THE GHOST DUKE’S DOMAIN
Lucian Greymont, Duke of Greymont and master of precisely nothing that mattered, woke at dawn as he had every day for the past eight years.
The habit had formed during the war—wake before the enemy, stay alive another day—and survived his return to civilian life with the tenacity of all unwanted things. He no longer needed to be alert for the sound of approaching cavalry or the whistle of incoming artillery. The greatest danger he faced now was his own thoughts, and those required no particular vigilance. They were there regardless, patient as creditors.
He rose without lighting a candle. His hands knew the geography of his chamber by now: washstand to the left, wardrobe straight ahead, window seat where he’d left his boots. The stone floor was cold beneath his bare feet, a familiar bite that helped shake off the remnants of sleep and whatever dreams had accompanied it. He preferred not to remember his dreams.
By the time pale grey light began to filter through the heavy curtains, Lucian was dressed in riding clothes and descending the servants’ staircase to avoid the likelihood of encountering anyone. The kitchen would be stirring by now, but Mrs. Holloway knew better than to intercept him before his morning ride. She’d leave coffee in the warming pot and say nothing about the cold breakfast he’d eat standing up, still in his riding boots, because sitting at the long dining table alone felt like a particular species of torture he’d not yet developed immunity to.
The stable yard was shrouded in the same fog that seemed to breed in Shadow Valley like some indigenous species, thick and grey and clinging. Roberts, the head groom, had Lucian’s stallion already saddled—another soul who’d learned the Duke’s schedule and adapted accordingly.
“Morning, Your Grace.” Roberts was a man of few words, which was among his many virtues. “Fog’s heavy. Mind the northern ridge.”
“I always do.” Lucian swung into the saddle, and Tempest—named in a moment of irony that had aged poorly—tossed his head with barely contained energy. The horse, at least, did not judge him for his solitary habits. The horse merely wanted to run.
Lucian gave him his head.
They thundered across the parkland, Tempest’s hooves sending up divots of wet earth, the fog parting and closing around them like curtains. The physical exertion, the controlled violence of it, offered a temporary reprieve from thought. There was only the horse’s power beneath him, the cold air burning his lungs, the blur of grey and green and brown as they raced toward nothing in particular.
He rode hard for an hour, following the paths he’d memorized until the valley revealed itself in fragments through the thinning mist: the old shepherd’s hut on the eastern slope, the ruined gatehouse where the original entrance to the estate had stood before his great-grandfather had built the current drive, the oak tree lightning-struck three summers past, still standing but hollow now, home to owls and regret.
Eventually, because even escape had its limits, Lucian turned back toward the Hall.
It rose from the fog like a ship from the sea, all dark stone and watching windows. His ancestral home. His inheritance. His prison, though he’d been the one to lock the door from the inside.
The thought that someone new now walked its corridors—slept in its east wing, broke her fast in its morning room, would soon spend her days in its library—caused something uncomfortable to shift in his chest. Curiosity, perhaps. Or the old instinct for self-preservation recognizing a new threat.
Theodora Ashworth. Miss Ashworth, he should remember to say, though the informality of her Christian name had lodged itself in his mind with unfortunate persistence. He’d hired her in a moment of what even he recognized as potential madness, but Roth had been increasingly insistent that the library needed cataloguing, and Lucian had finally surrendered to the necessity.
The necessity of the cataloguing, that was. Not the necessity of a woman’s presence in his home. That remained negotiable at best.
She’d been composed during the interview, almost eerily so. Dark hair pinned severely back, green eyes that met his directly despite obvious exhaustion from travel, hands folded neatly in her lap with an ink stain on her right index finger she’d clearly tried to scrub away and failed. She’d answered his questions about literature and languages with precision but without pretension, corrected his Latin without quite making it a correction, and regarded him with the alert wariness of someone who’d learned not to trust easily.
He’d recognized the look. He saw it in his own mirror often enough.
When he’d asked her why she wanted the position—isolation required, he’d made that clear in the advertisement—she’d paused just long enough that he knew whatever she said next would be at least partially untrue.
“I prefer quiet,” she’d said finally. “And I prefer books to most people.”
“Most people?” he’d challenged, because he’d been taught to probe weakness, and old habits died hard. “Not all?”
