Alaric Vaughn, Duke of Thornhold, has rejected three perfect brides. Onoria Finch intends to become the fourth, until his two enormous wolfhounds block the drawing-room doorway and refuse to let her pass. That very night, his mother hires a woman so unremarkable she is nearly invisible. Yet when the two fearsome hounds lie obediently at her feet, the coldhearted duke is left utterly stunned.

 PART 5

The news of Lady Onoria’s impending visit descended upon Thornhold like a sudden frost.

The staff, who had begun to relax into the gentle rhythm Clara had established, grew tense again. The butler’s back stiffened. The maids scurried with a renewed, nervous energy. The brief, fragile peace was over.

Clara learned of it from the Dowager herself.

They were in the morning room, embroidery hoops lying idle in their laps.

“Lady Finch and her daughter will be joining us for a few days.”

The Dowager’s eyes were fixed on a point somewhere over Clara’s shoulder.

“I shall require you to make sure the guest suites are prepared.”

“Of course, Your Grace.”

Clara’s voice was even. Her heart, however, gave a small, painful lurch. She remembered the whispers from the staff — the beautiful visitor who had been so thoroughly routed by the hounds.

“Lady Onoria is a lively presence.” The Dowager said it as if trying to convince herself. “I am hoping she might brighten the atmosphere.”

Clara said nothing.

She knew the atmosphere at Thornhold had already brightened. It had brightened because of wildflowers and open curtains and a garden being brought back to life. It had brightened because the Duke had begun to speak in full sentences.

She also knew that she — a vicar’s daughter with seven pounds to her name — had no right to think such things.

Her job was to be restful. And if the Dowager now required her to restfully prepare for her own replacement, then that was what she would do.

Lady Onoria Finch arrived not with quiet weariness, but with the force of a cavalry charge.

She brought a mountain of luggage, a lady’s maid with a permanently sour expression, and an aura of supreme, unassailable confidence. Her humiliation on the last visit had been transmuted, it seemed, into a steely resolve.

Her reunion with the hounds was a carefully stage-managed affair. The dogs were confined to the Duke’s study when she first entered the house. When she was presented to them later in the drawing room, she kept a careful distance, addressing them in a tone of bright, condescending cheerfulness that made Clara’s teeth ache.

“Ah, such big, brave boys,” she chirped, wagging a finger at them from across the room.

Brutus and Cassian were unimpressed.

They did not growl this time. They simply ignored her — turning their great heads to look for Clara, who stood quietly by the door.

Finding her, they padded over and sat at her feet. A warm, solid wall of loyalty.

The gesture was not lost on anyone in the room.

Onoria’s smile tightened. The Dowager looked deeply uncomfortable.

Alaric watched Clara, and a small, almost imperceptible smile touched his own lips.

The almost-smile. There and gone in an instant. But Clara saw it, and it felt like a shared secret.

Onoria, however, was not a woman to be deterred by dogs.

She had come to conquer a duke, and she set about it with military precision.

She was dazzling. She wore gowns of jewel-toned silk that made Clara’s plain muslin look drab by comparison. She played the pianoforte with a brilliant technical skill that filled the silent house with noise. She recounted witty anecdotes from her London season, her laughter ringing up into the high-ceilinged rooms.

And she treated Clara with a kind of pitying condescension far more cruel than outright hostility.

“Oh, Miss Hailwood, you must be so bored here, with only us old folk for company.”

A little laugh.

“Or is that a very practical shade of brown, Miss Hailwood. So sensible.”

Clara absorbed the small cuts with her usual quiet grace.

She did not cry. She had learned a long time ago that tears were exactly what a woman like Onoria wanted.

She simply continued with her duties, her calm demeanor an infuriating contrast to Onoria’s frantic effort.

The real battle, though, was for the Duke’s attention.

Onoria tried to engage him on every front — politics, horses, art. Alaric responded with his customary economy of words. His monosyllabic replies and long, thoughtful silences were a fortress she could not breach.

He remained polite. Distant. A man observing a play in which he had no interest.

His real attention was elsewhere.

It was in the walled garden, where he would find Clara in the early mornings with her hands in the earth.

It was in the library, where they would sit for hours in a companionable silence more intimate than any conversation Onoria could force.

One evening, after a particularly trying dinner — during which Onoria had dominated the table with a lengthy and detailed account of a ball — Clara retreated to the library.

She needed the solid presence of the books around her. The quiet wisdom of the ages.

She was not alone.

Alaric stood before the fire, one hand on the mantelpiece. The hounds, as always, were at his feet.

“She is very energetic,” Clara said by way of an opening.

Alaric turned. The firelight cast shadows on his face, making it seem even more stark and elemental.

“She is a siege engine.”

Clara could not help but smile.

“She does seem determined to take the castle.”

“She will find the walls are higher than she thinks.”

He took a step closer. The space between them seemed to crackle with an unspoken energy.

“She thinks the prize is a title and a fortune.”

“And is it not?” Clara’s voice was barely a whisper.

“The prize,” he said, his gaze steady on hers, “is peace. And she does not know the meaning of the word.”

He looked at her calm face. At her steady eyes.

“You do.”

His proximity was overwhelming. She could feel the heat coming off him, smell the faint scent of leather and cold night air that clung to his coat. She felt a dizzying pull toward him — a desire to close the small space that separated them, to see whether the peace he saw in her was something she could give him.

But she was Clara Hailwood, the vicar’s daughter.

And he was the Duke of Thornhold.

And in the drawing room, a beautiful, ambitious woman was playing the pianoforte, staking her claim.

Clara took a step back, breaking the spell.

“The Dowager will be looking for me.”

Her voice trembled, just slightly.

“Good night, Your Grace.”

She fled.

Alaric watched her go, a muscle working in his jaw.

He had come so close — to what? To telling her that her quiet presence had become the anchor of his world. To telling her that the thought of her leaving was now more terrifying than the grief he had lived with for so long.

He knew, with a sudden, chilling certainty, that this could not continue.

The situation was untenable. His mother’s well-intentioned meddling had created a battlefield inside his own home.

And Clara was caught in the crossfire.