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“Short on a great many things, Your Grace, if I’m being honest. I usually am. His Grace has never troubled himself with the household accounts, not since his sister passed. I’ve done as best I can, but there’s only so much managing to be done with a budget that hasn’t changed in three years and a staff that’s shrunk to half of what it was.”

“Show me,” Laura demanded. “Please. I will see what can be done about this.”

A small smile crossed Mrs. Holt’s face, and the softness returned. Laura just knew she had been a beauty in her youth, her face worn by years of dedicated service.

“Right this way,” Mrs. Holt said, and they took off.

They spent the better part of two hours bent over ledgers at the kitchen table, Mrs. Holt explaining the state of the linens and the leaking roof over the east gallery that needed urgent repairs.

Laura asked questions, and Mrs. Holt answered them honestly. By the end, a quiet complicity had grown between them, making them feel less like duchess and servant and more like two women plotting a small rebellion.

“There’s the matter of the garden too,” Mrs. Holt added, almost as an afterthought, when Laura rose to leave. “It was Lady Grantham’s pride, once. His Grace’s sister, I mean. It’s gone to ruin since her death.”

“Show me that too,” Laura said. “Tomorrow.”

“Your Grace.” Mrs. Holt hesitated at the door. “If I may say so, it’s a fine thing, you taking an interest. This castle hasn’t had a mistress attending to it properly in a very long time.”

Laura didn’t know what to say, so she simply nodded and let herself feel, for the first time since the auction, something that wasn't dread.

Laura carried a book to the small sitting room overlooking the east lawn that afternoon after her hard work and a small meal, more for something to hold than any real intention of reading. She settled into the window seat with her feet tucked beneath her, letting the pages fall open where they may.

She did not read a word. Her eyes kept drifting past the print to the light beyond the glass, and her mind kept wandering back over the last month like a tongue returning to a sore tooth, unable to leave it be.

It still does not feel real. Any of it. Six weeks ago, I was Laura Mercer, the only daughter of an earl with more pride than good sense, dreading nothing more than another dull evening in his drawing room. And now, with the wave of an auctioneer’s hammer, I am a duchess in a bloody castle. Married to a man, bound to him by a contract my father signed as though I were a damn parcel of land rather than his daughter.

She knew she ought to hate Nathaniel for that, or at least resent him, and she had tried at first. It would have been easier to hold onto cold resentment. But it could not survive the sight of him with his beloved niece, or the tenderness in his voice when he had soothed her from her nightmare.

And it surely could not survive the memory of his lips on hers.

Laura snapped the book shut, her cheeks flushing all over at the mere thought of it.

She had panicked afterward, almost embarrassingly, and pulled away before either of them could make sense of what had happened. More than that, he had let her and had left without a word of complaint.

She did not know whether his restraint made the whole thing easier to bear or considerably harder.

She thought of her mother then, the way she always did when her thoughts strayed anywhere near the marital bed, and the old familiar chill skittered down her spine.

She did not know if she could ever want what marriage was meant to lead to. But she knew that she was terrified. And she also knew, with a certainty that surprised her, that she wanted more mornings like this one had promised to be.

She set the book aside and rose, smoothing down her skirts. She told herself, not for the first time, that she would have time later to untangle the rest of what she felt.

Tomorrow, there would be a garden to visit, and a little girl who would very likely be waiting for her. She just needed to get through a simple dinner with Iris and find some semblance of peaceful sleep.

The rest of the evening passed quietly enough, and Laura woke bright and early the next morning with a renewed sense of purpose.

She found the gardener, a bent, weathered old man named Mr. Whipp. Mrs. Holt had told her he had tended the grounds since before Nathaniel was born and had opinions about every square foot of them.

“What a beautiful surprise, Your Grace,” he said warmly, walking over to her. He set his shears over his shoulder and bowed. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I’d like to see the gardens through your eyes, and to see how I might help,” she replied with a smile, instantly liking him.

“Roses need cutting back, Your Grace, or they’ll strangle themselves,” he began, gesturing to a tangled hedge with his shears. “Been meaning to for two years. But it is just me now, and an old man can only do so much in a day.”

I cannot believe a place as grand as this only has one gardener. My husband must be very distracted not to have seen to this. What plagues his mind?

“What would you need to bring it all back?” Laura asked.

Mr. Whipp gave her the same look Mrs. Holt had, faintly startled that anyone had asked. “More hands, mostly. And time. And His Grace’s leave to spend a bit more on bulbs and seed, though I don’t like to trouble him.”