“Perhaps,” Selina said with a sigh. “I will entrust this to you, Lucy. If you can navigate this situation, interpret the request, discern the true need, and act with tact and discretion... then perhaps, Lucy, you will earn my guidance. My trust.”
“Really?” Lucy’s eyes widened. “Are you being entirely serious, Aunt Selina? I can respond to this letter?”
“If you manage to pull this through, Lucy, then I will accept your choice and train you to be a matchmaker. Like me.”
Lucy’s hands tightened around the letter. “I will do it, Aunt Selina. I will do it well.”
Selina gave a slow, deliberate nod. “We shall see, Lucy. We shall see.”
CHAPTER TWO
“You say your name is Lucy? Lucy—” The Duke of Langridge paused, his dark blue eyes narrowing as he regarded her with a measure of scrutiny that made her stomach tighten. “Crampton?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Lucy said quickly, curtsying.
Lucy’s pulse quickened, and for a fleeting moment, she questioned why she had left the comfort of her aunt’s home to take on this task. Her thoughts drifted to the journey that had brought her here, the jolting carriage over rutted lanes, the tense silence between her and the driver. Each mile had carried her further from her aunt’s house, further from the life she had known, and closer to this moment.
Standing before Rowan Clawridge, Duke of Langridge, a man whose reputation was equal parts fearsome and infuriatingly intriguing.
“I was sent by my aunt, Your Grace,” Lucy said, bringing herself back to the present, to the intensity of his gaze. “She thought I might be of assistance regarding… well, a matter requiring discretion and careful attention.”
The study had fallen into a strange, attentive silence, as though the room itself had paused to listen.
Lucy stood where she had been directed, hands neatly folded before her, her back straight despite the long wait that had preceded this moment. She had been shown in, informed that His Grace was indisposed, and left alone with the slow ticking of the mantel clock and the weight of her own thoughts for company. Long enough, certainly, for doubt to creep in. Long enough for her to wonder whether her letter had been misplaced or worse, dismissed.
He had not been expecting her. That much had become painfully clear.
Now, standing before the Duke of Langridge, she understood why anticipation had coiled so tightly in her chest. He was taller than she had imagined, broad-shouldered, his presence filling the room with an ease that suggested command rather than effort. Dark hair, brushed back carefully, framed a face cut with decisive lines, and his eyes... dark blue, cool, observant, seemed to take her in entirely without the least embarrassment for doing so.
Lucy found herself doing the same, quite against her will.
It was not vanity that struck her first, nor beauty in the way poets so often ruined it, but solidity. He looked like a man accustomed to being obeyed, to carrying burdens without complaint, to standing his ground while others adjusted themselves around him.
She had known very little of him before this moment, and that, she realized, was precisely what unsettled her. London had never been short of gossip, and Lucy had grown up hearing it over tea tables in half-whispered conversations. Affairs, scandals, alliances, ruined reputations, she knew those stories well. Yet Rowan Clawridge had remained conspicuously absent from them. A duke with estates and influence, and yet no steady presence in the ballrooms or drawing rooms of the ton.
He was spoken of rarely, and when he was, it was always with a certain hesitation, as though no one were quite sure where to place him. Reserved, they said. Intimidating. Devoted to his household. A man who appeared when necessary and vanished again just as swiftly.
Lucy shifted slightly, acutely aware that she was alone with him, the door firmly shut behind her, the fire casting warm shadows across the shelves of leather-bound books. The study smelled faintly of woodsmoke and ink. His gaze flicked to her hands, still folded, still waiting.
“Is there a particular reason... Miss Crampton,” he asked, adjusting a ledger on his table as he sat down, “... I should know who your aunt is?”
Lucy blinked, unsure if she ought to remain standing. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace?”
He inclined his head slightly, as if she had responded exactly as expected. “You mentioned her with the confidence of someone invoking authority. I wondered whether it was authority I was meant to recognize or merely familial enthusiasm.”
“Oh,” Lucy said, heat rising faintly to her cheeks. “I did not mean to presume. My aunt is Selina Mullens.”
“Ah.”
The sound was neither approval nor dismissal. It was simply… acknowledgment.
Lucy waited, but nothing followed.
“She is,” Lucy added carefully, uncertain whether silence was invitation or warning, “... a matchmaker. She is… well known in certain circles.”
He tilted his head, considering this, and Lucy’s confusion deepened. “I find,” Rowan said at last, “that ‘certain circles’ are often very small.”
Lucy blinked again. “Selina Mullens is probably the most famous matchmaker in all of London.”
