My fiancé didn’t break my heart. He appraised it, weighed it, and sold it to England’s most feared recluse—the so-called “Rotting Duke”—to settle his gambling debts, certain I would wither away inside that crumbling estate. But instead, I became a Duchess… and when the locked West Wing finally opened, it revealed the heartbreaking reason the Duke had chosen me long before I ever knew his name.

 PART 3

What was in the west wing was a memory that nobody in that house was permitted to say out loud.

I learned that on my second morning, standing in the kitchen doorway with my arms folded, while Mrs. Gable looked at the far wall as though the answer might be written on it.

“It was a lamp,” she said. “His Grace’s mother was reading. She fell asleep. It was a lamp and a draught and thirty years of old timber, and that is all there is to say about it.”

“You were here.”

“I was in the village. My sister was ill.” Her mouth closed like a purse. “The butler woke the household. His Grace carried his mother as far as the gallery. The gallery came down.”

“And his father?”

“His father went back for the ledgers.” She said it flatly, as if reciting a fact that had long ago stopped being a wound and become a wall. “The ledgers, Your Grace. As if the fire cared what a man was worth.”

I stood with that for a moment.

“And the Duke?”

“Was pulled out of the west corridor by two footmen who are no longer with us. The left side of him was burned almost to the bone. The doctors said he would not last the week, and then they said he would not last the month, and then they stopped saying anything, because he kept waking up.” She picked up a kettle that did not need picking up. “He has not lit a fire in his own rooms in five years. He does not like the smell of it. He will not say so. He simply will not.”

I looked at the cold range, at the damp sheets of dust on the dresser, at the grey light seeping through the window like a stain.

“Thank you, Mrs. Gable,” I said. “Now light the stove.”

Morning in Harwood Hall did not break. It seeped through the dirty windows like a grey stain.

I woke shivering. The fireplace in my chamber was empty, thick with old ash, and the bedsheets felt damp. I lay there for a long moment, listening to the relentless howling of the Yorkshire wind, staring at the cracked plaster overhead.

I could pull the covers over my head. I could weep. I could write a pathetic letter to Henry, begging him to find a way to buy me back — though I already knew, coldly, precisely, that there was nothing left to buy. I was a married woman now. The law had made certain of that in a chapel off Fetter Lane before I had even left London.

Instead I threw off the heavy quilt, planted my bare feet on the icy floorboards, and decided to go to war.

If this was my kingdom, I was not going to rule over dirt.

I dressed in my simplest, darkest gown — heavy wool, meant for travelling — and pinned my hair back tightly. I found the kitchens by following the smell of stale bread and boiling water. Mrs. Gable was hunched over a battered wooden table, nursing a cup of tea. A young girl, no older than fourteen, was scrubbing a pot with half-hearted lethargy.

“Good morning,” I said loudly.

Mrs. Gable nearly dropped her cup. The girl spun around, eyes wide.

“Your Grace.” Mrs. Gable stood, smoothing her black skirts. “I was just about to bring up a tray—”

“Don’t bother. I prefer to take my meals hot.”

I walked to the massive cast-iron stove. It was barely lit.

“Why is the house freezing, Mrs. Gable? There is an entire forest surrounding this estate. We hardly lack for firewood.”

“The Duke—” She hesitated, glancing nervously at the ceiling. “His Grace does not like fires. Not since the accident.”

I stopped.

The fire that had scarred him, killed his parents, ruined his home. Trauma was a heavy chain. But freezing to death out of sympathy was not on my agenda.

“The Duke will not have fires in his private rooms, then,” I said, keeping my voice perfectly level. “But the rest of the house will be heated. Have the footmen chop wood immediately.”

I pointed at the girl. “What is your name?”

“Martha. Please, Your Grace—”

“Martha, fetch me a bucket of hot water, soap, and rags. Then find every available servant in this house and tell them to assemble in the main hall in twenty minutes.”

Mrs. Gable bristled. “Your Grace. I manage the household.”

“You have managed its decay, Mrs. Gable.”

I turned my gaze on her. I did not raise my voice. I simply let the authority of a woman raised by a ruthless London matriarch bleed into every syllable.

“Look at this kitchen. Look at the dust in the corridors. I am the Duchess of Harwood now. We are going to clean this house, or I will dismiss you all and hire from the village. Am I understood?”

