Six matches he rejected. Then his ruthless grandmother dragged a muddy, penniless stranger in from the rain — a woman hired to challenge him. Arthur Penhaligan swore he would die alone. But Claraara Ashford told him the truth, and the Earl of Mal found himself begging for three more days.

PART 2

Mud covered the hem of Claraara Ashford’s skirts. A thick, heavy crust of brown that dragged against her ankles with every step, leaving a trail of filth on the pristine marble floor of the grand foyer at Oak Haven.

She was twenty-six years old. She possessed no dowry, no title, and no remaining illusions about the world.

For the past six years she had served as an unpaid companion to her ailing, deeply bitter aunt in Somerset. The aunt — a woman with a minor barony and a major cruel streak — had finally died, leaving her vast fortune to a cat and a distant nephew. Claraara had been given three days to vacate the premises.

The letter from Matilda Penhaligan arrived on the second day. No flowery promises. Just coach fare, a meager stipend, and an order to appear at Oak Haven.

She had not asked questions. When a woman is teetering on the edge of destitution, she does not question the hands that reach out to her — even if they possess sharp claws.

Now she stood in the foyer of a house worth more than her entire lifetime of wages, dripping rainwater onto the marble, three days of travel grinding in the base of her skull.

“The dowager is currently resting, Miss Ashford,” the butler said, his gaze fixed somewhere safely above her head, deliberately ignoring the puddle forming around her ruined boots. “She instructed me to place you in the blue guest chamber. Dinner is at eight.”

“Thank you.”

Her voice was raspy, scraped raw by three days in drafty public carriages. She did not wait for a footman to take her battered leather satchel. She hoisted it herself, her knuckles white with cold.

She did not notice the man standing on the landing above until he spoke.

“You’re ruining the floor.”

Claraara stopped. She tilted her head back, wincing as the dull ache throbbed at the base of her skull.

He was tall, dark-haired, with features too harsh to be considered classically handsome. But it was his eyes that caught her. Gray. Flat. Intensely critical. He looked down at her the way a man inspects a horse he has no intention of buying.

“I’m aware of the floor,” Claraara said, her voice steady despite the shiver racking her spine. She did not drop her gaze. She did not curtsy. “Unfortunately, I do not possess the ability to levitate. If you have a cloth, I will wipe it up myself.”

His eyebrows twitched — a minuscule movement.

He descended the stairs slowly, his boots silent on the carpeted runner. He stopped three steps from the bottom, bringing them roughly to eye level. He studied her face.

Claraara knew exactly what he saw. She had looked in a mirror at the coaching inn that morning. Pale skin stretched tight over sharp cheekbones. Dark circles under hazel eyes. Damp, mousy brown hair plastered to her cheeks. She was not a diamond of the first water. She was a stone pulled from a riverbed, entirely unremarkable.

“You are Claraara Ashford,” he stated.

“I am. And you are standing in my way.”

The butler made a small, strangled sound of horror. “Miss Ashford — this is the Earl of Mal. You will address him as—”

“Leave us, Hastings,” the man interrupted, his gaze never leaving her face.

The butler hesitated, bowed stiffly, and vanished into the shadows of the corridor.

The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the ticking of a grandfather clock and the steady drip of water from Claraara’s cloak.

She had three pounds and twelve shillings in her pocket. No maid. No kin. No roof in England that would answer for her if this door closed.

And somewhere upstairs, the sharpest woman in England was watching the Earl of Mal meet the trap she had set for him.

Though Claraara Ashford, standing in a puddle of her own making, could not yet know that the trap was not meant for Arthur at all.