“Not all,” she’d agreed. “But the ones worth knowing are few and far between. I suspect they’re easier to find in libraries than in drawing rooms.”
He should have ended the interview there. Should have thanked her for her time and sent her back to wherever she’d come from. Instead, he’d heard himself offering her the position, watching her shoulders drop almost imperceptibly with relief, and hating himself a little for noticing the vulnerability she’d tried so hard to hide.
Now she was here, and he would have to learn to navigate around her presence like one learned to navigate around a new piece of furniture that had been installed in a familiar room. Eventually, presumably, he would cease banging his shin on it.
Roberts took Tempest’s reins when Lucian dismounted in the stable yard. “Good ride, Your Grace?”
“Adequate.” Lucian pulled off his gloves. “Has the house woken?”
“Kitchen’s been up for an hour. Mrs. Holloway’s seeing to breakfast for your guest.”
Not “guest,” Lucian thought. Employee. Staff. Someone temporary who would complete a task and leave. But he merely nodded and strode toward the house, entering through the servants’ door because the front entrance with its marble floor and ancestral portraits felt too formal for the grey mood that had settled over him like the fog over the valley.
He made it as far as the back corridor before Mrs. Holloway materialized from the direction of the kitchen, carrying a tea tray and wearing the expression of benign determination that meant she intended to say something he wouldn’t want to hear.
“Your Grace. Good ride?”
“Yes. Thank you.” He moved to step past her, but she shifted position with the practiced ease of someone who’d spent three decades managing this house and, more recently, its duke.
“Miss Ashworth is in the morning room. I thought you might wish to take breakfast with her.” Mrs. Holloway’s tone suggested this was a statement rather than a request. “Welcome her properly.”
“I spoke with her yesterday.” Lucian kept his voice neutral. “At length.”
“You interviewed her. That’s different from welcoming her.” She met his gaze with the peculiar immunity of someone who’d changed his nappies and was therefore immune to ducal authority. “She’s alone in a strange house, Your Grace. A kind word wouldn’t kill you.”
Probably not, Lucian thought. Though kindness had always been more difficult than cruelty for the men of his bloodline. His father had excelled at the latter while being entirely incapable of the former. Lucian tried to aim for polite indifference and mostly managed it, though lately, he’d wondered if perhaps that was just another form of cruelty, slower and colder.
“Very well,” he said, because arguing with Mrs. Holloway was an exercise in futility. “Five minutes.”
“I’m sure that will be quite sufficient.” Her tone made it clear she thought it wouldn’t be nearly enough, but she stepped aside and let him pass.
The morning room was at the back of the house, facing the gardens his mother had loved and that had gone wild in the years since her death. Grey light filled the space, filtered through the floor-to-ceiling windows that had been his mother’s addition to the Hall—she’d wanted more light, she’d said, to combat the valley’s persistent gloom. The room itself was perhaps the only space in the entire house that felt remotely cheerful: wallpaper in a pattern of small yellow flowers, furniture upholstered in faded blue velvet, a pianoforte in the corner that no one had played in eight years.
Miss Ashworth sat at the small table near the windows, a cup of tea before her and a book open beside her plate. She’d been reading while eating—a habit Lucian understood well—and looked up as he entered with a startled expression that made her seem younger than her years.
“Your Grace.” She rose quickly, the chair scraping against the floor. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—Mrs. Holloway said the morning room was—I can take my breakfast elsewhere if you prefer—”
“Sit,” Lucian said, more sharply than he’d intended. Then, forcing civility: “Please. Mrs. Holloway is right. This is your home as well now. For the duration of your employment.”
She sank back into her chair but didn’t reach for her tea. Her hands remained in her lap, and he noticed again the ink stain, darker now. She’d been writing already this morning, then. Letters? Or notes for the cataloguing?
He should leave. This was five minutes more than he’d intended to give. Instead, he found himself pulling out the chair opposite her and sitting down with the vague sense that he’d just set something irrevocable in motion.
“You slept well?” He reached for the social pleasantries that had once come naturally and now felt like a foreign language imperfectly learned.
“Very well, thank you.” A pause. “The house is quiet.”
“Too quiet?” He watched her face for the flicker of fear or discomfort he’d seen in previous staff members. The Hall had a reputation, and not all of it was undeserved.
