Lillian’s voice carried across the garden. “These roses won’t prune themselves. And I’m told we have a birthday to prepare for.”
Edmund’s expression shifted. “One month until you turn sixteen.”
“One month until my debut.” Excitement and nervousness warred in the girl’s voice. “Assuming society hasn’t rejected me.”
“They won’t.” Isadora’s voice was steel. “Your uncle made certain of that.”
Edmund had spent months rebuilding his reputation—not through silence, but brutal honesty about the duel. About James. About the guilt he’d carried.
Society had been shocked. Then sympathetic.
The Dangerous Duke had become the grieving friend.
“I’m terrified,” Lillian admitted.
Edmund crossed to her. Pulled her into an embrace. “You won’t face it alone. We’ll be there. Every moment you need us.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” His voice roughened. “You’re my daughter. And I will not let them destroy what we’ve built.”
Isadora joined them. Wrapped her arms around them both.
Three people who’d found each other through scandal and fear. Learning what family meant.
Not perfection.
Simply love. Real and difficult and worth every struggle.
The roses around them budded. Promising beauty despite damage.
Rather like them.
“You cannot possibly mean to read that drivel.”
Charlotte’s voice cut through the morning quiet of her townhouse drawing room, sharp with protective fury that only a true friend could muster. But Isadora didn’t look up from the scandal sheet spread across her lap, simply continued reading words that felt like knife wounds, each line cutting deeper than the last.
The Dangerous Duke’s Latest Victim: Sources close to Rothwell Abbey report the new Duchess has fled her husband’s estate after mere weeks of marriage. One can only wonder what horrors transpired behind those ancient walls to drive a gently bred lady to such desperate measures...
“Isadora.” Charlotte moved closer, silk morning gown rustling with agitation. “Put it down. You’re only torturing yourself.”
“I should know what they’re saying.” Her voice came out flat, stripped of emotion through careful practice since arriving at Charlotte’s door three nights ago—pale, trembling, barely holding back tears that had threatened to consume her during the endless carriage ride from Yorkshire. “I should understand precisely how thoroughly my reputation has been destroyed.”
She turned the page with hands that wanted to shake but refused the weakness. More poison awaited in careful print, each word selected to cause maximum damage.
Sources suggest the Duke’s ward, Miss Lillian Gray, may be connected to the scandal that has haunted Rothwell for a decade. Whispers speak of illegitimacy, of secrets best left buried. One must question what sort of household the new Duchess found herself thrust into, and whether her hasty departure speaks to dangers we can only imagine...
Isadora’s hands tightened on the delicate newsprint, crushing it slightly. They were targeting Lillian now. A fifteen-year-old girl whose only crime was being born to circumstances beyond her control. The injustice of it made her chest tight with anger that had nowhere to go except inward, where it joined the grief and humiliation already consuming her.
“That’s enough.” Charlotte snatched the scandal sheet from her grasp with uncharacteristic force, crossed to the fireplace and threw it in where flames consumed lies and half-truths with equal efficiency. “You’ll drive yourself mad reading that poison, and I won’t stand by and watch it happen.”
“Too late.” Isadora rose from her chair, moved to the window overlooking the street where London bustled below—carriages passing, servants running errands, life continuing as though her world hadn’t shattered into pieces so small she’d never find them all. “I’m already quite mad. Why else would I have married him?”
The question hung rhetorical and bitter in the air between them, impossible to answer because there were too many answers and none of them made sense anymore. Outside, Christmas decorations adorned every townhouse she could see—wreaths on doors, candles in windows, festive cheer that mocked the hollowness spreading through her chest like frost.
She’d been in London for three days, which felt like three years. Three days of hiding in Charlotte’s guest chambers while gossip spread like wildfire through society’s drawing rooms. Three days of reading scandal sheets and society columns until the words blurred together, watching her reputation burn while Edmund remained silent at Rothwell Abbey, apparently content to let her suffer alone for sins she hadn’t committed.
He hadn’t written. Hadn’t sent word. Hadn’t done anything to suggest her absence mattered in the slightest beyond the inconvenience it might cause to his carefully ordered life.
