Chapter One

“You cannot continue like this, Rowan.”

The words lingered in the dim study, as unwelcome as the shafts of summer sunlight straining past the heavy curtains. Rowan Vale, Duke of Thornwood did not turn from the window where he stood—if his rigid, carefully balanced posture could truly be called standing. One hand gripped the back of a chair, the knuckles pale beneath skin once darkened by campaign sun. Now he was as colourless as parchment, diminished in every way since returning from the Continent eight months earlier.

“I was not aware I required your permission to conduct my life, Marcus.”

His voice emerged low and controlled, each word measured with precision. Control, that was what remained to him. Control over his expression, his tone, the careful shifting of his weight so his ruined leg would not betray him.

Lord Marcus Vale stepped farther into the room, his boots sounding softly against the floorboards. Rowan tracked the movement without looking, an old instinct from the war, when footsteps might herald either orders or death.

“Permission? No.” Marcus’s tone carried the familiar mixture of affection and concern that had marked their relationship since childhood. Raised together after Marcus’s father died, they had long since ceased to feel like cousins. “But concern? That, I fear, you cannot forbid.”

Rowan’s jaw tightened. The scar that stretched from his left temple down across his cheek and neck pulled with the movement, a constant reminder—though none was needed—of what he had become. The mirrors had been removed from his chambers months ago. He had not regretted their absence.

“Your concern is noted,” he said coolly. “And unnecessary.”

“Is it?” Marcus crossed toward the desk, riffling through what Rowan knew would be the growing heap of unanswered correspondence. “When was the last time you left this room? This house? When did you last ride your lands or meet with your tenants?”

When I could do so without disgrace, Rowan thought bitterly. When I could mount a horse without assistance. When crossing a room did not feel like a military campaign.

“The estate is managed competently,” he replied aloud.

“By your steward. By your butler. By everyone except its Duke.” Marcus’s frustration softened into something gentler. “Rowan, I have not come to quarrel with you. I am here because I…because the family… we are worried.”

The family.

Rowan nearly laughed.

They had visited twice since his return: once when he arrived half-dead from the journey, feverish and broken; and once more several months later, when duty or curiosity had demanded another display of familial concern. They had looked upon his face, upon the ruin of what had once been called handsome, and struggled not to recoil.

He had spared them further discomfort by removing himself from sight altogether.

“The family may reassure themselves that I remain alive,” Rowan said flatly. “Beyond that, I have little to offer.”

“That is not true.”

“Is it not?”

This time, he turned, slowly and deliberately, allowing the light to strike the scarred side of his face. He had learned, during these long months of seclusion, how to use his disfigurement as a weapon. Most people flinched.

Marcus, to his credit, did not.

But Marcus had seen worse. Marcus had stood beside him through those first dreadful weeks, when pain and fever had made him scarcely recognisable, even to himself.

“You are the Duke of Thornwood,” Marcus continued steadily. “You hold a seat in Parliament. Seven hundred tenants depend upon your judgment. You have responsibilities—”

“I am aware of my responsibilities.”

The sharpness of the interruption made Marcus pause. Good. Perhaps if he proved sufficiently unpleasant, his cousin would finally retreat and leave him to the silence—the blessed silence in which no one looked at him with pity disguised as concern.

“Then you must also be aware,” Marcus said carefully, “that you cannot fulfil those responsibilities whilst hiding in this mausoleum.”

A bitter half-smile touched Rowan’s mouth.

A mausoleum indeed.

Thornwood Hall had become precisely that: a tomb inhabited by the ghost of the man he had once been.

“What would you have me do, Marcus? Parade myself through the village and terrify the children? Attend assemblies and watch young ladies flee in horror?” His hand lifted in a brief, vicious gesture toward his scarred face. “I do everyone a kindness by remaining here.”

“You do yourself an injury.” Marcus crossed the room, stopping just short of him. “Your leg, Rowan. The physician said—”

“The physician said many things. Most of them useless.”

