Chapter 1

1

London, 1874

Caroline, Duchess of Hastings, eyed her canvas with murderous intent. She clenched the paintbrush, fighting the urge to plunge its tip through the layers of oil and pigment.

“Turn towards the light, s’il vous pla?t ,” she said, struggling to keep the frustration from her tone.

Laurent shifted his bare body to catch the rays slanting through the window. He was an artist’s dream given form, yet the painting continued to elude her. Colours crashed and careened, composition crumbling into chaos. The smudgy blobs seemed to mock her, tangling into an unrecognisable jumble of limbs.

With a defeated sigh, she dropped her brush into a jar of spirits to soak. “I’m afraid that will be all for today, Laurent.”

The model began dressing without complaint, donning his clothes efficiently from years of serving as an artist’s subject. Caroline tidied her supplies, removed her gloves and smock, and escorted Laurent downstairs.

“When should I come again?” he asked at the foot of the stairs, buttoning his coat.

“I’ll send for you,” Caroline promised, then kissed both his bearded cheeks in farewell. “Ask cook for some scones before you leave. She made a fresh batch this morning.”

It was the least she could do after the poor man had endured her foul mood all afternoon. Laurent made for the servants’ entrance – the one route guaranteed to avoid stray visitors. Caroline would never hear the end of it if someone spied him leaving her home in broad daylight.

A scuff of footsteps behind made her turn. “Percy,” she began absently, still lost in thought, “please remind the maids not to enter the studio for cleaning. I have everything just where… I…”

Her voice faltered as she took in not the slim frame of the butler but the imposing presence of her estranged husband.

The Duke of Hastings was as gorgeous as ever, tall and broad-shouldered, with gleaming black hair that tumbled rakishly over his forehead despite his valet’s best efforts. He had always had a commanding air to complement a ruthlessly handsome face.

Now those glacier-blue eyes fixed on her, pale and remote as the northern seas. Once, they had thawed for her alone. Before their affection soured. Before everything fell apart.

Now, their marriage was one of carefully arranged and maintained neglect.

“Hello, Julian,” she said softly.

“Linnie.” The old childhood nickname was more dagger than caress.

There were a hundred things she could say to this man who was her husband in name alone. Recriminations and regrets piled on top of one another from years of separation. Years of silence and distance yawning between them like a grave.

But all she could summon was, “You look well.”

And he did – time had honed his beauty to a sharp edge. He still had the shoulders of a dockworker, strength evident in every inch of his tall, strapping frame. His face had the colour of time spent in warmth and sunshine far from London. From her.

All while her thoughts tangled in memories pressed between the pages of her many sketchbooks.

“As do you.” His gaze flicked towards the servants’ door through which Laurent had departed moments before. “Busy too, it seems.”

Annoyance flared, white hot. “Why are you here, Julian?” she asked, refusing to dignify his crass assumption with a response.

Julian removed his gloves before tossing them onto the hall table. Like a man readying for a duel.

“I’m between residences at the moment,” he said. “The tenant in my apartments needs time to finish moving. Rather than take rooms at a hotel, I decided to make use of my perfectly serviceable townhouse.”

His words were casual as he twisted the knife. Julian hadn’t set foot in this house since they married.

Caroline stiffened in disbelief. “You plan to stay here?”

He lifted a shoulder in a careless half shrug. “I have a room, don’t I? Or have you given it over to a frock museum in my absence?”

He didn’t wait for her answer, brushing past her to ascend the stairs. To seek out the bedchamber that had once been his refuge. Theirs.

“ Julian. ” Caroline hiked up her heavy skirts and hurried after him.

She wouldn’t – couldn’t – allow him to barge back into her carefully orchestrated existence. Not when she’d finally learned to breathe around the hole in her chest he’d carved open with his abandonment.

Her husband didn’t so much as turn. “It’s only a few weeks, Linnie.”

“But I—”

He turned to face her, pinning her in place with those wintry eyes. “But what?”

Caroline flinched. “The ducal chamber is my studio.”

For several heartbeats, Julian just looked at her – time and tragedy stretched taut between them. Then he climbed the last few steps up and tore open the door to what had once been his room.

Julian’s gaze traced over it all with clinical precision, no doubt taking in every telling detail. Everything was exactly as she’d left it earlier. The space was filled with half-finished canvases propped at odd angles to catch the light, jars of linseed oil and bottles of pigment scattered on every flat surface, the crimson divan placed strategically beneath the wide studio windows.

Nothing of his old room. No evidence of their intimacy. Their marriage had been put on a pyre and set alight, and the only thing that remained of it was the ashes of their former life.

His focus snagged on the easel, where the nude painting of Laurent sat half finished, in all its garish and horrific glory. Caroline’s cheeks reddened. Somehow, that portrait seemed like a mockery, a reminder of her ineptitude. No matter how many years she spent trying to forget Julian, no one else would compare.