But Miss Ashworth merely considered the question with what appeared to be genuine thought. “No,” she said finally. “I’ve spent the past two years in a household with six children under the age of ten. Quiet is a luxury I’d almost forgotten existed.”
“You were a governess, then.” He hadn’t asked about her previous employment during the interview, operating under the principle that anyone willing to accept isolation in the north of England for fifty pounds per annum was likely fleeing something. People’s pasts were their own concern until they became his.
“Of a sort.” Her tone cooled slightly. “More of a nursemaid, truth be told. The oldest child was barely able to read.”
“And yet you came here to catalogue books instead.”
“I came here because the position was available and I needed employment.” She met his gaze steadily. “If you’re asking whether I’m qualified, I assure you I am. If you’re asking whether I have somewhere else to go if this doesn’t suit, I assure you I don’t. That should make me suitably motivated.”
The blunt honesty surprised him into something almost like a smile. Almost. “I wasn’t questioning your qualifications. Merely expressing… mild surprise at finding a governess with a working knowledge of medieval Latin and Pre-Socratic philosophy.”
“My father was a scholar. He taught me himself.” She picked up her teacup, seemed to reconsider, and set it down again. “He died five years ago. I’ve been teaching myself since then, when I had the time and access to books. Which wasn’t often.”
There was grief in her voice, old and worn smooth by time, the kind that no longer actively hurt but left a permanent hollow behind. Lucian recognized it. He carried something similar for his mother, though his was complicated by the relief that she hadn’t lived to see what he’d become.
“The library will give you time and access both,” he said. “Work at your own pace. I’m in no particular hurry for the cataloguing to be complete.”
Something shifted in her expression—relief again, he thought, though she controlled it quickly. “Thank you. I’ll begin this morning, if that suits. Mrs. Holloway mentioned you’d want the rare books handled carefully.”
“They’re all rare, in their way. But yes. The medieval manuscripts especially. Some are quite fragile.” He paused, then added what he’d been avoiding saying: “I’ll show you the library myself. After you’ve finished breakfast.”
“I’m finished now.” She rose, closing the book she’d been reading. Lucian glimpsed the title: Sense and Sensibility. “I was just…”
“Escaping into fiction?” He stood as well, the habit of manners his mother had drilled into him taking over. “Understandable. Reality can be tiresome.”
“Sometimes,” she agreed. Then, with a flicker of something that might have been humor: “Though I confess I’m curious whether your library will prove more interesting than the fiction. Gothic manor, reclusive duke, mysterious isolation—if you have a mad wife locked in the attic, we’re entering dangerously derivative territory.”
The words were out before she clearly thought better of them. He watched the color rise in her cheeks, watched her straighten her spine as if preparing for rebuke.
He should rebuke her. The comment skirted the edge of impropriety, made light of his family’s tragedies, referenced gossip she must have heard. He should remind her of her place, reestablish the boundaries between employer and employee, make clear that familiarity would not be tolerated.
Instead, he heard himself say, “No wife. Mad or otherwise. My mother has been dead these eight years, and the North Tower is closed. There was a tragedy there, years ago. The servants have their own theories about it. Though I believe the servants have convinced themselves it’s haunted.”
“Is it?” She was watching him now with frank curiosity, the kind of direct gaze most people had learned to soften when addressing a duke. “Haunted?”
“All old houses are haunted, Miss Ashworth. By memory if nothing else.” He moved toward the door, pausing when he reached it. “The library is this way. Unless you’ve changed your mind about beginning this morning?”
“Not at all, Your Grace.” She followed him into the corridor, bringing with her a faint scent of lavender soap and old books, and Lucian felt again that uncomfortable shift in his chest, the one that felt suspiciously like his carefully maintained solitude recognizing a threat.
He led her through the Hall in silence, acutely aware of her presence behind him in a way he found distinctly unsettling. She moved quietly but not timidly, her footsteps echoing his own on the marble floors. When they passed the portrait gallery, she slowed fractionally, her gaze caught by the faces of his ancestors.
“That’s your mother,” she said, and it wasn’t a question. “The resemblance is striking.”
He looked at the portrait despite himself: Marianne Greymont, Duchess of Greymont, painted the year before her death. She was standing in the gardens, one hand resting on the pianoforte that now sat silent in the morning room. The artist had captured something in her eyes, some deep sadness that Lucian only recognized now, too late to ask its cause.
