Her Sisters Were Presented to the Duke—But He Asked About the Daughter They Overlooked

Chapter 12

Mr. Quill was the family solicitor. Mr. Quill had written to Ashmoor eleven times in the past year. Wren had answered nine of them herself, in her father’s hand, and had burned two.

She took the letter and did not open it in front of the servant. She walked four steps away, toward the wall, and broke the seal with her thumb, and read.

The blood left her cheeks so fast that the world tilted.

…payment overdue three quarters… confirming that the mortgagee had instructed Mr. Quill to commence foreclosure proceedings on the quarter day should the arrears not be settled… Whitaker—

She read it twice. The second time it made even less sense than the first, because she had paid the interest in December, she had sold the two northern ewes and moved the money herself, she had—

“Miss Ashby.”

She folded the paper. “Nothing.”

“You are a poor liar.”

“Then kindly pretend I am better at it.”

She turned toward the house and the wind came across the yard and took the letter out of her hand.

Wren lunged. Too slow. The paper lifted, turned in the air like something alive, and went skittering across the frost toward the wall — where Atticus Vale, who had moved the moment it left her fingers, caught it flat against the stone with the heel of his hand.

He did not read it. He picked it up, glanced at it, and turned to hand it back.

He read it anyway. She saw his eyes stop, and the muscles of his jaw shift, and the words go into him like a blade sliding home.

Payment overdue.
Foreclosure proceedings to commence.

He looked at her.

“Your father told me yesterday,” he said slowly, “that Ashmoor carries no significant debt.”

Wren reached out for the letter. He gave it to her — he did not withhold it, he was not that sort of man, and this she knew for certain by then — but his expression had gone very still, the way water goes still before it freezes.

“How close is this estate to ruin?”

She held the paper against her chest.

Behind them, from the archway, another voice answered.

“Close enough that my daughter has no business discussing it with you.”

Lord Ambrose Ashby stood under the stable arch with his gloves still on and his face white with fury, and his eyes fixed on the letter pressed to his daughter’s bodice.

“Go inside,” he said.

Wren did not move.

“Father—”

“Now.”

Atticus stepped away from the wall. He did not place himself between them — Wren would remember that, later, the exactness of it, the way he refused to make a performance of defending her — but the small shift was enough to change the shape of the space, and all three of them knew it.

“I asked Miss Ashby a question,” he said, “and she has no authority to answer it.”

“She appears,” said Atticus mildly, “to have sufficient authority to renegotiate your tenants’ rents.”

Lord Ambrose’s nostrils flared. “A temporary indulgence while I reorganized certain affairs.”

Wren’s fingers tightened on the letter.

“Thirteen months,” she said, “is an ambitious definition of temporary.”

Atticus glanced at her. She realized, too late, that she had said it out loud, and that she had said it in front of her father, and that there was a small, terrible, satisfying spark of something in her chest that had been waiting years for the opportunity.

Lord Ambrose did not shout. That was worse. He looked at her for a long moment — the way a man looks at a horse that has thrown him in front of guests — and then he said, with terrible quiet:

“Both of you. In the study. Now.”