The Duke of Renfield had been standing in the rose beds for nearly 3 hours, and his back was starting to protest. Nobody had spoken to him, not once. He straightened slowly, pressing 1 dirt-stained hand against his lower spine, and watched the latest group of silk-draped women glide past without so much as a sideways glance.
Their parasols created moving circles of shade across the lawn. Their laughter carried on the summer wind, bright and careless. To them, he was invisible, just another servant tending the grounds of Belmere House, exactly as he had planned.
Marcus had worn his oldest shirt, the one with the frayed collar that his valet had tried to burn twice. His trousers were borrowed from the head groundskeeper, still damp at the knees from morning watering. He had rubbed actual soil into his forearms before leaving his chambers at dawn, and he had made sure to miss a spot shaving, leaving a small patch of stubble along his jaw that would have horrified his mother.
The disguise was perfect, perhaps too perfect, given that Lady Peyton had nearly ordered him to move her trunk an hour ago, mistaking him for actual staff. But this was necessary. Marcus needed to see them as they truly were, not the practiced smiles and rehearsed conversation they showed a duke. He needed to see what lived beneath the performance.
His sister Catherine had warned him this was madness.
“You’ll find nothing but disappointment,” she had said 3 nights ago, sitting across from him in his study while rain hammered the windows. “People are people, Marcus. They respond to power and title because that’s what the world teaches them. You cannot fault them for it.”
But he could, and he did. Because somewhere in England, Marcus believed, there had to be 1 woman who would offer kindness to a gardener, 1 person who saw past the costume of class to the human being underneath. If he was going to marry, and the estate required that he marry soon, the solicitors had made that abundantly clear, then he wanted that person. Someone real. Someone true.
The garden party had been his idea, though Lord Belmere believed it was his wife’s. Marcus had suggested it through careful channels, ensuring that every eligible lady in 3 counties received an invitation. The Belmeres owed him a favor from a financial matter last year, and they had been happy to host without asking too many questions about the Duke’s sudden interest in their annual summer gathering.
Now Marcus moved between the hedges, pruning shears in hand, watching.
Lady Caroline Blythe dropped her handkerchief near the fountain. It landed less than 2 feet from where Marcus knelt examining a rose bush. She waited, her posture expectant. When he did not immediately leap to retrieve it, she made a small sound of irritation and summoned an actual footman with a snap of her fingers.
The Ashworth twins walked past discussing their upcoming trip to Bath, their voices carrying clearly. One of them gestured too broadly and knocked over a potted lavender. They stepped around the spreading soil without breaking conversation, leaving the mess for someone else to handle.
Miss Victoria Winters was kinder, at least. She said, “Mind yourself,” when Marcus had to shift a wheelbarrow out of her path, but her eyes never quite focused on him. She looked through him the way one might look through glass.
The afternoon sun climbed higher. Marcus’s shirt stuck to his back with sweat. His hands, usually soft despite his riding habit, were starting to blister from the unfamiliar work. He had actually been pruning, really cutting back the roses, because standing idle would have drawn attention. The head gardener would probably have words with Lord Belmere about the overzealous new worker, but Marcus would handle that later.
He was beginning to think Catherine had been right. Perhaps this was foolish. Perhaps people were simply people, and expecting more was the true madness.
Then he heard the voice.
“Excuse me, sir.”
Marcus looked up from the hedge he had been trimming with more violence than necessary.
She stood at the edge of the gravel path, 1 hand shading her eyes from the sun. Her dress was simpler than the others, a pale green muslin that had been laundered so many times it had gone soft at the seams. No jewelry except a simple cameo at her throat. Her dark hair was pinned up sensibly, without the elaborate curls the other ladies favored. She was not beautiful, not in the classical way. Her nose was slightly too prominent, her mouth a bit too wide, but her eyes were extraordinary, brown and direct and startlingly clear, like looking into deep water on a bright day.
“Yes, miss?”
Marcus straightened, aware of how he must look, sweating, dirt-streaked, probably red-faced from the heat.
“You’ve been working since morning.” It was not a question. “I saw you when I arrived, and you haven’t stopped once.”
Marcus blinked. She had noticed him. Actually noticed him hours ago.
“It’s my work, miss.”
“Yes, but it’s nearly 80 degrees, and I haven’t seen you take any water.”
She held out a tin cup, condensation beading on its sides.
“The punch table is just there, but I thought, well, you seemed quite occupied.”
He stared at the cup, at her hand extended toward him without hesitation. No gloves, he noticed. Her nails were trimmed short and practical. There was a small ink stain on her index finger.