Her husband, after all, had been her first model. Her first secret painting.

Her first everything.

“I saw work like this at Marlborough House.” His voice was soft, and yet it shared nothing. “Your brushstrokes, your method, your lighting.” He moved his fingertips over the canvas, not quite touching. “But it wasn’t your signature in the corner.”

It had not occurred to her that he would recognise all the intimate details of her work, but Julian had such a keen eye. An artist’s heart, if not the talent at putting paint to canvas. And so he had once given her the artist’s heart of him, and she – selfish creature in her youth that she was – had desired more.

Too much.

“Grace suggested Henry Morgan as my nom de guerre when I first started painting,” she said quietly. “Remember?”

She shouldn’t ask. Shouldn’t care. But his memories of their oldest childhood friend – the third of their trio – were woven through hers, a thread binding their frayed edges.

Grief ghosted across his features. Then it was gone. “I do.”

She cleared her throat. “I decided it was best to use it for my more… scandalous pieces. I wasn’t aware you’d seen my work since…”

Since you were the one who posed for me.

Julian’s hand dropped. “I admire exceptional art where I find it.” He spoke softly, each word clipped. “And yours have always been my favourite.”

Her traitorous heart gave a twist.

She studied the lines of his face, trying to remember the last time she’d kissed him. The last time she’d felt his touch. Every moment was documented and stored in her mind behind shards of jagged glass as reminders that their marriage began as a mistake.

When he’d left her, she’d done nothing to stop him. Just stood there, mute and stupid, while he walked away.

“I’ll stay in one of the guest chambers until my departure,” Julian said. “I leave for Italy at the end of the month.”

She shook her head. “I’ll have the servants remove my things from in here—”

“No.” Julian’s expression remained unreadable, as closed to her as a locked tower. “The afternoon light slants in here the way you like it, and a guest room would be more than suitable for me.”

Of course it would. That would put him on the other side of the house, putting as much distance between them as their residence allowed.

When her thoughts turned poisonous, Caroline sometimes wondered if Julian had simply decided he loved Grace. If their friend’s sudden loss had cracked him open in some fashion, made him realise the depth of his affection only after it was too late. Made him regret the impulsive circumstances binding him to Caroline now like shackles.

After all, he’d left Caroline behind the moment Grace drew her last agonised breath. And she went from being one-third of Julian, Grace, and Caroline to being utterly, wretchedly alone.

And now their peers whispered behind fluttering fans, speculating endlessly on why the Duke and Duchess of Hastings avoided each other’s presence.

Caroline’s lips twisted. “I understand you care very little for our marriage, but I’ve tried to maintain a reputation that doesn’t besmirch yours. I can hardly say the same about you.”

Julian’s eyebrow raised in surprise. “I’ve often complimented you in polite company. Certainly, no one can claim I’ve insulted you.”

A lick of fire burned within her. Eight years of this. Eight years. “You compliment me,” she repeated. “And yet you’re never seen with me, never present in my home, and depart for the Continent the moment Parliament so much as recesses. Now you suggest withdrawing to a distant guest bedchamber while in the same house, as if our servants won’t notice the slight.”

“And do our servants not notice your… slight ?” His eyes flickered to the painting of Laurent.

Caroline straightened. “If they notice anything,” she said in French, “it’s that my languages have improved through various tutors.” She switched to German. “You speak this, don’t you?” Then to Italian. “My husband is so well travelled, maybe I hope to find common ground if he should ever deign to put himself in my company.” And then to Spanish. “Or perhaps you’d like to check my progress in mathematics, o debería parar ahora ? I have a tutor for that , as well.”

“Enough with the games.” He lapsed back into German, the language of strategy and science. Of ruthless sensibility. “Just tell me plainly what you want.”

She wanted impossible things. Things lost to the ash and rubble of their grief.

“Board your ship to Italy in four weeks,” she said. “But until then, you’ll play the role of my husband, and we’ll show a united front to society and in our home. We’ll share a bedchamber. You won’t humiliate me in my own house. If all of this poses a problem, I suggest you lie convincingly. I’m sure you can manage.”

His cold blue eyes drifted down her body. “And I suppose you’ll want me to fuck you as well.”

Crude words from an elegant mouth – designed to shock, to push her away.

Caroline stepped closer. “You don’t have to play the dutiful husband behind closed doors,” she snapped.

“One month of pretence then,” Julian conceded, in a tone that promised retaliation. “For the sake of appearances. Does that satisfy you?”

As she scrambled for a response, his attention snagged on the painting of Laurent – and his mask of indifference slammed firmly in place.

This man was not her husband. Not anymore.

“I’ll be out for the day,” he said curtly. “Don’t bother waiting up.”

He strode from the room without a backwards glance.

As though he hadn’t just ripped the foundations out from under her for the second time.