Genevieve sat in the window seat of her assigned chambers, watching rain streak the ancient glass like tears she refused to shed. The room was beautiful in its desolation: velvet curtains the color of moss, a four-poster bed draped in silk that whispered with her slightest movement, furniture polished to a mirror shine. A cage, she thought, gilded and lovely, but a cage nonetheless. She had known this marriage would be loveless. Her father's solicitor had explained everything three days after the funeral, when the debts were tallied and her future sold to satisfy them.
Lord Ashford required a wife to fulfill an old obligation. She required survival. It was, the solicitor had assured her with false cheer, a practical arrangement. But she had not anticipated the ice lord's absolute contempt, the way his gray eyes had raked over her in the chapel, cataloging her deficiencies with surgical precision, the rigid set of his jaw when the vicar pronounced them bound. The silence, that terrible, suffocating silence as their carriage rolled toward Ashford Hall, two strangers trapped in mutual loathing.
Her father's sins were not hers. She wanted to scream it, but what purpose would it serve? Lord Ashford had decided who she was before ever meeting her. Traitor's daughter. Enemy. Penance. A soft knock interrupted her spiraling thoughts. A maid entered, young and kind-faced, carrying a supper tray. "His lordship says you're to eat, my lady," she murmured, setting the tray upon a small table. "He asks that you keep to your rooms this evening. He has business to attend." Of course he did. Business that did not include acknowledging his wife's existence. "Thank you," Genevieve whispered. The maid curtsied and fled, leaving her alone once more with the rain and her regrets.
Dominic stood in his study, the marriage certificate mocking him from his desk. His hand tightened around the whiskey glass until his knuckles whitened, the burn of alcohol doing nothing to numb the fury coiled in his chest like a serpent waiting to strike. Edmund Hartley's daughter slept under his roof, ate his food, bore his name. The thought was acid in his throat. He closed his eyes and saw, as he always did, his brother's face. Thomas was golden where Dominic was dark, gentle where Dominic was severe, beloved by all who knew him. And Edmund Hartley had sold the intelligence that put Thomas in the path of French muskets for money, for meaningless, blood-soaked gold.
Dominic had spent three years tracking the traitor through the smoking ruins of Europe, piecing together evidence, following whispers. He had been two weeks from confronting Hartley when fever claimed the bastard first, robbing Dominic of the vengeance that was his right. Now he was left with this: a girl who carried her father's blood, her father's name, her father's guilt. "You're punishing an innocent," his mother's voice echoed in memory. She had written from Bath, begging him to reconsider, to show mercy. But mercy was a luxury Dominic could no longer afford. Mercy had died with Thomas on a battlefield far from home.