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T HE INSISTENT, SCRAPING noise coming from the window made Maddie pause mid-stroke with the paintbrush. Was a rat climbing the wall? Who knew what creatures might be nestled in the plant? Perhaps she should cut it or move it away from the window. She waited. No noise came.

The good light had disappeared with the sunset, but she’d almost finished for today.

She took a step away from the canvas and admired her work.

Her heavy eyelids seemed to drop against her will, but she couldn’t stop smiling.

The painting needed a few final touches.

A brighter colour there, a few black lines here.

But the view was there. The gentle hills, the mist, and the river created a pleasant but unobtrusive background.

The focus remained on the couple dancing among the flowers.

The lady’s dress was caught in the middle of twirling around her legs, and the gentleman’s jacket was fluttering up.

Maddie’s first idea had been to draw them naked in a Hades and Persephone’s depiction. But alas, Mother would have never allowed her that.

What would Mrs. Blanchet say? Hopefully, she’d see the passion Maddie felt every time she picked up a paintbrush and—what was that noise again?

It came from above the window while earlier it’d come from below it.

The scratching sound sent a chill down her back.

It had to be an intruder. A rat couldn’t make so much noise.

Unless it was a very large rat. She almost preferred an intruder to a giant rat.

Some said the rats along the Thames grew bigger than the normal urban rats and that they were spreading throughout the city.

She didn’t want to be the one to prove the rumour right.

Another loud screech jolted her. Blimey. What was it?

She stretched out an arm towards the window but didn’t have time to open it before the deafening sound of glass shattering came.

The window exploded. Something large and dark smashed through it and shoved her back with the strength of a rugby player tackling an adversary.

She cried out as her back hit the floor hard and a searing pain slashed through her hand.

The agony cut off her breath and the scream about to burst out of her mouth.

On top of that, some type of fabric, a jacket perhaps, covered her face. She couldn’t see anything.

“I’m sorry,” a masculine voice said close to her ear.

The man scrambled to his feet amid the noise of glass shards being smashed under his weight. The moment he rose, the thing covering her face lifted too, revealing the disaster in front of her. Wood splinters, broken glass, and leaves littered her room. Debris covered even her vanity and bed.

Maddie lay on the floor, unable to speak. What had happened?

“I...I didn’t mean to hurt you. Miss?” The tall blond man crouched next to her. His blue eyes flared wide as he stared at her. “Are you all right? Oh, God. You’re bleeding.”

She closed her eyes and kept down the wave of nausea threatening to overcome her.

When her mind calmed, she sat upright but in doing so, she put her right hand down on the floor and a new shot of pain made her whimper.

A sharp piece of glass was buried deep in her palm.

A shock of stillness went through her. The shard caught the light, enhancing the ruby drops of blood on the glass.

“Let me help.” Strands of blond hair tumbled down the man’s sharp cheeks when he removed his flat hat. He reached out for her injured hand.

“Don’t touch me!” Maddie scurried away from him, smashing more glass underneath her.

He held up his hands. “I mean no harm.”

“You mean no harm? Look at me!” She raised her injured hand that throbbed and swelled. A hysterical laugh shook through her.

He rubbed his forehead, paling. “It was an accident.”

The door to her bedroom was flung open, and footsteps thudded from behind her.

“Maddie, what happened?” Verity crouched next to her sister, her long braid falling over her shoulder. “Maddie!”

“What is the meaning of this?” Father said at the same time as Mother screamed, clutching her shawl around her shoulders.

The man kept his hands up, gazing away from Verity and Mother in their nightgowns. “I’m not a thief. It was an accident.”

As he stepped away from Maddie, she had a full view of her bedroom and understood the extension of the disaster.

She forgot about the pain in her hand and about the fright.

Even her father’s rant and her mother’s complaints became a muffled, distant noise.

All the air was punched out of her lungs with a single sharp breath.

Her painting had been slashed by the glass and the broken wooden frame of the window.

The river had been cut in two by a splinter, and the dancing couple had been ripped apart.

The gentleman didn’t hold the lady’s hand any longer.

Even worse, the turpentine must have dropped on the canvas because a corner of the painting melted like tears from a rainbow.

