Chapter One
James
James Ashford’s bootcrashed through the rotted floorboard with a splintering crack that echoed through the empty halls of Ashford Manor like a gunshot. He cursed under his breath, extracting his leg from the jagged hole while rainwater dripped steadily from the ceiling above, pooling around the faded Turkish carpet that had once been his mother’s pride.
Twelve years. Twelve years since he’d last walked these corridors, since the night they’d dragged his father away in chains on charges that still burned like acid in James’s throat. Twelve years of watching from afar as his family’s ancestral home crumbled under the Crown’s indifferent oversight, windows boarded, gardens choked with weeds, servants scattered to the wind.
Now, with his father’s name finally cleared and the estate restored to Ashford hands, James faced a different kind of reckoning. The manor seemed determined to punish him for every season of abandonment. First the loose banister that nearly sent him tumbling down the main staircase, now this treacherous floor that threatened to swallow him whole.
*
Above him, hisfather’s portrait watched from its gilded frame. Hisbrother Sebastian looked so much like their dear Papa, with his dark hair and eyes. However, James and Sophia favored their fair-skinned, blonde mother, who had died giving birth to his baby sister. James had sworn on his father’s grave to restore the Ashford name along with these walls.
He only prayed the house was salvageable. Thus far, he had his doubts.
The more he explored, the more he realized what a momentous task it would be to bring Ashford Manor back to its previous glory. At the moment, it seemed rather hopeless. However, he’d hired an architect to help him. A George Fairfax from Brighton. From what he could gather, the gentleman had a stellar reputation for restoration.
He pulled the crumpled letter from his waistcoat pocket, reading George Fairfax’s bold script once more.I shall arrive Tuesday next to assess the restoration requirements.The architect came highly recommended for transforming other fallen estates, but James wondered if Fairfax had ever tackled a house that had died of shame as much as neglect.
James had signed the contract just last week, sending the paperwork back with a messenger to Brighton. He expected Mr. Fairfax to arrive at any moment.
Anxious, James paced around the once-grand entry hall, dim and echoing, its marble floor veined with cracks and grit. The great chandelier overhead, once a glittering constellation of cut glass, now hung askew, several arms snapped, the crystals dulled by soot and cobwebs.
To the left, the drawing room yawned open, its double doors permanently crooked. Inside, the wallpaper had peeled back in long, curling strips like shed skin. Mice had long since made a nest in the gutted settee, and what had once been rose-colored velvet was now the color of old bone. Water-stained ceilings sagged ominously in places, and mold traced dark veins across the cornices like ink bleedingthrough parchment.
He moved down the hall, each footfall sending puffs of dust into the stale air. A cold fireplace sat empty, its grate warped and blackened. The portraits of long-dead Ashford family members, spared from looters only by their size and weight, still lined the walls—watching him with grim disapproval from beneath thick layers of grime. One had fallen and lay cracked across the floor, the painted eyes of some forgotten viscount staring blindly at the rafters.
In the library, the shelves still stood, though many had buckled under time and damp. A layer of mildew clung to the spines of the books like a second skin. His father’s desk remained, though warped and slumped at one corner, drawer handles missing or rusted through. He hadn’t touched it. Not yet.
The smell was the worst part—old soot, damp wood, decay. A scent of rot and time, thick as fog and clinging to everything.
When their titles and finances had been restored after twelve years, James and his brother Sebastian had agreed that they must restore their old home to its former glory. Sebastian, although the elder of the two, had married a woman with a thriving estate of her own and was needed there. That left James to take care of Ashford Estate. It was his pleasure to do so.
He’d recently sold his tavern and the apartment above so that he could return to the place that had been snatched away from him when he was only ten years old.
He hadn’t expected the title but Sebastian had insisted.
Lord Ashford. Once a name whispered with disdain in drawing rooms and taverns alike, now spoken again with a careful kind of deference. The dukedom restored, the Ashford name reinstated, and with it a courtesy title granted by his elder brother who had discovered a small barony long buried in the family line, revived to mark James’s part in reclaiming their father’s honor.
It was a kindness, really. A public gesture from Sebastian, the newlyrestored Duke of Ashford, meant to signal that the family’s disgrace was over for them all.
“The family name needs more than a duke,” he’d said. “It needs visible unity. Restoration in full. And you’ve earned it—many times over.”
James had been a soldier. A tavern owner. A man with dirt beneath his nails. Being called “my lord” still made something in his chest go tight. As if the ton might all realize the truth and take it back again.
He hadn’t asked for a title. Wouldn’t have, even if it had been offered by the Crown itself. But Sebastian, ever the strategist and diplomat, had insisted.
The barony had once belonged to a distant Ashford uncle, a minor title folded into the estate’s legacy generations ago. Forgotten, mostly. But Sebastian had petitioned to revive it as a courtesy title. A symbol. A shield.
And so James became Lord Ashford. Not by inheritance. Not by entitlement. But by redemption. He must always remember his brother’s kindness and do good with what had been restored and gifted to him. He would set it all right again. Bring back his family’s manor and the village and farms associated with the Ashford name. His family was not the only one who had suffered when they’d wrongly sentenced his father to death.
He paused at the bottom of the staircase, hand on the balustrade. The wood was dry and splintering beneath his palm. Upstairs, the bedchambers waited like tombs. Rooms that had once held laughter, firelight, his father’s voice. Now they were only shadows and sagging beams.
He inhaled sharply, letting the air burn his lungs. This was his now. His to rebuild. His to rise from the ashes.
A knock on the door startled him. Had the architect come on foot? Surely not? He rushed to the door, expecting George Fairfax. Instead, a gray haired woman clutching a bag to her bosom stood before him.For a moment, he couldn’t place her. Then, it came back to him. Mrs. Ellsworth. Their former housekeeper. She’d been good to them after they’d hanged their father. While the rest of the staff had scattered like dandelions in the wind, she’d stayed with them until they’d been sent to live with the Langstons. In fact, if he remembered correctly, Mrs. Ellsworth had wanted to keep James and his sister and brother, but she was unable to, given her financial limitations.
Yet, here she was. Still rosy-cheeked, with kind hazel eyes. A small woman, who moved with birdlike swiftness and had run their household with graceful efficiency.
