Chapter One

“Seven.”

“You’re not counting the osprey plumes. We agreed—osprey counts double.”

“Since when?”

“Since Lady Lennox wore that disaster to the Harrington ball and nearly blinded a footman.” Lady Lily Wycliffe adjusted her parasol, tilting it toward the afternoon sun slanting through the elms that lined the walkway in Hyde Park. “Those are the rules, Isadora.”

It was their private game—had been since they were sixteen and bored senseless by the promenade. The more absurd the bonnet, the higher the score.

“Fine. Nine, then.” Miss Isadora Grant nodded toward a woman in towering puce silk passing on their left.

The gravel crunched softly beneath their slippers. The park smelled of grass and horses and the faint sweetness of someone’s crushed lavender sachet on the breeze.

“Eleven. You missed the ones tucked behind the bow.” Lily squinted. “Is that a …stuffed finch?”

“It’s a rosette.”

“It has a beak.”

Carriages gleamed along the Serpentine, their lacquer catching in the sunlight while ladies strolled with chaperones at measured paces and gentlemen tipped hats from the bridle path—the whole of the Season on careful, exhausting display.

Isadora’s fingers found the folded paper inside her reticule.

“Your turn,” Lily said, scanning the path ahead. “I see a—”

“I need to show you something.”

Lily stopped counting, stopped walking, her gaze dropping to Isadora’s hands, one dark eyebrow raised.

“What is it?”

“Just read it.” Isadora withdrew the paper. “And whatever you do, don’t scream.”

“Is it a love letter?”

“Worse.”

“A confession of—”

“Lily. Just read it.”

Lily snatched the folded paper from Isadora’s fingers before she could change her mind, her eyes devouring the list with the fervour of someone reading a particularly damning scandal sheet.

She stopped walking entirely. “Number three alone would get you shipped to a convent. It would get me shipped off just for reading it.” Her voice came out slightly strangled.

“We’re not Catholic.”

“Your mother would convert you out of principle.” Lily stared at the paper as though it might catch fire in her hand. “And number five, that’s not scandalous, that’s… I don’t even have a word for what that is.”

“Ambitious?”

“Deranged, possibly magnificent.” She was biting her lip against a grin, her eyes bright. “Are these what I think they are?”

“Yes.” Isadora said, her voice soft but firm. “Five things that I would like to belong to me before I belong to someone else. I want to know what it feels like to actually live, Lily. Not just perform for an audience.”

The breeze shifted, carrying the distant shouts of boys racing a toy boat near the bank.

“Give it back before someone sees.”

“Not until you tell me you’re joking.”

“All right, I’m joking.”

“You’re blushing.”

“I’m not.” Isadora lifted her chin. “It’s the sun.”

She snatched the list from Lily’s grip and folded it—once, twice, a third time until it was small enough to tuck inside her reticule. The silk lining swallowed it whole.

A matron passed them, her gaze lingering on their bowed heads, their voices pitched too low for proper promenade conversation.

Lily waited until the woman’s skirts had rustled past. “When did you make it?”

“Last Tuesday. After Edmund Carlisle sent his third arrangement of lilies.”

“Lilies are perfectly—”

“I detest lilies. I have ever since I broke out in hives at the Midsummer Ball.” Isadora lifted her chin. “And yet, they arrive like clockwork.” She paused, her tone cooling slightly. “He asked my father whether I played pianoforte. He asked my mother whether I was accomplished in French.” Her fingers tightened around the parasol handle. “He has not, to my recollection, addressed a single question to me that couldn’t have been answered by consulting my card at Almack’s.”

A child’s hoop rolled across their path, pursued by a shrieking boy with mud on his knees. They stepped apart to let him pass, then drew together again.

“So this list,” Lily said carefully, “isn’t really about the scandalous specifics.”

“Oh, but it is. And it’s proof.”

“Proof that you’ve lost your mind entirely?”

“Proof that I want things. And someday I’ll look back on it knowing that I chose them. That for five moments in my life, at the very least, I was a woman who decided for herself.”

They walked in-step past a knot of young officers on horseback, all gleaming brass and self-importance. One tipped his hat. Another let his gaze track the line of Isadora’s throat to her collarbone before she tilted her parasol to cut the inspection short. Her dark chestnut hair was pinned in soft curls at her temples. She didn’t need to see the officer’s face—she’d been receiving that particular attention from the opposite sex since she was seventeen.

Lily studied her. Then she straightened, hooked Isadora’s arm more firmly through her own, and dropped her voice. “Well then. We’d better start planning, because I have notes about number two that you are going to want to hear.”

