Chapter One

 

“You’ll be wanting to turn back, miss.”

The coachman’s warning came too late, approximately three hours and seventeen miles too late, by Seraphina Vance’s estimation. She peered through the rain-lashed window of the hired carriage and watched lightning split the sky above what could only be described as the architectural embodiment of a threat.

Ironwood Hall rose from the Devonshire moors like something that had crawled up from the earth and made it its permanent place of residence. Its towers, which were vastly more numerous than elegance demanded, clawed at the storm-darkened sky, and the few windows that weren’t shuttered, glowed with the sickly amber of dying candlelight. The iron gates stood open, which Seraphina found more unsettling than if they’d been locked. Open gates suggested the house had nothing to fear from visitors.

Or perhaps it was meant to inspire a sense of profound dread in all who approached.

“The Duke does not receive callers,” the coachman continued, hunching deeper into his oilskin coat. Rain hammered against the carriage roof like an accusation.

 “Hasn’t in five years. Not since…well.” He made a vague gesture that seemed to encompass fire, tragedy, and the general inadvisability of approaching men who’d earned the moniker such as The Beast of Ironwood.

 “Begging your pardon, miss, but whatever business you’ve got with His Grace, it can’t be worth that.”

Seraphina thought of her brother’s face when the debt collectors had come. She thought of the papers she carried in her valise, documents that bore her family’s name and the Duke of Montrose’s damning signature. She thought of the letter she’d received three weeks ago, written in a hand so sharp it had nearly cut through the paper: Send someone to settle the matter, or I shall come to collect what is owed myself.

“It is worth exactly that,” she said, surprised by the steadiness of her own voice.

 “You may wait here or return to the village. I shall manage either way.”

The coachman stared at her as though she’d announced an intention to waltz with the lightning. “You’re going in? Alone? At night?”

“The alternative is standing in a thunderstorm debating the wisdom of my choices.” Seraphina gathered her valise and adjusted her thoroughly inadequate bonnet. 

“I’ve been doing quite enough of that already, thank you.”

She alighted from the coach lest a moment’s hesitation her courage and determination should abandon her.

The rain lashed out at her like a personal insult. Within seconds, her traveling dress, her best traveling dress, the blue wool she’d been saving for occasions that warranted resembling a woman of means rather than a woman of desperate circumstances, was plastered to her frame. Her bonnet, a sensible straw affair that had survived three seasons of determined use, surrendered immediately to the assault. Water streamed down her face and into her collar, and her boots, which had been questionable even before the journey, began making sounds of profound distress.

A fine display, indeed, was her grim silent cry. To be sure, nothing could be more advantageous than presenting myself to His Grace bearing the lamentable likeness of a bedraggled kitten.

The gravel drive seemed to stretch for miles. Each step produced a wet crunch that sounded distinctly like regret. The carriage remained where it was, with all her personal effects still inside. The coachman was apparently unwilling to drive any closer to the house and by the time Seraphina reached the front steps, she couldn’t have said whether she was shivering from cold or terror. 

The door was massive, dark oak bound with iron, the kind of door designed to repel medieval invaders. There was no bell that she could see, only a brass knocker shaped like a snarling lion’s head. Its eyes seemed to follow her as she raised her hand.

Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself firmly. It’s a knocker. It doesn’t have opinions about you.

She knocked.

The sound echoed through what must have been a cavernous entrance hall, reverberating like a death knell. For a long moment, nothing happened. The rain continued its assault. Whilst thunder rolled across the moors with theatrical timing. Seraphina’s teeth began to chatter uncontrollably.

She was raising her hand to knock again when the door swung open.

The man who stood in the doorway was not the Duke of Montrose. He was ancient, quite possibly prehistoric, with a face which resembled crumpled parchment and eyes that had clearly witnessed the rise and fall of empires. A butler, Seraphina guessed, though his livery was faded and his posture suggested that standing upright was an act of considerable personal sacrifice.

He looked at her. He looked at the storm. He looked at her again.

“No,” he said, and began to close the door.

“Wait…please…” Seraphina wedged her boot into the gap, wincing as the heavy oak pressed against her toes. 

“I’ve come about a debt. My name is Seraphina Vance. My brother is William Vance, and I believe His Grace is expecting, well, perhaps not expecting, precisely, but he did write…there was a letter…”

She was rambling and was perfectly aware of it. It was difficult to form coherent sentences when one’s teeth were chattering and one’s boot was being slowly crushed by a door that seemed determined to make a point about unwelcome visitors.

The butler, studied her with the enthusiasm of a man examining something unpleasant on the bottom of his shoe. 

“His Grace,” he said slowly, as though explaining a complex concept to a particularly dim child, “does not receive visitors.”

“His Grace threatened to come collect the debt himself if we didn’t send someone. I believe his exact words were…” She fumbled in her valise, which was rapidly becoming a small pond, and produced the crumpled letter. 

“Send someone capable of rational discourse, or I shall be forced to demonstrate what happens to those who waste my time.”

A long silence. The butler’s eyebrows, impressive specimens that appeared to have their own weather patterns, rose incrementally toward his hairline.

“You,” he said flatly, “are the rational discourse.”

Seraphina attempted to look dignified. This was challenging, given that she was currently dripping onto the doorstep like a poorly wrung dishcloth.

 “I am Miss Seraphina Vance, sister to Mr. William Vance, and I have come to discuss terms for the settlement of my family’s obligation to His Grace the Duke of Montrose.” She paused. 

“Also, I believe I am catching a chill, and if I die of pneumonia on this doorstep, it will create considerably more paperwork than simply allowing me inside.”

The butler blinked. It was, Seraphina suspected, the most emotion he’d displayed in decades.

“Remain here,” he commanded, and closed the door with most unceremonious haste.

The entrance hall of Ironwood Hall was exactly as welcoming as the exterior had suggested, which was to say not at all.

Seraphina stood in a puddle of her own making and tried not to drip on anything that looked to be of great value. This proved difficult, as nearly everything looked expensive, or rather, everything looked as though it had once been expensive and had since been left to the tender mercies of time, dust, and what appeared to be a comprehensive lack of housekeeping staff.

The chandelier overhead, a massive crystal affair that must have been magnificent in its day, hung dark and cobwebbed. Portraits lined the walls, their subjects obscured by years of accumulated grime. The marble floor was cracked in places, and the grand staircase that swept upward into shadow had a banister that listed slightly to the left, as though even the architecture had given up.

Five years, she thought. He’s been living like this for five years.

It was strange, she had expected wealth, perhaps even ostentation. The Duke of Montrose was, by all accounts, obscenely rich. The debt her brother owed him was significant to the Vance family, but it should have been a pittance to a man of his standing. Yet the house bore all the hallmarks of neglect, of someone who had simply stopped caring about comfort or appearances or the slow decay of everything around him.

Rumour asserted that the fire had brought a transformation upon him; indeed, common report concerned itself with a great many such histories, that he’d been burned so badly he was scarcely human anymore, that he’d killed the servant responsible, that he wandered the halls at night howling like something from a Gothic novel. Seraphina had dismissed most of it as the kind of sensational nonsense that passed for entertainment in rural villages.

Standing in this mausoleum of a house, she was no longer entirely certain what to believe.

The butler who had introduced himself as Crane, which seemed almost too appropriate, had deposited her there, under the strictest injunctions not to stir until his return. He had offered neither refreshment nor a chair, and Seraphina suspected this was deliberate. Everything about Ironwood Hall seemed designed to make visitors uncomfortable enough to leave.

Well, it was a sad business indeed, she thought with a grim sort of determination. I’ve come too far to be intimidated by cobwebs and a grumpy butler.

