The hound approached slowly, stared at the crest, and gave a soft, aching whine. Clara’s face changed. There was no surprise in it, only recognition. And as she bent toward the animal, it became clear that Bruno’s devotion had never begun at Blackwood Hall. He had known Clara long before the Duke ever laid eyes on her.

Before long, Nathaniel stopped pretending Bruno was the reason he kept finding his way to the servants’ corridor. At first, he appeared in the kitchen asking for coffee. The next day, it was fresh bread. After that, he claimed he wanted to know whether Bruno had been troublesome.

The servants noticed. Clara noticed, too. Neither of them mentioned it. One evening, long after the household had quieted, Nathaniel found her alone at the work table, shaping pastry beneath the warm glow of the kitchen lamps.

For once, there was no hound between them, no servant hovering nearby, and no convenient excuse for either of them to leave. Their conversation became more personal than either intended. Nathaniel admitted that there were moments when he envied ordinary men, men who could choose a wife simply because they loved her, rather than because a title demanded an heir, an alliance, or another respectable name attached to an estate.

Clara regarded him with that unsettling honesty he had come to expect from her. She seemed genuinely puzzled by the idea that being a duke should forbid him from choosing happiness. Nathaniel found himself smiling. No one else spoke to him with such ease.

Clara suggested that perhaps everyone else was too frightened of the title to remember there was a man beneath it. That answer silenced him. When Nathaniel wondered whether she feared him, too, Clara hesitated. Sometimes she did.

He was about to ask why when footsteps sounded behind them. Lady Rosamond Fairfax had entered the kitchen. One glance was enough for her to understand far more than Nathaniel wanted her to. Her attention settled on Clara, and the warmth vanished from the room.

Rosamond made it painfully clear that servants who forgot the distance between themselves and their employers rarely remained employed for long. Nathaniel stopped her before the humiliation could continue. The speed of his defense surprised Clara. It surprised him even more.

Later, the Dowager Duchess confronted her son privately. She warned him that affection for a kitchen servant could become gossip before either of them realized it. And gossip involving a duke could destroy a woman far more easily than it damaged him. Nathaniel insisted nothing had happened.

His mother made it clear that her concern was what might happen next. Then, only days later, Lord Alister Vane arrived at Blackwood Hall. Clara was carrying a tray when he unexpectedly entered the kitchen. The moment she saw him, the tray slipped from her hands and struck the floor.

Alister stopped. For one terrible second, recognition flickered across his face. Clara lowered her eyes before he could study her properly. She gave her name as Clara Hart.

Alister repeated it as though testing a lie. That night, while the household slept, he quietly began searching through the servants’ records. Because unlike Nathaniel, Lord Alister did not believe Clara was merely a mysterious kitchen maid. He had seen that face before.

Clara Hart had never truly existed. Years before she entered Blackwood Hall wearing a servant’s dress and answering to a borrowed name, she had been Lady Clara Ashbourne, the only daughter of the Earl of Ashbourne. Ashbourne Manor had once been her entire world.

Its gardens had been where she learned to ride. Its library had taught her French, poetry, and music. And in its kennels, a litter of hunting hounds had been born one spring, including a clumsy black-and-white puppy who followed Clara everywhere. That puppy was Bruno.

But the life Clara had known did not survive for long. Her mother died first. Her father followed only months later. With Clara still young and the estate suddenly vulnerable, Lord Alister Vane stepped forward to manage the family affairs.

At first, he seemed helpful. Then the debts appeared. Ledgers claimed the Earl had borrowed enormous sums. Creditors arrived.

Servants were dismissed. Land was sold. Before Clara fully understood what was happening, Ashbourne Manor had been taken from her. But Clara knew her father.

The numbers made no sense. She began searching through old correspondence and discovered enough inconsistencies to suspect the debts had been manufactured. Worse, several signatures appeared to have been forged. All of them benefited Alister.

Before Clara could bring her suspicions to anyone powerful enough to investigate, her carriage was attacked on a lonely road. The vehicle overturned. Her companion was killed. Clara survived only because she was thrown clear into the trees before the carriage disappeared down an embankment.

By the time help arrived, everyone believed Lady Clara Ashbourne had died with it. Clara made the most dangerous decision of her life. She stayed dead. She cut her hair, abandoned her name, and disappeared into service.

She knew that if Alister discovered she was alive, he would finish what had begun on that road. Years passed before Clara learned one final piece of information. Shortly before his death, her father had entrusted certain private documents to an old friend, the late Duke of Blackwood. That was why Clara came to Nathaniel’s estate.