena Darrow’s auburn hair until each curl clung damp and stubborn about her temples. The chill reached through her spencer and muslin like a thief with deft fingers, prising into her bones despite the patter of her pulse.

She was abominably late to the appointment with Mr. Hart. Swearing under her breath—no true lady, her mother would have said, and yet her mother was not here to scold—Helena caught up fistfuls of her skirts and hitched them to her knees.

Yesterday’s snow had melted and crusted over again in the night, leaving a treacherous mixture of ice glazed thin as spun sugar above ruts of black mud. It clutched at everything and had already seeped through her boots and stockings until her toes burned and then went numb.

For a heartbeat, she stood in the street’s narrow throat between tall, soot-licked houses and considered turning back—simply not meeting Mr. Hart at all. The fog breathed in and out like some great animal, and she breathed with it, a steadying draught that tasted faintly of smoke and horse.

The weight of her choice settled about her shoulders like a heavy travelling cloak. It was not as though she truly wished to sign the contract Mr. Hart had drawn up.

Edmund waited in the hired hackney a few streets away, wrapped in his best coat and Meg’s knitted scarf, his thin knees knocking when he was anxious, though he pretended they did not. She could go back to him, say she had changed her mind, and keep them both on the uncertain path they knew.

But she could not bear to leave matters as they were. Cowardice solved nothing; debt solved nothing.

She set her jaw and quickened her pace, picking her way over the uneven road with a recklessness born more of desperation than courage. A stitch lanced beneath her ribs. Her breath fogged white and vanished.

Hooves and wheels sliced the damp air—close. She turned her head just as a carriage shouldered through a sheet of standing water and flung it up in a glittering arc. The puddle slapped cold against her legs, heavy and shocking. She gasped. The carriage checked and came to a halt mere feet away, the horses blowing steam, leather harness creaking.

Heat of fury rose through the cold. Helena strode forward, heart thundering, and rapped her knuckles against the carriage door with more force than she intended. She meant to have an apology—at the very least—or coin for laundering. The door jerked open so sharply it nearly caught her cheek.

“Good morning, madam.”

He descended with unhurried grace. Tall and austere, dark hair disciplined into order, eyes black and bright as polished jet. His greatcoat—broad of shoulder and perfectly brushed—gave him the air of a cantankerous crow who disliked being disturbed. He was immaculate. He was dry. An irrational part of Helena despised him for both when she was wet to the knees and splashed with London.

“Your driver has ruined my stockings and gown,” she said, clipped as the frost.

“Unfortunate,” he drawled, as if pronouncing on the weather.

“Is that all you have to say?”

One eyebrow climbed a fraction. “What would you have me say? Have you never walked in London? Mud will stain your hems. If such things vex you, you ought to consider taking a carriage.”

Helena’s fingers curled until the ache ran through her knuckles. A dozen scathing replies offered themselves and fled in the same instant, too sharp for prudence. But one escaped anyway, bright and reckless on her tongue.

“Perhaps if you looked where you were going instead of down your nose, sir, you might spare others your arrogance as well as your mud.”

The words struck the air like flint on stone. His brows lifted, the faintest gleam of amusement—or warning—in his eyes. Heat rushed to her cheeks, mortification chasing fury.

She took a step to turn away, but her boot found a skin of invisible ice.

The world slipped. Street, horse, sky—all tilted backward—until a hard arm locked about her waist and held. It cost several beats of her startled heart to understand why she had not met the cobbles. The man had caught and steadied her, and though she stood upright again, he had not yet released his hold. The clean, restrained scent of his cologne—orange blossom and lavender—drowned the mould and gutter-reek for a breath.

She did not want his hands on her. Even disgraced, she remained the daughter of a gentleman. Yet a traitorous shiver, perilously like anticipation, skimmed her spine.

“Unhand me,” she said, cool as she could make it.

He obeyed at once, an almost lazy condescension at the corner of his mouth. “There. I have spared your skirts from further ruin. We may call the account balanced.”

“Balanced?”