“The library.”

Crane’s voice made her jump. He’d reappeared without a sound, which was unnerving in a man who looked as though his joints should creak with every step.

“I beg your pardon?”

“His Grace will see you in the library.” The butler’s tone suggested this was a personal inconvenience of the highest order. 

“Follow me. Do not touch anything. Do not speak unless spoken to. And do not…” He paused, fixing her with a look of profound warning. 

“Do not gape”

Do not gape. Seraphina filed this away as confirmation that the rumors about the Duke’s appearance held at least some truth. She lifted her chin, showing a most composed countenance and followed Crane down a corridor that seemed to grow darker with every step.

The library, when they reached it, was the first room that showed signs of actual habitation.

It was vast, easily the largest private library Seraphina had ever seen, with shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling and a rolling ladder that tracked along them on brass rails. A fire burned in the massive hearth, casting the only real light in the room and sending shadows dancing across the spines of thousands of books. The scent of leather and old paper and wood smoke hung in the air, and despite everything, Seraphina felt something loosen in her chest.

Books… whatever else the Duke of Montrose might be, he was a man who valued books. Surely that meant something.

“Miss Vance, Your Grace,” Crane announced to the apparently empty room, and then retreated so quickly Seraphina half-expected him to leave a dust cloud in his wake.

The door closed behind her with a soft, final click.

She was alone.

Or rather, she appeared to be alone. The firelight didn’t reach the corners of the room, and those shadows were deep enough to conceal any number of things. Seraphina’s heart began to beat faster, though she refused to let it show.

“Your Grace?” she called, hating the slight waver in her voice. “I am…that is, I’ve come to…”

“I know why you’ve come.”

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, low, rough, a dark rumble that seemed to vibrate through the floor and into her bones. Seraphina’s breath caught. She turned toward the sound and found herself facing the darkest corner of the room, where the firelight couldn’t reach and the shadows seemed almost solid.

Something moved in that darkness.

“Your brother owes me money.” The voice was closer now, and Seraphina realised with a start that he was circling her, moving through the shadows at the edge of the room like a predator assessing prey. 

“A considerable sum. And instead of coming himself to face the consequences of his foolishness, he sends…what? A sister? A sacrifice?”

“A negotiator,” Seraphina said, and was proud that her voice didn’t shake.

 “My brother was called away on urgent business. I offered to come in his stead.”

A sound emerged from the shadows, something between a laugh and a growl.

 “Urgent business. Of course. The urgent business of being a coward, I presume.”

It was accurate enough that Seraphina couldn’t argue. William was a coward. He was also a gambler, a liar, and possessed of a remarkable talent for creating disasters and leaving others to clean them up. But he was still her brother, and the family’s reputation, what remained of it, was bound up with his.

“He is otherwise occupied,” she said carefully. “I have full authority to discuss terms.”

“Terms.” The Duke’s voice dripped with contempt.

 “I was not aware that I had invited a bargain.”

He stepped into the firelight.

Seraphina had prepared herself. She had recited Crane’s warning in her head…do not gape, do not…and steeled herself for whatever horror the rumors had promised. Melted flesh, perhaps. Missing features. The kind of disfigurement that made children cry and grown women faint.

What she saw instead made her forget to breathe for entirely different reasons.

The Duke of Montrose was enormous. That was her first thought, the overwhelmed, slightly hysterical observation of a brain trying to process too much information at once. He had to be several inches over six feet, with shoulders broad enough to block out the firelight and a frame that suggested he could have torn the door off its hinges if the mood struck him.

His face…

His face was scarred. That much was true. The left side bore the unmistakable marks of a burn, silver-pink tissue that pulled at the corner of his eye and traced down his cheek to disappear beneath the high collar of his coat. Yet the remainder of his countenance, the firm line of his jaw, the prominent carving of his cheekbones, and a nose that bore the rugged mark of past violence, was far from monstrous. 

He was, Seraphina realised with something approaching horror, striking. Handsome in the way of a storm, or a blade, or a fire burning out of control. Handsome in a way that was entirely, devastatingly dangerous.

Oh, she thought faintly. Oh, this is going to be a problem.

His eyes, dark, so dark they seemed black in the firelight, narrowed as they swept over her. Seraphina felt that gaze like a physical weight, pressing against her sodden dress and her bedraggled hair and her thoroughly inadequate composure.

“Your eyes are singularly fixed upon me,” he said flatly.

She immediately realised that she was, even though he had been forewarned not to gape.

“Forgive me,” she managed. 

“I was… I had been led to expect… that is…” She stopped, took a breath, and tried again. 

“The rumors are exaggerated.”

Something flickered in those dark eyes…surprise, perhaps, or irritation.

 “The rumors say I’m a monster.”

“The rumors say a great many things.” Seraphina lifted her chin, refusing to look away from his face, scars and all. 

“I have found that rumors are rarely reliable sources of information.”

The Duke went very still. For a long moment, he simply looked at her, not with the disdain she’d expected, but with something more complicated. More searching. As though she were a book written in a language he hadn’t encountered before and he was trying to determine if she was worth the effort of translation.

Stop, she told herself firmly. Stop noticing the way the firelight catches in his eyes. Stop cataloguing the exact shade of darkness in his gaze. You are here on account of family business. It certainly has nothing to do with any other trivial matters.

Then his expression hardened. “You should be afraid of me.”

“Should I?” Seraphina clasped her hands in front of her to hide their trembling. 

“That seems rather counterproductive to a civil conversation.”

“Civil.” He advanced a step, and she had to fight the urge to retreat. Up close, he was even more overwhelming, she could smell wood smoke and something darker, sandalwood perhaps, and beneath it the sharp metallic scent of blood. The heat radiating from his body seemed to cut through her rain-soaked chill, and she found herself wanting to step closer, which was absolutely, categorically insane. 

“There is nothing civil about what I do to people who waste my time.”

“Then it’s fortunate I don’t intend to waste it.” Her voice was steady. She had no idea how.

 “I have come to propose an arrangement, Your Grace. One that would settle my brother’s debt in a manner more advantageous to you than simple repayment.”

“More advantageous.” He laughed, and the sound was as rough as gravel, as dark as the shadows he had emerged from. It did something strange to her pulse, something she refused to examine. 

“And what, precisely, could a drowned governess offer me that I could not simply take?”

The insult landed, but Seraphina refused to flinch. 

“I am not a governess. I am a scholar. Specifically, I am a scholar with considerable expertise in the restoration and cataloguing of rare manuscripts.” She paused, letting the words settle.

“I could not help but observe, while being conducted through your most impressive estate, that your collection appears to be in some disarray.”

The Duke’s expression didn’t change, but something shifted behind his eyes. 

 “So…you observed.”

“I observed that you have a first edition of Caxton’s Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye sitting on a shelf where direct sunlight can damage it.” She gestured toward the windows, currently shuttered against the storm. 

“I also observed that your medieval manuscripts appear to be shelved alongside works from the Enlightenment, with no apparent system of organisation. And I observed…” She turned, pointing to a stack of books on a nearby table.

 “That someone has been using what appears to be a fifteenth-century illuminated psalter as a coaster.”

A muscle twitched in the Duke’s jaw. “The library is not your concern.”

“It could be.” Seraphina turned back to face him, her heart pounding so loudly she was certain he must hear it.

 “My brother owes you eight hundred pounds. We cannot pay our dues…at least not immediately, and perhaps not ever, if you demand it in a single sum. But I can offer you something worth far more than money.” She spread her hands, encompassing the chaos of books around them.

 “I can restore your library to order. Catalog every volume. Preserve what’s salvageable and properly store the rest. In exchange, you agree to forgive the debt.”

