Her Family Cast Her Out for Being Barren — A Widowed Duke with Five Heirs Chose Her.

Chapter 2

The landlady’s voice carried up the stairwell, sharp with something between disbelief and awe. “Mrs. Grey? There is a footman here. Says he has come from Ashworth House.”

Eleanora’s hands went still over the glove she was mending. Ashworth House. Even in her fallen state, she knew that name. The Duke of Ashworth. A widower twice over. Five children. A man who had not been seen at a single social function in nearly two years, who had become as much a ghost as the wives he had buried.

She opened the door to find a liveried footman standing on the narrow landing, his expression carefully blank. He held a sealed letter in a gloved hand and extended it without a word. “His Grace requests the pleasure of your company. Tomorrow, at three o’clock. He has sent his carriage.”

“There must be some mistake.”

“There is no mistake, Mrs. Grey.”

She took the letter with fingers that refused to stay steady. The script inside was plain, almost terse, as if the writer had no patience for flourishes. Mrs. Grey — I have a proposal that will interest you. Come and hear it before you refuse it. — Ashworth

She did not sleep that night. Not from hope — she had buried hope weeks ago, in a shallow grave behind the glove-maker’s shop. But from the sheer strangeness of it. Why would a duke send for her? Unless he wanted to see the scandal up close, like a curiosity preserved in amber. Unless this was cruelty dressed as charity.

She went anyway. She had nothing left to protect.