“You were angered that my driver muddied your hem. I have prevented worse. Fair exchange. And now—if you would kindly be about your way. I have an appointment, and you have delayed me already.”

Something in the unruffled superiority of him—his height, his immaculate coat, that idle certainty—unlocked a recklessness in Helena that was cousin to courage and kin to folly. Without taking her gaze from his face, she bent, scooped a palmful of slush and black London, and rose.

“Are you mad?” he demanded softly.

“Oh yes,” she said. “Though not in the way you mean.”

She pressed the mess to his lapel. He jerked back a fraction too late. The cool façade cracked, astonishment flaring cleanly. He could hardly have looked more scandalised had she struck him across the mouth.

“Now, all is fair.”

Helena turned on her heel and strode off, skirts clutched high, breath shaking with cold and after-courage. Sensible fear arrived a few paces later. She had no notion who he was. What if he was vindictive? What if he followed?

She lengthened her stride until her calves burned and the ache in her side became a stitch proper. No steps came behind. She did not look back.

***

By the time she reached Mr. Hart’s chambers, the fog had curled itself into the stairwell and clung to the brass rail. Helena’s hands shook as she pushed open the door. A fair-haired, blue-eyed clerk sprang up so quickly his chair skittered. He stared outright for a beat—at her wind-snarled hair, her damp hem, the splash on her stocking—then recollected himself into a brisk bow.

“You must be Miss Darrow.”

“Indeed.”

A faint line wrote itself between his brows; the clock on the mantelshelf ticked pointedly. Helena sighed and set about the buttons of her spencer with stiff fingers. Heat bled from the small iron stove near the window; she longed to stand over it like a cat and thaw.

An inner door opened. A slight gentleman with neat auburn hair and clear blue eyes looked out, his glance sweeping her in one precise pass before returning to her face. “Miss Darrow! Please, come in. I am Nathaniel Hart, and I see you have met my clerk, Howell. You look chilled to the bone. Howell, take the lady’s coat and bonnet.”

Helena surrendered her things with gratitude and smoothed her hair to little avail. Her curls were temperamental at the best of times; once wetted, they preferred rebellion. Mr. Hart bowed and held the door, ushering her into a chamber book-lined and handsome in that modest professional way: sturdy desk, pigeon-holes, well-inked pens, a worn Turkey carpet, fire lively upon the hearth. The room smelled of paper and soap and a whisper of brandy.

“Will you take a glass?” Mr. Hart asked, pausing by a small stand upon which a decanter stood with two squat tumblers.

“Do you offer all your clients brandy?” she asked, mouth tugging despite herself.

“Usually,” he said, and coloured faintly. “I seldom have dealings with ladies, Miss Darrow.”

“Then I shall do you the honour of not confounding your custom.” She accepted the glass. The spirit burned a clean path and left a little courage behind.

He took the chair opposite and studied her skirts with a scholar’s attention. “That is lovely embroidery. Did you work it yourself?”

Helena lifted a brow, unsure why a solicitor wished to speak of needlework, though she preferred it to an admonition about the hour. “I did. Thank you.”

“I am sadly ignorant of botany. Are they—?”

“Foxgloves,” she supplied. “Digitalis. My favourite. Beautiful, and dangerous if mishandled. Not without medicinal use, however.”

“Indeed?” He brightened. “I had the vague notion of it. Withering—Mr. Withering—wrote upon it, did he not?”

“He did,” Helena said, and could not help herself: “His conclusions are interesting, though he is given to a sweeping tone.”

Mr. Hart’s mouth twitched. “The fault of many authors and some solicitors.” He cleared his throat. “But I digress. Time is precious.”

“It is,” Helena agreed, and set her glass carefully upon a blotter. “I gather my groom-to-be has already left. Did he sign the contract?”

“He did not.”

Her heart dropped like a stone down a well. “Why not?” The room tilted, just a little.

“Oh! You misunderstand me.” Mr. Hart set down his own glass. “His Grace did not keep the appointment.”

