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He reached for the cup, but his hand betrayed him, trembling slightly before he forced them still. The tremors had returned last night—not from the danger or the blood, but from the woman who’d pulled herself up from the muck and stood like a queen among scattered rose petals. Her eyes had been defiant, her throat blooming with bruises. And she had said his name like it meant something.

Graham.

Not Dr. Redchester. Not Your Grace. Just Graham. The sound of it in her voice had slipped past his defenses with unsettling ease.

“Blast,” he muttered, shaking himself free of the memory.

He exhaled and brought the cup to his lips with a precise movement. The coffee, bitter and too hot, scalded his throat, but he took another drink before setting it aside and reaching into his coat pocket for the letter.

His fingers hesitated over the seal. The letter’s weight in his pocket had been a persistent reminder of obligations he’d been avoiding. Whatever Beatrix Norwood had penned in that precise, upright hand would ask something of him—something he wouldn’t know how to give. Her letters never carried disaster, only truth. And that was often worse.

Dr. Redchester,

I write with some concern.

Mary Ann has taken to sleeping beneath her bed. She says it feels safer there. She claims the curtains whisper at night, though I suspect it is more memory than mischief that troubles her. Heather refuses to leave her sister alone, which is good of her, though she now insists on staying awake “in case he comes back.” I am unsure who he is meant to be—ghost, goblin, or grief itself—but she will not be persuaded otherwise.

Neither child has slept properly in three nights. They’re cross in the mornings, slower with their sums, quick to tears. Yesterday Mary Ann spilled her inkpot and cried for half an hour over it. Heather has begun correcting my grammar with great vigor, which I believe is her way of asserting control in a world that feels unsteady.

I know you are busy. I know silence feels safer to you than words. But I believe the girls need reminding that you are still here. Not in the house, but with them. If you could manage to join us for supper—just once this week—I think it would do more good than all my stories and warm milk combined.

In friendship and frankness,

Miss B. Norwood

Graham’s jaw tightened. He folded the letter neatly—reflex more than thought—and returned it to his pocket.

The coffee had gone tepid. He took a sip anyway, tasting nothing but the bitterness.

Edward had been the one meant for fatherhood, the dukedom, a life of domestic tranquility. Graham was the second son, the spare, free to pursue medicine before losing himself in the brutal arithmetic of war.

It had been raining the night the carriage overturned on the Bath road. Horses spooked, wheels splintered, and that was the end of it. The Duke and Duchess dead and two little girls were left blinking in the aftermath, trying to understand why everyone kept sayingthey’re gone.

Graham hadn’t learned of the accident until long after the funeral had passed and the will had been read. By the time he returned to England, the title was his.

So were the seven-year-old twin girls.

He had accepted the guardianship because it was expected. Because it was right. Because the thought of anyone else—especially Baron Frederic Hollan, the late Duchess’s cousin and nearest living relative on her side—laying claim to them made his blood run cold.

The girls were already living at Eyron Park, tucked away in the country. A rotating cast of nurses and tutors had seen to their care. His brother had preferred it that way, raising his daughters far from London’s endless scrutiny. It had suited the family—private, distant, rarely seen in town.

Graham had been content to leave them there. But little girls needed more than provision. They needed presence. Stability.

Not a war-scarred uncle who cannot even tell them apart.

He’d hired Beatrix Norwood on instinct and desperation. The Quaker governess had arrived with plain gowns and quiet authority and had taken over the nursery in less than an hour. The girls had clung to her without hesitation.

He had almost envied that.

Since then, he’d visited Eyron Park only twice—brief, structured appearances that made the girls wary and the house feel no more his than it ever had. He’d stayed in London under the pretext of caring for the sick, but the truth was simpler.

Distance felt safer than failure.

Now he was being called home to supper.

He pressed a hand to his temple, willing the silence of the club to press back the chaos gathering in his head. He’d known this pretense—this life half-lived in the ambiguity of London—couldn’t last forever, but he was not ready to relinquish it.

I will not expose them to the demons that cling to me.