As if summoned by the words, pain pulsed through the ruined limb. The cannon blast that had torn through his company had shattered bone and ripped through muscle alike. The surgeons had preserved the leg, but not its strength. On good days, he limped. On bad days, he scarcely walked at all.

“Then perhaps,” Marcus said cautiously, “you require a different sort of assistance.”

Something in his tone sharpened Rowan’s attention immediately.

“What have you done?”

“Nothing you will not eventually thank me for.”

“Marcus.”

His cousin raised a placating hand. “I made discreet inquiries. There is a woman—a healer—whose methods have achieved remarkable success with injuries similar to yours.”

“A healer.” Rowan’s voice flattened. “You have brought me a village mystic dispensing poultices and superstition?”

“Nothing of the sort. Miss Eliza Wyndham is the daughter of Edmund Wyndham, the surgeon. Surely you remember him? He served in the Royal Navy before establishing his practice in Kent.”

Rowan did remember. Wyndham had been spoken of with considerable respect among officers—a man reputed to save lives others would have abandoned. He had died some years earlier, though Rowan could not recall the particulars.

“His daughter,” he repeated.

“She trained under him from childhood. Her methods may be unconventional, but I have spoken with several gentlemen who credit her with restoring mobility they had been told was permanently lost.” Marcus paused. “She is not formally a physician, but she understands war injuries in ways fashionable London surgeons do not.”

“And you have what? Engaged her services without consulting me?”

“I invited her to Thornwood Hall to determine whether she might assist you.” Marcus met his gaze directly. “She arrived this morning.”

For one long moment, Rowan could not speak.

The presumption of it—the extraordinary arrogance—stole the breath from him.

“Send her away.”

“Rowan—”

“I will not be examined by some surgeon’s daughter amusing herself with medical experiments. I will not be treated as a helpless case to be managed.” His voice dropped dangerously low. “Send her away, Marcus, or I shall do it myself.”

“At least meet her.” Marcus’s composure began to crack. “Five minutes. If you still wish her gone afterward, I will escort her to the village myself and compensate her for the trouble. But I ask this of you as your cousin—as your friend—as the man who sat beside your bed for three weeks while you burned with fever and begged for death. Please. Give her five minutes.”

The words landed like a blow.

Rowan remembered little of those weeks beyond fragments: agony, laudanum, the sensation of being held down while delirium consumed him. But he remembered Marcus’s voice, steady in the darkness.

He owed Marcus his life.

And he hated that truth.

“Five minutes,” Rowan said at last; each word dragged unwillingly from him. “And then she leaves.”

Chapter Two

Eliza Wyndham had learned, in her three-and-twenty years, how to wait.

She had waited at her father’s side through surgeries that stretched for hours, instruments ready in her hands, watching for the precise moment when she would be needed. She had waited beside sickbeds through long, airless nights, counting breaths and heartbeats, alert to the smallest sign of improvement or decline. She had waited, after her father’s death, for grief to loosen its hold enough that she might remember how to live.

She was waiting now, in a guest parlour that had plainly been opened and aired for her arrival. Its furnishings were elegant, but impersonal; the sort of room prepared for duty rather than welcome. The house around her felt heavy with silence—not the peaceful quiet of a country estate in summer, but something denser. More oppressive.

A house holding its breath.

The Duke of Thornwood did not wish to see her.

She had gathered as much from the butler’s carefully neutral expression, from the housekeeper’s manner as she had shown Eliza to this room, and from Lord Marcus’s letters, which had not attempted to disguise the truth. His cousin was resistant to assistance, suspicious of strangers, determined to shut himself away from the world and all who inhabited it.

A wounded creature, Eliza had thought while reading those letters. Cornered, snarling, and too frightened to recognise a hand that might heal rather than harm.

She had treated wounded creatures before—literally, as a girl, when she had nursed injured birds and foxes back to life, and figuratively, in the soldiers who had come to her after the war, their bodies damaged and their spirits shattered.

The trick was patience.

The trick was proving, slowly and steadily, that one was not a threat.

The door opened.

