Lucas's face softened completely. He covered her hand with his own. "I am perfectly safe, Josie. The horse is sure-footed, and I was thinking of you the entire time." 

"Were you?" she whispered, lowering her eyelashes. 

"I was. I composed something, a few lines. I'll write them down for you tonight." 

Josephine's smile did not waver. Not a muscle twitched to betray the disgust she had voiced only twenty-four hours ago. "I shall treasure it. I read your last poem until the paper was worn soft. It is my greatest comfort." 

Lady Trent coughed politely into a lace handkerchief. "My Lord Duke, we are expecting your mother, the Dowager, within the hour. Has she sent word of her exact arrival?" 

Lucas's smile dimmed slightly. He looked down, a shadow of anxiety crossing his features. "She should be here soon. I... I must ask you both to be patient with her. My mother is a formidable woman. She does not yield easily, but once she sees how happy you make me, Josie, I know she will love you as I do." 

"I am sure of it," Josephine said softly. She stepped closer to him, resting her head lightly against his shoulder. 

Lucas wrapped an arm around her, kissing the top of her hair. 

"I am so anxious to meet her," Josephine continued, her voice dripping with reverence. "To finally have a mother figure, someone to guide me. I have prayed every night for her good health, Lucas. Truly, I have." 

Constance had heard enough. The blood roared in her ears. The restraint that had governed her entire life, the aristocratic poise, the quiet diplomacy, evaporated. She was not a duchess playing politics. She was a mother watching a predator bare its teeth at her child. 

She stepped out from the shadows of the doorway. Her boots made a heavy, unrefined thud against the polished hardwood floor. She bypassed the side tables where a servant was meant to leave the tray. Instead, she walked directly to the center of the room, straight toward the couple. 

Lady Trent saw her first. The older woman's eyes flared with outrage. 

"What are you doing?" she snapped, abandoning her maternal facade. "You ignorant girl, step back. Mrs. Higgins will have you whipped." 

Constance ignored her. She stopped three feet from Lucas and Josephine. She looked down at the silver tray in her hands, then intentionally, deliberately, let her grip loosen. 

The tray hit the floor with a deafening crash. Crystal shattered, spraying sherry and glass across the toes of Josephine's silk slippers. 

Josephine shrieked, leaping backward. "You clumsy, wretched cow!" she screamed, her mask slipping violently. "Look what you've done! I told you yesterday to stay out of my sight!" 

Lucas stepped in front of Josephine to shield her from the glass. He turned to the servant, his face full of gentle reprimand. 

"It is all right. Just—" Lucas stopped. He froze. The reprimand died on his lips. His eyes scanned the muddy boots, the coarse brown skirt, the drab shawl, and finally locked onto the face beneath the white cotton cap. 

The color drained entirely from Lucas's face. His mouth parted, but no sound came out. He looked as if he had been struck by lightning. 

"Lucas," Constance said. 

Her voice was quiet, but it carried the chilling, unmistakable authority of the Dowager Duchess of Aylesbury. It was a voice that commanded drawing rooms, silenced lords, and terrified politicians. 

Lady Trent stood up, her face purple with rage. "How dare you speak to the Duke in such a manner? Guards, get this filth out of my house!" 

Constance did not look at Lady Trent. She kept her eyes locked on her son. She reached up and pulled the white cotton cap from her head. Her silver-streaked hair tumbled down. 

"She hasn't prayed for my health, Lucas," Constance said, her voice echoing in the sudden, suffocating silence of the room. "She plans to send me to Cornwall to rot by the sea. Because, as she told her mother yesterday, you are soft, you limp like a wounded duck, and your poetry makes her want to scream." 

Josephine's breath hitched in her throat. She stared at the servant. Recognition, horror, and absolute ruin dawned in her pale eyes all at once. 

"Mother?" Lucas whispered. 

The word hung in the air, heavy and impossible. *Mother.* 

The silence that followed was not empty. It was pressurized, the kind of silence that precedes a bridge collapsing under too much weight. The heavy ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner suddenly sounded like a hammer striking an anvil. The spilled sherry pooled on the faded Persian rug, bleeding into the wool like a dark, ugly stain. 

Lady Trent's mouth opened and closed. Her brain, usually so adept at calculating odds and margins, completely misfired. She looked at the woman in the mud-caked boots, then at the Duke, and then back again. 

"Lucas, this is madness," Lady Trent choked out, her voice entirely stripped of its aristocratic polish. "This... this creature is a vagrant, a village idiot. She has broken into my home and insulted—" 

"Be quiet," Lucas said. 

He didn't shout. He didn't have to. The gentleness that usually warmed his voice was gone, replaced by a flat, hollow tone that commanded absolute obedience. He did not look at Lady Trent. He did not look at his mother. His eyes were locked on Josephine. 

Josephine was trembling. The blush pink silk of her dress fluttered against her chest with the frantic beating of her heart. The mask of the demure, adoring angel was slipping, revealing the terrified, calculating girl trapped beneath it. She looked at the woman standing before her, *really* looked at her this time. She saw the posture, the straight spine, the imperious, unyielding set of the jaw. It was the exact same jawline Lucas possessed. 

"Lucas," Josephine whispered, stepping forward, her hands outstretched in a desperate bid for the physical contact she usually used to pacify him. "Lucas, please. I do not know what this is, but it is a cruel trick. She is lying. Whoever she is, she is lying."