Nevan
I made it as far as the courtyard before my body betrayed me.
My vision blurred. My chest seized. I stumbled through the archway and into the walled garden, my hand finding the trunk of the old oak before my legs gave out. I leaned into it, forehead pressed against the bark, dragging in air that wouldn’t come fast enough.
The black lines beneath my sleeves were burning.
"Nevan." Clyde’s voice, somewhere behind me, called out. "Breathe. Slow down. In through your nose, out through your mouth."
I couldn’t. The pressure in my chest was crushing, a knot tightening with every heartbeat. My hands were shaking so violently that the bark bit into my palms, and I didn’t feel it. Everything I’d held together in that hall, every measured word, every controlled breath, every second of composure I’d performed in front of Rosamund was unravelling at once.
"Deep breaths, Nevan. You’ve done this before. Focus on my voice." Clyde called out again.
I closed my eyes and forced the air in. I held it, let it go, and repeated it again and again until, slowly but painfully, the knot in my chest loosened. My vision cleared, and the burning beneath my skin dimmed to a smoulder.
Then the anger hit.
I spun from the tree and drove my fist into the garden wall. Stone cracked beneath my knuckles, and pain exploded up my arm. I swung again and again until the skin on my knuckles split and blood smeared across the pale stone.
I kicked the iron bench beside the path, and it toppled, clanging against the flagstones. I grabbed the terracotta pot on the ledge and hurled it at the wall, where it shattered into a hundred pieces that rained down into the flower bed.
"Damn her!" The words tore from my throat raw and ragged. "Damn her stubbornness and her pride and her. Damn all of it!"
I stood in the wreckage, chest heaving, blood dripping from both hands, surrounded by broken pottery and scattered earth. The garden that my mother had planted thirty years ago looked like a battlefield.
Clyde said nothing; he waited as he’d always done.
When my breathing finally steadied, I sagged into the remaining garden chair, my elbows on my knees, my bloodied hands hanging between my legs. The fight left my body all at once, like a tide pulling out, leaving nothing behind but exhaustion and the dull throb of torn skin.
Clyde crouched in front of me without a word. He pulled a clean handkerchief from his coat, tore it in two and began wrapping my right hand.
"The guest," I said quietly, watching him work. "The wedding preparations. What happens now?"
"I already handled it." He moved my left hand, winding the linen carefully around my split knuckles. "I sent messages to the invited families and guests within an hour of discovering Lady Rosamund was missing. The wedding has been postponed indefinitely. They’ll be informed when a new date is chosen."
I nodded. "Thank you, Clyde."
"It’s my job, Your Grace."
He finished the bandaging and stood. I remained in the chair, staring at my wrapped hands, at the blood already seeping through the white linen.
"Jennifer was right," I said.
Clyde raised an eyebrow but didn’t speak.
"Rosamund is different." I shook my head slowly. "None of the others ever attempted to leave. Catherine, Elowen, and Margaret all wanted to be here. They wanted to be my wife, they wanted the title, the estate, the life. They wanted it so badly that it irritated me. But Rosamund..." I let out a humourless laugh. "She couldn’t get away from me fast enough."
Clyde was quiet for a moment before he spoke. "Rosamund didn’t grow up in society, Your Grace. In her world, bagging a Duke isn’t like finding gold. It means nothing to her. She has no frame of reference for titles or rank or what any of it represents." He paused, a small smile on his face.
"In Lady Rosamund’s world, relationships exist on feelings alone. She’s treating you the way she would treat any man —with suspicion until you’ve earned her trust. She doesn’t know how to do it any other way."
I nodded. He was right, and that was the part that gnawed at me most. Rosamund wasn’t defiant because she was spoiled or ungrateful. She was defiant because no one had ever given her a reason not to be.
I had given her my mother’s brooch and expected it to mean something to her, but I’d barely seen her wear it. She didn’t even acknowledge the gesture that I’d given her something priceless.