The silence stretched. Thunder rolled outside, closer now.

“You wish to reside here,” the Duke said slowly. “In my home…with me.”

When phrased in such a manner, the scheme appeared altogether devoid of reason. 

“I wish to work here for a period of time sufficient to complete the task. I estimate three months, perhaps four, depending on the extent of the collection.”

“Three months.” He was staring at her again, that dark, unsettling gaze that made her feel as though he could see straight through her sodden dress to the racing of her heart beneath. His voice dropped lower, rougher and almost intimate in a way that made her skin prickle with awareness. 

“You would spend three months in this house. With me.”

Yes, something whispered treacherously in the back of her mind. Yes, that is precisely what I want, and I should be horrified by how much I want it.

“If necessary,” she said aloud.

“Do you have any idea what they’ll say about you?” His voice dropped lower, rougher. 

“A young woman…single, living alone with the Beast of Ironwood. Your reputation would be…”

“My reputation,” Seraphina interrupted, “is already considerably damaged by my brother’s activities. A few months in the countryside can hardly make things worse.” She met his eyes, refusing to look away despite the intensity of his gaze. 

“And I am not afraid of you, Your Grace.”

It was It was a mere pretense. She was afraid, not of violence, not exactly, but of something far more dangerous. Of the way her pulse quickened when he moved closer. Of the way his voice seemed to curl around her like smoke. Of the strange, inconvenient heat that had bloomed in her chest when she’d first seen his face in the firelight.

She was afraid of herself, and what she might feel if she stayed.

“You should be,” he growled. And then, before she could respond, he moved.

It happened so fast she barely had time to gasp. One moment he was across the room; the next he was right there, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his body, close enough that she could see the individual striations in his scars, close enough that if she reached out she could touch the hard line of his jaw, the corded muscle of his neck…

She tried to still her fluttering heart but to no avail.

It was a folly that she dared not entertain, yet to her utter dismay, the image haunted her with such constancy that no other concern could find footing in her soul.

“I do not require your assistance,” he snarled, his breath hot against her face. 

“I do not want your company. I do not require anything except to be left alone. Take your pathetic offer and your dripping boots and your brother’s debts and get out of my house.”

He swept his arm toward the door in a gesture of furious dismissal and that was when Seraphina saw it.

Blood. Fresh and bright against the stark white of his shirt cuff. A wound on his palm, oozing crimson through what appeared to be a hastily wrapped bandage.

“You are hurt,” she said.

The Duke froze.

It was such a small thing, a minor injury, probably sustained before she’d even arrived but something about the words seemed to stop him mid-motion, as though she’d spoken in a language he’d forgotten how to understand.

 “I beg your pardon?” His voice was devoid of all warmth.

“Your hand.” Seraphina reached for it without thinking, her fingers brushing against his wrist before she realised what she was doing.

 “You are bleeding. The bandage is not…”

He pulled his arm away as if she had scalded him as though she’d burned him. 

“Do not touch me.”

But it was too late. She’d felt the tremor that went through him at the contact, a full-body shudder, as though that brief, accidental brush of her fingers against his skin had been a shock of electricity. His eyes were wide now, wild, and his breathing had gone ragged.

It appeared he was famished for the warmth of human fellowship. At that very moment, she was struck by a distressing question… how great an interval had passed since he had last known the solace of a sympathetic touch? When was the last time anyone touched him with kindness?

The realisation hit her like cold water. Five years. He had been hiding in this house for five years, and in all that time, had anyone touched him at all? Had anyone looked past the scars and the snarling and the carefully cultivated reputation for monstrousness to see the man beneath?

Her fingers still tingled where they’d brushed his skin. She could still feel the heat of him, the way his pulse had jumped beneath her touch.

This is dangerous, she thought. This feeling…this awareness…it’s the most dangerous thing in this house.

“Forgive me,” she said quietly, forcing her voice to remain steady despite the chaos of her thoughts. 

“I only meant…” She reached into her valise, past the sodden letter and the documents that were probably ruined, and found the one thing that had stayed dry: a handkerchief, cotton, embroidered with her initials. She held it out.

 “At least let me offer you this. The wound should be properly wrapped.”

He stared at the handkerchief as though it were a live snake.

“Why?” The word was rough, scraped raw. “Why would you…I just…I tried to…”

“You tried to frighten me,” Seraphina agreed.

 “You were quite successful. But being frightened of someone and wishing them ill are not the same thing.” She kept the handkerchief extended, her hand steady despite the trembling she couldn’t quite suppress. 

“You are bleeding, Your Grace. Whatever else you may be, that matters.”

For a long, breathless moment, neither of them moved.

The fire crackled and rain lashed relentlessly against the shuttered windows. Somewhere in the house, a clock struck the hour…ten, eleven, twelve mournful chimes that seemed to mark the passing of something more than time.

Then, ever so slowly it was almost imperceptible, the Duke of Montrose reached out and took the handkerchief from her hand.

Their fingers didn’t touch this time. She made sure of it. But the air between them seemed to crackle anyway, charged with something she couldn’t name and didn’t dare examine too closely.

He looked at the square of white cotton in his palm, at the delicate embroidery, S.V., stitched in the corner. His thumb traced the letters, and Seraphina felt the ghost of that touch on her own skin, as though he were tracing the initials across her pulse point.

Desist! She told herself fiercely. Stop imagining things that will only lead to ruin.

“You are a fool,” he said softly. There was no heat in it now. Just a strange, hollow wonder.

“So I have been told.” Seraphina managed a small smile. 

“But I am also very good with books.”

The Duke looked at the handkerchief in his palm. Then looked calmly at her and then looked around at the chaotic state of the library. 

“Crane will show you to a room,” he said finally, the words dragged from him like teeth being pulled. 

“We will discuss terms in the morning.” His jaw tightened. “If you last that long.”

He turned away, retreating into the shadows at the edge of the room. Seraphina watched him go, her heart still racing, her skin still tingling where she’d touched his wrist. She noticed that he moved differently now, not with the predatory grace of before, but with something more careful. More guarded. As though she’d cracked something open that he wasn’t quite sure how to close again.

“Your Grace?” she called after him.

He paused but didn’t turn. “What?”

“Your name. I know your title, but not…” She hesitated. 

“What should I call you?”

The silence stretched. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely more than a whisper, rough as torn velvet.

“Gideon.” A pause.

 “But it will not matter. You shall not be here long enough to use it.”

He vanished into the darkness.

Seraphina stood alone in the firelight, surrounded by books and shadows, and felt the word settle into her chest like a brand.

Gideon.

She pressed a hand to her sternum, as though she could contain the strange, fluttering warmth that had taken up residence there. The handkerchief was gone, he had taken it with him, she realised, taken this small piece of her into the darkness and something about that made her breath catch in a way it had no business doing.

This is madness, she thought. I’ve known him for less than an hour. He’s frightening and rude and clearly determined to make my life as difficult as possible. I should not be feeling… whatever this is.

But the feeling remained, stubborn and inconvenient, curling through her like wood smoke.

Somewhere in the depths of the house, a door slammed.

Seraphina stood alone in the firelight and had a terrible feeling he was wrong.

She was going to be here for a very long time indeed.

 

Chapter Two

 

“She did not scream.”

Gideon stood at the window of his bedchamber, watching the storm rage against the glass, and couldn’t stop thinking about the woman currently sleeping three doors down the corridor.

Three doors. Close enough that if he walked, if he allowed his feet to carry him where his treacherous mind kept wandering, he could be at her threshold in seconds. Could press his palm flat against the wood and imagine her on the other side, her dark hair spread across the pillow, her breath soft and even in sleep.

