“Mr Briggs has broken his arm, but he will mend. We are at Thornwick Castle, miss—the Duke of Thornwick’s seat.” Molly’s voice dropped to a whisper, as though the very walls might overhear. “That was the Duke, miss. The one they call the Beast of Thornwick.”
The Beast of Thornwick.
Fiona closed her eyes briefly. Of course. Naturally she had screamed at a duke. Not merely a duke, but one furnished with a melodramatic epithet—always an ominous sign.
“Why do they call him that?”
Molly cast a nervous glance toward the door before leaning closer. “They say he was born… marked, miss. That he bears a great stain upon his skin—across his chest and up his neck. Wine-dark and spreading. They say his mother could not bear the sight of it, and that is why he lives out here, removed from polite society.”
“A mark.” Fiona recalled the high collar of his coat, the way he had kept his throat covered even amidst wind and rain. “What sort of mark?”
“A birthmark, miss. That is what they say. The servants speak of it only in murmurs. They claim he never removes his coat in company, never allows anyone to see—”
“That will do, Molly.”
Her maid fell silent at once. Fiona stared up at the velvet canopy and endeavoured to reconcile gossip with memory: the man who had carried her through a storm without hesitation, who had barked orders with crisp efficiency, whose arms had been the only steady thing in a world turned sideways.
A birthmark. That was sufficient to render him a beast in the eyes of society—not cruelty, nor violence, nor vice, but the accident of his skin.
And she had rewarded him with a scream.
“Help me up,” Fiona said abruptly.
“Miss, your ankle—”
“Is sprained, not severed. Help me up, Molly. I must apologise to the Duke.”
Molly’s eyes widened. “Apologise? Miss, you cannot mean to seek him out. He is—they say he is—”
“He is a man who pulled me from a shattered carriage and bore me through a storm to safety.” Fiona pushed back the covers, suppressing a sharp intake of breath as pain flared in her ankle. “Whatever tales are told of him, I owe him better than hysteria.”
The attempt to rise proved ill-advised. Her ankle, neatly bound in fresh bandages, had swollen alarmingly. The moment she placed weight upon it, a searing bolt of pain shot up her leg, and she sank back onto the mattress with a gasp.
“You see, miss?” Molly fluttered anxiously. “You are in no condition—”
“Then procure me a walking stick. Or a crutch. Or a sufficiently sturdy broom handle.” Fiona glared at her treacherous ankle as though moral authority alone might compel obedience. “I will not languish in this bed like some overwrought heroine awaiting the brooding master of the house to determine my fate.”
“But miss, that is precisely what occurs in chapter six of—”
“Molly. The broom handle. At once.”
***
Christian had retreated to his study, which was where he always retreated when the world proved too much to bear.
It was the only chamber in Thornwick Castle that felt wholly his own—not merely inherited from his father, not shadowed by his mother’s disappointed sighs, not peopled by the silentexpectations of generations of Hales who had contrived to be born unmarked. Every volume upon the shelves had been selected by his own hand. The leather of the great chair had been worn to suppleness by years of solitary evenings. The decanter upon the sideboard was kept filled, the fire laid without fail, and no one disturbed him here unless the house itself were in peril.
Which was why the knock at the door made him spill his tea.
“Your Grace.” Mrs Blackley’s voice carried through the wood, carefully composed. “Miss Hart requests a word.”
Christian stared at the door. “Miss Hart is injured. Miss Hart ought to be resting.”
“I ventured to suggest as much, Your Grace. She was quite… resolute.”
A pause. From beyond the door came a muffled exchange that suggested resolute might be a charitable description.
“I am not receiving callers, Mrs Blackley. Inform Miss Hart—”
