They Married Her Off to the ‘Ruined’ Duke as Punishment – She Found a Man No One Bothered To Know

Chapter 2

The east wing of Thornvale Keep was cold, and it was beautiful, and it smelled of beeswax polish applied by hands that had long since given up hoping anyone would notice the care taken.

Margaret noticed.

She noticed the careful mending of the curtains, the silver polished to a gleam though no guests ever came, the kitchen garden tended with a devotion that far exceeded the needs of a household of two reclusive souls. She noticed the way the servants moved through the house — quietly, efficiently, with the particular watchfulness of people who had been starved of purpose for a very long time.

On her third day at Thornvale, she found the under-gardener in the kitchen garden, a young man named Thomas who could not have been more than nineteen, and she thanked him for the roses he had cut for her room. The boy stared at her as though she had spoken in a language he did not understand.