To solve the collapsed roof over the great conservatory, Rosalind turned to daring architectural experiments becoming fashionable in London. She commissioned a sweeping dome of glass and wrought iron that flooded the once-dismal interior with radiant sunlight.
The effect was breathtaking.
The old Elizabethan walls remained, but the interior was becoming something entirely new.
Alderley heard the rumors in London.
At first he dismissed them. Then he mocked them. Then, when visitors returning from Yorkshire began describing iron columns, active quarries, and a glass dome rising above the moors, his amusement curdled into rage.
If Rosalind succeeded, he would lose more than land. He would suffer public humiliation before the very society whose approval he valued above almost everything.
The sabotage began in August.
First, the supply lines were choked.
The Duke used his influence over local turnpikes and tollkeepers to make the roads effectively unusable for Ashdown’s shipments. Wagons carrying glass, timber, plaster, and iron were delayed, overcharged, or turned away outright. Materials sat for days in neighboring towns while workers at Ashdown waited idle.
Rosalind watched her carefully constructed schedule begin to collapse.
Then, just as despair threatened to set in, an unexpected ally arrived on horseback.
Lord Dominic St. John was the Duke’s younger half-brother, a brooding, intellectually restless man who had spent the previous five years in self-imposed exile in Italy studying architecture, engineering, and classical design.
Dominic despised his brother’s ruthlessness. Intrigued by the rumors of the “Iron Manor” and the woman stubborn enough to build it, he rode to Ashdown under cover of darkness.
When he first stepped into the unfinished conservatory, he found Rosalind covered in chalk dust, sleeves rolled to the elbow, furiously redesigning a pulley system on a slate board.
“My brother is a fool,” Dominic said from the shadows.
Rosalind spun around.
Dominic stepped into the lantern light.
“He believes he is fighting a terrified girl,” he continued. “He does not realize he is fighting a titan.”
Rosalind did not smile.
“Your name is St. John.”
“It is.”
“That is not currently a recommendation.”
“I suspected as much.”
She remained suspicious, but Dominic quickly proved his loyalty.
Knowing his brother had blocked the main roads, he showed Rosalind how to use a forgotten network of old canals and water routes running behind the property. Heavy iron and glass could be barged in quietly at night, bypassing the toll gates entirely.
Within two weeks, materials were moving again. Barges slid through dark water after sunset carrying iron beams, crates of glass, timber, plaster, and tools. Men worked by lantern light to unload them before dawn. The Duke’s tollkeepers watched the empty roads and congratulated themselves on having strangled the project while Ashdown’s walls quietly climbed higher beyond their sight. For Rosalind, Dominic’s intervention was more than practical help. It was the first proof that Alderley’s power was not absolute.
By autumn, Ashdown Park was rising from its own ashes.
Its exterior retained the sweeping Elizabethan façade, but inside, it had become a marvel of modern engineering. Beckford installed a central heating system powered by boilers and concealed pipes. Large windows brought daylight deep into halls once defined by gloom. The glass conservatory transformed a dead interior court into a brilliant garden room.
Working side by side late into the night, Rosalind and Dominic moved from wary allies to trusted partners.
Dominic did not treat her ambition as a flaw to be managed. He admired it. He challenged her calculations, debated design choices, carried lumber when laborers were short, and listened when she spoke.
Rosalind, in turn, discovered a man who had spent years fleeing the shadow of his brother but had never lost his sense of honor.
Theirs became a fierce, largely unspoken romance born not of ballroom flirtation, but of exhaustion, danger, and shared purpose.
Yet neither the romance nor the progress of the house could remain hidden forever.
In late November, with only months remaining before the wager’s deadline, Alderley’s spies discovered how the supplies were getting through and, more dangerously, who was helping Rosalind.
The betrayal of his own blood shattered what remained of the Duke’s restraint.
If bureaucracy could not stop the work, destruction would.
It happened on a freezing Tuesday night.
Rosalind was asleep in the newly finished east wing when the frantic barking of estate hounds jolted her awake. The smell of smoke was already thick in the corridor.
She ran to the window.
The southern façade was on fire.
Timber scaffolding supporting unfinished stonework had become a roaring cage of flame. Fire climbed the wooden hoists, spread across tarred ropes, and licked at newly installed window frames.
Three riders were seen fleeing across the property line wearing livery unmistakably associated with Alderley’s estate.
The message was clear.
If the Duke could not have Ashdown Park, no one would.
The night erupted into chaos. Wind drove sparks sideways across the courtyard. Horses kicked against stall doors, terrified by the heat and smoke. Workers sleeping in temporary quarters ran half-dressed into the yard while servants formed lines with whatever containers they could find. For several minutes nobody knew whether they were trying to save the southern wing, the stables, or simply the people trapped between them. Rosalind refused to stand back and watch others defend what she had asked them to build.
Rosalind raced through the east wing, coughing as smoke pressed through unfinished doorways. She threw open the great courtyard doors and ran barefoot into freezing mud.
“Ring the estate bell!” she shouted to a terrified stable boy. “Wake the quarrymen. Wake everyone.”
The great iron bell of Ashdown rang across the hills.
Down in the valley, men working Rosalind’s limestone quarries heard the alarm. Within minutes, laborers began climbing the hill carrying buckets, blankets, axes, and anything else that could help.
Dominic St. John became a force in the confusion.
He stripped off his coat and moved directly into the courtyard, organizing a relentless bucket line from the old canal behind the property. When part of the burning frame threatened a trapped stonemason, Dominic helped brace the timber long enough for the man to escape.
Rosalind worked beside everyone else. Her nightgown turned black with soot as she hauled water until her hands split and bled.
For three brutal hours, Ashdown fought for survival. Buckets moved hand to hand until arms failed and were replaced by fresh ones. Wet blankets were thrown over burning doors. Men cut away sections of timber before the fire could leap toward the oldest part of the manor. Dominic moved from one crisis to another, his voice almost gone by the second hour. Rosalind lost one slipper in the mud and never noticed. She kept working until the skin of her palms was raw and the hem of her nightgown was black with soot and rain.
Then the Yorkshire sky opened.
A violent downpour crashed across the property, hissing against the last embers and drowning what remained of the flames.
Dawn broke gray and exhausted over the moors.
Rosalind stood in the courtyard shivering uncontrollably as she looked at the blackened southern wing.
The scaffolding was gone. Wooden hoists were destroyed. Months of decorative exterior work had been burned away.
She had less than five months until the wager’s deadline and almost no money left for replacement timber.
For several terrible minutes, she believed the Duke had won.
Then Elias Beckford began laughing.