“That’s very kind,” Marcus heard himself say. His voice came out rougher than intended.
“It’s basic decency.” She stepped closer, still holding the cup out. “Which seems to be in rather short supply today.”
There was something in her tone, not bitterness exactly, but a certain dry observation that suggested she had noticed the same things he had, the carelessness, the casual dismissal of anyone deemed unimportant.
Marcus took the cup. Their fingers brushed briefly, and he felt calluses on her palm. This woman did her own work, whatever that work might be.
The water was cool and tasted faintly of lemon. He drank it in 3 long swallows, surprised by how thirsty he had actually been.
“Thank you,” he said, handing the cup back. “Truly.”
“You’re welcome.”
She smiled then, and it transformed her entire face.
“I’m Rosalind. Rosalind Thorne.”
Not a name he recognized, which meant she was not from 1 of the major families, not on his mother’s endless list of suitable candidates.
“I’m—”
Marcus hesitated, caught off guard. He had prepared a false name, something common and forgettable, but looking at her, at those clear, honest eyes, the lie stuck in his throat.
“Thomas,” he said finally, using his middle name. “I’m Thomas.”
“Well, Thomas, you’re doing a lovely job with the roses. They’ll be spectacular next week.”
Rosalind glanced back at the main party, where the other ladies had gathered near the refreshment tables.
“I should return before my cousin notices I’ve wandered off. She tends to worry.”
“Your cousin brought you?” Marcus asked, wanting to keep her there just a moment longer.
“Yes. Margaret Belmere. She’s Lord Belmere’s niece.”
Rosalind’s expression turned slightly rueful.
“She means well, dragging me to these things. She thinks I should get out more, meet people, though I suspect I’m rather hopeless at it.”
“You seem to be managing well enough.”
“Do I?”
Rosalind laughed quietly.
“I’ve spent the last hour hiding in the library. I only came out because I felt guilty about Margaret going to all this trouble. And then I saw you and thought…”
She trailed off, looking suddenly self-conscious.
“Well, I should go.”
“Wait.”
Marcus set down his shears.
“Will you be at the dinner tomorrow night?”
Lord Belmere was hosting a formal dinner, the traditional conclusion to the garden-party weekend. Marcus had planned to attend as himself, to see how these same women behaved when the Duke of Renfield was in the room.
Rosalind shook her head.
“Oh, no. That’s just for the primary guests. I’m only here for the day.”
She gestured vaguely at the grand house.
“Margaret tried to insist I stay, but I don’t really belong at something so formal.”
There was no self-pity in her voice, just a plain statement of fact. She understood the social lines and accepted them. Marcus found himself objecting to those lines more than he ever had before.
“Perhaps—”
He stopped himself. He could not ask to see her again, not as a gardener, and he could not reveal himself. Not yet. He needed to think this through.
“Perhaps we’ll meet again.”
“Perhaps.”
Rosalind smiled once more, that warm, genuine smile that made something in his chest constrict.
“Goodbye, Thomas. Stay in the shade when you can.”
She walked back toward the party, her simple dress moving easily in the breeze. Marcus watched her rejoin the group, saw her cousin Margaret reach out to squeeze her hand. They stood together slightly apart from the others, and he realized Rosalind had not been exaggerating. She was there, but not of there, an outsider just as he had made himself.
Marcus picked up his shears again, but his hands were trembling slightly.
He had found her.
After 3 hours of watching the worst of society’s casual cruelty, he had found exactly what he had been looking for, a woman who saw people, who noticed a gardener working in the heat and thought to bring him water, who smiled at servants and probably remembered their names.
And he had lied to her, called himself Thomas, let her think he was someone he was not.
Marcus looked down at his dirt-stained hands and felt the weight of what he had done settling over him like a coat in summer, heavy, uncomfortable, impossible to shrug off.
Because now he had a choice to make.
He could reveal himself tomorrow, arrive at the dinner as the Duke of Renfield and hope she would understand. Or he could find another way to meet her as himself, start fresh, never mention this afternoon in the garden.
Both options felt like lies. Both options felt like betrayal. And neither option solved the larger problem now taking shape in his mind.
What happened when she discovered the truth? Would she see it as the test it had been, a way to find someone genuine, or would she see him as just another member of the aristocracy playing games with people’s feelings because he could?
Marcus did not know.
He only knew that he had spent 3 hours looking for someone real, and now that he had found her, reality had become impossibly complicated.
Rosalind could not sleep.
