She snatched her hand back immediately, color rising in her cheeks, but not before he saw her eyes widen with the same shock of awareness that had coursed through him. The air between them suddenly felt charged with electricity, dangerous as the storm clouds gathering outside.
“Forgive me,” she murmured, tucking her hands back into her lap with careful precision.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” he said, though his voice sounded rougher than usual. “The roads are treacherous this time of year.”
But they both knew the treachery had nothing to do with the condition of the Yorkshire highways.
Edmund forced his attention back to the landscape outside, watching familiar landmarks appear and disappear as they drew closer to home. The village of Lesser Rothwell came into view first—a cluster of stone cottages with smoke rising from their chimneys, Christmas greenery adorning their doors and windows. A few faces appeared at cottage windows as the ducal carriage passed, curious about the new Duchess being brought home to the Abbey.
Home. When had he stopped thinking of Rothwell Abbey as merely his residence and begun considering it home? Perhaps when he had imagined Isadora walking its halls, bringing life to rooms that had stood empty for too long. Perhaps when he had pictured her in the drawing room where his mother had once held court, or in the gardens where spring would soon coax new growth from winter’s barren soil.
The thought was dangerously domestic, too close to the sort of hopes he had sworn never to entertain again.
“Tell me about the surrounding area,” Isadora said, breaking through his unwelcome reverie. “Are there neighbors? Other families of consequence?”
“A few. The Fairfaxes have an estate ten miles south, though they spend most of their time in London. Lord Pemberton maintains a hunting box to the east, but he rarely visits outside of shooting season.” He paused, considering. “You’ll find Yorkshire societyrather different from what you’re accustomed to. Less formal, perhaps, but also more insular. Families that have known each other for centuries, with all the complications that entails.”
“Complications?”
“Old grudges. Ancient alliances. The sort of long memories that make every social gathering a careful navigation of historical grievances.” He glanced at her. “The Ravensleighs have not always been popular neighbors.”
She raised an eyebrow at this admission. “Oh?”
“We have a tendency toward... directness that some find off-putting. My father was known for speaking his mind regardless of social convention. My grandfather once called out a marquess for cheating at cards in front of half the county.” He shrugged. “It’s made for interesting dinner parties over the years.”
“I see. And I suppose I’m to continue this family tradition of diplomatic catastrophe?”
There was amusement in her voice, and Edmund found himself warming to the conversation despite his better judgment. “I have a feeling you’ll manage that quite naturally.”
“How flattering.” But she was smiling as she said it, and the expression transformed her features in ways that made his chest tighten with something he refused to name.
The first glimpse of Rothwell Abbey appeared through the bare trees like something from a medieval tapestry. Ancient stone walls rose from the snow-covered landscape, towers and battlements silhouetted against the darkening sky. It was magnificent and forbidding in equal measure, exactly as he had described it—a fortress built to withstand siege, adapted over the centuries for human habitation but never quite losing its martial character.
He watched Isadora’s face as she took in her first view of what would now be her home, looking for signs of dismay or regret. Instead, he saw something that looked remarkably like satisfaction.
“It’s beautiful,” she said quietly, and to his surprise, she seemed to mean it.
“Beautiful. That’s not typically the first word visitors choose.”
“Perhaps they lack imagination.” She leaned closer to the window, studying the approaching walls with the attention of someone genuinely interested rather than merely polite. “It looks like a place where important things happen. Where history lives.”
Her words struck something deep in his chest, a pride in his heritage that he had thought buried beneath years of scandal and isolation. When had anyone last looked at Rothwell Abbey and seen its grandeur rather than its reputation as the Dangerous Duke’s lair?
The carriage rolled through the main gates, past the lodge keeper who touched his cap respectfully, and up the long drive that curved between ancient oaks toward the main entrance. In the fading light, the Abbey’s windows glowed with warm yellow lamplight, and Edmund could see figures moving in the great hall—servants preparing for their arrival, perhaps Lillian herself waiting to meet her new guardian.
“Are you nervous?” he asked suddenly, the question surprising them both.
Isadora considered this with the same careful attention she seemed to give everything. “Yes,” she said finally. “But not for the reasons you might expect.”
“What reasons?”
She met his eyes directly, and in the lamplight from the approaching Abbey, he could see something that looked like hope flickering in their hazel depths.
“I’m nervous that I might disappoint you,” she said quietly. “That I might not be what Lillian needs, or what this place requires. But I’m not nervous about the life itself. For the first time in years, I feel as though I’m moving toward something rather than simply away from something else.”
The honesty in her words hit him like a physical blow. When had anyone last cared whether they disappointed him? When had anyone looked at the prospect of life at Rothwell Abbey as an opportunity rather than an exile?
Before he could form a response, the carriage drew to a halt before the main entrance. Through the windows, he could see Mrs. Pemberton and the other senior servants assembled in the great hall, waiting to be presented to their new mistress. Somewhere beyond them, Lillian was waiting as well—the girl whose need had brought them together, whose future now depended on whatever strange partnership they could forge from duty and circumstance.
