Alistair sank back into his chair, rubbing his temples where a headache brewed. Beyond the window, the mill floor hummed on without him, indifferent to the upheaval taking shape in this small room.
Fortunestone Hall.
A crumbling relic, by all accounts, buried in debt and outdated traditions. He had heard whispers over the years. Poor management under Jerome, fleeing tenants, a dowager duchess clinging to faded glory with her granddaughters in tow. And now it was his? Responsibilities he had not sought, estates to manage, tenants to house, a family of aristocratic relatives to navigate. “Damn him for getting himself killed. The fool probably deserved it, hunting like some dandy without a care.”
“Perhaps,” Franklin allowed, a flicker of amusement crossing his face. “But the solicitors are insistent. It could be a boon, Alistair … land, rents, influence in Parliament.”
Alistair snorted derisively. “Influence? I would sooner dance a quadrille at Almack’s than rub elbows with those powdered prigs. This mill is my domain. The deal with Hollingford & Goss … that is our future. Not some dusty title.” Yet even as he spoke, a flicker of pragmatism stirred. The Oxley lands bordered their wool suppliers. Integrating them could consolidate production, ensure a constant supply immune to market fluctuations.
But no.
The aristocracy had shunned their father, called him vulgar for his trade. Why embrace that world now?
Franklin watched him, perceptive as ever. “At least speak to the solicitors. When you can spare the time, of course.”
Alistair grumbled, leafing through another letter to distract himself. “Fine. When I can spare it. But do not get ideas,LordFranklin. You are now the brother of a duke. Does that make you a lordling?” He infused the words with mock scorn, a rare attempt at levity to quell his anger.
Franklin laughed outright, the sound rich and genuine, easing the tension in the room. “Lord Franklin? Sounds ridiculous. I would rather be second at Fraser & Oxley than first in some drafty hall. But suit yourself, Your Grace. Just do not let it go to your head.” He clapped Alistair on the shoulder, a brotherly gesture that grounded him.
Alistair shot him a glare, but there was no heat in it, only the familiarcamaraderiethat had seen them through business slumps and family losses. “Out with you. Draft that response to Hollingford. And tell no one of this nonsense. Not yet. The last thing we need is gossip disrupting the workers.”
As Franklin departed, his footsteps fading down the stairs, Alistair moved to the window, his palm pressed against thecool glass. The mill floor stretched below him in its familiar choreography … spinners feeding carders, weavers inspecting bolts, dyers stirring vats. This was his world. Tangible, productive, a testament to ingenuity over inheritance. A dukedom was a chain, binding him to a past he neither wanted nor needed. The solicitor’s letter lay on his desk like an unspoken challenge, its wax seal cracked in implication.
He would deal with it in time. On his terms.
Alistair donned his coat and descended to the floor, immersing himself in the work. Inspections, adjustments, a word here and there. These were his anchors.
By evening, the shifts had changed, and lanterns flickered to life, casting a warm glow over the cooling machines. The daytime workers filed out in clusters, their voices carrying the easy warmth of people heading home to families, to hearths, to the small comforts of the lives they had built beyond these walls. Alistair watched from the doorway of the mill as the last of them disappeared into the January dusk—Tom, walking alongside his father who ruffled his hair, and Mrs. Wilkins, linking arms with a daughter who had come to meet them.
The silence outside settled around him with the frost that crept along the riverbank. He closed the great doors, his breath a pale cloud in the night air, and stood for a moment in the empty yard. The mill’s silhouette rose behind him, the sound of the evening shift working muted by the thick walls, but even its solidity could not fill the quiet that followed him home each evening. It was always this way, these last steps of the day. The work fell away, and there was only Alistair, walking alone through the cold toward a home where no one waited, the one he kept close to the mill while his mother and Charlotte lived in a much grander one on the outskirts of Irving.
He did not dwell on it. Could not. There was too much to be done to indulge in maudlin sentimentality. But tonight, thesilence felt heavier than usual, sharpened by the weight of a title he had never sought and a life that suddenly refused to remain the orderly thing he had built.
The unanticipated duke.
What a farce. The stars wheeled above, indifferent, as he turned up his collar and quickened his pace against the wind.
CHAPTER 1
Two months later
The carriage juddered along a road that could charitably be described as neglected. Its ruts were deep enough to swallow a man’s boot, and every third yard produced a lurch that rattled Alistair’s teeth. Beside him, his companion braced a bracing hand against the door frame and said nothing, which was one of the qualities Alistair appreciated most about Nathaniel Beckwith.
Beckwith was a renowned estate manager whom Alistair had lured away from a profitable situation in Northumberland with the promise of a generous salary, performance bonuses, and the sort of challenge that men like Beckwith could not resist. Namely, an estate so thoroughly mismanaged it bordered on the archaeological. They had met on two prior occasions, once at a livestock auction in Harrogate and once over supper at a Leeds coaching inn, and both times Alistair had come away with the impression of a man who reckoned the world in yields per acreand did not suffer fools. The sort of fellow one wanted when inheriting a catastrophe.
“Your first task will be the accounting books,” Alistair said, pitching his voice above the rattle of carriage wheels on uneven ground. “Find them, assess their condition, and begin setting things in order. I want to know what is owed, what is earned, and what has vanished into the ether.”
Beckwith inclined his head. He was a solidly built man, thirty-four or thereabouts, with a square jaw softened by the kind of patient eyes that came from years of negotiating with stubborn tenant farmers and even more stubborn sheep. His coat was well-made but practical, absent of any affectation. “And the current steward? Am I to work alongside him, or?—”
“The current steward is not to be paid any mind.” Alistair’s tone brooked no argument. “The estate is infamous for being buried in the past. Tenants flee because the land is managed as though it were still the reign of the Tudors. Any man who has overseen this decline for more than a twelvemonth is either complicit or incompetent.”
Beckwith considered this, his gaze drifting to the carriage window where a line of elms, their bare branches like the fingers of supplicants, flanked the avenue. “It might not be entirely the steward’s fault, Your Grace. If the late duke was issuing impractical instructions, even a capable man would struggle to?—”
“Then either he was not good at managing His Grace,” Alistair cut in, “or he was not talented enough to find a more desirable situation. Which failing do you prefer?”
Beckwith’s lips twitched. “Fair point. There is no excuse for incompetence when it affects the livelihood of tenant farmers and the people of the duchy.”
“Just so.” Alistair folded his arms across his chest, the leather of his gloves creaking in the cold. “I did not inherit excuses. Iinherited obligations and responsibilities. There is no time for ineptitude when there are so many mouths to feed.”