She had been lying in her narrow bed for 2 hours now, watching moonlight creep across the ceiling of her rented room above the bookshop. Her mind kept returning to the garden, to the man with the pruning shears and the startled eyes.
Thomas.
She had surprised him by bringing water. She had seen it in his face, that flicker of confusion when she had spoken to him like he was a person instead of furniture. It had made her angry, that surprise. Angry at all those women in their expensive dresses who had walked past him like he was invisible. Angry at herself too, if she was honest, because she had almost done the same thing, almost stayed in the library with her book and her solitude.
It was only the heat that had driven her outside and the sight of him working without pause that had made her act.
What did that say about her? That kindness was an afterthought, something she managed only when circumstances aligned.
Rosalind turned onto her side, pulling the thin blanket up to her chin. The room smelled like old paper and lamp oil, familiar smells, comforting ones. She had lived above the bookshop for 3 years now, ever since her father died and left nothing but debts and a collection of books nobody wanted to buy.
Margaret had offered to take her in. Sweet Margaret, with her comfortable home and her comfortable marriage and her genuine concern for her poor cousin living alone. But Rosalind had refused. She liked her independence, even if it meant mending her own dresses and eating plain meals. She liked the quiet of the shop, the steady work of cataloging and selling, the occasional customer who actually cared about books instead of just decorating their libraries.
Tomorrow, Margaret would try again to convince her to move. She always did after these social events, as if 1 garden party might suddenly reveal to Rosalind what she was missing.
But Rosalind knew exactly what she was missing. She just did not want it.
Those women that day, with their practiced laughs and careful conversations, had been performing, every single 1 of them, playing parts in a play they had rehearsed their whole lives.
Rosalind had tried that once, years ago, when her father was alive and still pretending the money was not gone. She had been terrible at it, too direct, too honest, too willing to say what she actually thought.
“You’d be prettier if you smiled more,” her aunt had told her. “You’d be more popular if you agreed with people instead of arguing.”
Rosalind had smiled less after that.
But Thomas had not seemed to mind her directness. He had looked at her like she was saying something important, not just filling silence with pleasant noise. And when their hands had touched, just for that brief moment—
She sat up abruptly, pushing the thought away.
This was ridiculous. He was a gardener. She was a shopkeeper. They had had 1 brief conversation, and here she was spinning dreams out of nothing.
Except it had not felt like nothing.
Rosalind stood and walked to the window. The street below was empty, just pools of lamplight and shadow. Somewhere a dog barked. A night watchman called the hour.
She pressed her forehead against the cool glass and made herself face the truth she had been avoiding all evening.
She wanted to see him again.
Not at another garden party, not in a context where she was the cousin, the charity case, the woman who did not quite fit. She wanted to see him somewhere real, talk to him properly, learn whether that moment of connection had been genuine or just her own loneliness playing tricks.
But how? She did not even know his full name. Did not know whether he lived on the Belmere estate or traveled between houses with the seasons. The world of servants was invisible to people like her, just as her world was invisible to people like Lady Caroline Blythe.
Rosalind laughed quietly at herself. Here she was offended by how those women had ignored Thomas, and she knew just as little about how to find him.
The church bell struck 3.
She should sleep. Tomorrow she needed to open the shop, and Mrs. Chen was expecting that delivery of medical texts from London. Real life continuing as always.
She climbed back into bed and closed her eyes.
But sleep would not come.
Marcus stood in front of his wardrobe and hated every piece of clothing he owned.
The formal dinner was in 4 hours. He should be choosing between the blue coat and the black, deciding which waistcoat made him look most ducal. Instead, he was thinking about borrowed groundskeeper’s trousers and the way Rosalind had smiled at a man she thought was nobody.
“Your Grace, the carriage will be ready at 6.”
His valet appeared in the doorway, impossibly neat as always.
“Shall I lay out the blue?”
“No.”
Marcus turned away from the wardrobe.
“I’m not going.”
A pause.
“Sir?”
“Send my regrets to Lord Belmere. Tell him I’ve been called back to Renfield on urgent estate business.”
“But, Your Grace, this dinner is partially in your honor. Lord Belmere will be expecting—”
“I know what he’ll be expecting.” Marcus moved to his desk, pulling out writing paper. “That’s precisely why I’m not going.”
He could not do it. Could not sit at that table with those women who had walked past him in the garden. Could not pretend he did not know what lived behind their pleasant faces. And he especially could not do it knowing Rosalind would not be there, knowing she was somewhere in town, probably above some shop or in some modest rented room, believing he was Thomas the gardener.
