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 6

Spring did not arrive in Yorkshire. It invaded.

The snow melted into a ferocious deluge of mud, but beneath the grey slush the earth was violently green. The tenant roofs held against the rain. The drainage ditches ran clear.

And inside my body, a quiet, steady fluttering confirmed that the future of Harwood Hall was secured.

I was reviewing the ledger for the spring seed purchase when Mrs. Gable appeared in the doorway of the estate office. Her normally rigid posture was agitated.

“Your Grace.” She wrung her hands in her black apron. “A carriage has arrived in the courtyard. From London.”

I frowned, setting my pen down. We expected no one. Finch was not due until autumn.

“Who is it, Mrs. Gable?”

“He says his name is Mr. Henry Pendleton. Your Grace, he is demanding to see you.”

The name hit the room like a foul odour. Henry. The man who had traded me for a clean ledger.

“Where is His Grace?”

“At the stables, ma’am. With the new foals.”

“Leave him there. Do not disturb him.”

I stood, smoothing the skirt of my dark green day dress. A cold, hard knot of fury tightened in my chest.

“Put Mr. Pendleton in the main drawing room. Do not offer him tea.”

I took my time walking through the corridors. I let my heels click sharply against the newly polished floors. The house smelled of lavender and wood smoke now — a testament to the life we had clawed back from the rot.

I pushed open the double doors.

Henry stood by the window, looking exactly as he had eight months ago. Perfectly tailored blue coat. Immaculate cravat. Hair styled to look effortlessly windswept. But his eyes were nervous, darting around the room — taking in the restored tapestries, the gleaming silver, the roaring fire.

He turned as I entered, a practised smile stretching across his weak face.

“Cecilia. My God, look at you.”

I did not cross the room. I stood by the door, my hands folded calmly over my stomach.

“Mr. Pendleton. You have strayed quite far from your club in St. James. What do you want?”

His smile faltered. He had clearly expected a different reception — tears, perhaps, or at least a lingering bitterness he could manipulate.

“I came to check on you, of course. The rumours in London are dreadful. They say Harwood has lost his mind entirely, that he’s locking you in a dungeon while he squanders the last of his fortune on mud and sheep.”

“The rumours in London are clearly generated by men with too much time and too little consequence.”

Henry took a step forward, lowering his voice into a tone of conspiratorial intimacy.

“Cecilia, I know I handled things poorly. But I am back on my feet. A fantastic investment in the Indies. I have the funds now to settle Harwood’s claim entirely and arrange for your separation. I could have you back in London within the fortnight.”

I stared at him.

“Henry. I am a married woman. A settlement is not a purchase, and a duchess is not returned like an unwanted bolt of cloth. There is no arrangement in English law that unmakes a marriage because you have suddenly found your pockets full again.”

It was almost comical. He truly believed he was the hero of this story — riding north to rescue the damsel he had gleefully thrown to the wolves. He wanted the estate’s recovering wealth. Or perhaps his ego simply could not survive the idea that I had not withered away without him.

“You don’t have to pretend with me, Cecilia,” Henry pressed on, undeterred, stepping closer. “I know what he is. He’s a freak. A recluse. You’re rotting away in this tomb just to spite me.”

“You are speaking of my husband.”

The voice did not come from me. It came from the doorway behind Henry.

Henry spun around. The blood drained instantly from his face.

Nathaniel stood on the threshold. He had not bothered to change out of his working clothes — heavy boots, canvas trousers, a thick woollen sweater. He was covered in horsehair and smelled faintly of hay. He had never looked larger, or more dangerous.

He walked into the room with a predatory slowness. He did not favour his scarred side. He did not look at the floor. He locked his sharp dark eye onto Henry, his presence filling the room, suffocating the London dandy with sheer physical dominance.

“Harwood.” Henry choked out a frantic step backward and nearly tripped over a Persian rug. “I was merely checking on Cecilia’s welfare. Old friends, you know.”

Nathaniel ignored him entirely. He walked past Henry as though the man were a mildly irritating piece of furniture and came to stand beside me. He reached out casually and rested his large, calloused hand on the small of my back. The heat of his touch radiated through my silk dress.

“Is this man bothering you, my dear?” Nathaniel asked me. His voice was a low, terrifying rumble that vibrated in the quiet room.

I looked up at my husband. I saw the strength we had built together. I saw the man who pulled boulders from ditches and kissed me in the dark with desperate reverence.

Then I looked back at the trembling, pathetic creature I had once planned to marry.

“No, Nathaniel.” I smiled — a sharp, genuine thing. “Mr. Pendleton was just leaving. He finds the Yorkshire air a bit too harsh for his constitution.”

Henry opened his mouth. Closed it. He looked at Nathaniel’s massive frame, at the ruined, unforgiving face, at the protective, possessive way he stood beside me.

“Right,” Henry squeaked, grabbing his hat from a side table. “Yes. I have a long journey ahead. Good day, Your Grace. Cecilia.”

He practically ran from the room. We stood in silence, listening to his frantic footsteps echo down the hall, followed by the heavy slam of the front door.

Nathaniel looked down at me. The intimidating aura vanished instantly, replaced by a soft, weary amusement.

“Settle my claim and arrange your separation?”

“He seems to believe marriage is a lease he can buy out early,” I said lightly, leaning my weight against him.

Nathaniel’s arm wrapped securely around my waist, pulling me flush against his side. He rested his chin on the top of my head.

“And why didn’t you go? You could have returned to the ballrooms of Mayfair.”

I reached up and traced the rough line of his jaw, where the scar tissue met smooth skin.

“Because ballrooms are terribly boring, Nathaniel. And I have an estate to run.”

Summer baked the Yorkshire moors into a hard, cracked tapestry of dried heather and pale grass. Inside Harwood Hall the relentless heat felt like a victory.

The damp rot that had plagued the grain stores under the west wing was banished — the worst of the leaks there had finally been sealed that spring, though the rest of the wing, the long corridor and the gallery beyond it, still stood shuttered and untouched, waiting for a courage neither of us had yet found. We were sitting in the estate office, going over the profitable wool yields, when the sound of an unfamiliar carriage shattered the afternoon quiet.

I set my pen down and pressed a hand to my swollen abdomen. At six months the child was an undeniable physical fact, turning my previously brisk walk into a deliberate waddle.

Nathaniel stood instantly, his chair scraping loudly against the floorboards. His gaze snapped toward the window.

“Finch was not due for another month,” he said, his voice tightening.

“Then it is not Finch.”

I pushed myself up from the desk.

We walked to the grand entrance together.