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When Brook had started to wonder if the box of English ones were in fact to another woman altogether, when she had drawn out the one envelope with a seal to give to Justin, she had considered reading them all, more closely.

Something had stayed her.

She opened the bandbox and drew out the smaller wooden one. Held it to her middle. Now she knew the writer was not some long-gone, faceless name. He was here. Her father. And if anyone should go through these letters, it was he.

She slid out of her room, padded down the stairs, took turn after turn until she heard the snapping of a fire in a grate and smelled the perfume of books and smoke and the magic of all those tales in one place.

Whitby surged to his feet the moment she entered, as if he had been waiting for her. “Brook. Were you looking for me, or for a book?”

“You.” Though now she had to turn in a circle to take in the books. Shelves upon shelves of them, floor to vaulted ceiling. “If ever you cannot find me, look here first.”

Whitby chuckled and slid a step toward her. “I daresay I will already be here ahead of you. It is my favorite room in the house.”

Another thing they had in common. She put on a smile—
though it felt slight and uncertain—and held out the box. “I mentioned these yesterday. The correspondence, from you to my mother. I wanted to return it.”

The look that crossed his face went beyond words. As if it were the echo of a million memories, the joyous and the bittersweet. He closed the space between them and reached for the box.

His fingers were long and slender, like Brook’s on a larger scale. They gripped it in one hand, traced its contours with the other. “My grandmother’s box. I gave it to Lizzie thinking she would store her gloves in it, as Grandmama had.” He flipped the latch, opened the lid.

Shut it again and held it out to her with flaring nostrils.

Knowing her confusion must be on her face, Brook reached for it slowly.

Her father’s larynx bobbed as he swallowed. “I have the ones she wrote to me. Her words, her script, her perfume once upon them. I don’t need to read my own words. You may, if you like. If you think it would help you to know us. I can give you the others, too, that she wrote.”

Though she pressed the wood until it seemed her fingertips ought to dent it, reading their correspondence still seemed wrong somehow. “I do not want to pry.”

But his eyes went soft, and he skimmed his hand over her wrist. Fleeting, brief, the touch of a man unaccustomed to such gestures. All the more important because of it. “I want you to. It is a daughter’s privilege.”

Was it also a daughter’s privilege to ask questions? Because she wanted to know why her mother had had the box with her when she died. Why they were even in a carriage leaving Whitby Park in the middle of the night, on their way to York. Why, if this emotion that seemed to have drowned her father was love in its purest form, they were so disastrously separated.

One hand went to the pearls dangling from her necklace. Twisted them, let them fall, twisted the opposite way.

A knock sounded on the open door, and Brook jumped and spun. Whitby had introduced Mr. Graham and Mrs. Doyle earlier, and they both now stood in the doorway, faces pleasant but cool. The butler sketched a quick bow. “Mademoiselle Ragusa’s train ticket has been purchased as you requested, my lord, and there will be one awaiting her at the port as well.”

The housekeeper directed a smile to Brook. “Deirdre will be happy to serve as your lady’s maid until you can find one, my lady. Or indefinitely, if you find her work satisfactory.”

Though the features were still unfamiliar, she knew well the look on Mrs. Doyle’s face. She had seen it often enough on the fearsome palace housekeeper’s, the one who wore the keys to the Grimaldi home as if they could unlock heaven and hell themselves. It said: “
My words suggest—my will commands.
”

Brook told her lips to curve. She had gone head to head with her old housekeeper a time or two, but it would surely not be wise to do so with Mrs. Doyle on Brook’s second day here. “I’m sure Deirdre will suit me quite well, Mrs. Doyle. I would be pleased to have her as my lady’s maid.”

Whitby obviously knew the look as well as Brook did. His sigh blustered forth. “You needn’t agree to anything so soon, my dear. We should speak with Mary about it, see what she recommends—and you can be sure she’ll have an opinion.”

Mrs. Doyle stiffened.

Brook offered a conciliatory smile, though she wasn’t sure who she was trying to placate. “I would welcome a maid who is already a part of Whitby Park.”

“Brook—”

“
Je
veux être comme l’un d’eux
.”
I want to
be one of you
. She hoped her father spoke enough French to understand her
meaning—and that the servants did not. Given their blinks, she was right at least on that score.

Whitby she was not sure of. Not until his lips twitched. “You are the image of your mother, my dear. But it seems your disposition you inherited from me, stubbornness and all. My apologies.”

She repositioned the box of letters and returned his hint of a smile. “It serves me well.”

He dismissed the servants with a nod and then studied Brook for a long moment, obviously trying to see something beyond the visible. Perhaps he managed it. The lines around his eyes softened, as did the tension in his shoulders. “Tomorrow,” he said quietly, “after our guests depart, I will show you your home. And your mother’s room, her things. You can have whatever you wish. I want you to be one of us too, Brook. I want you to feel that this is where you should have been all along.”

She wanted it too, so very much. Wanted to walk these halls with all the abandon she had enjoyed in the prince’s palace. Wanted to be welcomed and respected among the household as her cousins were. Wanted to make this man before her laugh and smile, and to know what to call him.

But those desires were much like love—pretty on paper. So very hard won in reality.

Ten

N
ever had the ride to Azerley Hall felt so interminable. Justin tried to watch the Yorkshire moors roll by beyond the rain-spattered windscreen, but it was no use. He kept darting glances to Grandfather, who kept ignoring him.

No, that was unfair. Grandfather was exhausted. The creases in his face had deepened, and his cane had shaken nearly violently as he made his way to the car that morning. The trip had cost him precious energy. The fact that he had been unreadable yesterday through tea, supper, and Brook’s performance on the piano afterward, meant only that he did not forget his breeding even in illness. The fact that he held his silence now meant only that he was too tired to converse, not that he had something bad to say.