He pressed his forehead against the cold glass and cursed himself for a fool.

She hadn’t screamed. That was the part he couldn’t reconcile. Every servant who’d seen his face for the first time had flinched, gasped, or, in one memorable instance, fainted dead away. The village children ran when they caught sight of him on the rare occasions he ventured beyond the estate’s borders. Even Crane, loyal to a fault, still couldn’t quite meet his eyes when the light fell wrong on his scars.

But Seraphina Vance had looked at him…really looked, with those clear grey eyes that seemed to see straight through his carefully cultivated monstrousness and she had not screamed. She had remained remarkably silent, forgoing any outward sign of distress.

The rumors are exaggerated, she had said, as calmly as if she were commenting on the weather.

He turned from the window, prowling the length of his room like the caged animal he’d become. Sleep was impossible. It had been impossible for years, but tonight it felt actively hostile, as though his own mind were conspiring to keep him awake and dwelling on things he had no business dwelling upon.

The handkerchief sat on his nightstand.

He had told himself he would throw it in the fire. He had told himself that the moment she had pressed it into his palm, her fingers trembling with the effort of not touching him. But here it was, three hours later, still pristine and white against the dark wood, her initials catching the candlelight like an accusation.

S.V.

Seraphina Vance. Scholar. Sister to a fool and a coward. A woman with more courage than sense, who had walked into the Beast’s lair and offered to stay.

Gideon picked up the handkerchief. Brought it, without conscious thought, to his face.

Lilies. She smelled of lilies and something else…ink, perhaps, or old paper. The scent of books and quiet determination. It shouldn’t have affected him. It absolutely should not have made his blood heat and his chest ache with a longing so acute it bordered on pain.

He was two and thirty years of age. He had not been touched with anything approaching tenderness since the fire, since his fiancée had taken one look at his ruined face and fled the room in tears, since his mother had passed and taken with her the last person who had ever held him as though he mattered.

This slight creature had penetrated his guarded reserve in a single evening, armed only with a delicate handkerchief and words that betrayed a tender solicitude for his injury.

You’re bleeding, Your Grace. Whatever else you may be, that matters.

“Damn her,” he growled to the empty room. “Damn her and her grey eyes and her…and her kindness.”

The word felt foreign on his tongue. Kindness had no place in Ironwood Hall. He had made certain of that.

But she was here now, sleeping in his house, breathing his air, and in the morning he would be forced to face her again. He would have to look at her and pretend that her presence did not make him feel like a man dying of thirst who’d just been shown a river.

He could still send her away, as the debt was meaningless…eight hundred pounds was nothing to him, a sum he could lose at cards without noticing. He’d only demanded payment because he’d wanted to remind the world that the Beast of Ironwood was not to be trifled with. He had wanted someone to come, to cower, and to give him an excuse to rage and snarl and feel something other than the crushing emptiness of his self-imposed exile.

He had not wanted her.

He had not wanted a woman who looked at his scars without flinching. Who noticed when he was bleeding and cared enough to offer help. Who stood her ground when he tried to frighten her, meeting his darkness with a quiet fire that made him want to warm his hands on her flame.

Three months, she’d proposed three months in his house. Three months of her presence, her scent, her voice…and three months of watching her work among his books while he slowly went mad with wanting what he could never have.

It was impossible. He would tell her so in the morning. He would be cold and cruel and give her every reason to flee, and then he would return to his solitary existence and forget she’d ever existed.

He brought the handkerchief to his face again and breathed deep.

He was lying to himself, and he knew it.

 

Seraphina woke to grey light filtering through moth-eaten curtains and the unsettling realisation that she had dreamed of dark eyes and scarred hands and a voice like velvet dragged over gravel.

She lay still for a moment, staring at the cracked ceiling of her guest chamber, and tried very hard not to remember the specifics. The way dream-Gideon had looked at her. The way his fingers had traced patterns on her skin that real-Gideon would never…could never…

Stop, she told herself firmly. She reproached herself at once, sensible that it was beyond the bounds of decorum to harbour such fancies.

It was a reasonable response to an unreasonable situation, she decided as she pushed back the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She had spent the previous evening in close proximity to a man who radiated danger and darkness like a fire radiated heat. It was only natural that her subconscious would… process the experience.

In vivid, inappropriate detail.

With rather more attention to the breadth of his shoulders than was strictly necessary.

She pressed her palms to her flushed cheeks and groaned.

Her traveling dress—the blue wool, which had been hung near the fire to dry, was wrinkled but serviceable. She dressed quickly, fingers fumbling with buttons as her mind kept drifting back to the library. To the way he’d moved toward her, all predatory grace, and the way her body had responded with a surge of something that was definitely not fear.

You should be afraid of me, he’d said.

She was. Just not in the way he’d meant.

The corridor outside her room was silent, the house still wrapped in the hush of early morning. Seraphina made her way toward the stairs, trying to remember the path Crane had taken the night before. The house seemed different in daylight, less threatening, perhaps, but also sadder. The dust motes floating in the pale light only emphasised how empty these halls were, how long it had been since anyone had cared for them.

He’s been alone here for five years, she thought, and felt her heart twist in a way that was entirely unhelpful.

She found the breakfast room by following the smell of toast and weak tea. It was a smaller space than she’d expected, intimate almost, with windows overlooking a garden that had clearly not been tended in years. A single place was set at the table.

“His Grace does not breakfast,” Crane announced from somewhere behind her, making her jump. The man really did move like a ghost. “You may take your meal here. When you have finished, His Grace requests your presence in the study.”

“The study?” Not the library, then. “I thought we were to discuss the terms of…”

“The study,” Crane repeated, in a tone that suggested further questions would not be welcome. He gestured toward the table. 

“Eat. You’ll need your strength.”

That was ominous. Seraphina sat, poured herself tea from a pot that was more lukewarm than hot, and tried to convince herself that the churning in her stomach was hunger.

It wasn’t.

The toast was dry, the preserves slightly stale, and Seraphina ate without tasting any of it. Her mind was elsewhere, in the library, in the firelight, in the moment when her fingers had brushed his wrist and she’d felt the tremor that went through him.

He was starved of affection, she had thought then. And now, in the cold light of morning, the word seemed even more significant and devastating.

What did it do to a man, to go years without human contact? To be so convinced of his own monstrousness that he couldn’t bear to be touched?

And why did she want so badly to be the one to touch him?

She set down her teacup with a clatter and pushed back from the table. This was dangerous thinking. She was here to work, to save her family from ruin, not to develop inconvenient feelings for a man who had made it abundantly clear he wanted nothing to do with her.

If you last that long, he’d said.

Well. She would show him just how long she could last.

 

The study was smaller than the library but equally masculine with dark wood paneling, heavy furniture, and the lingering scent of tobacco and something else. Something that made her think of storm clouds and restless nights.

Him. The room smelled of him.

Seraphina’s pulse quickened without her permission.

He was standing at the window when she entered, his back to the door, and for a moment she simply… looked. The morning light was kinder to him than the firelight had been, or perhaps crueler, it revealed details she hadn’t noticed before. The way his dark hair curled slightly at his collar. The tension in his shoulders, as though he were bracing himself against an invisible weight. The sheer size of him, filling the space before the window like a force of nature.

His white shirt seemed to strain against the breadth of his chest causing Seraphina’s mouth to go inexplicably dry.

Stop staring, she commanded herself. You told him the rumors were exaggerated. Staring like a lovesick fool will not help your case.

“Close the door.”

His voice rolled through her like thunder, low and rough, and she obeyed without thinking. The click of the latch seemed unnaturally loud in the silence.

