Three sisters were sent to Aldridge Hall to win a duke’s fortune — one was prepared to charm him, one was the backup, and Nora only wanted to disappear. She hid behind a curtain to avoid being noticed, but the Duke found her first — and from that moment, he never looked at her sisters again.

PART 1

Somerset mud had a peculiar way of clinging to everything it touched. It caked the wheels of the rented carriage, splattered against the mahogany doors, and seeped through the floorboards until the chill settled into bone.

Inside, the air was the opposite — stifling, thick with cheap lavender water and nervous sweat. Lady Edith Montgomery sat rigid on the velvet cushions, knuckles white around the ivory handle of her fan. Three years a widow, she had held the frayed edges of her family’s respectability together through sheer force of habit. Her husband had left behind a mortgaged Yorkshire estate and a ledger of gambling debts that kept her awake until dawn.

“Pinch your cheeks, Rosalind.” Edith’s eyes cut to her eldest daughter. “You look like a corpse. Dukes do not marry corpses.”

Rosalind — twenty-one, terrifyingly beautiful — obeyed without a word, digging manicured nails into pale skin until it bloomed harsh and pink. She was the weapon. The family’s last, best chance. She understood her assignment: smile, play the pianoforte with acceptable mediocrity, secure a proposal from Nathaniel Reed, Duke of Aldridge.

Beside her, nineteen-year-old Celia recited French verbs in a frantic whisper — the second line of defense, should Rosalind fail to catch his eye.

And then there was Nora.

She sat facing backward, shoulder pressed to the cold glass. Twenty years old, neither the beauty nor the charming backup. The third sister. The afterthought. Her dress — a hand-me-down from Rosalind, hastily altered by a half-blind seamstress — pinched at the armpits.

“Stop slouching, Nora.” Edith didn’t even look at her. “You’re bending the bone in your stays.”

“More than my comfort, evidently,” Nora muttered, shifting her weight. The whalebone dug a fresh groove into her ribs.

Edith leaned forward as the iron gates of Aldridge Hall loomed through the mist. “Listen to me. This house party is our final hour. Lord Croft’s solicitors will seize the Yorkshire house by Christmas. We have two weeks to convince the Duke that a Montgomery girl is the answer to his bachelorhood.” Her gaze swept over her youngest with faint, exhausted irritation. “Nora — just try not to frighten anyone. Read a book in the corner. Stay out of Rosalind’s light.”

“Gladly.” She meant it. The idea of parading herself before a stranger to beg for her family’s survival made her stomach turn. A cattle auction. Only the cattle wore silk and pretended to be having a marvelous time.

The estate rose from the earth like a stone fortress. Footmen descended limestone steps. Nora’s thin slippers sank into gravel; she shivered, watching a dozen other carriages unload girls wrapped in furs, all wearing the same predatory glint. The competition.

She looked at the oak doors and calculated how long she could hide in the library before someone came looking. She doubted anyone would bother.

The drawing room was a masterpiece of intimidation — gold leaf, crystal chandeliers, portraits of dead men who looked thoroughly disappointed in the living. Sixty people. Thirty eligible women. Thirty eagle-eyed mothers. And in the center, the prize.

Nathaniel Reed did not look like a man enjoying his wealth. He looked like a man enduring a slow tooth extraction. Thirty years old, tall, broad-shouldered, his jaw shadowed with stubble, his nose faintly crooked as though someone had once punched him. Nora silently commended whoever had done it. He wore his coat like a uniform he couldn’t wait to remove, nodding mechanically as a viscount’s daughter chattered at him.

“Look at him,” Edith breathed, fingers biting into Rosalind’s arm. “Ten thousand acres in Somerset alone. Go drop your fan. Do something.”

Rosalind drifted across the room like a hunting falcon — timed, graceful, arriving just as the viscount’s daughter paused for breath. Nora watched her sister curtsy, exposing exactly the right amount of pale neck. The Duke’s expression didn’t change. A polite, abbreviated bow. Something brief. Rosalind’s laugh rang out, musical and utterly soulless.

Nora felt a crushing weight settle on her chest.

The room was saturated with rose water and burning wax. The fire roared too hot. Sixty women’s chatter drilled into her temples. Her corset — already too tight — felt as though it were shrinking by the second. She took a shallow breath and met the immovable wall of whalebone.

I am going to faint. I am going to pass out in a duke’s drawing room, and Mother will actually murder me.

She backed toward the wall, eyes lowered, past the dowagers judging livestock from velvet sofas, until she reached the floor-to-ceiling windows framed in heavy burgundy curtains. A sliver of draft slid through the glass — cold, glorious night air.

Without thinking, without caring about propriety, Nora slipped sideways behind the thick fold of velvet and let it fall shut behind her.

The noise died to a muffled hum. The heat receded. She was alone in a small dark sanctuary between glass and fabric. She pressed her forehead to the freezing pane, hands going to her ribs, searching for an inch of slack. There was none.

She looked down. Her left shoe was rubbing her heel raw.

“To hell with it,” she whispered, and kicked it off. Her toes flexed against the cold floorboards — relief, sharp and immediate. She leaned against the frame, fully prepared to stand on one foot in the dark for the next three hours.

Then the curtain rustled.

A hand gripped the velvet and pulled it back. Light sliced into the alcove. Nora froze, breath catching, bracing for her mother’s fury or a footman come to shoo her out.

Instead, a man stepped into the narrow space and let the curtain fall shut behind him, plunging them both back into shadow. He hadn’t seen her yet. He leaned against the wall, tipped his head to the ceiling, and let out a long, rough exhale that sounded remarkably like a curse.

Nora stood perfectly still, balanced on one bare foot.

It was him.