Eliza rose, smoothing her skirts in a gesture more habitual than necessary. Her gown was good but plain: dove-grey muslin, serviceable after travel, chosen to suggest competence rather than fashion. Her dark hair was pinned neatly beneath a simple cap, and her only ornament was the silver watch that had belonged to her father, tucked close where she could feel its familiar weight against her heart.

Lord Marcus entered first, wearing the tense expression of a man who had staked much on uncertain ground.

Behind him came another figure.

Eliza’s breath caught before she could prevent it.

She had seen injuries before. She had seen men marked by fire, blade, and shot. She had kept steady before sights that would have sent many ladies into hysterics. But something about the Duke of Thornwood—about the contrast between the ruin of his left side and the austere, almost severe beauty of his right—struck her with unexpected force.

He had once been handsome. Devastatingly so, if the portraits in the entrance hall were to be believed. Strong jaw, high cheekbones, eyes the grey-green of a winter sea. The right side of his face still held that beauty, preserved like sculpture. The left told another story entirely.

The scarring began at his temple and swept down across his cheek in a mottled river of pink and white, the skin drawn tight in places and ridged in others. It disappeared beneath his collar, though Lord Marcus’s letters had told her it continued down his neck and shoulder—the legacy of burning debris searing through uniform and flesh alike.

He watched her look.

She could feel the weight of his gaze: sharp, assessing, waiting for the flinch. Waiting for pity. Waiting for revulsion to confirm every dark thing he had come to believe about himself.

Eliza gave him none of them.

“Your Grace,” she said, dipping into a curtsey respectful enough for his rank, but not obsequious. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.”

“I agreed to nothing.” His voice was low and clipped, every word a small weapon. “My cousin overstepped. You were brought here under false pretences, and I apologise for the waste of your time.”

“There is no need to apologise.” Eliza straightened and met his eyes directly. They were indeed grey-green, she noted—pale as sea glass, and twice as cold. “Lord Marcus made it quite clear in his letters that you had not consented to my presence. I came nonetheless, because I believed, and still believe, that I may be of assistance.”

Something flickered across his face. Surprise, perhaps, that she had not already retreated.

“You were told I did not want you here, and still you came.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

It was a fair question, and Eliza considered it before answering.

“Because I have learned, Your Grace, that what we want and what we require are not always the same thing. And because I have seen too many men like you—wounded, isolated, convinced beyond reason that they are beyond help—to walk away simply because the door was not opened with enthusiasm.”

“Men like me.” His jaw tightened, and she saw his hand flex against the back of the chair he used for support. The movement was slight, but she catalogued it automatically: his right leg bearing most of his weight, the left placed with care, his grip suggesting considerable reliance on the upper body. “You know nothing of men like me, Miss Wyndham.”

“I know that you were injured eight months ago in an engagement on the Continent. I know the damage to your leg was severe enough that amputation was considered and rejected. I know the burns to your face and shoulder have healed, but that the tissue beneath remains compromised.” She kept her voice steady and clinical, offering facts rather than sympathy. “I know you have refused to see the physicians your family has sent, that you rarely leave this house, and that your mobility has declined rather than improved since your return.”

“You have been thorough in your research.”

“I am always thorough, Your Grace. It is how I obtain results.”

For a long moment, he merely looked at her.

The silence stretched between them, and Eliza forced herself to remain still, allowing him to take her measure without fidgeting or filling the pause with nervous chatter. Her father had taught her the value of silence, and the way it could speak more plainly than words.

“Results,” the Duke repeated at last. “And what results do you imagine you might obtain with me, Miss Wyndham? Will you restore my leg to its former strength? Erase the scars that mark me as a monster? Wave your healer’s hands and make me whole again?”

The bitterness in his voice was sharp enough to cut, but Eliza did not let it wound her. Bitterness, she had learned, was often the last defence of a man who had run out of other weapons.

