The “small token” had been ten pounds.
Conscience money, Lorraine thought of it. Lydia sent it twice a year, always anonymously, always through solicitors, as though their shared surname might somehow combust if committed to paper too near the funds.
Lorraine had returned it, as she always did. The solicitor was likely quite weary of her by now.
I do not want your money, she had written in the privacy of her own thoughts—in words she would never send.I want you to say thank you. I want you to acknowledge what I did. I want you to remember that I had a life once—and prospects—and I burned them all so that you might keep yours.
But that was the thing about sacrifice, was it not? The moment one demanded recognition for it, it ceased to be noble and became merely transactional. And Lorraine Weston was many things—proud, stubborn, and occasionally too clever for her own good—but she refused to be pathetic.
She finished her supper, paid her bill, and retired to a narrow room with a window that faced north.
Toward Yorkshire.
Toward Rovewood Hall, and its mysterious, frozen duke, and the orphaned boy who needed someone to care for him.
Three months,she reminded herself.Do not grow attached.
She was very well practised in not growing attached. Practice, after all, made perfect.
***
The final approach to Rovewood Hall was everything the name suggested—and nothing it had prepared her for.
The carriage had set her down at a crossroads two miles from the estate—some confusion regarding the driver’s willingness to navigate the private road in gathering darkness—and Lorraine had been obliged to walk the remaining distance, her single trunk balanced upon a borrowed handcart. The lane wound through a wood of ancient oaks, their leaves thinned and ragged by the early cold, branches reaching toward a sky the colour of wet slate. Rooks circled overhead, their cries harsh in the stillness.
Wild country, her father’s voice whispered.Makes you feel your own smallness.
She felt small, certainly. Small, cold, and beginning to question the wisdom of answering urgent summonses from reclusive aristocrats.
And then the trees parted, and Rovewood Hall rose before her.
It was beautiful.
That was the first impression—the unavoidable, almost aggressive beauty of the place. Pale stone and Gothic windows, turrets and towers; a structure that seemed to have grown from the moorland itself rather than been built upon it. Ivy clung to the eastern wall in defiance of the season. Lamplight glowed behind a scattering of windows, warm against the grey October dusk.
It was also, Lorraine noted with the practised eye of a woman accustomed to assessing households at a glance, enormous—and plainly understaffed. The drive was not quite overgrown, but neither had it been recently raked. The topiaries flanking the entrance had grown shaggy with neglect. A house of this size ought to boast footmen at the door, a groom hurrying forward to receive arrivals, the quiet bustle of a well-ordered establishment.
Instead, there was only silence, the wind across the moors, and the distant cry of birds she could not name.
Lorraine squared her shoulders, left the handcart at the foot of the steps, and lifted the heavy iron knocker.
The sound echoed through what she imagined must be a vast entrance hall. She waited. The wind tugged at her cloak, and she thought she heard something—movement, perhaps, from somewhere above. She tilted her head.
There.
A small face at an upper window. Pale and solemn, framed by fair hair. A child’s face, watching her with an expression she recognised at once.
Waiting to see whether this one will stay.
Lorraine raised her hand in a small, reassuring wave.
The face vanished.
The door opened.
“Miss Weston?” The woman who stood before her was perhaps sixty, grey-haired and sharp-eyed, with the air of one who had been managing households since before Lorraine was born. Her expression held wariness, hope, and fatigue in equal measure. “We expected you yesterday.”
“The roads were difficult.” Lorraine stepped inside without waiting for a formal invitation—a small breach of etiquette, but she was cold, tired, and rather past caring for strict propriety. “The coaching schedule from York was much disrupted by the weather.”
