CHAPTER1
Carthwaite Castle, Yorkshire
April 1882
Grayson Hawkridge,Marquess of Rothwell, had always known he’d been born for a purpose. His life had never been about doing as he wished or pursuing his passions, though he’d stolen moments to do both. Yet they were only brief pleasures. Interludes when he convinced himself he possessed the freedom to act as he desired.
It had always been an illusion.
His fate was set from the moment he squalled his first breath. Heir to a dukedom that could trace its roots back to the Saxons. A family that had held land and power in Britain for centuries.
Somehow, he’d thought he’d have more time. That his birthright was over there somewhere, off in the future. Yet here it was on his doorstep. Or rather,hewas on its doorstep.
The ancient, weathered stones of Carthwaite Castle loomed over him as if they intended to swallow him whole. Good grief, he already missed London. No, he truly missed Sussex. That was where his heart made its home. Give him green fields and the salty hint of sea breeze in the air any day.
“My lord.” He’d been slow to open his carriage door, so a footman had come forward and stood waiting for him to descend. The poor man was already drenched.
A deluge had started as if it were a harbinger of things to come the moment he’d begun his journey north, and it appeared in no mood for letting up.
Gray couldn’t delay any longer.
He stepped down from his carriage, and water rushed over the top of his boot, so deep were the puddles in the stone-paved drive of Carthwaite Castle. Raindrops tapped ceaselessly against his hat and pummeled his shoulders. Droplets this far north were more like shards of ice, and the cold did nothing to ease his aching muscles. The trip to his family’s ancestral estate had been long and made longer by washed-out roads.
But there’d been no other option—no possibility of turning back.
He’d been summoned.
This was his purpose. His fate. The duke, his father, had been in ill health for years, and it was hard to imagine the old man would ever give up the fight, but even with all his arrogance and power, Titus Hawkridge was mortal.
And for Gray, his duty to his father, the title, and the family’s estates was all that had ever mattered. Whatever uncertainties life held, whatever temptations or disappointments he’d experienced in one-and-thirty years, the dukedom of Carthwaite was his lodestar.
Tipping his head, he glanced up at the castle’s tower on the west edge of the structure. No matching tower stood on its east side, so the lack of symmetry gave the whole pile a misshapen, lopsided appearance. Even from a distance, one’s eyes were drawn to that high assembly of stones and the two narrow arched windows in the rooms at its top.
Would he die in that ducal suite one day too?
The front door creaked open and Turner, the family’s wizened butler, bowed in greeting.
“Welcome, my lord,” Turner intoned at Gray’s approach. “Your rooms have been prepared, and though Lady Hepworth begs your presence in the grand drawing room, His Grace insists you go to him first.”
“Of course.” Gray stepped into the foyer, removed his sodden outerwear, and swept a hand through his damp hair. Even his aunt’s desire for him to mingle with the guests could not trump his father’s commands. Few ever dared to defy his father. “How many other guests?”
“Seventeen, my lord. Not including Lady Worthington and her niece.”
Evangeline.The dismal day faded, and his mind filled with color—memories of Lady Worthington’s niece. Her red-gold hair streaming out in glossy waves as she walked beside him, her green glare turned his way, the sprinkle of cinnamon freckles across her nose and cheeks.
She was a creature of contrasts—a lady with empathy for many and harsh judgements for others. Most thought her haughty or cool, and gentlemen had been cut by her sharp tongue often enough to avoid her at social events, which Evie seemed to find oddly satisfying.
But what Gray remembered most of Miss Evangeline Granger was her low, resonant laughter, her sweet lily scent, and her unwavering loyalty to her aunt.
Their aunts were as close as sisters, so Gray had known Evie since childhood. They’d been confidantes of a sort back then. But, of late, she had avoided him at all the many balls and soirees her aunt hosted.
Good grief, how many times had she refused his offer of a dance?
Knowing she was at Carthwaite unsettled and pleased him in equal measure. What would she think of the grandeur of the place? She was an utterly practical young woman who championed the notion of the wealthy doing much more than they were at present to aid the poor and downtrodden.
At a titter of muffled feminine laughter, Gray snapped his head toward the ground floor drawing room, searching for a glimpse of red hair.
“If you go via the west stairwell, you’ll avoid encountering any of the guests, my lord.”