“I do not work miracles, Your Grace. I cannot restore what has been lost, and I would not insult you by pretending otherwise.” She clasped her hands before her, choosing her next words with care. “But I can assess the present state of your injury and determine whether some of the mobility you have lost might be regained through proper treatment. I can address the inflammation that is likely causing you considerable pain—pain you have learned to conceal, but which costs you more than you realise. I can help rebuild strength in muscles weakened by disuse.”

“And what makes you believe I want any of that?”

The question hung in the air, heavy with more than refusal. It carried the weight of a man who had decided, somewhere in the darkness of this silent house, that he did not deserve to heal; that this broken version of himself was all that remained, and all that ought to remain.

She had seen that burden before.

It was heavier than any physical wound.

“I do not know what you want, Your Grace,” she said quietly. “But I know what is possible. And I believe you deserve the chance to decide for yourself, with full knowledge of your options, rather than surrendering to despair before you have truly fought.”

Something shifted in his expression, too swift to read—there and gone like light passing behind cloud.

When he spoke again, his voice had lost a little of its edge.

“You speak plainly, Miss Wyndham.”

“I find plain speaking saves time, Your Grace. And I have never seen the purpose in wrapping difficult truths in comfortable lies.”

“A dangerous philosophy for a woman in your position.”

“Perhaps.” She allowed herself the faintest smile. “But I have found that men who have been to war prefer honesty to flattery. They have seen too much to be persuaded by pretty words.”

The Duke’s gaze sharpened.

For a moment, Eliza had the disconcerting sense of being truly seen—not as a healer, not as a woman, but as a person whose measure he was taking with the same careful attention she had applied to him.

“Five minutes,” he said abruptly.

Lord Marcus, who had watched the exchange with barely concealed tension, stepped forward. “Rowan—”

“I said I would grant her five minutes. The five minutes are over.” The Duke’s attention remained fixed on Eliza. “You may remain tonight, Miss Wyndham, as it is too late for travel. Tomorrow, a carriage will take you to the village, and you will be compensated for your trouble.”

It was a dismissal, plain and final.

Eliza inclined her head in acknowledgement.

“As you wish, Your Grace. But if I may—” She paused, waiting until she was certain she had his attention. “I will not force my presence upon you. I will not badger or plead, nor attempt to convince you through argument. But I shall remain available, should you change your mind. The east wing, I understand, has been prepared for me. I shall be there, should you have need.”

“I shall not have need.”

“Perhaps not.” She dipped into another perfectly correct curtsey. “I wish you good evening, Your Grace. And I thank you for your time.”

She turned and walked to the door, conscious of his gaze upon her back, conscious of every measured step. Her hand was on the handle when his voice stopped her.

“Miss Wyndham.”

She turned. “Your Grace?”

He stood very still in the dim study, half-shadowed, half-revealed. When he spoke, his voice had lost its sharpest edges and become something almost uncertain.

“You did not flinch.”

It was not a question, but Eliza answered it nonetheless.

“No, Your Grace. I did not.”

“Why?”

She considered the question—considered the dozen replies she might offer, the clinical explanations and practised reassurances. In the end, she chose the simple truth.

“Because I see no reason to flinch from a man who has suffered greatly. Your scars are evidence of survival, Your Grace, not cause for revulsion. I have learned to look at what is before me, not only at what was lost.” She paused. “Good night.”

She slipped through the door before he could answer, closing it softly behind her. In the corridor, she allowed herself one long breath, steadying the heartbeat that had quickened without her permission.

It was not the scars that had unsettled her, she realised.

It was the eyes.

Those winter-sea eyes, alive with pain and pride and something else—something dangerously close to hope, though starved almost beyond recognition.

You will not send me away, she thought as she made her way towards the east wing.

Not yet.

She had no evidence for the belief. Only the instinct of a woman who had spent her life reading the subtle language of wounded things.

***

Rowan remained standing for a long time after the door closed.

The study had fallen silent again, but it was not the same silence as before. It felt charged now, as though the air itself had been altered by her presence. He could still hear her voice: calm, steady, cutting through his defences with surgical precision.

Your scars are evidence of survival, Your Grace, not cause for revulsion.