The lie was growing larger by the hour, and Marcus needed to stop it before it became something he could not take back.
“I need information,” he said, writing quickly. “A woman named Rosalind Thorne. She’s cousin to Margaret Belmere. I need to know where she lives, what she does. Quietly. No 1 can know I’m asking.”
His valet’s expression did not change, but Marcus could feel the judgment anyway. Dukes did not chase after unknown women. Dukes did not skip important dinners. Dukes certainly did not send their servants on investigative missions about shopgirls or governesses or whatever Rosalind turned out to be.
“It’s not what you’re thinking,” Marcus said, though he was not entirely sure what he was thinking himself.
“Of course not, Your Grace.”
“I met her yesterday at the garden party, but she was kind.”
The words sounded inadequate even as he said them.
“She brought me water.”
“How thoughtful.”
Marcus looked up sharply, but his valet’s face remained perfectly neutral.
“Just find out where she is, please.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
When he was alone again, Marcus sat at his desk and stared at the half-written letter. He should explain himself to Belmere properly, should maintain the social niceties that kept the world of the aristocracy running smoothly.
Instead, he crumpled the paper and threw it across the room.
He had spent his entire life being the Duke of Renfield, following the rules, meeting expectations, playing the part he had been born to play. And what had it gotten him? A parade of women who saw only his title, and the growing certainty that he would marry someone he could never truly know.
Until yesterday.
Until a woman in a faded green dress had seen him as simply human and acted accordingly.
Marcus stood and walked to the window. The estate stretched out below, perfectly maintained, profitable, exactly as a duke’s holdings should be. It felt like a prison.
Somewhere in town, Rosalind was probably preparing for an ordinary evening. She had no idea that he was thinking about her, no idea that he had already decided he would find her again, as himself this time, honestly.
Though how he would explain the gardener in the Belmere garden, Marcus still had not worked out.
1 problem at a time.
First, he needed to find her.
Then, he needed to figure out how to tell the truth without losing the only real thing he had found in years.
The bookshop bell chimed at exactly 2:00 on Tuesday afternoon.
Rosalind looked up from the account ledger she had been wrestling with for the past hour, grateful for the interruption. Then she saw who stood in the doorway, and the pen slipped from her fingers.
Thomas.
Except he was not Thomas. Not anymore.
The man walking toward her wore clothes that cost more than her entire shop. His coat was perfectly tailored. His boots polished to a mirror shine. His hair was properly cut. His jaw cleanly shaved.
But the eyes were the same, those startled, uncertain eyes that had looked at her in the garden.
Rosalind stood slowly, her heart doing something complicated in her chest.
“You’re not a gardener,” she said quietly.
“No.” He stopped a few feet away, hat in hand. “I’m not.”
The shop felt too small, suddenly too warm. Rosalind gripped the edge of the counter to steady herself.
“My name is Marcus Hadley,” he said, taking a breath. “I’m the Duke of Renfield.”
Of course he was.
Because nothing in Rosalind’s life could ever be simple.
She should be angry. She knew she should be angry. This man had lied to her, had played some kind of game while she had offered him water like a fool. But looking at him now, seeing the genuine worry in his face, she found she could not quite manage fury.
“Why?” The word came out steadier than she felt.
“I wanted to see them as they really were.”
Marcus set his hat on a nearby stack of books, then seemed to think better of it and picked it up again.
“The women at the party. I needed to know who they were when they thought no 1 important was watching.”
“So you tested them?”
“Yes.”
He met her eyes directly.
“And they failed. Every single 1 of them. They walked past me like I was stone, like I didn’t exist.”
He paused.
“Until you.”
Rosalind shook her head.
“I’m not special for bringing someone water. That’s just being a decent person.”
“Exactly.” Marcus took a step closer. “That’s exactly my point. It should be ordinary, common, but it wasn’t. You were the only 1 who saw me.”
“I saw Thomas,” Rosalind corrected. “A gardener working in the heat. I didn’t see you.”
“But that’s the thing.”
His voice carried an urgency now.
“You did see me, the real me, not the title or the estate or any of the rest of it. You saw a person who needed help, and you helped. No calculation, no performance.”
Rosalind wanted to pace, but the shop was too cluttered, books everywhere, stacked on tables and piled in corners, her small, honest life on display for a duke.
“You lied to me,” she said.
“I know.”
“You let me think you were someone you’re not.”
“I let you think I was exactly who I am.”
Marcus set his hat down again, deliberately this time.
“The gardener was more honest than the duke has been in years. When I’m Marcus Hadley, people perform for me. They tell me what they think I want to hear. They see the coronet and the property, not the person.”
