5 years ago they buried her. He stood in the freezing rain and watched the wet earth hit the mahogany coffin. They told him it was the sweating sickness.
They lied.
Now the Duke of Cuddon stands in his own drawing room staring at the blistered hands of the scullery maid scrubbing his hearth. The maid who just looked up. The maid with the exact same gray eyes that have haunted his nightmares for half a decade.
She isn't a ghost. She's his dead fiance.
The clock in the grand hall of Cuddon House chimed three. Alaric Weston, the 9th Duke of Cuddon, stood in the doorway of his private study. He was not supposed to be awake. He was a man of immense power, vast wealth, and terrible rotting exhaustion. The parliamentary debates had stretched long into the evening, full of bloated men arguing over grain tariffs, while the poor starved in the gutters of St. Giles. Alaric had tolerated it with the cold, cynical detachment that had become his armor since he inherited the title.
He shrugged off his velvet tailcoat, letting it drop to the Persian rug. The house was supposed to be empty of servants at this hour. The fires should have been banked. But as he stepped into the dim, cavernous space of the library, the sharp acidic scent of lye soap cut through the familiar smells of leather bindings and old scotch. Someone was by the fireplace.
Alaric stopped. A solitary figure knelt on the hearthstone, swallowed by the shadows. It was a maid. She wore the drab, coarse, gray wool of the lowest rung of his household staff, a scullery drudge. She was scrubbing the soot-stained bricks with a wire brush, her movements rhythmic, harsh, and utterly devoid of grace.
"The fires are out," Alaric said. His voice was a low rasp, dry from cigars and silence. "Leave it for the morning."
The maid flinched, the wire brush clattered against the stone. She did not turn around. Instead, she folded herself smaller, tucking her chin to her chest, her shoulders drawn up to her ears. It was the posture of a whipped dog.
"Apologies, your grace," she whispered. Her voice was muffled, thick with coal dust and terror. "The housekeeper, Mrs. Higgins, said the hearth must be spotless before dawn. I was slow today."
Alaric frowned. He poured a heavy measure of amber liquid into a crystal tumbler. He didn't care about Mrs. Higgins or the cleanliness of the bricks. He just wanted to drink until the ghost of his past stopped pacing the corridors of his mind.
"Go to bed," Alaric commanded, stepping closer to the dying embers to feel the residual warmth.
The maid scrambled to her feet, keeping her head bowed, clutching her filthy rag to her chest. She moved to skirt around him, hugging the edge of the heavy mahogany desk. As she passed, the weak moonlight spilling through the tall mullion windows caught her. She tripped on the edge of the Persian rug. It was a small stumble, a moment of clumsy exhaustion, but as she threw out a hand to catch herself against the desk, her face turned toward the moonlight.
Alaric stopped breathing. The glass slipped from his fingers. It hit the hardwood floor, shattering into a hundred glittering shards. The scotch splashed against his boots, but he didn't feel it. He couldn't feel anything. The blood roaring in his ears deafened him to the sound of the breaking crystal.
The maid froze. She looked at the broken glass, then up at him, her eyes wide with panic. Gray. Her eyes were the color of a winter sea just before the storm breaks. They were framed by dark soot-streaked lashes. Her cheekbones were sharp, hollowed out by hunger and labor. A far cry from the soft, rosy youth he remembered. A jagged, faded scar cut through her left eyebrow. Her lips were chapped and split. Her hands, God, her hands were red, swollen, and cracked. The nails broken down to the quick. But the architecture of her face was unmistakable.
Alaric's chest tightened so violently he thought his ribs might snap. He took a step forward. The air in the room felt thick, unbreathable.
"Penelope," he choked out. The name tasted like ash on his tongue. It was a name he had not spoken aloud in 5 years, a name buried under 6 ft of London clay.
The maid stepped back, her breath hitching. "Y-your grace," she stammered. Her voice trembled. She dropped her gaze to the floor, her body vibrating with a desperate, frantic energy. "I am sorry for the glass. I will clean it. Please, I am Jane. Jane from the kitchens."
Alaric crossed the distance between them in two massive strides. He didn't care about propriety. He didn't care that he was the Duke of Cuddon and she was covered in soot. He reached out and gripped her chin, forcing her head up. His fingers burned where they touched her skin. She was freezing. She felt like a bundle of fragile twigs beneath his hands.
"Look at me," he commanded, his voice shaking with a terrifying primal intensity.
She squeezed her eyes shut. A single clean tear cut a path through the coal dust on her cheek.
"Look at me!" Alaric roared, the sound tearing through the quiet of the immense house.
Penelope opened her eyes. The terrified facade crumbled, replaced by a deep, hollow exhaustion. For a split second, the scullery maid vanished. And the woman he had loved, the woman he had promised to marry before he sailed for the Mediterranean, stared back at him.
"Hello, Alaric," she whispered.