He did not believe her.

Could not believe her.

He had seen the faces of servants who looked at him by accident, had seen the swift, horrified flicker they tried and failed to hide. He had seen his own reflection during that first terrible week, before he had ordered every mirror removed: the monster staring back, unrecognisable as the man who had ridden to war with confidence and purpose.

And yet.

She had not flinched.

He had positioned himself deliberately, allowing the light to fall across the worst of his scars, and waited for the telltale flash of disgust or pity.

It had not come.

She had looked at him as she might look at any patient: assessing, analytical, but not unkind.

“Well?” Marcus’s voice broke through his thoughts. “What do you think?”

Rowan turned slowly, his leg protesting the movement. “I think you had no right to bring her here without my consent.”

“That is not what I asked.”

No. It was not.

Rowan moved to the leather wingback near the cold fireplace and lowered himself into it with the careful movements that had become second nature. His leg throbbed dully, an ever-present companion, and he closed his eyes against the pain.

“She is… not what I expected.”

“In what way?”

In every way, Rowan thought.

He had expected someone older, perhaps. Someone with the brisk, impersonal manner of a nurse, or the simpering deference of a woman eager to curry favour with a duke. He had not expected youth and quiet composure. He had not expected eyes the colour of warm honey, steady and unafraid. He had not expected to feel, for one disorienting moment, as though she could see past the ruin of his face to something beneath.

“It matters not,” he said aloud. “She will be gone tomorrow.”

“Rowan—”

“The discussion is closed, Marcus.” He opened his eyes and fixed his cousin with a look that had once commanded soldiers. “I appreciate your concern. I do not appreciate your interference. Let that be an end to it.”

Marcus looked as though he wished to argue, but something in Rowan’s expression must have warned him against it. He sighed, the sound heavy with frustrated resignation.

“Very well. I shall leave you to your solitude, since you seem so determined to preserve it.” He moved towards the door, then paused with his hand on the frame. “But Rowan? I saw the way you looked at her. And I saw the way she looked at you—without flinching, as you said. Do not be so quick to dismiss what that might mean.”

The door closed behind him, leaving Rowan alone with the shadows.

He sat for a long time, watching the light fade beyond the curtains, thinking of nothing and everything. The pain in his leg ebbed and returned like a tide. The scars on his face felt tight and foreign, as they always did.

And beneath it all—beneath the bitterness, the resignation, and the careful walls he had built around himself—something stirred.

Something small and dangerous.

Something he had thought long dead.

I shall remain available, should you change your mind.

Her voice. Her steady, unflinching gaze. The way she had spoken to him not as a patient to be managed, nor as a duke to be flattered, but as a man. Simply a man, worthy of honesty rather than comfortable lies.

No one has spoken to me so plainly, Rowan realised, the thought settling in his chest like a stone.

No one, since before the war.

He did not know what to do with that knowledge. He did not know whether it was hope or merely another form of torment.

He only knew that sleep, when it finally came, was long in arriving—and that when it did, he dreamed not of cannon fire and screams, but of honey-coloured eyes that had looked upon him without fear.

Chapter Three

“Miss Wyndham remains in residence, Your Grace.”

Rowan’s hand stilled upon the letter he had been pretending to read.

Three days.

Three days since the surgeon’s daughter had arrived uninvited. Three days since she had first looked upon him without flinching. Three days since she had calmly declared she would remain available, and then, infuriatingly, done precisely that.

“I am aware, Graves.” He did not look up from the meaningless correspondence before him. “Has she made herself a nuisance?”

“No, Your Grace.” Graves’s tone possessed the perfect neutrality of a servant too well trained to reveal his opinions. “Miss Wyndham has been… remarkably unobtrusive. She has spent much of her time in the stillroom, I believe. Organising the medicinal stores.”

Rowan’s jaw tightened.

The stillroom had been neglected for years—certainly since before the war, when his mother had still lived to oversee the household remedies and herbal preparations that had once formed part of a duchess’s domain. It was a sensible occupation for a healer with idle hours.

