A ROYAL DECEPTION.

He stepped inside, closing the door behind him with the softest click—as if sound itself might betray him.

"I didn't see you tonight," he said.

She didn't turn.

"Good."

The word landed like a slap.

He flinched, barely.

"Emily—"

"Don't." Her fingers curled around the bedpost, white-knuckled. "Don't come here and pretend this isn't what you chose."

"I didn't choose her," he said, his voice raw. "I chose survival."

She gave a small, humourless laugh—too brittle to last.

"And what am I, then?" she asked, softly. "A liability you couldn't afford?"

"No." He took one step forward, then another. "You were the only thing that ever felt real."

At that, she turned to face him.

And for the briefest moment—a flicker, a breath—he looked young again. Not the Duke's heir. Not the man an empire was watching. But the boy who had once clutched her hand beneath a willow tree and begged her to run away.

The one the ton whispered about, year after year—not for his scandals, but his lack of them. No courted heiresses. No indiscretions. No mistresses behind closed doors.

They had gossiped behind lace fans and clinked crystal—

That perhaps Lord Blackwood didn't care for women at all.

But they were wrong.

He simply hadn't cared for anyone… except her.

She hadn't meant to let him touch her.

But then his fingers brushed her wrist—just a whisper of contact, the way he used to when they were reckless and young and still believed the world might bend for them. A shiver tore through her, treacherous and unbidden.

"Emily," he said again, and this time, her name was a plea.

She should have pulled away. Should have thrown him out. Should have done anything but stand there, trembling, as his thumb traced the delicate bones of her hand.

But God help her—she remembered.

The way he had kissed her that first summer, desperate and clumsy behind the hedgerows. The way he had whispered promises against her skin, half-laughing, half-serious, as if he could will them into truth. The way he had looked at her, always, like she was the only thing in the world worth seeing.

And now here he was, his breath warm against her temple, his body so close she could feel the unsteady rhythm of his heart.

"This changes nothing," she whispered.

"I know."

His mouth found hers anyway.

It wasn't gentle. It was hunger and regret and five years of silence, all crashing together in something too fierce to name. She gasped, and he swallowed the sound like a man starved, hands tangling in her hair, pressing her back against the bedpost until the wood bit into her spine.

She should have stopped him.

She didn't.

His lips moved to her throat, her collarbone, the hollow beneath her ear that had always made her weak. And when his fingers skimmed the laces of her gown, she didn't push him away—she arched into him, nails scoring his shoulders, as if she could carve herself into his skin and stay there forever.

Later, when the candles had burned low and the London fog pressed against the windows, she would tell herself it meant nothing. That it was only weakness, only memory, only the last ember of something long since dead.

But when he finally pulled her onto the bed—when his body covered hers, when he whispered her name like a prayer against her bare shoulder—she knew, with a terrible, sinking clarity, that she was lying.

---

The dawn at Ashbourne Hall was a slow, silvered thing—the kind of light that caught on the dew like scattered shillings and turned the paddocks into a mirage of gilt-edged green. Sebastian Blackwood rode through it as though he had invented the morning himself, his stallion's hooves slicing through the mist with indolent grace. He never hurried. Not when the world would wait for him.

The second set of hoofbeats approached with deliberate measure.

Sebastian smiled without turning.

"Future Duke of Ashbourne," he drawled, the title dripping like honey laced with arsenic. "To what do I owe the honor?"

Alexander drew alongside him, a shadow cut from sharper cloth. Black coat, black gloves, a face like a blade left out in the cold. His horse, darker still, moved as if it too had been schooled in silence.

"You're up early," Alexander observed.

Sebastian flicked a speck of dust from his sleeve. "I find the sunrise less tedious than the company at breakfast."

A muscle twitched in Alexander's jaw.

Sebastian exhaled a laugh. "Father must be congratulated. Lady Georgiana is exquisite. That spine of hers—like she was bred to wear a crown."

"She'll do."

"Do?" Sebastian's grin widened. "If that's all you require in a wife, you might have married the housemaid and saved us the spectacle."

Alexander's gaze remained fixed ahead. "The housemaid wouldn't have come with thirty thousand acres."

Sebastian's eyes glittered. "Ah. So it is about the land."

"It's always about the land."

A beat. The wind lifted, carrying the distant scent of leather and damp earth.

Sebastian tilted his head. "People talk, you know. They say you've never so much as glanced at a woman—or a man, for that matter. They whisper that you're as cold as the family vault."

Alexander turned his head just enough to meet his brother's gaze. His voice was soft. Deadly.

"Let them."

Sebastian held the look a moment longer before sighing. "She'll be miserable, you know. A woman like that—all fire and pride—stuck with a man who thinks marriage is a tax on his time."

Alexander's gloved hand tightened on the reins. "Then she should have prayed for a better match."

Sebastian laughed outright. "God doesn't meddle in the affairs of dukes."

Alexander nudged his horse forward, the animal stepping as though it sensed the dismissal in his bones.

Sebastian called after him, voice light as a knife's edge: "Do try to look at her during the wedding. It's traditional."

Alexander didn't pause.

"Tradition," he said, "is the last resort of men with no imagination."

And then he was gone—swallowed by the mist, leaving only the ghost of his words behind.

---

TO BE CONTINUED...