“You barely had a proper look—”

“I read faster than most. It’s a talent and I refuse to apologize for it.”

“You’re a menace.”

“I’m resourceful. There’s a difference.” Lily grinned—wide and reckless. “You know I could never let you do anything truly catastrophic without me.”

Isadora bit the inside of her cheek. The tightness beneath her ribs loosened—not much, but enough that her next breath came without the sharp edge that had lived there since breakfast.

“It’s your final Season,” Lily said, quieter now.

“Hmm. Mama’s made that spectacularly clear. She’s had a jeweller to the house already, you know.”

“Before there’s even a gentleman?”

“The man is but a detail. The ring is the strategy.”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Lord.”

“She’s even composed a list of her own—suitable gentlemen ranked by title, income, and proximity to a London townhouse.”

“Naturally.”

“Teeth factor in as well, apparently.”

“Teeth?”

“They matter far more than one would expect after twenty years of marriage, apparently.”

Lily’s laugh broke free—too bright, too loud for the promenade.

A gentleman on horseback turned sharply toward the sound, and she pressed her fingers to her mouth, shoulders shaking.

“Stop.” Isadora whispered as she fought her own smile. “You’re drawing attention.”

“You handed me the most scandalous document in the history of the London Season and you want me to be discreet?”

“I want you to not get us escorted off the grounds.”

“Fine.” Lily gathered herself with visible difficulty. “But you must know—this is the bravest, most reckless—”

“Isadora,” A voice cut across the path, clipped and unhurried. Viscountess Vivienne Grant approached, her maid a half step behind.

Isadora straightened her spine, shoulders, and chin. Beside her, Lily stiffened into matching propriety.

Isadora’s mother’s lips pressed into a tight smile. “Mind your posture!” Her gaze swept over her daughter from bonnet to hem. She reached forward and tucked a loose strand of chestnut hair behind Isadora’s ear. “You’re flushed. Have you been walking too quickly? Exertion is not becoming.”

“I shall endeavour to perspire less visibly, Mama.”

Her mother acknowledged Lily with a brief nod. “Lady Lily. Your family is keeping well?”

“Very well, my lady.”

“And your brother—settling into his duties, I trust? A duke taking his seat after so long abroad must be quite the undertaking.”

“He is finding Ravensmere an adjustment, but a welcome one.”

Isadora’s fingers stilled on her parasol.

She hadn’t seen Alistair Wycliffe since she was nine years old. Lily’s letters had tracked his years abroad in fragments—Vienna, then Rome, then silence. His return to England had been the talk of every drawing room for a fortnight, and she had absorbed every morsel she could while pretending complete indifference.

“Splendid. We must have him to dinner before the Season turns. A duke at one’s table is never unwelcome.” She turned back to Isadora, stepping back to survey her daughter. “Now. I’ve spoken with Lady Foxwood. Several gentlemen worth your attention are walking this afternoon—Lord Whitley near the bridge, Baron Harcourt on the east path, and a Mr. Arthur Dalton. Second son of the Earl of Kenmore. Very promising.”

“Has he any thoughts of his own, or only promising parents?”

“Don’t be droll, darling. It thins your face.” Her mother’s fingers found a loose curl at Isadora’s temple and tucked it back with a firmness that doubled as correction. “Be agreeable this afternoon. Not clever.”

Lily’s carriage had drawn to the curb, the driver signalling. “I’m afraid that’s mine, Lady Grant.”

“Of course, dear. Do give your brother our regards.”

“Tuesday,” Lily whispered against her ear, squeezing hard. “Tea at Ravensmere. I’ll have Cook make those lemon biscuits you always pretend not to eat four of.”

“I eat three. At most.”

“You eat four and hide the crumbs in the settee cushion. I’ve found the evidence.” Lily pulled back, her expression shifting into something quieter, fiercer. She glanced toward the reticule, then toward Isadora’s mother. “Don’t lose it.”

“I won’t.”

Isadora stood with her mother and the maid, watching the carriage until it rounded the bend and vanished. Then they steered Isadora toward the bridge to where the gentlemen had gathered in a loose cluster.

“Lady Grant. Miss Isadora Grant.” Lord Whitley bowed first, his smile a fraction too eager. “What a fortunate encounter.”

“Hardly fortune, my lord. We walk this path every Thursday.”

Her mother’s laugh smoothed the moment.