He gestured helplessly.
“But with you, for just those few minutes, I was simply a man, and you were simply kind.”
“Pretty words,” Rosalind said, but her voice wavered.
“True words.”
He moved around the counter slowly, giving her time to object. She did not.
“I’ve thought about nothing but you since Saturday. I skipped the dinner at Belmere, sent my regrets, and spent 2 days trying to find you. My valet thinks I’ve lost my mind.”
“Maybe you have.”
“Probably.”
Marcus smiled then. It was the same smile from the garden, uncertain and real.
“But I had to see you again. Had to tell you the truth, even if it means you’ll send me away.”
Rosalind looked at him, really looked. Past the expensive clothes and the perfect posture, she saw the nervousness in his hands, the way he kept glancing at her and then away, the vulnerability of someone who had taken off his mask and did not know what would happen next.
“Why come as yourself?” she asked. “You could have found me as Thomas again, kept the lie going.”
“Because I don’t want to build anything on lies.”
Marcus took a breath.
“And because you deserve better than games. You deserve honesty.”
The shop was quiet except for the ticking of the old clock by the door. Rosalind thought about Saturday, about that moment when their hands had touched, about how she had felt seen in a way she rarely experienced.
“I’m a shopkeeper,” she said finally. “I live in 2 rooms above this store. I have ink on my fingers more often than not, and I say what I think even when I shouldn’t. Your mother would be horrified.”
“My mother is horrified by most things. It’s her natural state.”
Marcus’s expression turned serious.
“I’m not asking you to fit into my world, Rosalind. I’m asking if I might fit into yours.”
“That’s not how this works. Dukes don’t—”
“Dukes do whatever they choose,” he interrupted gently. “That’s rather the point of being a duke. And I choose this. I choose honesty. I choose someone who sees people instead of titles.”
He reached out slowly, giving her every chance to pull away.
“I choose you, if you’ll have me.”
His hand hung in the air between them, an offer, a question.
Rosalind thought about all the reasons she should refuse, the difference in their stations, the gossip it would cause, the impossibility of it all. She thought about those women at the garden party who would say she had trapped him, manipulated him somehow.
Then she thought about how none of that mattered if she spent the rest of her life wondering what if.
She took his hand.
His fingers closed around hers, warm and sure. The same calluses she had felt on Saturday were gone now, but the man was the same, just dressed differently.
“I’m still angry about the lying,” she said.
“That’s fair.”
“And I don’t know how any of this works, courting a duke.”
“Neither do I.”
Marcus smiled.
“I’ve never courted anyone honestly before. We’ll figure it out together.”
“People will talk.”
“Let them.”
He squeezed her hand gently.
“I’ve spent my whole life doing what people expected. I’d like to try doing what I want instead.”
“And what do you want?”
Marcus looked around the cluttered shop, at the books and the worn counter and the simple life she had built for herself. Then he looked back at her.
“This,” he said simply. “Someone who brings water to gardeners. Someone who reads in libraries during parties. Someone real.”
Rosalind felt something unlock in her chest, something that had been closed for so long she had forgotten it was there.
“I still think you’re slightly mad,” she said.
“Absolutely.”
Marcus lifted her hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, proper and old-fashioned and making her heart race anyway.
“But it’s the best decision I’ve ever made.”
The bell chimed again.
Mrs. Chen poked her head in, saw them standing there hand in hand, and retreated with a knowing smile.
Rosalind laughed.
“Well, I suppose the gossip starts now.”
“Let it.”
Marcus pulled her closer, and she let him.
“We’ll give them something worth talking about.”
“What’s that?”
“A duke who found his duchess in a bookshop. A woman who saw him when he was invisible. A love that started with simple kindness and grew into something true.”
Rosalind looked up at him, at this impossible man who had walked into her shop and turned her careful life upside down.
“That’s quite a story,” she said softly.
“It’s our story,” Marcus said. “If you want it to be.”
She thought about Saturday, about water in a tin cup and callused palms and the moment she had chosen to be kind instead of invisible. She thought about right now, about honesty and risk and the terrifying possibility of happiness.
“Yes,” Rosalind said. “I want it to be.”
And when he kissed her there among the books and the dust and the afternoon light, it felt like the most honest thing in the world.
Outside, the town would talk. His mother would object. Society would clutch its pearls and whisper behind fans.
But inside the little shop above which Rosalind lived, none of that mattered. A duke had dressed as a gardener and found the 1 woman who saw him truly, and she had offered him water, and everything else had followed.
