She slowed near the balustrade overlooking the lower garden, resting her hands against the cold stone, and closing her eyes for a moment. Her breath came shallow at first, then steadier, the night air filling her lungs in a way the ballroom never could. She pressed her fingers more firmly into the stone, grounding herself in its solidity, in the certainty of where she was.
“It was nothing,” she told herself quietly. “A trick of the light. A resemblance. You imagined it.”
But her heart refused to listen. It continued its uneven pace, each beat sharp with the memory of that familiar line of jaw, that unmistakable posture she had not seen in years and yet would recognize anywhere. She opened her eyes and stared out across the lawn, counting the shapes she could see: the curve of the path, the pale gleam of marble statuary, the dark mass of trees beyond. Anything to keep herself present.
Footsteps sounded behind her. “You should not be out here alone, Madeline.”
The voice cut cleanly through the quiet, close enough that she jumped despite herself. She turned immediately, her hand catching the balustrade as her pulse leapt. Her breath stalled for a brief, humiliating moment before she could draw it back in.
Wilhelm stood a few paces away. The dark lines of his evening coat were stark against the softer shadows of the garden. He had removed his gloves. One hand hung loosely at his side, the other resting at his hip, his posture straight but alert, as though he had been looking for her and had not been surprised to find her here.
“Your Grace,” she said, straining her voice with visible effort. “I did not hear you.”
“I did not mean to startle you. I simply saw you leave,” Wilhelm said, stepping into the pale, watery moonlight. His face was a mask of hard angles and deep shadows, his eyes dark pits ofblue that seemed to drink her in, devouring the sight of her. “And found I could not remain inside while you were out here, vulnerable to the night.”
“I am perfectly safe,” she lied, the words brittle. She turned her face away, terrified that the moonlight would reveal the raw, naked fear in her eyes—the terror of a girl who had spent a year running from a woman who shared her own blood. “The ball… you should be there. Tessa is…”
“Henry is currently spinning Tessa in circles and ensuring she feels like the belle of the Season,” Wilhelm interrupted, his voice dropping an octave, becoming that low, jagged rasp that always made Madeline’s pulse skip a beat. He moved closer, his scent surrounding her until she felt trapped between his massive frame and the garden wall.
Madeline felt the heat of him radiating through his evening coat, a magnetic pull that made her want to lean into him and weep, to bury her face in his chest and tell him everything—the Captain, her mother, the life she had traded for the quiet safety of Kirkford Hall. But she couldn’t. She was a governess, and he was a Duke, and the distance between them was a chasm she had no right to cross.
“We should walk,” he said, not a request but a quiet command, and he offered his arm.
Madeline hesitated, her fingers hovering over the fine wool of his sleeve before she finally let them settle there. Even through her gloves, the contact felt electric, a jolt of pure, unadulteratedawareness that sizzled through her veins. As they moved deeper into the garden, away from the muffled thrum of the orchestra, the silence became its own kind of weight, intimate and suffocatingly beautiful.
“My parents never walked like this,” Wilhelm said abruptly, his gaze fixed on the gravel path beneath their feet. “My father saw affection as a tactical error. My mother saw it as a chore. I grew up in houses that were larger than most villages, and yet I was always cold, Madeline. Always starving for a word that wasn’t a reprimand or a lecture on the duty of the Kirkford line.”
Madeline looked up at him, her heart aching with a sudden, fierce tenderness. She thought of his daughter, of the way he looked at Tessa’s scars with such agonized love, and she realized that his stiffness was a shield he had built to protect a heart that had been frozen since childhood.
“I struggle,” he continued, his voice tight, his jaw flexing in the moonlight. “I see the way you move through the world, the way you speak to Tessa, and I feel… I feel like a man standing on the edge of a precipice. I do not know how to be soft. I do not know how to give her what you give her without feeling as though I am breaking apart.”
“You aren’t breaking, Your Grace,” she whispered, the intimacy of it all hanging in the air like a bared secret. “You are opening. While it’s challenging to open one’s heart, you must feel that you’re reaping the rewards each time you make your daughter smile.”
He stopped then, turning her toward him so sharply that her skirts flared around his boots. He took her face in his large, gloved hands, his thumbs stroking the line of her cheekbones with a reverence that made her breath hitch.
“You are the most dangerous thing that has ever entered my life,” he growled, his eyes roaming her features with a desperate, starving hunger. “I look at you and I forget the title. I forget that I am meant to be a man of stone. All I want—all I have wanted since the first time I saw you—is to find out if you taste as intoxicating as you look.”
Madeline knew she should pull away; every second spent in his arms felt like a countdown to her own undoing. But the moment his mouth crushed against hers, her logic dissolved.
The kiss was a violent collision, a desperate release. He tasted of the cold night air and the faint, bitter edge of brandy. His tongue swept into her mouth with a possessive hunger that made her knees turn to water.
Madeline’s fingers tangled into the thick hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him closer until there wasn’t a breath of space left between them. She arched her spine, pressing her chest against the hard, unyielding wall of his waistcoat, her small gasps lost against his lips. The sheer force of his want was a physical weight, pinning her into a reality where only the heat of his skin and the bruising pressure of his mouth mattered.
He groaned into her mouth. The sound was low and primal, and he backed her against a brick wall covered in dormant ivy. Thecold stone was a sharp contrast to the furnace of his body. His hands moved from her face, sliding down the long line of her throat to the swell of her breasts. His touch was heavy and sure through the silk.
“Madeline,” he gasped against her neck, his breath hot and ragged. “Heaven help me, I cannot stop.”
“Don’t,” she whimpered, her head falling back as his lips traced the line of her collarbone. “Please, don’t stop.”
She felt the weight of his thigh as he pressed it between her legs. The friction of his wool trousers against the delicate silk of her gown created sparks of pure fire through her lower belly. She was melting, her bones turning to liquid, her mind a chaotic blur ofwant. She wanted him to take her, to claim her, to make her his so completely.
He pulled back just enough to look at her. His expression was raw and beautiful. Then, with a slow movement, he reached down. His large hand gathered the hem of her gown and lifted it. Madeline’s breath left her in a hiss as the cool night air hit her stockings, and then—then there was the heat of his hand.
He found her, his hand sliding with a blunt, sure intent beneath the layers of silk and lace. The heat of his palm against her inner thigh was a shock that made her breath hitch. When his fingers finally moved against her, the contact was direct and unyielding. Madeline let out a broken moan. She buried her face into the heavy wool of his shoulder to stifle the sound as a sharp, electric jolt of pleasure spiked through her.
“You are so soft,” he rasped against her ear, his well-groomed beard grazing her sensitive skin.
His thumb found her, applying a rhythmic pressure that made her hips jerk instinctively against his hand. He watched her face in the moonlight, his own features tight with a strained, agonizing hunger. The world shrunk to the precise, repetitive motion of his fingers and the heavy weight of his body pinning her to the stone wall. She could feel the hard line of his arousal pressed against her hip; a reminder of the restraint he was forcing upon himself just to focus on her.
