Chapter One
London, 1882
To society, shewas the Duchess of Burghly. To her husband, murdered by a Fenian’s blade, she had been Araminta, formal and proper and beloved by him in his way. She had loved him equally in her way. Sweet Freddie, with the heart of an angel and the desire to change a world that would never understand or accept him.
She was all too familiar with the way the world treated hopeful, unsullied hearts.
“Ara.”
She had been hopeful and unsullied once.
When she had known the man standing before her in the drawing room of Burghly House. When she had loved him. When she had been…
“Ara.”
There it was again, spoken with such dark vehemence that it almost vibrated in the air, sending unwanted tendrils of heat licking through her even after all the years that had passed. That name, that bitter reminder of who she had been, spoken in the voice that had once sent a thrill straight to her heart…it was her undoing.
Ara had not realized she had clambered to her feet until her body swayed like a tree caught in an aggressive wind. Faintness overcame her. Her vision darkened. The palms clenching her silken skirts were damp, hands trembling.
He was taller than she remembered. Broader and stronger. He had always been a mountain of a man, but he had grown into his bones and skin, and the result took her breath despite her fierce need to remain as unaffected by him as possible. His eyes, cold and flat, burned into her. His jaw was rigid, his expression blank. A vicious-looking scar cut down his cheek.
She wondered for a moment how he could have received such a mark.
And then she reminded herself that she did not care. That he had ceased to be someone she worried after some eight years ago, on the day she had waited for him with nothing more than a valise and her foolish heart. He had never come.
The agony of that day returned to her a hundredfold as she stood in the gilt splendor of her drawing room, stabbing at her with the precision of a blade. Hours had passed, day bleeding into evening, and she had waited and waited. The only carriage to arrive had been her father’s, and it had taken her, broken and dejected, back to the place from which she had fled.
“Your Grace, are you well?”
The voice of the Duke of Carlisle, edged with concern, pierced her consciousness, reminding her she had an audience, lest she allow her dignity to so diminish that she allowedhimto see the visceral effect he had upon her.
She swallowed, tamped down the bile threatening to curdle her throat, and turned her attention to Carlisle. “I am as well as can be expected, given the events of the last three months, Duke. I thank you for your concern.”
He inclined his head. “I am deeply sorry for the loss of your husband, madam. He was a bright star in the Liberal party.”
“Yes,” she agreed, a tremor in her voice that she could not suppress. Speaking of Freddie inevitably festered a resurgence of horror and sadness. He had been a good man, an estimable husband to her and father to Edward, and he had not deserved to die choking on his own blood in a Dublin park. “He was.”
Carlisle’s lips compressed into a pained frown. “I cannot begin to fathom your grief, and I apologize for our unwanted presence here today. If there were any way to keep you free of this burden, I wholeheartedly would.”
“The grief is immense,” she whispered, all she could manage past the knot in her throat.
How she hated that it wasn’t just her sorrow for Freddie that paralyzed her now and stole her voice. She felthisstare upon her like a brand. He had not moved. Had not spoken another word save her name, and yet he seemed to have stolen all the air from the room.
“As I was saying prior to Mr. Ludlow’s arrival,” Carlisle continued with a formal tone, “it is with great regret that I find myself tasked with informing you that there has been a threat made against you by the same faction of Fenians that murdered your husband. To that end, the Home Office has assigned an agent to ensure your protection.”
Carlisle’s words sank into her mind as though spoken from a great distance.
…a threat made against you…
…same Fenians that murdered…
…an agent to ensure your protection.
Her breathing was shallow. Her fingers fisted in her skirts with so much force that her knuckles ached. Still, the weight ofhisburning gaze upon her would not lift. Her entire body felt achy and hot and itchy and chaotic all at once.
“Would you care to elaborate on the nature of the threat?” She kept her eyes carefully trained upon the Duke of Carlisle, but it was impossible to keephimfrom her peripheral vision. He filled the chamber as much with his presence as with his massive size.
The Duke of Carlisle, despite his reputation as a depraved reprobate, was the unexpected liaison between herself and the department of the government responsible for informing her about Freddie’s murder and the investigation into finding his assassins. Their previous meetings had been equally stilted, revolving around his sympathy for her loss and any new information regarding the Fenians who had plotted Freddie’s death.