“Your Grace…” she began.

“Sit.”

She didn’t sit. Instead, she lifted her chin and stood her ground, even as her heart hammered against her ribs. “I believe we were to discuss terms.”

He turned then, and the full force of his gaze hit her like a physical blow.

In daylight, his eyes weren’t black, they were dark brown, the color of strong coffee, of earth after rain, of things that grew in shadows. They swept over her with an intensity that made her skin prickle with awareness, cataloguing every detail of her appearance with an attention that felt almost physical.

He’s looking at my mouth, she realised, and promptly forgot how to breathe.

“Terms,” he repeated, the word a low rumble. He moved toward her, not quickly, but with a deliberate, predatory grace that made her think of wolves, of lions, of all the beautiful dangerous things that could devour you whole. “You wish to discuss terms.”

“I believe that was the purpose of this meeting, yes.”

“The purpose of this meeting…” He stopped, close enough that she could see the silver threading through his scars, close enough that she could smell sandalwood and wood smoke and him. “…is to convince you to leave.”

“Ah.” Seraphina forced herself to hold his gaze, even though every instinct screamed at her to look away, to run, and to do anything other than stand here and burn under the weight of his attention. “And how do you intend to accomplish that?”

Something flickered in his eyes…surprise, perhaps, or grudging respect. “Most people don’t ask. They simply flee.”

“I’m not most people.”

“No.” The word was quiet, almost wondering. “You are not.”

The silence stretched between them, thick and charged. Seraphina became acutely aware of her own breathing too fast, too shallow and of the heat radiating from his body, mere inches from hers. If she swayed forward, if she allowed herself to tip into his gravity, she would be pressed against that broad chest, her head tucked beneath his chin…

Stop. Stop it immediately.

“Your terms,” she said, and was proud that her voice only trembled slightly. “What would you require?”

His jaw tightened. For a moment, she thought he would refuse to answer…would simply stand there, looming and glowering, until she gave up and walked away. But then he spoke, and his voice was rough as sandpaper, scraped raw with something she couldn’t name.

“Rules. I would require rules.”

“Rules,” she repeated carefully.

“You will work in the library between the hours of nine and five. Outside those hours, you will remain in your chambers or the common areas designated for your use.” He began to pace, moving around her in a slow circle that made her think again of predators, of creatures sizing up their prey. She turned with him, refusing to let him out of her sight. “You will not seek me out. You will not speak to me unless spoken to. You will not…” He stopped directly behind her, close enough that she could feel the heat of his breath on the back of her neck.

 “…touch me.”

Seraphina’s heart stuttered.

“The handkerchief…” she began.

“Was a mistake.” His voice was closer now, lower, a dark murmur that seemed to caress her ear. 

“One I do not intend to repeat.”

She turned to face him, and the movement brought them even closer than before, close enough that she could count his eyelashes if she wished to, close enough that she could see the rapid pulse beating at the base of his throat. Close enough that if either of them leaned forward, just slightly, their lips would…

Do not! She told herself fiercely, even as her body swayed toward him of its own accord. Do not dare.

“Why?” The word slipped out before she could stop it. 

“Why cannot I touch you?”

Something cracked in his expression, a fissure in the carefully maintained wall of coldness, revealing something raw and hungry beneath. His eyes dropped to her mouth again, lingering there for a heartbeat too long before dragging back up to meet her gaze.

“Because I do not trust myself,” he said, so quietly she almost did not hear it.

The admission hung in the air between them, devastating in its honesty.

Because I do not trust myself.

What did that mean? What dark imaginings did he harbor about what might happen if she touched him again? And why…did part of her want desperately to find out?

“I accept your terms,” she heard herself say.

He blinked, clearly thrown. “You…what?”

“Your terms. I accept them.” She stepped back, putting space between them before she did something unforgivable like reach up and trace the line of his scarred cheek with her fingertips. “I will work in the library between nine and five. I will not seek you out or speak to you unless spoken to. And I will not…” Her voice caught, but she pressed on. “I will not touch you.”

Even though I want to, she didn’t say. Even though the thought of going three months without feeling your skin against mine feels like a punishment I haven’t earned.

“In return,” she continued, “you will forgive my brother’s debt in full upon completion of the cataloguing. You will provide me with food, lodging, and any materials I require for the restoration work. And you will…” She paused, considering. “You will allow me full access to the library and its contents, without restriction.”

His eyes narrowed. “Without restriction?”

“Some manuscripts may be fragile. Some may require specialised treatment. I cannot do my work properly if you’re hovering over my shoulder deciding what I can and cannot examine.”

“I do not hover.”

Despite everything, Seraphina felt her lips twitch. “I am certain you do not. Nevertheless, those are my terms.”

For a long moment, he simply stared at her. She could see him weighing the options, calculating the risks, trying to find the flaw in her logic that would give him an excuse to refuse.

Finally, reluctantly, something in his posture shifted. Not quite surrender, the Duke of Montrose did not seem like a man who surrendered, but something close to acceptance.

“Three months,” he said. “Not a day more.”

“Agreed.”

“And if you break my rules…”

“I shall not.”

His laugh was dark, humorless. “So confident. You have no idea what you’re agreeing to, Miss Vance.”

“Seraphina.” The word was out before she could stop it. “If we’re to spend three months under the same roof, you might as well call me Seraphina.”

Another crack in his expression, quickly smoothed over. “That would be inappropriate.”

“More inappropriate than a young woman living alone with an unattached duke?” She raised an eyebrow. “I do believe we are rather past the bounds of propriety, Your Grace.”

“Gideon.”

Now it was her turn to blink. “I am sorry?”

“You gave me your name.” His voice was rough, almost reluctant, as though the words were being dragged from him against his will. “It seems only fair. Gideon. Not….” He paused, something painful flickering behind his eyes. “Not in front of the servants. But here. In private. You may call me Gideon.”

In private. The words sent a shiver down her spine that had nothing to do with cold.

“Gideon,” she repeated, testing the shape of it on her tongue. It felt intimate. Dangerous. Like holding a flame too close to her skin.

His eyes darkened at the sound, his jaw going tight in a way that suggested he was fighting some internal battle she couldn’t see. “You should go.”

“Should I?”

“Yes.” The word was clipped and strained. 

“Before I…” He stopped, turned away, presenting her with the rigid line of his back.

 “The library will be open to you within the hour. Crane will provide anything you require. Now go.”

Seraphina went.

But as she walked down the corridor toward the library, her heart pounding and her skin flushed with heat that had nothing to do with exertion, she couldn’t help but replay his words in her mind.

Before I…

Before he what?

She had a terrible, wonderful, absolutely inadvisable feeling that she wanted to find out.

 

The library was different in daylight.

Last night, it had been all shadows and firelight, mystery and menace. Now, with morning sun streaming through the tall windows, it revealed itself in full: a glorious, chaotic disaster of books piled on every surface, manuscripts scattered without order, and dust so thick it seemed to have developed its own ecosystem.

Seraphina stood in the doorway and felt something unfamiliar bloom in her chest.

Joy. Pure, uncomplicated joy.

This was what she was born to do. Not society balls, not husband-hunting, not the endless tedium of being a respectable spinster waiting for her brother to have her wedded to whoever would have her. This, the careful work of bringing order to chaos, of preserving knowledge, of touching the same pages that scholars had touched centuries before.

She stepped inside, trailing her fingers along the spines of books as she passed. Leather and cloth and vellum, cool and smooth beneath her touch. The smell of old paper and binding glue and, faintly, beneath it all, that scent she was coming to associate with him. Sandalwood…Storm clouds…. Danger.

