“Who the devil are you?” His voice was low and rough. “And why would you think you’d be welcome here?”
Rosamund rose. Her limbs protested after the long wait, but she smoothed her cloak and faced him all the same.
“We have met before. A long time ago, Your Grace,” she said. “I am Miss Rosamund Belle.”
She held his gaze.
“I am a writer, and I’ve come here so that I can tell your story.”
Tell his story?
Julian Cavendish, Duke of Bexley, fixed his scowl on the chit perched so primly in his drawing room. The very sight of her unsettled him.
A visitor. When had he last endured one? Years, perhaps longer. Long enough that he’d grown used to silence as company—if silence could be called the scrape of chisel on oak; his hound, Argus’s steady snore; and Sable’s furtive prowl.
Those sounds belonged.
A woman’s voice did not.
And yet, here she was.
And… she looked familiar.
“I don’t imagine you remember me,” she said suddenly, tugging at the thought in his skull.
He arched a brow.
But she only smiled, seemingly unintimidated, though her fingers worried at the buttons on her cloak. “We met in Hallows Bridge. I was ten years old. You must have been about six and ten at the time. We were in the mercantile. You were buying a tin of comfits. I wanted one, but I hadn’t a farthing. And you…” She tilted her head, and the copper-colored tail of a braid slipped forward over her shoulder, catching the last traces of sunlight. “…You paid for one and pressed it into my hand. You didn’t have to do that.”
The freckles.
Ah, yes. That unraveled something.
The blurred memory of a plump, red-haired child standing alone, books clutched to her chest, wide eyes lifted toward him in silent hope. A memory so distant he might have dismissed it—except the freckles had endured.
They dusted her nose. Spanned her cheeks. A scatter of warm gold across pale skin.
His gaze dropped—unintentionally—lower.
A few disappeared beneath the edge of her cloak.
The thought arrived unbidden.
Did they continue?—
No.
Julian shifted his stance, jaw tightening as he dragged his attention back to her face. He had no business wondering at the geography of this woman’s skin.
He folded his arms across his chest, brandishing his scowl like a weapon.
She was not deterred. “You were kind, and in spite of what everyone says, I know you are not a?—”
“A beast?”
At last she fell silent, though not for long.
“Exactly.” She held his stare without flinching, fixed on his one visible eye.