Cold crept into Helena’s veins more efficiently than the fog ever had. “Do you know why?”

“I do not.” He looked properly apologetic. “He has given me no indication that he wishes to withdraw, however, so I think it best we proceed. He may have been detained.”

Detained. By indifference? By some new scandal? She could not decide how she felt. It was absurd to be wounded by a stranger’s absence, and yet the slight stung. Perhaps she ought to be relieved; he could hardly scold her for tardiness when he had not come at all.

“Very well,” she said, and kept her voice even.

Mr. Hart drew the contract from a leather portfolio and smoothed it flat with neat hands. “Would you like me to explain any part?”

Her gaze travelled the page. There was little mystery here: a marriage contract, a mutually advantageous arrangement between Lord Lucien Ashmore, Duke of Ravensgrave, and Miss Helena Darrow, late of Bloomsbury, with provisions for settlement of Mr. Darrow’s debts, protection of certain effects belonging to his daughter, and a clause respecting the guardianship and education of Edmund Darrow.

“No,” she said quietly. “I know what a marriage contract entails.”

He offered pen and ink with a small, sincere smile. “Allow me to congratulate you, Miss Darrow. It is, if I may say so, an advantageous match—much desired by gentlewomen.”

“Are you married, Mr. Hart?”

“No.”

“That explains a great deal,” Helena murmured, and then, because he looked wounded, softened the words. “An advantageous marriage has its appeal, certainly—but caution serves a woman better than enthusiasm. A title does not make a man worthy.”

He regarded her with professional curiosity, as though she were a problem well-posed. “Are you hesitating?”

“A little,” she said, truthfully.

The benefits were incontestable. She would not secure better: not with her father’s name in the scandal sheets these two years running and her own visits to lecture halls whispered of with laughter that cut. This contract would settle the debts that pressed like stones upon her chest. It would head off any ugly contest over Edmund’s guardianship. It would give him a future that did not begin with a closed door and end with a closed mouth.

“I would offer a word of advice,” Mr. Hart ventured, tentative.

Helena’s mouth went wry. “You are very good. I doubt clever words will ease my fears. Men discard women easily when they become inconvenient.”

He stared as if she had uttered something in Greek, and perhaps she had for a solicitor. Helena signed before she could talk herself out of it. The scratch of the pen sounded very loud.

“It is done,” she said.

Provided His Grace signed as well. If he did not, her choices narrowed to a pin-prick. She lifted the brandy again and finished it with more fortitude than grace; her eyes watered, and the heat ran like a small fire down her throat. Ill-advised—but if any moment warranted ill-advised comfort, it was consenting to wed a man she had never met, whose name the papers paired too readily with the word disgraced.

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Hart.”

She rose. He opened his mouth—some polite felicitation trembling there—and she fled before it could alight.

In the outer office, Howell started, then hastened to fetch her bonnet and coat. The wool was blessedly dry against her chilled palms. Helena tied the ribbons beneath her chin with steadier fingers and stepped back into the London damp. The fog had thickened; lamps wore small halos; the world felt muffled and watchful.

She did not want Edmund waiting too near the office; discretion served as armour as surely as coin. Gossip bit hardest in winter when the ton scattered to their parks and parsonages, leaving space in the scandal sheets for smaller prey. A disgraced naturalist’s daughter offered a neat mouthful.

She walked the agreed streets to the hackney, counting crossings to keep her mind from returning to the carriage and its intolerable gentleman. The horses tossed their heads as she approached; the driver touched his hat; she climbed inside.

Edmund started, his eyes—wide, green, and anxious—so like her own that for a moment she could not speak for tenderness. “Did you finish the business with the solicitor?”

“Yes,” she said lightly. “He did not need me long.”

Edmund did not know she had signed a marriage contract, and Helena meant to keep him innocent of it a little longer. He was ten: clever as a whip and soft as a peach, both at once. Besides, there remained the very real possibility His Grace would refuse to sign. After all, he had not kept the appointment.