Do not think about him, she told herself firmly. You have work to do.

She found a desk in the corner, relatively clear of debris, and began to establish her workspace. Lead pencils for notes, paper for cataloguing and a magnifying glass she had brought from home, worn smooth from years of use. The tools of her trade, such as they were.

The morning passed in a blur of discovery. She found treasures buried beneath the chaos, a medieval Book of Hours with illuminations that made her gasp, a first edition of Milton! She felt sure the British Museum would deem no price too high to secure such a treasure for their halls.

There was a collection of letters that appeared to be correspondence between Newton and Leibniz that would send historians into fits of academic ecstasy.

There were signs of years of neglect throughout as she saw carelessly shelved books, with their spines cracking.

She was so absorbed in her work that she didn’t hear him enter.

“You are still here.”

The voice came from the doorway, low and rough, and Seraphina’s heart leapt into her throat.

She looked up to find Gideon leaning against the door frame, arms crossed over his chest, watching her with an expression she couldn’t quite read. How long had he been standing there? How long had he been looking?

“It is not yet five o’clock,” she said, glancing at the clock on the mantel.

 “I believe I have another two hours before I am required to vanish into my chambers like a ghost.”

His mouth twitched, not quite a smile, but close.

 “I didn’t expect you to actually start working.”

“What did you expect?”

“For you to come to your senses. To realise that this…” He gestured vaguely at the library, at himself, at the whole impossible situation. “…is madness.”

“Perhaps it is.” Seraphina set down the book she’d been examining a lovely little volume of poetry, badly water-damaged but potentially salvageable and rose to her feet. 

“But I have never been particularly sensible.”

“No,” he agreed, his voice dropping to something softer. “I do believe you have not.”

The silence stretched between them. Seraphina was acutely aware that he was looking at her differently than he had that morning, not with cold disdain, but with something that might have been curiosity. Or hunger. Or both.

Do not seek him out, she reminded herself. Do not speak unless spoken to. Do not touch.

But he had sought her out. He had spoken first. And if she crossed the room right now, if she laid her palm against his chest and felt the beat of his heart…

“You have ink on your cheek,” he said abruptly.

Seraphina’s hand flew to her face. “What? Where?”

“Here.” He moved toward her, and her breath caught.

 “No…to the left. You are making it worse.”

“Then perhaps you could…”

She stopped. They both stopped.

Do not touch.

His hand was raised, hovering inches from her cheek. She could feel the heat of it, the almost-contact, and every nerve in her body seemed to strain toward him like a flower toward sunlight.

“I could fetch a mirror,” she whispered.

“You could.” He didn’t move. Neither did she.

The moment stretched, crystallised and became something fragile and impossible and terrifying in its potential.

Then he dropped his hand.

“Third shelf from the left,” he said roughly, stepping back. “There is a volume of Catullus that may interest you. The binding is original.”

And then he was gone, leaving Seraphina alone with the dust and the books and the thundering of her own heart.

She pressed her palm to her cheek, the one he had almost touched and felt the warmth there as though he’d left a brand.

Three months, she thought. Three months of this.

She was never going to survive.

 

Chapter Three

 

 “You are observing me again.”

Seraphina didn’t look up from her work as she said it. She did not need to. She could feel him…had been feeling him for the better part of an hour, his gaze pressing against her skin like a physical weight from somewhere in the shadows above.

The library had a gallery. She had discovered it on her second day, a narrow balcony that wrapped around the upper level of the room, accessible only through a door she suspected led to the Duke’s private chambers. She’d seen him up there twice now, a dark silhouette against the dusty windows, watching her work with an intensity that made her fingers clumsy and her breath uneven.

There was never a word, nor an announcement…only that unwavering, silent watch.

It should have been unsettling but beneath the discomfort lay something else, something that felt dangerously like anticipation. It resembled the breathless interval before the storm…weighty, charged, and heralding the strike to come. 

“The rules,” his voice drifted down from above, low and rough as gravel, “say nothing about observing.”

Seraphina’s quill faltered and stuttered across the page, leaving an ugly blot of ink on her careful cataloguing notes. She set it down with deliberate precision and finally looked up.

He was leaning against the balcony railing, arms braced on the iron, his body a long dark line against the grey afternoon light. From this angle, she couldn’t see his scars, only the strong line of his jaw, the broad sweep of his shoulders, the way his shirt stretched taut across his chest as he leaned forward.

Stop looking at his chest, she told herself firmly. You are a professional. You are here to work. You are absolutely not here to catalogue the way his forearms look with his sleeves rolled up…

His sleeves were rolled up.

She hadn’t noticed that before. The white linen was pushed back to his elbows, revealing forearms that were… well. They were forearms. Muscular. Dusted with dark hair. Entirely unremarkable, really, except for the way looking at them made her mouth go dry and her stomach turned in a manner that was decidedly not professional.

“Observing,” she managed, dragging her gaze back to his face,

 “Seems rather a waste of your time, Your Grace.”

“Gideon.” The correction came automatically, a low rumble that she felt in her bones.

“Gideon.” She found that se derived a certain pleasure in uttering his name…out loud.

 “Surely you have better things to do than lurk in shadows and stare at me while I work.”

“Do I?”

The question hung in the air between them, loaded with something she didn’t dare examine.

 “I am sure that I could not say,” she said carefully. 

“We do not speak, unless spoken to. Those are the rules.”

“You are speaking now.”

 “I am merely responding to you.”

His laugh was short, surprised, as though he had forgotten he was capable of the sound.

 “So I did.”

Silence fell again, but it was different this time. Charged. Seraphina became acutely aware of her own body in a way she’d never been before, the way her dress clung to her waist, the strand of hair that had escaped her pins and now curled against her neck, the rapid flutter of her pulse at the base of her throat.

Could he see that, from up there? Could he see the effect he had on her?

Dear sweet mercy…I pray he cannot.

“What discoveries have you made today?”

His voice was closer. She looked up again and realised with a start that he had moved and was moving still, making his way along the gallery toward the spiral staircase that led down to the main floor. Her heart beat with such sudden ferocity against her ribs that she feared it might be heard in the stillness.

“Several things,” she said, pleased that her voice remained steady even as her pulse raced. 

“A rather spectacular collection of medieval herbals. A first edition of Spenser’s Faerie Queene that’s been badly mishandled. And…” She hesitated.

He had reached the bottom of the stairs now and was walking toward her, each step slow and deliberate. Her breathing became more laboured as he slowly approached her.

“And?” He stopped on the other side of her desk, close enough that she could smell him, that intoxicating blend of sandalwood and wood smoke that haunted her dreams.

“And some journals,” she finished.

 “From the family collection. I was not certain if you wanted them catalogued with the rest or kept separate.”

Something flickered in his expression. “Journals.”

“Yes. They appear to date back several generations. There is a rather fascinating account from your great-grandmother about the construction of the east wing, and some correspondence from…”

“Show me.”

It wasn’t a request. Seraphina rose from her chair too quickly, perhaps, because the movement brought her closer to him than she had intended, close enough that she could see the individual threads of silver in his scars, close enough that if she reached out she could touch the hard line of his chest…

 She took a step back and tried to breathe calmly.

“This way,” she said, and was grateful when her voice didn’t quiver.

She led him to the corner of the library where she’d been organising the personal documents, letters, diaries, household accounts and all the intimate ephemera of generations of Montroses. The journals were stacked on a low table, leather-bound volumes of varying sizes, some so old the covers were crumbling.

“Most of these are standard fare,” she explained, picking up one of the older volumes and handling it with the care it deserved. 

“Mere domestic trifles and the drudgery of the accounts. But there were a few that seemed more… personal.”

