Her father’s £8,000 gambling debt should have ended in ruin — she offered the Duke her family’s last acres. He refused every shilling of it. What he demanded instead wasn’t her land, or her virtue. It was her signature.

PART 1

The mud of London had a specific quality in November. Thick, greasy, smelling of coal smoke and rotting cabbage. Eleanor Hastings — Lana to the handful of people who still bothered to know her — stared down at the hem of her dark blue pelisse, watching the dampness creep upward, ruining the wool.

She stood in the foyer of Ashborne House. Checkered marble floors, clean enough to eat off of, though she hadn’t eaten a proper meal in two days. A grandfather clock ticked heavily in the corner — a gavel striking wood, over and over.

Her father, Arthur Hastings, was three miles away, locked in his bedroom, weeping into a pillow, clutching an empty bottle of gin. He had lost eight thousand pounds at White’s three nights ago. The man holding the promissory notes was Gideon Croft, Duke of Ashborne.

Lana was not here to beg for her father’s life. She was far too practical for that. She was here to offer a structured surrender.

“His grace will see you now.” The butler’s spine looked as though it had been replaced with an iron rod. He didn’t sneer at her. He didn’t have to. The polite blankness in his eyes was humiliation enough.

She followed him down a corridor that smelled of beeswax and expensive cigars. The study doors opened.

Gideon Croft was not lounging by a fire with a snifter of brandy. He sat behind a mahogany desk, surrounded by stacks of ledgers and bound agricultural reports. Thirty-two years old, and he looked forty. His dark hair was carelessly pushed back, ink staining the cuff of his white linen shirt. He didn’t look up.

“If this is about the drainage issue in Somerset, tell them I won’t authorize the funds until the surveyor submits a proper topographical map.”

“I know very little of Somerset drainage, your grace.”

His pen stopped scratching. He looked up. Pale eyes, the color of slate in the rain, swept over her — the frayed edges of her gloves, the outdated cut of her pelisse, the rigid, unyielding line of her posture.

“Miss Hastings.” He set the pen down. “I assume your father is either dead or in hiding.”

“Hiding. I am afraid he is a coward.”

“But you already knew that when you sat across from him at the card table,” Lana said, chin level.

A faint line appeared between his brows. “I didn’t invite him to my table. He invited himself, and he kept raising the stakes.”

“Because he is an addict.” Lana took a breath, her chest bound tight in iron bands. “I have come to apologize for his debts and to offer a settlement.”

Gideon leaned back, steepling his fingers. “A settlement. You owe me eight thousand, Miss Hastings. Your townhouse in Mayfair is leased. Your country estate in Sussex is mortgaged to the hilt, and your father sold your late mother’s jewels three years ago to pay off a previous marker.”

The fact that he knew exactly how destitute they were sent heat crawling up her cheeks. She swallowed the shame. Pride was a luxury she couldn’t afford.

“The Sussex estate is mortgaged, yes,” she said, stepping closer to the desk. “But the land is still fertile. There’s a timber copse untouched for a generation — worth perhaps two thousand. We have a small collection of first-edition folios in the library worth another five hundred. I’ve drawn up the papers to transfer the deed and the library to you. And I’m prepared to sign a promissory note for the remainder, paying fifty pounds a quarter from my earnings as a governess.”

Gideon stared at her. He didn’t blink. The silence stretched until it felt fragile enough to snap.

“Fifty pounds a quarter.” His tone was unreadable. “It would take you nearly thirty years to repay me.”

“Then you’ll have a steady income for thirty years.” Her voice was remarkably steady. “It’s better than throwing my father in debtor’s prison. You’ll get nothing if he’s in the Fleet. He cannot work. He’ll simply die, and you’ll be out eight thousand pounds.”

She reached into her reticule, damp fingers trembling as she drew out the folded documents she’d spent the entire night drafting, and set them on the edge of his desk.

Gideon looked at the papers. Then at her face — the dark smudges beneath her eyes, the stark pallor of her skin, the complete absence of tears. Aristocratic women usually cried when they were ruined. They fainted. They threatened the Thames. This woman had done the math.

“Sit down, Miss Hastings.”

“I would rather stand.”

“Sit down,” he repeated, softer, but with a weight that forced her knees to bend. She sank into the leather chair opposite him.

He picked up her documents. Read through her neat, desperate handwriting. Saw the cold logic of her sacrifice — a woman throwing her entire life into a furnace to keep a worthless man warm.

“No,” Gideon said, dropping the papers back onto the desk.

Lana’s breath hitched. Panic pierced her ribs, cold and sharp. “Your grace, I assure you, the timber alone—”

“The timber is irrelevant. The books are useless to me. I don’t want your fifty pounds a quarter, and I certainly don’t want to manage a crumbling estate in Sussex.” He leaned forward, forearms on the desk. “I reject your settlement.”

Lana closed her eyes. The room tilted. It was over. The Fleet, then.

“However,” Gideon continued, his voice dropping an octave, “I have a counter offer.”

Her eyes opened. He was watching her with an intensity that made her skin prickle.

“What counter offer?”

Gideon stood, walked to the window, and looked out at the dreary street, the rain washing soot from the cobblestones.

“I am thirty-two years old,” he began, back to her. “I oversee six estates, three coal mines, a textile mill in Manchester, and a voting block in the House of Lords that requires constant, exhausting maintenance. My days consist of numbers, disputes, and politicians who speak for hours without saying a single useful word.” He turned to face her. “I do not have the time, the patience, or the inclination to court a wife.”

Lana frowned. “I’m missing your point, your grace.”

“My point, Miss Hastings, is that my aunts and my political advisers are hounding me. A duke must have an heir. A duke must have a duchess to host dinners, manage the household staff, and smile politely at tedious people. For the past two seasons I’ve been paraded before debutantes who cannot hold a conversation about anything more complex than the weather, and who expect me to write them poetry.” A brief flash of genuine distaste crossed his face. “I despise poetry.”

Lana sat perfectly still. She was beginning to understand — and the realization hollowed out her stomach.

“You are four-and-twenty, are you not?”

“Five-and-twenty.”

“Even better. Past the age of romantic delusion.” He walked slowly back to his desk. “You did not weep. You did not beg. You calculated. You presented me with a ledger. I appreciate ledgers. They are honest.”

Gideon sat and looked her dead in the eye.

“I will forgive your father’s debt entirely. I will settle an annuity of five hundred pounds a year on him, on condition he leaves London and resides in Bath, never to set foot in a gaming hell again. In exchange—” the grandfather clock ticked, three times, four “—you will marry me.”