“What shall we do now?” he asked, eager for orders, as if she were captain and he cabin-boy.

Helena pressed down the tide of doubt, drew him under her arm, and warmed his chilled hands between both of hers. “We shall go home and ask Meg for something warm and fortifying—posset if she is in a mood to be indulgent, chocolate if she is not. Then we will sit by the fire and read one of Mama’s ghost stories.”

Once, Meg had been Helena’s nursemaid, then Edmund’s; she had remained on through economies and embarrassments—one of the few servants Helena had kept, more from love than she would admit aloud. Meg claimed December belonged to ghosts because the nights came early and left late, and left room in between for listening.

Edmund brightened at once. “She always says December is best for ghost stories.”

“So she does.”

The hackney jolted into motion; the city unspooled—barrows and boys and a sweep of iron rail—like a ribbon tugged hand over hand.

A knot of longing drew tight beneath Helena’s breastbone. Memory came in bright fragments: her mother’s soft voice reading by candle’s low flame; the scratch of a pen as she revised a sentence even while reading it aloud; her father’s gentle smile when Helena corrected the Latin, his eyes glittering with a pride that was never loud enough to shame. He had been a progressive man, not threatened by a woman’s mind, not afraid to stand beside his wife and daughter in rooms that did not want them.

Now both were gone, and it fell to Helena to gather the pieces they had left and build something that would not let Edmund fall through the cracks.

The hackney rattled on; the fog pressed its face to the glass and watched them pass.

She set her shoulders beneath the weight of the heavy cloak of choice. What she had done in Mr. Hart’s office could not be undone. What remained was to carry it properly.

Outside, somewhere behind the veil of fog, a church bell counted the hour she had missed—and the hours left to make herself equal to what she had set in motion.

Chapter Two

Lucien stormed into the townhouse, his mood as dark as his title suggested. His arrival came hours later than anticipated—his entire day thrown into disarray by a mud-slinging madwoman in Clerkenwell.

Simon Richardson, Lucien’s butler, bowed deeply. “Welcome home, Your Grace.”

Lucien scowled.

Undeterred, Richardson took his coat and continued to smile in that polite, unflinching way that came of being entirely secure in one’s position. He was an old man—the last relic of Lucien’s father’s household—spindly and pale, sparse white hair giving him a vaguely skeletal look. Yet he moved with the unhurried efficiency of long habit. The brass buttons on his coat were bright; his linen was immaculate; the hall itself bore the quiet order of his stewardship.

“Mr. Hart has sent correspondence for you.”

“I am certain he has,” Lucien said dryly. “I’ll review it in my study. Bring a bottle of port.”

“At once, Your Grace.”

Relieved of his coat, Lucien tugged off his gloves and tossed them onto a nearby table. Emma, a maid lingering in the hall, darted forward and gathered them up with practiced speed.

“I shall tend to these, Your Grace.”

He gave a curt nod and strode to his study, shutting the door with more force than necessary. His jaw tightened as his thoughts returned to the feisty young woman who had accosted him in the street. He had never witnessed such audacity.

In hindsight, perhaps he ought to have done something—pursued her, demanded recompense, insisted upon a magistrate. That might have been the proper course, ensuring she did not remain a menace to decent citizens. Truth told, astonishment had rooted him where he stood. He could only stare as that wild creature thundered away, skirts flying, eyes bright with temper.

Lucien dropped into the chair behind his desk and stared at the open ledger. The last thing he wished to see. Second only, perhaps, to the memory of that woman.

A knock sounded. “Enter,” he barked.

Richardson appeared, bearing a sheaf of papers and a bottle of port. “As requested, Your Grace.”

The butler uncorked the bottle, poured a generous measure into cut crystal, and set the glass before him with a deft turn of the wrist. He placed the bottle at Lucien’s right hand—near enough to reach, far enough to discourage drinking from the neck.

“That will be all,” Lucien said.

Richardson bowed. “As you wish, Your Grace.”