She reached for a smaller journal, bound in blue leather that had faded to grey with age. “This one, for instance. The handwriting is quite young, a child’s, I believe. It seems to be a kind of naturalist’s notebook. Drawings of birds, pressed flowers, observations about the weather.” She opened it carefully, revealing pages covered in cramped, enthusiastic script. 

“Whoever wrote it had a real gift for…”

 “That belongs to me.”

Seraphina’s hands stilled on the pages. “I beg your pardon?”

“The journal.” His voice had gone strange…tight, almost strangled. 

“It belongs to me.I wrote it when I was… ten, I believe, perhaps eleven.”

She looked down at the book in her hands with new eyes. The childish drawings took on a different cast, not just any child’s work, but his. The boy he had been before the fire, before the scars, before he’d learned to hide behind walls of ice and fury.

“You drew these?” She traced a finger over a careful sketch of a hawk in flight, the lines confident despite their youth. 

“They are remarkable.”

“They are the scribblings of a child.”

“They are positively beautiful.” She looked up at him, and something in her chest clenched at the expression on his face. He was staring at the journal as though it were a ghost, as though she’d reached into his past and pulled out something he’d thought safely buried. 

“You had real talent.”

“Had.” The word was bitter. “Past tense.”

“You do not draw anymore?”

He did not answer. But his jaw tightened, and his hands, those large, scarred hands that she had been trying so hard not to think about, curled into fists at his sides.

“The fire,” she said quietly. It was not a question.

“The fire,” he confirmed. “It took rather a lot of things from me. A steady hand was the least of them.”

Seraphina closed the journal gently and set it aside. She wanted to reach for him…wanted to take those clenched fists in her own hands and smooth them open, to press her lips to his scarred palms and tell him that his value had never been in what he could create but in who he was…

. Yet she was powerless to act as the laws had been set…The rules he had set…

“There are more,” she said instead. “Journals, I mean. From when you were older. Should I…” She gestured toward the stack. 

“Should I set them aside? Keep them private?”

For a long moment, he didn’t respond. He was staring at the pile of journals with an expression she could not read pain, perhaps, or longing, or some complicated mixture of both.

Then, slowly, he reached past her.

His arm brushed against hers as he did, the barest whisper of contact, wool against wool, but it sent a shock of heat racing through her entire body. She heard his breath catch. Saw the muscle in his jaw jump. Felt the tremor that went through him at even that minimal touch.

He was famished for the slightest kindness of contact…She felt great devastation at the mere thought.

He picked up one of the journals, a larger volume, bound in dark green leather and opened it with hands that were not quite steady.

“I was young when I wrote this…I had intended to propose…” He stopped suddenly.

“It is of no consequence now.”

But it did matter. Seraphina could see it in the rigid line of his shoulders, in the way he held the journal like it might bite him. Whatever was in those pages, it mattered enormously.

“You do not have to tell me,” she said softly.

“No.” He looked at her then, and the raw hunger in his eyes made her forget how to breathe.

 “I do not.”

The silence stretched between them, thick and heavy with things unspoken. Seraphina was acutely aware of how close they were standing, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his body, close enough that if she swayed forward even slightly she would be pressed against his chest.

She found herself wishing she could sway forward towards him…She wanted to…her body wanted her too…

“You should return to your work,” he said, but he didn’t move away. If anything, he seemed to lean closer, drawn toward her by the same inexorable gravity that was pulling at her.

“I should,” she agreed, but she didn’t move either.

“The rules…”

“I am familiar with the rules.”

“Then you know that this…” His voice dropped lower, became something rough and ragged that scraped against her nerve endings like velvet. “That we…”

“I know.”

His hand came up slowly, so slowly, as though he were fighting himself with every inch and hovered near her face. Not touching. Never touching. But close enough that she could feel the warmth of his palm, close enough that her skin seemed to reach toward him of its own accord.

“You have ink on your cheek again,” he murmured.

“I know.” She did not and she did not care. All she cared about was the half-inch of air between his hand and her skin, the unbearable tension of almost-contact, the way his breath had gone shallow and fast in a way that told her he was as affected as she was.

“I should…” His thumb traced the air beside her cheekbone, not-quite-touching.

 “I should wipe it away.”

“You could.” Her voice came out breathy, barely a whisper.

 “It is just ink. It is not…it would not be…”

It would not be touching. Not really. Not in the way that matters.

Yet, both were conscious that the truth had been quite forsaken. Every touch between them mattered. Every brush of fingers, every accidental collision, every charged moment of proximity, they all mattered, building on each other like kindling waiting for a spark.

“Seraphina.” Her name on his lips was a groan, a prayer, a warning. 

“If I touch you…”

“Then touch me.”

The words were out before she could stop them, reckless and wanting and entirely inappropriate. She should take them back. Should step away, laugh it off and pretend she had not just…

His hand made contact.

Just his thumb, pressed gently against her cheekbone, rubbing at the ink stain she may or may not have actually had. But the effect was devastating. She felt it everywhere, in the catch of her breath, in the flutter of her pulse, and in the fevered warmth that took possession of her, radiating outward until every nerve seemed to come alive. 

It was spreading insidiously like a blaze throughout her aching body. 

His eyes had gone dark and his pupils had pupils blown wide, fixed on the point where his skin met hers as though he had never seen anything so remarkable. A muscle jumped in his jaw. His breath came harsh and uneven.

“You are so soft,” he said, and the words sounded torn from him, helpless and wondering. 

“I did not…I had forgotten what softness felt like.”

Five years, she thought. Five years without this.

Her hand came up before she could think better of it, her fingers wrapping around his wrist, not to pull him away, but to hold him there. To keep him touching her for just a moment longer.

The sound he made was inhuman. A groan that was almost a growl, torn from somewhere deep in his chest. His whole body shuddered, and for one heart-stopping moment she thought he might…

He wrenched himself away.

“No.” The word was ragged, desperate. He had retreated several steps, putting the width of the table between them, and his hands were shaking visibly at his sides. “No. This is…I cannot…”

“Gideon…”

“The journals.” His voice was barely controlled, a thin veneer of composure over something wild and dangerous. 

“Keep them. Catalog them. Do whatever you need to do. Just…” He was backing toward the door now, moving like a man fleeing a fire. 

“Just stay away from me.”

He was gone before she could respond, the echo of his footsteps fading into the depths of the house.

Seraphina stood alone among his memories, her cheek still burning where he’d touched her, and tried to convince herself that she wasn’t already in far too deep.

 

***

 

Sleep did not come easy.

She had tried…had lain in her bed for hours, staring at the cracked ceiling, counting sheep and reciting Latin conjugations and doing all the things one was supposed to do when sleep refused to come. But every time she closed her eyes, his face haunted her. She felt his thumb against her cheek. Heard the devastating sound he had made when she had touched his wrist.

You are so soft. I had forgotten what softness felt like.

She pressed her face into her pillow and groaned.

The situation was utterly beyond the bounds of reason, just as he was beyond the reach of propriety.

 It was pure folly, of the highest order. It was undoubtedly a certain invitation to ruin…yet she found herself advancing toward the precipice with a terrifying clarity of mind, her pulse racing in treasonous rhythm against all dictates of common sense.

She sat up, pushing the covers aside. The room was cold as the fire had died down hours ago, but she was burning from the inside, flushed with a heat that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with a dark-eyed duke who looked at her as if she was water and he was dying of thirst.

She contemplated walking through the corridors in order to relieve her restless body and wandering mind.

