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Dorian stood at the open window, his eyes transfixed on the delicate figure in the garden below. Patience knelt beside a withered rosebush, her slender fingers gently pulling the tangled branches apart. Sunlight was caught in her golden hair, under her white bonnet. She wore a simple dress, one of those she’d brought with her, and worked without any gloves.

When he’d put his ring on her finger, he noticed how calloused and rough the skin of her hands was. He’d assumed it was because she didn’t have an easy life. Now that he knew the true reason, he was even more intrigued.

Beside her stood several small burlap sacks full of what must be soil, from which protruded rosebushes she must have brought from her family home. He wondered briefly where they’d been stored until now and if they had survived or if being uprooted like that and then held in burlap sacks without care had already killed them. He shouldn’t have forbidden Patience working in the garden. If she had cared enough about her roses to defy her parents, it was clearly very important to her.

From here, he could hear her hum something, her voice high, like little bells, and so lovely his heart squeezed.

“O, where are you going?” “To Scarborough fair,”

Savoury, sage, rosemary, and thyme;

“Remember me to a lass who lives there,

For once she was a true love of mine.

He’d never liked folk songs, preferring Bach, Mozart, and Italian opera, but he closed his eyes, letting her voice seep into his psyche. He could listen to her sing anything for hours. Her gentle voice, her serene face, the way she tended to the roses with such care and devotion stirred something deep within Dorian.

His mind drifted to last night, the feel of her skin against his, the sound of her sighs in his ear. His heart quickened, and his breath caught in his throat. A tingling warmth spread through his chest and straight to his groin. His muscles tensed involuntarily, readying him for a closeness that was no longer there. But it was more than mere lust that moved him now.

He’d held her in his arms as she slept, her breath deep and even, tickling his skin. He’d guarded her as if she were a gentle otherworldly creature, fleeting and mercurial—one he was lucky enough to hold in his arms. Her presence soothed him, calmed his wrath, his inner demons. Something like peace had settled in his body, the strange sense that he was right where he was supposed to be, and he didn’t need to run.

Getting a glimpse of the passion and tenderness he had denied himself for so long had opened a crack in his walls. And yet, even as he’d reveled in the pleasure of her responsiveness last night, a small voice had whispered that it was too good to be true.

She was a punishment sent to him by God. The forbidden fruit of happiness, so close its luscious scent tickled his nose.

And yet completely unreachable.

The memory of that dreadful night in Oxford twelve years ago slapped into his mind like a blast of fire, and his mangled hand ached and tingled in the leather glove.

Twenty-year-old Dorian had just got the news of his papa’s death and marched out of the stuffy student pub The Bear, in urgent need of fresh air. Anything to relieve the strange mix of anger and loss he’d never felt before. I regret to inform you that on 3 October your father, the Most High, Noble, and Potent Prince, His Grace Frederick Louis, Duke of Rath, passed away… The words in the solicitor’s letter rang in his head like a hammer striking iron. As you are your father’s heir, his title will be awarded to you⁠—

Lucien’s footsteps hurried some distance behind him as Dorian shoved through the pub’s back doors into the mews. The night air, cold and damp, clashed with the foul stench of pig manure. Despite the muck squelching under his shoes, Dorian relished the biting chill and the darkness that enveloped him, a stark contrast to the pub’s noisy warmth filled with laughter and clinking mugs.

But the night wasn’t silent. To his left, the distressing sounds of a struggle pierced the quiet—a woman’s faint cries and a man’s gruff grunts.

“Please, no…” the woman pleaded.

“Shut up. You’ll like it,” the man insisted.

Dorian turned, his heart hammering, and froze. Under the faint glow of a gas lamp, a man’s back hunched over a figure pinned against a hay pile. The flicker of white under the lamp revealed a woman’s skirt, female legs kicking on either side of the man. They were struggling, one arm of the man holding the woman down, the other fumbling at his breeches.

“You’ve been begging for this all night,” grunted out the man.

It took only a moment to understand what was going on. Dorian needed an army of enemies to quench his rage and pain. But he didn’t have an army.

He had only himself.

With fury shooting through him in a blast of fire, he launched himself at the man, his fists curling around the edge of his jacket, and pulled him back and away from the woman.

The man whirred around, freeing himself from Dorian’s grasp. With yet another shock, Dorian saw that he recognized the man. It was Mr. John Rose shoving his shirt into his breeches.

The girl desperately pushed her skirts and her white apron down, tucked her hair under her bonnet, and ran away with her face flushed and her eyes big and teary. It was the maid, the daughter of the pub owner—Chloe… Catherine… Something starting with C… Christine, he remembered.

Mr. John Rose, a young gentleman with curly blond hair, bright blue eyes, high cheekbones, and full red lips stared at him. A vile expression twisted his angelic features, which now seemed as out of place as smudges of bright paint on a masterpiece.

Dorian didn’t know the man except as someone who had tried several times to talk to him earlier this evening. He seemed to be one of those men who were desperate to know someone of importance to advance in life.