They fell into silence as the carriage groaned past a pair of stone gateposts, their once-proud griffins now missing a wing and half a beak, respectively. Iron gates hung open at a slant, one hinge having surrendered to rust and gravity. A gatekeeper’s lodge sat dark and shuttered at the verge.
Not promising.
The avenue wound deeper into the estate, and the neglect deepened with it. Fences sagged. A stone wall had collapsed into a mossy heap, and no one had bothered to rebuild it. The land itself was not poor. He could see that much, even through the early March drizzle, but it had been squandered. Alistair’s jaw tightened as the carriage lurched through another rut.
His father had told him, on the rare occasions when Edmund Oxley had allowed himself to speak of the family he had left behind, that the eighth duke, Alistair’s own grandfather, Peregrine Oxley, had been a man of iron convictions and glacial affections. Peregrine had believed in bloodlines the way other men believed in God, and when his second son had dared to fall in love with Moira Fraser, the old man had not merely disapproved; he had severed the branch entirely.
“Sullying the bloodline.”
Those had been the words, according to Alistair’s father. As though love were a contaminant and industry a disease.
The disinheritance had been swift and merciless. No farewell. No allowance. No acknowledgment that his second-born son existed at all. Edmund had walked into marriage with nothing but the clothes he wore and the bride on his arm, the old duke likely having drawn a line through his name in the family Bible as though excising a tumor. Alistair’s mother had told him this, years later, her voice free of bitterness. Moira Fraser-Oxleywas not a woman who wasted time on resentment when there was work to be done.
Alistair had inherited that pragmatism, along with his mother’s auburn hair and his father’s stubborn jaw. He had also inherited his ducal grandfather’s relentless drive, though he would sooner have thrown himself into the Irwyn than admit to the resemblance.
From his exile, Edmund had built something finer than anything the Oxleys had managed in generations. Fraser & Oxley Textile Mill stood as testament to what men could achieve when they chose merit over inheritance, grit over gilt.
The mill had belonged to the Fraser family, and when Edmund Oxley married the owner’s daughter, he entered the business to work as a partner. Even after Grandpapa Alistair passed from the world, the maternal name remained first in the firm’s title. It was a deliberate mutiny, a declaration that the Fraser-Oxleys were not ashamed of trade. On the contrary, they were proud of it.
And now, by the perverse arithmetic of inheritance, all that Edmund had rejected was being heaped upon his eldest son.
For Alistair’s entire life, he had lived just two miles from the ducal estate but had never seen the manor before this day. Not as the grandson of a duke. Nor as the nephew of a duke. Nor … well … nor as a duke.
It was still difficult to comprehend that he now held the curst title, even while he attempted to list out his unwanted responsibilities in a notebook. He would dispatch them swiftly, then head to London to sign the contract with Hollingford & Goss. The new partnership with the mercantile house would elevate Fraser & Oxley Textile Mill to unprecedented success, and those funds would be needed to modernize this behemoth of antiquated land management, amongst his other far more invigorating projects.
As the carriage rattled along the bumpy avenue to reach the hall, Alistair considered the disrepair he had already noticed. The estate was lost in the mists of time. As if fate itself wished to laugh at his new circumstances, the carriage chose that moment to break free of the line of trees that had obscured the view, and Alistair caught sight of the manor for the first time.
Medieval, refurbished in the 1500s, and perched on the edge of a dramatic gorge, the stone towers were wrapped in early morning mists as if to punctuate the phantasy elements of his journey. It was as if he were traveling back in time to a bygone era.
Fortunestone Hall.
Or Fortune’s Fall, as the locals preferred to call it. A cutting commentary on both its location so near the gorge and the dreadful mismanagement of the ducal estates, infamous throughout the region. The previous Dukes of Oxley were not renowned for being good stewards, and certainly, his uncle’s recent fatal plummet down its cliffs had served to only cement the sobriquet. The entire estate was physical evidence of high-minded noblemen caught in a bygone era, oblivious to changes in the practical world where lessor humans lived.
Fortune’s Fall, indeed.
His new title was an albatross, and Alistair needed to make arrangements to divest himself of its weight lest it drag him under.
“Handsome pile,” Beckwith observed, leaning forward to take it in, though his tone carried cautious reserve. He was likely already calculating the cost of maintaining a roof that size.
“It is a millstone.” Alistair pulled the notebook from his coat pocket. He addedroofbeneathgatehouseandfencingand snapped the book shut. “I intend to be in London within the week. Whatever arrangements need making, we are to make them swiftly.”
Beckwith said nothing to that, which again Alistair appreciated. The man understood priorities. He understood that the mill was not merely a business. It was the engine that kept an entire community breathing. Fortunestone Hall, by contrast, appeared to be a monument to financial entropy.
The carriage clattered across a stone bridge whose balustrades were chipped and stained with lichen, then rattled up the final stretch of the drive toward the hall’s entrance. Up close, the decay was plain. One of the great oak doors stood slightly ajar, as though the house itself had given up the effort of keeping the world at bay. As the coachman reined the horses to a halt, Alistair drew a deep breath. The air smelled of wet stone, damp earth, and the faintly vegetal tang of moss. It was the scent of a place that had been slowly surrendering to nature for decades.
Right, then. In and out. Assess, instruct, arrange, depart. You are here to untangle a mess, not to adopt one.
He stepped down from the carriage, his boots meeting gravel with a satisfying crunch, and looked up at Fortunestone Hall. The sheer scale of it pressed against him. Towers, chimneys, a roofline that seemed to stretch the width of a small village. For a moment, the weight of what he had inherited settled upon his shoulders like a physical thing. He shook it off. He had not come here to be awed.
Somewhere behind those ancient walls awaited his uncle’s family. Four cousins he had never met, a grandmother who had sanctioned his father’s exile, and a young widow whose situation he knew almost nothing about. He had caught sight of Jerome Oxley a handful of times over the years, a tall figure stepping in and out of a carriage in Irwyn with the imperious air of a man who believed the world owed him deference. They had never exchanged a word. And then Jerome had wandered off a cliff inthe dark and left the whole wretched mess for someone else to sort out.
Typical Oxley. Leave the inconvenient consequences to the next man.
Whatever condition he found his new family in, he would make arrangements and be on his way. Alistair Fraser-Oxley was a man accustomed to solving problems with dispatch. This would be no different.
He straightened his coat and strode toward the door.
* * *