“Yes,” he said. “She died when I was twenty-four. A wasting illness. The doctors called it consumption, though I suspect they were guessing.”
“I’m sorry.” The words were quiet, without the performative sympathy he’d grown to despise. “It’s a beautiful portrait.”
“She hated it. Said it made her look mournful. But my father insisted.” He turned away from the painting and continued down the corridor. “The library is at the end of this hall.”
The library occupied what had once been the original Great Hall of the medieval structure at the heart of Greymont Hall. Subsequent dukes had added to it, built around it, but the library remained the soul of the house: three stories of books rising to a vaulted ceiling, with a gallery running around the upper levels and narrow windows set high in the walls that filled the space with filtered light.
Lucian opened the double doors and stepped aside, watching Miss Ashworth’s face as she entered.
She’d seen the library once before, of course—her interview, conducted by lamplight, surrounded by shadows that had made the vast space feel intimate rather than overwhelming. But that had been evening, and she had been too nervous to do more than register its scale. Now, in the pale morning light filtering through the high windows, the library revealed itself properly, and her reaction was immediate and unguarded. She laughed, a sound of pure delight that transformed her entire countenance.
“Good God,” she breathed. “How many books are there?”
“Approximately ten thousand.” He followed her inside, oddly pleased by her reaction despite himself. “Collected over four centuries, though the majority came from my great-grandfather and grandfather. They both had a passion for acquisition.”
“Clearly.” She moved forward slowly, turning in a circle to take it all in. “This is… this is extraordinary. Why on earth would you need it catalogued? It looks perfectly organized.”
“It looks that way, yes. But the organizational system is known only to my late grandfather, and he died thirty years ago without writing it down. What looks like order is actually chaos masquerading as intentionality.” He gestured to the nearest shelf. “These appear to be grouped by subject. They’re not. That shelf contains everything from a treatise on agricultural reform to a Gothic novel to a medical text on the treatment of gout.”
She pulled a volume from the shelf at random, examined it, and laughed again. “Pre-Socratic philosophy nestled between a farmers’ almanac and The Castle of Otranto. Your grandfather had eclectic tastes.”
“To put it mildly.” Lucian found himself moving closer, drawn by her enthusiasm despite his better judgment. “The goal is to create an actual cataloguing system. Author, title, subject, date of publication. Make the collection accessible.”
“To whom?” She looked up at him, genuine curiosity in her green eyes. “Forgive me, Your Grace, but who exactly is meant to access this library? You said you don’t entertain.”
It was a fair question. The honest answer—that he’d been fleeing the wreckage of his marriage and the guilt of his wife’s death and the impossibility of ever being what people expected—was not one he intended to give.
“I prefer the quiet,” he said, echoing her own words from the interview. “And I prefer my own company to most people’s.”
She smiled slightly. “That’s what I said. I had the distinct impression you didn’t believe me.”
“I didn’t. And I suspect you don’t believe me either.”
“No,” she agreed. “But I respect that some questions shouldn’t be answered. I have a few of my own I’d rather not field.”
A soft knock interrupted them. Mrs. Holloway appeared in the doorway carrying a tea tray, which she set on the reading table between them with the practiced ease of someone who had been anticipating this exact situation.
“I thought you might want refreshment, Your Grace. Miss Ashworth.” She poured two cups without waiting for a response and withdrew, pulling the door closed behind her with a click that sounded, to Lucian’s ears, suspiciously satisfied.
They regarded each other across the table, two people with secrets, and Lucian felt something shift between them—a tentative understanding, perhaps, or the beginning of one.
“Then let’s agree,” he said, “not to pry into each other’s pasts. Work together civilly, maintain our respective privacies, and part ways when the cataloguing is complete with nothing more complicated than a good reference.”
“That sounds eminently sensible.” She raised her teacup slightly. “To an uncomplicated arrangement.”
He lifted his own cup to meet hers, but the words caught in his throat.
Because he knew, even as they spoke them, that nothing about Theodora Ashworth in his house would prove uncomplicated. She was already complicating things merely by existing, by laughing in his library, by sitting across from him and making him remember what it felt like to want conversation instead of silence.
“To an uncomplicated arrangement,” he echoed anyway, knowing it for a lie.
They drank, and the evening continued its careful progression toward a conclusion that felt both inevitable and impossible to predict.
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