Weeks of work. All her dreams. All her plans. Gone. Vanished. Destroyed.

The intense agony tearing her apart cut her so deeply she couldn’t even howl, although an insistent ring buzzed in her ears. If she was about to faint, she wouldn’t oppose any resistance. Unconsciousness sounded like a jolly good idea now.

Voices echoed around her. The man talked, gesturing at the window and shaking his head. Everyone talked. Verity supported Maddie’s injured hand, blathering something about calling their physician, but Maddie couldn’t focus on anything aside from the paint smearing across her shattered dream.

Sitting in the armchair, Maddie cradled her bandaged hand. A blazing log fire roared in the hearth, and the gas lamps and candles spread a warm atmosphere. It’d be cosy and comfortable if not for the throb in her palm and the tangible tension in the room.

The family physician had been summoned from Harley Street, the glass shard had been removed, and the wound promptly stitched.

But the pain in both her hand and chest remained.

The ointment the physician had applied to the wound smelled like vinegar, and the numbing pain potion had left a sour taste in her mouth.

But somehow, she didn’t care about any of that.

It was as if she witnessed her own downfall as an observer, watching her life crumble with a sense of helplessness.

Now she was in the sitting room with her assailant, her parents, Verity, and a very agitated young constable who blushed so fiercely she wouldn’t be surprised if he passed out.

In the midst of the utter chaos following the destruction of her window and life, no one had properly interrogated the intruder who, to his credit, hadn’t tried to flee.

Maddie’s mother had never stopped talking, but Maddie couldn’t tell about what.

“Please, madam.” The constable dabbed his forehead with a handkerchief, cutting off Maddie’s mother. “Let me ask a few questions to the gentleman.”

“Gentleman?” Her mother tilted her chin up. “He’s an intruder.”

“My name is Lord Hector Wentworth,” her assailant said in the tone of someone whose patience was wearing thin. That made two of them.

Tall and gangly, he had the refined manners and cultured speech of a lord and the sapphire eyes of a perfect spring sky; it was a peculiar colour, not quite blue and with a hint of violet. She would love to replicate it once she came out of her catatonic state.

Not that any of Lord Wentworth’s striking features changed the fact he’d attacked her, broken her window, destroyed her precious painting, and injured her hand.

The hand she used to paint. Her mind was a jumble of incoherent thoughts.

One moment, she wondered if her hand would allow her to paint any time soon.

The next, she pondered if she could have a nice cup of tea, perhaps with an oat biscuit.

No, her stomach roiled at the thought of food, but a cup of tea would be wonderful.

“Wentworth?” Mother asked. Her dressing gown covered her from chin to toe, but even in a garment that made her look tinier and shorter than she was, she didn’t lose her commanding aura.

“Are you a relative of Robert Wentworth, the Duke of Blackburn?” Her voice acquired a sudden sweet note that even Maddie in her confused state couldn’t miss.

Hector nodded several times, his curly golden hair bouncing over his face. “I’m his brother, actually. Please send for him. He will vouch for me.”

Duke, earl, prince, king. Who cared? Maddie slouched back in the armchair. She didn’t care who the man was, but her mother apparently did because she smiled and ordered the constable to call this duke.

“What were you doing in my sister’s bedroom?” Verity asked, holding Maddie’s good hand.

Hector twisted his flat hat with his restless fingers.

“There’s this rare plant covering Miss Madeline’s window.

” He paused to inhale. “It’s an extremely rare species, believed to be extinct, and I wanted a sample to take to the Royal Botanical Society.

But when I reached the gutter where the plant had its root, I tripped and smashed through the window.

It was breaking the window or falling to my death.

” He rushed to Maddie and took a knee in front of her, startling her.

His unique eyes widened, and the light from the fire was reflected in them. Really peculiar colour.

“Miss, I swear I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It was an accident.” He was so lean his Adam’s apple was particularly prominent.

In a tiny corner of her mind, she found his large eyes, strong jaw, and straight nose worthy of being captured in a painting. He’d be a great model for a Greek god or an angel, although she knew better. The man was no angel.

But then his words sank. A plant. The entire disaster had happened because of a stupid vegetable. She snatched her hand out of Verity’s, her chest rising and falling quickly.