She was out of bed and reaching for her wrapper before the thought had fully formed. The silk was thin, inadequate against the chill, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She could not bear to lie in such unbearable stillness, haunted by the specter of a moment lost, wondering, with a heavy heart, what bliss might have been hers had he not withdrawn his hand.

The corridors of Ironwood Hall were silent at this hour as the shadows languidly gathered in the corners and candlelight flickered in the occasional sconce. Seraphina walked without direction, letting her feet carry her where they would, trying not to think about the fact that somewhere in this house, he was probably awake too. Probably pacing his own chambers, fighting the same battle she was fighting, wanting the same things she wanted…

She rounded a corner and stopped suddenly.

Music.

Faint, distant, but unmistakable, it was a low, mournful sound of a cello drifting through the darkness like smoke.

His “Secret”: He spends his nights doing something unexpectedly gentle.

Her heart began to flutter with a most disquieting haste.

She shouldn’t follow it. Should turn around and go back to her room and pretend she had never heard anything. The rules were clear…do not seek me out and this was definitely, absolutely, unquestionably seeking him out.

But her feet were already moving, carrying her toward the sound as though drawn by invisible strings.

The music grew louder as she walked, a Bach suite, she realised, something melancholy and yearning that seemed to give voice to all the things neither of them could say. It led her through a part of the house she hadn’t explored, down a corridor lined with covered paintings and dusty furniture, until she reached a door that stood slightly ajar.

Golden, flickering candlelight spilled through the small opening.

Seraphina pressed her palm flat against the wood and pushed.

The room beyond was a music room or had been, once. A pianoforte sat shrouded in the corner, its keys hidden beneath a dust cloth. Empty music stands stood like skeletons against the walls. But in the center of the room, illuminated by a single candelabra, sat Gideon.

He was dressed in nothing but shirtsleeves and trousers, his feet bare against the cold floor, his body curved around the cello like a lover. His eyes were closed, his expression one of complete surrender, and his hands, those scarred, shaking hands that he’d told her could no longer draw, moved across the strings with devastating grace.

He was a most handsome man.

It was an expression of such exquisite melancholy that to behold it was a sharp ache; it moved her to a state of wild inconsistency, where she longed both to weep and to rejoice.

 She felt a desperate impulse to close the distance between them and to be so utterly united in spirit and frame that their separate selves might easily have been lost in one another.

The music slowly built up to a crescendo and then faded into silence.

His eyes opened.

For a long moment, neither of them moved. He stared at her across the candlelit room, his expression shifting from surprise to something darker, hungrier and more dangerous.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

“I know.”

“The rules…”

“I know.”

She should leave. Every rational part of her brain was screaming at her to leave, to apologise for the intrusion and retreat to her room and forget she’d ever seen him like this, vulnerable and open and so heartbreakingly human.

Instead, she stepped further into the room.

“You play beautifully,” she said.

A muscle twitched in his jaw. “I play adequately. The cello does not require the same… precision as other instruments. I can manage it despite…” He lifted one scarred hand, flexed the fingers. “Despite the damage.”

“You told me you could not create anymore. That the fire took that from you.”

“I told you it took my ability to draw. I never said anything about music.”

“You led me to believe…”

“I let you believe what everyone believes.” His voice was bitter, sharp-edged.

 “That I am a monster who spends his nights howling at the moon, not…” He gestured at the cello, at himself, at the whole impossible scene.

 “Not this.”

Seraphina moved closer. The candlelight caught her thin wrapper, and she saw his gaze drop…just for a moment, just a flicker, before he wrenched it back to her face. His jaw tightened. His hands curled around the neck of the cello as if he was holding onto it for dear life.

“Why do you hide it?” she asked.

“Because it is private.” The words were rough, almost angry. 

“Because this is the one part of myself I have managed to keep. Because if people knew that the Beast of Ironwood spent his nights playing sad music in the dark, they might think I was…” He stopped and slowly shook his head.

“They might believe you were human,” she finished softly.

The silence that followed was deafening.

“You need to leave,” he said finally, his voice strained. 

“I cannot …Seraphina, I cannot do this with you standing there looking like…” His eyes swept over her again, lingering on the thin silk of her wrapper, the bare feet, the hair tumbling loose around her shoulders.

 “Looking like that.”

She should have been embarrassed. Should have realised how improper this was her in her nightclothes, him in his shirtsleeves, alone together in the middle of the night with no chaperone and nothing between them but candlelight and wanting.

She found herself emboldened, possessed of a reckless daring. For the first time, she felt truly, fervently alive.

“Like what?” she asked, and her voice came out lower than she’d intended, almost sultry.

It was at that very given point that his control shattered.

He was on his feet in an instant, the cello set aside with careless haste, and then he was striding toward her with a predator’s grace. She should have retreated. Should have run. Instead she stood her ground, her heart pounding, her whole body thrumming with anticipation.

He stopped inches away from her, close enough that she could feel the heat of him through the thin silk, close enough that his breath stirred the hair at her temple.

“Like temptation,” he growled.

 “Like everything I’ve been trying not to want. Like a woman who walked into the Beast’s lair and somehow…” His hand came up, hovering near her face, not quite touching.

 “Somehow…made him remember that he used to be a man.”

“You are a man.” She reached up slowly, giving him time to pull away and laid her palm flat against his chest.

His heartbeat thundered beneath her hand, wild and fast, matching the rhythm of her own. He shuddered at the contact, his whole body going taut, a sound escaping him that was half groan and half sob.

“Seraphina.” Her name was a warning, a plea, a prayer. “If you don’t leave right now, I don’t know what I’ll…”

“Then do not know.” She stepped closer, erasing the last of the distance between them, until they were pressed together from chest to hip. “Just feel.”

For one endless, breathless moment, she thought he might kiss her.

His head lowered. His breath ghosted across her lips. His hand finally made contact with her face, cupping her cheek like she was something precious, something fragile, something he was terrified of breaking.

“Not yet,” he whispered, and the words sounded like they were killing him. 

“Not like this. Not when I cannot …when I do not. He pressed his forehead against hers, their breath mingling in the space between them.

 “You deserve better than a monster in the dark.”

“You are not a monster.”

“You do not know that.”

“I know enough.”

He pulled back, not far, just enough to meet her eyes. In the candlelight, his expression was raw, stripped of all the walls he’d built, and what she saw beneath them made her heart ache.

Longing. Desperation. Fear.

And beneath it all, burning like an ember, hope.

“Go back to your room,” he said, but his hand was still on her face, his thumb stroking gentle circles against her cheekbone. 

“Please. Before I do something we’ll both regret.”

“Would you regret it?”

The question hung in the air, dangerous and honest.

“No,” he admitted, and the word sounded torn from him. 

“That’s the problem. I wouldn’t regret it at all.”

He stepped back and let his hand fall and put distance between them that felt like miles.

“Goodnight, Miss Vance.”

The formal address was a wall, rebuilt between them brick by brick.

Seraphina wanted to tear it down. Wanted to close the distance and press her mouth to his and show him exactly how much she wouldn’t regret it either.

Instead, she dipped into a curtsy, her silk wrapper whispering against the floor.

“Goodnight, Your Grace.”

She walked away on legs that weren’t entirely steady, feeling his gaze burning into her back with every step.

At the door, she paused. Looked back.

He was standing where she’d left him, illuminated by candlelight, looking like a fallen angel waiting for absolution.

“Gideon?”

His breath caught at his name on her lips.

“Play something happy tomorrow night,” she said. “I would like to hear it.”

She left before he could respond, closing the door softly behind her.

But as she walked back to her room, her heart racing and her skin flushed and her entire body humming with unfulfilled desire, she could have sworn she heard the cello begin again.

This time, the music was not sad at all.