When the door closed, Lucien exhaled and reached for the letters. He broke a wax seal and recognised Mr. Hart’s tidy hand at once.

I am certain that some more pressing matter must have kept you from making our appointment this morning—

Lucien’s scowl deepened; he set the letter aside. Hart was a fumbling man with little notion of how the ton operated, and that lack of polish never failed to irritate him. Ironic, then, that Lucien had hired him precisely for that reason. Mr. Hart was competent and discreet—least likely, among London’s solicitors, to gossip about a duke’s private affairs.

The contract lay among the papers, neatly folded. Lucien opened it and scanned the clauses, the dense phrasing describing an arrangement as old as the peerage itself. At the bottom, Helena Darrow appeared in a delicate, looping hand.

That woman had agreed to be his wife.

He dipped his pen and signed beside her name, idly noting the contrast—her graceful loops against his spare, angular script. A faint smudge of ink caught at his forefinger; he wiped it away with a square of blotting paper. He had the vaguest recollection of the Darrow girl from childhood: pale and freckled, trailing after her eccentric father like a little shadow in lace and ribbons; a serious child, watchful. That was all.

The door burst open. Lady Honora stood framed upon the threshold like a Fury from the Underworld. Though nearly sixty, she remained stately and formidable, thick black hair arranged in meticulous curls, blue eyes sharp as cut glass. Her pale blue gown looked altogether too cheerful for her severe countenance.

“Aunt,” Lucien said evenly, folding his hands atop the desk. “What a pleasant surprise.”

“What have you done?” she demanded without preamble.

“You will have to be more specific.”

“What is this I have heard about a marriage?”

Lucien smothered a spark of irritation. It was hardly a surprise she knew. If there was a scandal anywhere in Britain—no matter how carefully buried—Lady Honora would sniff it out.

“You did not consult me,” she said.

“I was not obliged to.”

Lady Honora inhaled sharply and pressed a gloved hand to her breast, as though mortally wronged. The scent of her lavender water drifted across the room, precise as her coiffure.

“It is not as though I have a wealth of options,” Lucien said, voice low with irony. “The ton has long memories and delicate sensibilities. No lady of worth is eager to wed a man with scandal at his back, a burned estate, and blood on his name. But I still have a title, and titles have a way of buying obedience if not affection.”

Her lip curled. “You still have much to offer.”

Lucien scoffed. His first, cruel thought—I am not Henry—he bit back. Too callous, even for him.

“I am not in the habit of second-guessing my own decisions,” he said, his voice low and final. “The match is made. The contract is signed.”

“It is made of paper,” Lady Honora countered sharply. “Paper burns—and it should. Women with tarnished reputations rarely remain in the background where they belong.”

Lucien gave a short, dark laugh. “Then you and my wife will suit one another perfectly.” He folded the contract with deliberate care and slid it into his breast pocket. “You both have a habit of ignoring the place society assigns you.”

Lady Honora’s eyes narrowed. “You mistake concern for insolence.”

“And you mistake insolence for weakness,” he said, rising. The quiet authority in his tone made the room still. “I will take some air. Alone.”

Her mouth tightened. “Of course.”

Lucien swept past, leaving her standing there, unwilling to waste another breath on the matter.

He crossed the tiled corridor and stepped into the cold. The townhouse gardens were more extensive than most in London—and nearly as neglected as his patience. After Henry’s death, his father had lost all interest in the estate’s upkeep. Pride had kept him from surrendering management to steadier hands.

Lucien entered the shuttered conservatory. Silence hung heavy, save for the faint leathery flutter of bats above the broken panes. Once, the place had been splendid—glass and paint and trained roses, his mother’s careful hand everywhere. Now the glass was cracked, the paint flaked, and the air was thick with the sweet rot of old soil and dead leaves. Frost limned a fern’s skeleton with delicate silver.

He crossed to the small table where he and Henry used to play chess. The board remained, dust-filmed, one rook toppled. Lucien’s throat tightened.

“Sometimes,” he murmured, “I wish it had been you instead of me. You would have worn the title better.”