"It’s my fault," I said. "I gave her too much freedom. Jennifer warned me. Clyde, she warned me repeatedly, and I ignored her because I thought —" I trailed off. "When I saw Julian Whitmore standing next to her in that cart, I was scared."
Clyde’s brows arched. "Scared?"
I nodded. "In that moment, every thought about her running away disappeared, and I thought the Whitmore family had taken her. That in their quest for answers about Elowen, they’d taken Rosamund as leverage." I stared at the broken terracotta scattered across the flagstones. "For a moment, I thought I’d lost her completely."
"Nevan..." Clyde called out, giving me a pitiful stare.
"I was relieved, you know," I sighed. "When I saw she was alive. I felt terror and relief at the same time."
Clyde took a step toward me, studying me carefully. "Did she tell you how she got the injuries? The bruises on her throat?"
"No. She insisted Whitmore had nothing to do with them and that he saved her." I flexed my bandaged fingers and winced. "She didn’t say it directly, but she dropped a hint that someone attacked her, but wouldn’t say who."
Clyde frowned. "Who would want to use her as leverage against you? Does anyone come to mind?"
I paused for a minute, thinking. "I honestly don’t know at this point. I have more enemies than friends."
Silence settled between us. The gentle garden breeze swished through the trees, carrying anything but peace to me.
"Go easy on her, Nevan," Clyde said finally. "She’s not accustomed to this world. She only just turned nineteen. She’s frightened, alone in a strange house, and everything she’s heard about you has given her every reason to run. That doesn’t excuse what she did, though, but it explains it."
I scoffed. "For her age, Rosamund acts like she’s been around for decades. Don’t let the tears fool you, Clyde. That girl knew exactly what she was doing when she walked out of that gate."
Clyde let out a short laugh, catching me off guard. "Forgive me, Your Grace, but I have to ask. Are you becoming fond of her?"
I turned sharply to him.
"In all my years of service to you," Clyde continued smoothly. "I’ve never seen you lose control like this. Not even Jennifer riles you up the way Lady Rosamund does."
I opened my mouth to deny it. The denial sat right there on my tongue, but it wouldn’t come because Clyde was looking at me with that quiet, knowing expression and lying to him felt pointless.
I shrugged my response.
Clyde nodded slowly, as though the shrug had confirmed everything he needed to know.
I rose to my feet and brushed the dirt from my coat. "Let’s go through with the wedding tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?" Clyde rushed up to me. "Nevan, you just postponed —"
"There will be no guests, no ceremony, flowers or ribbons or any of that," I interrupted him, adjusting the handmade bandages on my palms. "Send for the magistrate—the one who registers marriages for the Crown. Let him come to Wellspring tomorrow morning, Rosamund and I will sign the documents, and the entire household will stand as witnesses. After that, it’s done."
"C’mon, Nevan. Every woman deserves a proper wedding. People will think she’s with child if you marry her in secret."
"And every fiancé deserves a bride who doesn’t run away the morning of their wedding. Besides, since when did I start worrying about what people think?" I turned to face him. "I’ve run out of goodwill for Rosamund, Clyde. Starting now, she’ll be treated as she deserves. Consider this her punishment for trying to leave me."
Clyde let out an exasperated sigh. I could see the argument forming behind his eyes. "Nevan, if you do this, you’ll push her further away. You can’t force a woman to —"
"I said send for the magistrate." I cut him off again, my voice carrying a note of finality. "That’s an order."
Clyde held my gaze for a long time. Then he exhaled, bowed his head slightly, and stepped back.
"As you wish, Your Grace." He paused. "Is there anything else?"
I looked toward the house. Somewhere inside, below the main floors, in the lower quarters behind a locked door, a man named Julian Whitmore was sitting in a cell.
A man who shared a surname with a woman who had vanished from my estate. A man who had been on the road to Wellspring at dawn, armed with a sword and carrying a dagger with markings I recognised from my darkest nightmares.
A man who had his hands on my woman.
"Yes," I said with a nod. "Take me to Whitmore."