Still. Justin needed to know what the duke thought of her. Not that his opinion would change Justin’s, but it mattered. It mattered a great deal.

“Will you relax?” Cayton leaned close to issue the order. The others seemed not to hear him over the noise of the engine. “You are taut as a bow.”

“Sorry.” But though he told his neck to ease, his shoulders to let go their bunching, they would not obey.

His cousin rolled his eyes. “You can call again any time you please.”

Whitby had said as much when they departed, that they were always welcome. But Justin glanced again at Grandfather, and a knot tightened in his stomach. He daren’t leave him. Not unless the duke improved drastically.

Cayton’s gaze followed Justin’s. And he nodded. His shoulders went taut too. In this, they were of the same mind.

Silence reigned again—other than the roar of the motor, the grumble of the tires over the pitted road, and the hiss of rain on glass. The air today was cool, to match the low grey clouds. And Brook, as she toured Whitby Park with her father, would be claiming she loved the rain, even as her fingers turned to ice.

Another look at the duke proved as fruitless as the first hundred. He said nothing as they covered the last miles to Cayton’s home. Nor as they parked and all climbed out. Nor, even, when Aunt Susan insisted on helping him up the stairs.

Then, when they were all inside the towering great hall, he met Justin’s gaze at last. “Join me in the study, if you would, Justin.”

With the command, years fell away. He was back at school, getting called into the headmaster’s office for putting a toad in a tutor’s drawer. At the palace, being called before Prince Albert after he’d taught Brook to use a pistol when she was twelve. At Ralin, about to get a dressing down for posing a suit of armor in a too-undignified manner.

“Coming, Grandfather.”

“May God have mercy on your soul,” Cayton muttered as he brushed past on his way to the stairs.

Justin allowed himself only one fortifying glance at his aunts and then followed the duke’s slow steps toward Cayton’s study.
To the room, behind the desk, to the massive leather chair that somehow made Grandfather’s weakening frame seem bigger rather than smaller.

Justin took the chair on the other side of the mahogany desk. And wished Father were there to make one of his jokes about tight laces and expectations.

Grandfather gripped the arm of the chair with one hand, held on to his cane with the other, and drilled his gaze directly into Justin’s. “I did not want to mention this with your aunts present. But we have a problem.”

Justin tried to straighten his spine, though it was already a ramrod. “Sir?”

“I have tried to ease you into the running of the estates. Perhaps I shouldn’t have. You know we have holdings in India, Africa, Canada, and the Caribbean.”

Of course he knew—and had been hinting for years that Grandfather needed to let him review the ledgers for them. Justin nodded.

The duke sighed. “Apparently my stewards there were not as trustworthy as I thought. They have been lining their pockets with Stafford money. Money I was counting on to improve the tenements. The repairs on the cottages in the village cannot be put off another year, but I don’t know now how we can afford them.”

The fear eased before it could slice. Those books he
did
know, better at this point than his grandfather did. “If we tighten up on our spending and cut loose a few holdings that we’ve no need of, we can find the money.” And he had inherited a tidy sum from Father—though mentioning the fortune he had made at the tables wasn’t a safe topic.

Grandfather shook his head. “I am none too sure. You will have to travel to put these issues to rights, and doing so in the style you must to make a proper impression will necessitate
spending yet more.” He paused, focused his gaze on the far wall and its rows of scarcely populated bookshelves, and rocked his cane back and forth. “You should marry her, my boy. Sooner rather than later. Being out of society so long, Whitby has spent little and made much. He will give her an impressive dowry, and he said he will draw up the papers to name her his heir within the week.”

His throat went dry and tight. “You
asked
him?”

The duke’s gaze snapped back to him. Slapped at him. “We all know how these things work. You will make his daughter a duchess. No one would expect her to come to the union empty-handed. It would be a marriage of equals, beneficial to all.”

Justin clenched his teeth until he felt the tic of the muscle in his jaw.

Grandfather’s eyes went dark. “Why do you look at me like that? You are fond of the girl—it is obvious. You would likely have wed her even if she were a penniless nobody, nothing but the daughter of an opera singer. You ought to be praising the Lord she is more, so that it will bring good to Stafford rather than scandal.”

Justin could not convince his jaw to unclench. If he did, words would spill out that he could not in good conscience speak to the duke. Words about how he didn’t want to marry for the good of Stafford. He didn’t want to marry with even the thought of what money she could bring to him. If he married Brook it would be because they had always understood each other. They made each other better, stronger, more.

Because he loved her. Had always loved her,
would
always love her. And he could not cheapen that by putting a pound sign on it.

Grandfather, apparently assuming his word was, as always, law, leaned back in the chair. “Propose soon. Perhaps at this house party in a fortnight, before the rest of society meets her.
She is too beautiful to remain unattached for long, and that aunt of hers is inviting all the leading families. Nottingham’s son will be there, and he’s likely to switch his affections to your baroness now that she is Whitby’s heir. From what I hear, he has a silver tongue and a way with the young ladies. Claim her before he can.”

A stab, a twist in his gut. “Brook will not be so easily swept off her feet, Grandfather. She may sing the arias of love and romance, but she is practical and logical to a fault.” When she wasn’t flying off on some impulsive lark or another, anyway . . . but liberating cars and joining the ballet were a far cry from pledging her life to a stranger’s.

Weren’t they?

“Logic will tell her, then, to make the best match possible. And if word gets out that our estates are not in order, you will be second to Worthing. Move ahead of the rumors.” Grandfather pushed himself up, slowly and obviously with pain. “You will be a good duke, Justin. A good husband. A good father. You will be all we prayed you would be. You have always made me proud.”