Mr. Dalton bowed over Isadora’s hand. Up close, everything about him was carefully assembled—the coat cut to flatter, the smile calibrated to charm, his eyes lingering on hers long enough to make certain she’d noticed.

“Lady Foxwood tells me you play Clementi as though you’d studied on the Continent.”

“I haven’t, I’m afraid. Though I did once convince my governess that four hours’ daily practice constituted a medical emergency.”

Dalton blinked. Then laughed, quick and startled.

Lord Whitley pivoted to her mother. “I was just telling Baron Harcourt—I had the pleasure of hearing Viscount Grant’s speech on the Enclosure Bill last week. Masterful. You must be tremendously proud.”

“My husband does speak well,” she said, her chest puffing slightly.

Harcourt turned to Isadora. “That’s a lovely gown, Miss Grant. The colour suits you enormously.”

“Thank you, I—”

He pressed on without missing a beat. “And I understand you sketch? Landscapes, I believe?”

“When I have time.”

“Delightful. My mother paints watercolours. Florals, mostly. Quite accomplished.”

“How nice for her.”

Dalton, who had been watching this exchange with his head slightly tilted, stepped back in. “What else occupies your time, Miss Grant? Beyond diplomatic negotiations with governesses?”

“I read.”

“Anything in particular?”

“Philosophy, mostly. And the occasional novel, when I can find one worth finishing.”

“A woman of discerning taste.” He said it with warmth, but his gaze had already drifted—scanning the path, the passersby, the careful distance at which her mother and maid stood watching—measuring the impression he was making.

“Your father’s holdings border Ravensmere, I understand?” Dalton continued. “Excellent land. Good tenancies.”

“My father would be the one to speak to about that, my lord.”

“Of course, of course.” He smiled. It was pleasant, polished, but his eyes were already drifting past her.

“Gentlemen.” The Viscountess glided forward. “How delightful you’ve made this walk. I do hope we’ll see you at Lady Foxwood’s dinner on Saturday.”

There were bows, promises to call, and a lingering look from Dalton that aimed for admiring and landed closer to proprietary. Then, three well-polished pairs of boots retreating down the path.

Her mother fell into step beside her. “Mr. Dalton has real promise. I’ll arrange the seating. You’ll wear the burgundy silk—it does wonderful things for your complexion.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“And perhaps more warmth when he speaks? You were bordering on curt, Isadora.”

“I was making conversation.”

“You were making him work. Men of his standing don’t expect effort. A touch of encouragement goes a great distance, you know.”

Her mother adjusted her gloves before she continued toward the carriages, Mrs. Merriweather falling in behind her.

Isadora remained on the gravel walkway while the park carried on around her—a burst of laughter from a nearby bench, the creak of carriage springs rolling past, the elm shadows lengthening across the path as the afternoon thinned toward evening.

Something behind her ribs had cinched tight, the same airless constriction as a corset laced one notch past breathing. Isadora pressed her hand flat against the bag, feeling the paper’s edges through the silk.

She would make every single one of them happen. No matter what it cost her.

She lifted her chin, turned back toward the promenade, and walked straight into the crowd.

Chapter Two

“We’re late, Your Grace.”

“By whose standard?”

“Your uncle’s. He sent word at half three.” Briggs adjusted the reins as the carriage slowed, the park’s iron gates drawing level with the windows. “And again at quarter to four.”

Alistair leaned his head against the glass.

The promenade stretched ahead of them, clogged with parasols angled against the late sun, riders slowing to be admired, the whole park performing itself for an audience of itself. He watched as a pair of young officers tipped their hats to a cluster of giggling debutantes, and the weariness behind his sternum pressed deeper.

He’d forgotten this. The performance of it—every tipped hat and turned ankle calculated for maximum strategic advantage, the entire Season reduced to a particularly well-dressed auction.

“How far to Bond Street?” He asked, his knee bouncing.

“Twenty minutes, Your Grace.”

“Stop the carriage.”

Alistair was already reaching for the door handle. The velvet walls were closing in, and if he spent another second sealed inside this mahogany coffin, he was going to put his fist through something.

“I’ll walk the rest.”

The gravel was firm beneath his boots. He adjusted his coat—dark, buttoned to the throat—and tucked his bundle of notes tighter under his arm before moving into the crowd at a pace that discouraged conversation.

It had been years since he’d last breathed this air, and it tasted exactly as he remembered—soot and ambition and the faintest undercurrent of horse dung dressed up in perfume.