A useful one, even.

He resented it intensely.

“She asks nothing of the household?” he pressed. “Makes no demands? Does not attempt to insert herself where she is not wanted?”

“None whatsoever, Your Grace. She takes her meals in her chambers, walks the grounds only in the early morning before the household is stirring, and has expressed no desire for entertainment or company.” A slight pause. “Mrs Finch reports that she is… pleasant. The staff appear rather fond of her already.”

Of course they were.

Rowan set the letter down with more force than necessary. Miss Eliza Wyndham, with her calm voice and steady eyes, was making herself indispensable without seeming to try. Not through manipulation or charm, but through usefulness—which was somehow worse.

Well. He would not be managed.

“Send for her,” he said abruptly. “I wish to speak with her in my study. At once.”

“If you wish, Your Grace.”

The door closed behind the butler.

Rowan pushed himself slowly to his feet. His leg protested immediately; it had been a difficult morning, the joint stiff and swollen after another restless night. Still, he forced himself upright.

He moved to the window where a narrow gap in the curtains admitted a blade of afternoon sunlight, positioning himself deliberately so that when she entered, she would see the scarred side of his face in full illumination.

He had done something similar three days earlier.

She had not flinched.

He wanted to know whether that composure had been genuine, or merely the disciplined courtesy of a first encounter.

The minutes dragged.

Rowan counted his breaths, an old discipline from the field, using the rhythm to steady the distribution of weight between his good leg and his ruined one. Standing had become an exercise in endurance, every movement measured, every adjustment deliberate.

A knock sounded.

“Enter.”

The door opened.

Miss Wyndham stepped inside dressed, once again, with studied simplicity. Her morning gown of pale blue suited her colouring, drawing warmth into her complexion, while her dark hair remained neatly pinned beneath the same modest cap. She closed the door quietly behind her before dropping into a curtsey.

“Your Grace. You wished to see me.”

Not a question. Not hope.

Simply acknowledgement.

“Miss Wyndham.” Rowan kept his tone cold. “I confess myself surprised to discover you still in residence. I believe I was quite clear regarding the temporary nature of your stay.”

“You were, Your Grace.” She straightened smoothly. “You permitted me one night beneath your roof. I chose to regard the absence of any direct dismissal thereafter as permission to remain until told otherwise.”

“A remarkably convenient interpretation.”

“A hopeful one, perhaps.”

The faintest suggestion of amusement touched her mouth.

“I have found that gentlemen determined to refuse assistance often require time in which to reconsider. I thought it prudent to remain available should reconsideration occur.”

“It has not.”

“So I gathered.”

Again, her gaze moved steadily over his scarred face, mercilessly illuminated by the afternoon light. Again, Rowan searched for the recoil that did not come.

“Yet here I am, summoned to your study,” she continued evenly. “One might almost conclude you wished to speak with me.”

Something in her tone—not insolence precisely, but awareness—made Rowan’s hands curl at his sides.

“I wished to speak with you,” he said deliberately, “because your continued presence in my home has become an irritation. You are wasting your time, Miss Wyndham. Whatever my cousin may have promised you, whatever compensation you expected, you shall not receive it. I have no need of a healer hovering over my condition.”

“I do not hover, Your Grace. It interferes with observation.”

“There is nothing for you to observe.”

“On that point, I must disagree.”

She took a single step nearer—not enough to crowd him, merely enough to shorten the distance between them.

“Your leg is troubling you more severely today. You are carrying greater weight upon the right side than you were three days ago, and your shoulders are tense with the effort of compensating for it. The inflammation has worsened, likely from insufficient rest and continued strain upon the joint.”

Rowan stared at her.

The accuracy of the assessment unsettled him. He had said nothing regarding the pain. He had concealed it carefully, as he always did.

Yet she had seen through him at once.

“You presume a great deal, Miss Wyndham.”

“I observe, Your Grace. It is what I was trained to do.”

Her voice softened slightly.

