Page 94 of The Duchess Trap
Duncan reached forward and interlaced his fingers with hers.
“It feels like home here,” she whispered.
He glanced down at her. “Home can be many places.”
She looked up at him, the candlelight tracing gold across his face. “And for you?”
He only smiled faintly in return.
Around them, the fire crackled, the children murmured in their sleep, and the world seemed, for a brief and perfect moment, whole.
CHAPTER 26
“Your Grace!”
The shout cut through the quiet of the evening.
Catherine froze, quill suspended above the ledger. The faint scratching she’d been making over the figures of the orphanage accounts stopped mid-stroke, ink pooling on the page.
Until that moment, the night had been calm. The sort of calm she had come to love at Raynsford House. The low crackle of the fire, the rustle of parchment, Duncan’s measured breathing from the armchair opposite as he read the day’s correspondence.
They had shared a companionable silence for over an hour, broken only by the occasional flick of a page or the clink of the clock striking nine. It was one of those evenings when they managed to exist together without words, each aware of the other’s presence, each content to let the stillness speak for them.
She had been thinking, just before the voice came, how the candlelight softened his face when he read, how the faint crease at the corner of his mouth eased when he was lost in thought. And then?—
The fire in the hearth snapped, but it was not that sound that chilled her; it was the urgency in the footman’s voice as he burst into the drawing room, panting, eyes wide with panic.
“Your Grace!!” he repeated, nearly stumbling over the rug in his haste. His livery was askew, hair damp with sweat.
Duncan was already on his feet before she could ask. The letter slid from his hand to the floor. “What is it?”
The words were calm, but Catherine saw the tension ripple through his shoulders.
The footman swallowed hard, chest heaving. “It’s Brightwater, Your Grace. There’s— there’s a fire.”
Catherine’s heart seemed to stop. “A fire?”
He nodded, the motion jerky. “One of the boys ran to fetch help—the south wing, they said. The roof’s caught— the wind’s strong?—”
She didn’t hear the rest. The words were only sound now, distant and unreal, swallowed by the rush of blood in her ears. The quill slipped from her fingers; the ledger fell open across the desk, inkbleeding through the numbers she had written only moments ago, as if even they could not bear witness to what she’d heard.
“The children,” she whispered. The room tilted around her. She pushed back her chair so hard it toppled, the crash sharp against the silence. Her skirts tangled at her feet, but she barely felt them as she moved.
“The staff are doing what they can, Your Grace,” the footman managed, but she was already moving.
Duncan’s voice cut through the haze. “Catherine?—”
His hand closed around her wrist, steady and solid, and for an instant, the panic inside her collided with the strength in his grip.
“I have to go,” she said, her voice breaking. “They need me.”
His grip tightened, steady and commanding. “You are not going alone.”
“Then come with me,” she snapped, meeting his gaze. “But I willnotsit here while Brightwater burns.”
For a heartbeat, the room held nothing but their breathing—hers fast and shallow, his low and controlled. Then he released her wrist and turned to the footman. “Have the carriage brought round. Now.”
The man fled.