A cluster of matrons parted as he passed, fans stirring. One whispered something to her companion. He caught the sweep of a gaze from his dark hair to his shoulders to his jaw before he moved beyond earshot.

He turned sharply onto a narrower path—and collided directly with a woman stepping out from behind the elms.

The impact was solid enough to knock her back a step. His hand caught her elbow on instinct, but her reticule had already slipped from her wrist, striking the gravel and bursting open—her papers and his notes tangling together as a gust of wind dragged them across the path.

“Forgive me.” He released her arm and dropped to one knee, reaching for the nearest page before the breeze carried it beneath a passing heel. “The solicitor’s brief, bloody hell—”

She’d already crouched, gathering papers with quick hands. He noticed there was no fluttering, no theatrical gasp—none of the usual dramatics employed by marriage-minded debutantes. Her gloves were already dirty, and she hadn’t once glanced at his coat or his cravat or anything above his hands.

A breeze whirled between them, sending the papers fluttering. His fingers closed around a folded sheet at the same moment hers did.

He looked up into a pair of hazel eyes, warm with a dark ring at the outer edge—so immediately, inexplicably familiar that the apology forming on his tongue dissolved before he could shape it.

The angle of the late sun caught the curve of her jaw, the hollow at the base of her throat where her pulse beat visibly, and the loose curls of dark chestnut escaping their pins where the breeze tugged at them.

“That one’s mine, I believe.” Her voice was steady, but colour was climbing her throat.

“You’re certain?”

“I know my own handwriting.” She tugged it free and folded it into the stack she’d gathered. “And you should watch where you’re walking. There are small children about.”

“I was watching. I avoided four of them and their enormous puffy dog.” He clutched a few papers against his chest. “You, I did not see coming.”

The corner of her mouth lifted—barely, and suppressed immediately. “I imagine most people have the sense to stay out of your path.”

“Most people, yes.” He collected the remaining pages without examining them, sweeping them into his coat, and retrieved her book from where it had landed spine-down on the gravel. “Yours.”

Her fingers brushed his through the gloves as she took it. She pulled back a fraction too quickly and tucked the book into her reticule, drawing the strings closed.

“I hope your meeting with the solicitor goes well.”

“I said that aloud, did I?” He hadn’t realised. “It generally does, when I’ve had time to prepare.”

“Well, I wish you the best of luck. Good afternoon.” She turned, walking toward a waiting carriage with a stride that suggested she’d rather run but had been trained out of it, her fingers tightly gripping the reticule strings.

The footman handed her up. The door closed. And there, gleaming on the lacquered panel in the fading afternoon light, he saw it. The Grant crest.

Alistair’s hand stilled on his coat.

He suddenly recalled a nine-year-old girl with those same hazel eyes. A grass-stained pinafore. A relentless stream of questions he’d pretended to find tiresome while secretly considering them the only honest thing in the house. Her little voice following him through the corridors of Ravensmere back when he was seventeen and running from everything she’d been too young to understand.

Miss Isadora Grant.

He pushed the thought away and walked on.

The solicitor’s offices occupied the second floor of a grey-fronted building on Bond Street, directly above a confectioner’s that filled the stairwell with the cloying sweetness of burnt sugar. Alistair took the stairs two at a time and found his uncle already sitting in the leather chair closest to the fire, legs crossed at the ankle, a glass of port balanced on his knee.

“There he is.” Archibald rose, his handshake firm. “Thought you got trampled in the promenade.”

“Only grazed.” Alistair shook his hand once and released it.

Archibald settled back into his chair.

The solicitor, Mr Thornwell, occupied the far side of a desk buried under towers of correspondence and ledgers. He rose, spectacles glinting, and gestured to a chair that creaked when Alistair sat.

“Your Grace, welcome home. I must say, the likeness to your late father is quite—”

“I’m aware,” Alistair said, his voice clipped as he crossed one ankle over the other.

The solicitor redirected with the instincts of a man who had survived decades of aristocratic temperament. “The north parcels, if you’ll—”

“The arrears.” Alistair opened the ledger Thornwell pushed across and ran his thumb down the column. “How far behind?”

“Several quarters, Your Grace. Your late father had arrangements with the longer-standing families. Verbal assurances, mostly.”

“Verbal assurances aren’t binding.”

“No. But they were honoured. In practice.”

“Half the north tenants owe more than their holdings produce.” He turned the page. “And Hathaway?”

Thornwell’s quill tapped the edge of his inkwell. “There was a boundary survey that contradicts the original deed. The family has contested the eastern line and refuses to—”

“Commission a counter-survey. I want written terms for every tenant on the north parcels. On my desk within a fortnight.”