“Your leg is not healing correctly. Without intervention, your mobility will continue to decline until walking becomes exceedingly difficult. That is not conjecture. It is fact.”

“And you believe you can prevent this?”

“I believe I may help. Whether improvement is possible depends upon many things, not least your willingness to permit it.”

She paused.

“I know you do not wish me here. I know you have convinced yourself that isolation is preferable to assistance, and that any offer of help must conceal some ulterior motive. I cannot alter your beliefs. I can only tell you what I see and leave the decision to you.”

The silence stretched between them.

She sees too much, Rowan thought uneasily.

Not the title. Not merely the scars. The weakness beneath them.

“Whatever my cousin is paying you,” he said flatly, “I shall double it. Triple it, if necessary. Name your price, Miss Wyndham, and I shall have a carriage prepared within the hour.”

Something flickered briefly across her face—disappointment, perhaps.

“I do not want your money, Your Grace.”

“Everyone wants money.”

“Not everyone.” She met his gaze steadily. “I came because Lord Marcus described a man who was suffering needlessly when treatment might help. I came because I have seen too many wounded soldiers abandoned to pain and hopelessness simply because no one was willing to persist beyond failure.”

A brief pause.

“I shall leave if you insist upon it. But I will not accept money to do so. That is not why I came.”

Rowan searched her face for calculation, ambition, deceit.

He found nothing.

It infuriated him.

“Very well, Miss Wyndham.” He turned slightly away, presenting her with his unscarred profile. “Since bribery proves ineffective, allow me to be plain. Your services are not required. Your presence is not wanted. You may remain in the east wing until the end of the week, at which point I expect you to make other arrangements. Is that sufficiently clear?”

“Perfectly clear, Your Grace.”

“Then we have nothing further to discuss.”

He heard the soft rustle of her curtsey. Her footsteps crossed the carpet toward the door.

He waited for the latch to click.

Instead, her voice came once more, quiet but unwavering.

“The inflammation in your leg is causing the surrounding muscles to seize. That is why the pain worsens during the night and is most severe in the morning. Warm compresses before sleep, combined with gentle manipulation of the joint, would provide considerable relief.”

A pause.

“I offer the information only because it may prove useful. What you choose to do with it is entirely your own affair.”

The door closed softly behind her.

Rowan remained motionless in the shaft of sunlight, his hands unsteady with something he refused to examine.

***

Eliza did not allow her composure to crack until she reached the privacy of her chambers.

Only then did she sink into the chair beside the window and press her palms firmly against her skirts to still their trembling.

Well. That could have gone better.

She had known, before arriving at Thornwood Hall, that the Duke would not welcome her presence. Lord Marcus’s letters had painted the portrait of a man buried beneath despair, determined to drive away anyone who attempted to help him.

She had expected resistance.

She had expected anger.

She had expected the sharp cruelty wounded men sometimes wielded in self-defence.

What she had not expected was the way he looked at her.

Those grey-green eyes studied her with such relentless intensity that she felt stripped bare beneath them. And when he had offered her money to leave, desperation, not arrogance, had roughened his voice.

He fears disappointment more than pain, she realised.

That, perhaps, was the deeper wound.

It was not unfamiliar to her. She had seen the same fear in soldiers her father had treated after the war—men who had taught themselves not to hope because hope, once disappointed often enough, became unbearable.

The Duke had built walls around himself high enough to withstand a siege.

But walls could erode.

Patience and persistence, her father had always said, were a healer’s greatest tools. One could not force a wound to close. One could only create the conditions for healing and wait.

The question was whether she possessed enough time.

Four days.

Four days before he expected her departure.

She rose and crossed to the small desk where she had arranged her supplies: dried herbs, tinctures, salves—the familiar tools of her trade. Sorting them steadied her.

If the Duke refused her help, she would simply make herself useful elsewhere.

The stillroom required restoring. Several tenant families had children suffering from summer colds. There was work to be done, whether or not Thornwood’s master consented to becoming her patient.

And perhaps, in time, quiet usefulness would accomplish what argument could not.