Every woman in London was warned never to sit beside Alistair, Duke of Roth. Yet Lydia Penhallow accepted her sisters’ wager and unexpectedly talked with him until the ball ended. The next morning, everyone was stunned when the feared Duke arrived at her door with an offer that could save her entire family.

 PART 5

Two days later the air in London shifted, breaking the dreary fog with a crisp, brilliant morning.

Lydia walked the quiet gravel paths of Hyde Park. It was barely eight o’clock — an hour when the fashionable ton was still buried beneath feather duvets. The park belonged to the gardeners, the delivery boys, a few solitary riders in the distance.

And Alistair.

He walked beside her. His pace was agonizingly slow — every step a calculated negotiation between gravity and pain. The heavy thud of his cane against the gravel made a steady metronomic rhythm. Lydia had the naturally brisk walk of a woman who needed to get things done quickly, but today she slowed her steps, matching his exactly.

She didn’t look at his leg. She didn’t offer a steadying arm — knowing instinctively that to offer help was to offer pity, and pity was the one thing he would not tolerate.

They had met by arrangement. A brief, formal note from Roth House had arrived the afternoon before, requesting her company for a morning walk. Lady Violet had nearly fainted. Charlotte had accused Lydia of witchcraft.

“The cold is good for it, surprisingly,” Alistair said suddenly, breaking a long silence. He didn’t look at her.

Lydia didn’t pretend not to understand. “The cold. The leg.”

He grimaced — a brief tightening of the mouth. “The doctors in London insist on heat. Hot poultices, warm fires, thick blankets. It makes the bone throb like a rotting tooth.” He exhaled. “The cold air numbs it. It is the only time I feel somewhat assembled.”

“Then we shall walk in the cold,” Lydia said simply.

He glanced at her. Something strange and intense moved behind his eyes.

“You do not ask about it. The leg. The injury. The war. The incident.” He practically spat the last word. “Everyone else does. They try to disguise it as polite concern, but it is just morbid fascination. They want the blood and the gore so they can feel a thrill over their teacups.”

Lydia pulled her dark blue velvet cloak — the very one she had won, its rabbit-fur lining warm against the chill — tighter around her shoulders.

“I don’t need to ask, your grace. The results are evident. The details of how you acquired your pain are irrelevant to the fact that you possess it.”

Alistair stopped. He turned to face her right there on the gravel path. The morning sun caught the silver at his temples, highlighting the harsh aristocratic lines of his face.

“You are a remarkably pragmatic creature, Lydia.”

It was the first time he had used her given name. It sounded different coming from him — grounded. Solid.

“Pragmatism keeps the roof over my family’s head,” she replied, refusing to back down from his stare. “Sentimentality does not pay the baker.”

“And what about you?” He stepped a fraction closer. The scent of sandalwood and cold air wrapped around her. “What pays for you? Who looks after the woman who spends her life managing the wreckage of her family?”

Lydia’s breath caught.

It was a simple question. It hit her with the force of a physical blow. No one had ever asked her that. She was the sturdy beam holding up the crumbling house. People only cared that the beam held — not how much weight it bore.

She looked down at the gravel.

“I look after myself. I always have.”

Alistair reached out slowly. Deliberately. He raised his gloved hand.

He did not touch her skin. He merely brushed his knuckles against the soft velvet collar of her cloak, right near her jawline. It was a feather-light touch — and it sent a shockwave straight down her spine.

“It is a heavy burden, Lydia,” he said, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper. “The world alone.”

“I manage.”

“I know you do.” He dropped his hand back to the cane. “That is precisely why they fear you. Your sisters. Society. They fear a woman who does not need their approval to survive.”

“They fear you, too,” Lydia pointed out, her voice slightly unsteady.

Alistair let out a short, hollow laugh. He began to walk again, and she fell into step beside him.

“They fear me because I remind them their manicured world is fragile.” He looked out over the Serpentine, its surface like shattered glass in the morning light. “They look at me and they see mud and blood and chaos. They call me a beast because it is easier to label me a monster than to admit I am just a man who went to their war and brought the ugly truth back with him.”

Lydia looked at his profile — the harsh jaw, the rigid posture, the quiet, devastating intelligence in his eyes.

“You are not a beast, Alistair.”

He didn’t stop walking. He didn’t turn his head. But she saw his grip on the cane shift, and she heard the slight, ragged catch in his breathing.

They walked the rest of the path in silence.

It was not the silence of a truce, or the silence of strangers. It was the silence of two people who had finally found someone who spoke their exact cynical, desperate language.

The Radcliffe Soirée was a suffocating affair.

The ballroom was smaller than Ashdown House, the guest list more exclusive, and the heat generated by hundreds of wax candles oppressive. Lydia stood near the refreshment tables with her back pressed against the cool plaster of the wall.

She could feel the stares. They were heavier tonight. More brazen.

The ton had spent forty-eight hours digesting the impossible reality of the Duke of Roth showing favor to a spinster, and they had come up with their own vicious explanations.

As she sipped a lukewarm glass of lemonade, she overheard two matrons gossiping behind a painted silk screen, entirely unbothered by who might hear.

The blackmail theory: Miss Penhallow, desperate and cunning, had somehow acquired a terrible secret regarding the Duke’s time in Brussels and was holding his reputation hostage.

The charity theory: the Duke’s physicians had prescribed him a steady dose of tedious, unchallenging company to calm his violent nerves, and a penniless spinster was the cheapest medicine available.

The madness theory: the pain in the Duke’s leg had finally rotted his brain entirely, and he simply lacked the capacity to distinguish between a proper lady and a desperate wallflower.

Lydia closed her eyes and let the cruel words wash over her.

It did not hurt her pride. She had stripped herself of that useless luxury years ago. But it angered her. It angered her that they reduced Alistair’s brief moments of peace to madness or manipulation.

“Miss Penhallow.”

She opened her eyes.

Lord Windham stood before her — a viscount with a face like a ferret and a reputation for crushing gambling debts. He was smiling, but it was a thin, cruel expression that did not reach his eyes.

“Lord Windham.”

“I must say, you are the absolute talk of the room.” He drawled it, stepping uncomfortably close. He smelled of stale brandy and heavy cologne. “We are all entirely fascinated by your sudden elevation in society.”

He leaned in.

“Tell me — what is your secret? How does one tame the mad duke? Do you feed him raw meat, or simply bore him into submission?”

Lydia’s grip tightened on her glass.

“I find, Lord Windham, that treating a man with basic human dignity is often enough. Though I understand how that concept might be entirely foreign to you.”

Windham’s smile vanished.