“A fortnight? Your Grace—”

“You’ve had twelve years, Mr Thornwell. I’d say the debt of patience runs in my direction at present.”

Thornwell’s quill scratched frantically.

“The parliamentary seat remains open to you, naturally,” Archibald said from his chair by the fire, swirling his port. “Your father held it for nineteen years. The constituency expects a Wycliffe in attendance to—”

“The constituency expects someone who’ll show up. Which my father stopped doing long before he stopped breathing, from what I gather.”

A flicker of irritation across his uncle’s face—brief, smoothed instantly. “Your father had his… difficulties. But the family name carries weight, nephew. That’s what matters. It opens door that—”

“I spent twelve years avoiding them. I’ve found that they open onto remarkably little.”

Archibald’s fingers paused on his glass before the easy posture resettled.

“The south pasture easement,” Thornwell said after clearing his throat. “Contentious since—”

“Since before I was born. Grant the surveyors access to the full southern boundary.”

Thornwell scratched another note, and Alistair pulled the remaining papers from his coat and separated them across the desk.

“You’ve been busy.” His uncle leaned forward to examine the stack. “Are those the tenant figures?”

“And the estate calculations. Your numbers from last quarter don’t hold together without adjustment, Uncle.”

Archibald’s hand stilled on the page briefly, then withdrew. “The accounts were managed under rather extraordinary circumstances, nephew. Your father’s illness left very little room for—”

“Then I look forward to restoring it.” Alistair slid the parliamentary correspondence toward himself. “I’ll read these at Ravensmere.”

“Read them and respond, I should hope.”

Alistair signed the document Thornwell slid toward him, scanning the clause this time. “Responding suggests I’ve already decided to care.”

“Your father, whatever his flaws, never neglected the political machinery.”

“My father neglected a great many things. He was simply strategic about which ones.”

Alistair didn’t look up from the papers. He was sorting the last of them when he noticed a sheet that wasn’t his. The paper was finer—cream-coloured, smooth beneath his thumb, folded into a tight, tiny square.

He unfolded it below the edge of the desk while Thornwell bent over the ledger and his uncle reached for the port.

Five items, captured in a neat, round hand and violet ink. He read it once, slowly, his thumb pressing hard against the crease while the fire shifted in the grate, sending a log collapsing into ash.

He had expected a shopping list, or perhaps a sentimental verse copied from a ladies’ magazine. This was neither. This was the kind of document that could end a reputation, launch a scandal, or become something considerably more interesting than both.

“Your Grace?” Thornwell peered over his spectacles. “The surveyors. Shall I arrange access for the full boundary, or only the disputed section?”

Alistair refolded the paper along its original creases, his fingers steady. His breathing hadn’t changed—he’d made certain of that. But his pulse had quickened beneath his cravat, and the room had grown considerably warmer.

He slipped the paper inside his breast pocket. “The full boundary. Is there anything else that requires my signature today?”

Archibald studied him across the rim of his glass. “You seem a bit distracted, nephew.”

“Merely tired, uncle.”

“And then there is the household accounts from the last quarter—”

“Have them sent home.” He stood and buttoned his coat. “Gentlemen.”

Archibald rose with him. “I thought we might dine, nephew. There’s a club on—”

“I’ve had quite enough company for one afternoon, I’m afraid.” Alistair pulled his gloves on.

His uncle’s gaze tracked the movement of his fingers grazing the wool just above his heart. “Of course,” Archibald said with a nod, and turned back to Thornwell.

When Alistair emerged into the street, his carriage was waiting.

Once he was seated inside and they pulled away, he withdrew the folded paper from inside his coat. He didn’t need to read it again, but he stared at it anyway, the Grant crest still vivid in his mind, together with a pair of hazel eyes.

He refolded the paper with the same deliberate care she’d used to make it small and tucked it back inside his pocket again. The carriage rocked gently as it turned onto the main road.

“Your Grace?” Briggs glanced over his shoulder. “Shall I have supper prepared at the townhouse?”

“No. Take me to Ravensmere.”

Briggs nodded and turned the horses north.

Alistair settled against the seat and watched London thin beyond the glass, the rooftops loosening, the sky widening, the countryside sprawling around them.

And all the while, his hand rested over his breast pocket—fingers tracing the edges of the folded paper through the wool.

The smile that pulled at his lips was deliberate and entirely without virtue.

She would come looking for it.

And God help him, he wanted her to.