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Offered a stiff nod.

“Yes, Your Grace.”

By noon I had a headache, a smudge of soot across my cheek, and a small army of five terrified, bewildered servants scrubbing the great hall. I had tied an apron over my dress and was personally cataloguing the tarnished silver in the dining room when I heard the heavy, irregular tread of boots behind me.

“What in God’s name are you doing?”

I turned. Nathaniel stood in the doorway. In the harsh daylight his scars were even more pronounced — a stark map of survival. He wore muddy boots and a thick wool sweater that smelled of horses and rain. He looked massive. He looked furious.

“I am taking inventory,” I said, holding up a heavily tarnished candelabra. “Or trying to. This hasn’t seen polish since the King’s coronation, I imagine.”

“I did not ask you to come here and play maid,” he growled, stepping into the room.

“I am not playing maid. I am playing duchess. There is a distinct difference.”

I set the candelabra down and picked up a ragged ledger I had found in a drawer.

“I have spent the morning reviewing the household accounts, Nathaniel. You are bleeding money, and you have nothing to show for it but a cold house and idle staff.”

He flinched at the use of his Christian name. I ignored it. If we were to be partners in this miserable arrangement, we would be equals.

He crossed the room in three long strides and snatched the ledger from my hands.

“These are not your concern.”

“I live here. Therefore it is my concern.”

I did not back down. I stepped closer. He was a foot taller than me, broad and intimidating, and I tilted my chin up and met his good eye.

“You brought me here to save your estate. How do you expect me to do that if I am barred from actually running it?”

“You are here to provide an heir,” he snapped, his voice dropping low. “Nothing more.”

“Really?”

I laughed. A short, bitter sound.

“And where shall we raise this heir? In a damp corridor? Will we swaddle the child in dust sheets? You cannot hide in the dark forever and expect the world to simply accommodate you.”

“You know nothing about it.” He turned his scarred profile toward me as if to weaponise it. “Look at me, Cecilia. Look at the rotting duke. The servants are terrified of me. The village thinks I am cursed. What makes you think you can fix this?”

“I am not trying to fix you!” I yelled back, the frustration finally boiling over. “I don’t care if you are scarred. I don’t care if the village thinks you’re a monster. I care that my toes are freezing, that the food is stale, and that I married a man who hid his own face from me at the altar and would rather wallow in his own misery than light a damned fire!”

The silence that slammed into the room was absolute.

I breathed heavily. I had crossed a line. Women did not yell at dukes. Wives did not yell at husbands.

Nathaniel stared at me. His chest heaved once. He looked down at the ledger in his hands, then at the smudge of soot on my cheek, then at the tarnished candelabra on the table.

Slowly, the anger drained out of his posture. The rigid set of his shoulders slumped a fraction. He rubbed a hand over his tired face, careful to avoid the scarred tissue on the left.

“The roof on the west wing is failing,” he said quietly. “It leaks into the grain stores below. That is where the money goes. We have to keep replacing the rot.”

I blinked, thrown by the shift. He wasn’t yelling. He was explaining.

“And the tenant farms?”

“Struggling. The soil is poor this year. I haven’t collected full rents in two seasons.” He tossed the ledger onto the table. It landed with a dull thud. “Pendleton’s debt wiped out my cash reserves. I bought your marriage contract, Cecilia, but I bankrupted the estate’s immediate future to do it — to secure the inheritance.”

The bitter truth hung between us. We were both trapped. He was shackled to this decaying stone, and I was shackled to him.

I picked up a cloth and began wiping down the silver tray beneath the candelabra.

“Then we have work to do.”

He watched me for a long moment.

“You are a terrifyingly practical woman, Cecilia.”

“Survival requires practicality, Nathaniel. Not poetry.”

He did not argue. He walked to the hearth — entirely empty of wood — and stared at the blackened bricks.

“Tell Mrs. Gable,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, “that she may light the fires in the main rooms.”

A pause.

“Just not in the library. Not yet.”

It was a concession. A small, fragile truce handed across enemy lines.

“I will tell her,” I said.

He nodded once, not looking at me, and walked out.

I looked back down at the tarnished silver, my reflection warped in the dark metal. I picked up the rag and polished harder — until the dirt began to clear, and a small bright patch of silver shone through the rot.