And Vivienne.
He’d loved her since childhood. She was golden-haired and blue-eyed, with a laugh like bells and a smile that had haunted his dreams through every bloody mile of the campaign. He’d carried her portrait into battle, pressed against his heart. He’d written her letters full of longing and promises, fueled by the desperate hope that he would survive to keep them.
She’d been waiting when he returned. She stood in the drawing room of her father’s house, wearing pale blue and looking like an angel descended to welcome him home. He’d reached for her, but she stepped backward—one step, then two, while her eyes fixed on his face with an expression he’d never seen before.
Horror.
“I cannot marry a monster.” She pressed her lace handkerchief to her mouth, her shoulders trembling as she backed away.
Five months later, she married a baronet with an unmarked face and a comfortable estate in Surrey. Dominic had heard she was expecting their first child.
He shoved the memory away and reached for the package of tarts. The brown paper crinkled as he unwrapped it, and the scent of cranberry and butter rose to meet him. He bit into one—and the pastry crumbled perfectly, rich and flaky, yet the cranberry filling was tart-sweet, bright against his tongue. It was exceptional.
The baker had made these—yet he pictured the woman with raven hair escaping its pins in dark wisps. She had brown eyes too large for her face, set above round cheeks dusted pink from the heat of her ovens. She had a rosebud mouth that had pursed at him in disapproval. She’d barely reached his chest. The top of her head might graze his collarbone if she stood close, yet she’d looked up at him the way she could bring him to his knees with a single word.
She hadn’t flinched when she saw his face.
He turned the thought over in his mind, examining it from every angle. Everyone flinched. Even the servants who had known him since childhood always showed that first moment, that quick flash of shock before training took over and they smoothed their expressions into careful neutrality. But the baker had simply looked at him as if he were an inconvenience. The rain had blown something unpleasant into her shop and she was waiting for it to leave.
It was the most refreshing thing anyone had done in two years.
He’d been rude to her. He knew this. He’d called her shop “quaint“ and dropped the sovereign on her counter like a challenge. He’d given her a once-over, noticing the generous swell of her hips beneath that apron and the soft fullness of her figure. He’d seen curves upon curves that his palms itched to learn, and he’d been daring her to react. It was an old habit, part of the armor he put on without thinking. If people were going to stare at him like a monster, he might as well act like one.
But she hadn’t backed down. She’d refused his gold. She looked at him the way she’d look at any other customer who’d tracked rain onto her floor. She spoke to him like he was ordinary. To her, his scar was only a scar. It was not a mark that demanded pity or fear.
He didn’t know her name. He hadn’t thought to ask. He hadn’t thought he would care. He shouldn’t return. She was a shopkeeper. She was a widow, judging by the black ribbon at her collar. She was beneath his notice and far beneath his station. He had no reason to go back.
But he reached for another tart. He knew, despite himself, that he would find a reason.
Three
Dominic Westmore stood at the window of the study at Bramwell Park, watching groundskeepers hack at hedges that had grown wild in his absence. He couldn’t stop thinking about the baker.
Three days had passed. The crumpled tart wrappers littered his desk, six of them, empty—he’d meant to ration them, perhaps one per day. Instead, he’d eaten two that first night, standing at this very window while rain streaked the glass. The remaining four had vanished by the second morning, devoured over coffee he barely tasted.
The house pressed around him. He’d paced the halls yesterday like a caged animal, opening doors to rooms shrouded in dust sheets, finding nothing but memories and silence. He saw the library where his father had taught him to play chess. He passed the music room where his mother had practiced scales that once echoed through the corridors. The nursery remained untouched since he’d outgrown it, still holding the wooden soldiers he’d lined up for imaginary battles.
He turned from the window. His reflection caught in the glass, the scar a dark slash against pale skin, and he looked away.
The door opened behind him. Graves entered with the particular silence of a man who had spent thirty years learning not to startle his employers. “Will you be taking luncheon in the dining room today, my lord?” Graves kept his eyes level, his tone neutral.
“I will be riding to the village.” Dominic reached for his coat where it hung by the door, his movements stiff. “Don’t hold supper for me.”
“Very good, my lord.” Graves moved to the side table, retrieving gloves that Dominic hadn’t asked for. “The grey mare has been saddled.”
Dominic paused, his coat half-shrugged onto his shoulders. “I hadn’t told you I was going out,” he noted, his brow furrowing as he met the servant’s eye.
“No, my lord.” Graves held out the gloves, his expression unchanged. “You hadn’t.”
Something loosened in Dominic’s chest. Graves had seen the crumpled tart wrappers littering the study desk, the restless trips down corridors that led nowhere, and drawn whatever quiet conclusion he was entitled to draw.
“Thank you, Graves,” Dominic said, taking the leather gloves and pulling them tight over his knuckles.
“My lord.” Graves inclined his head and stepped back, his hands folded behind him in a posture of perfect patience.
The roads were dry and the air was crisp with the promise of autumn. Dominic kept the mare to an easy canter, though his blood thrummed with an urgency he refused to examine too closely. People stopped to stare as he passed: a farmer mending a fence, a woman hanging washing, and two children who gapeduntil their mother pulled them inside. He kept his eyes forward, for he was used to being a spectacle.
The village of Cresswell emerged from the trees like something from a painting. It was a collection of thatched roofs and cobblestone streets, with a church spire reaching toward clouds that threatened rain but hadn’t yet delivered.
