To wed a viscount

London, 1867

Eleanor Ashford had an unfortunate habit, one that had haunted her since childhood: she laughed at precisely the moments when laughter was least welcome. It was not a deliberate act of defiance, though many assumed it was. Rather, it was a reflex, a spark of nervous energy that erupted when the world pressed too heavily upon her. So, when her father, the Baron of Mayfair, summoned her to the drawing room of their townhouse, a room stuffed with the weight of old money and older expectations, and announced that she was to marry Viscount Henry Blackthorne, Eleanor did the only thing her nerves permitted. She laughed.

It was not a delicate chuckle, the sort a well-bred lady might allow to flutter from her lips. Nor was it a polite, restrained titter, carefully measured to avoid offense. No, this was a full-throated, head-thrown-back, are-you-quite-mad? laugh that echoed off the room’s gilded walls. The sound was so unlady like with the gravity of the moment that even the housemaid polishing the silver in the corner froze, her cloth suspended mid-motion.

“I beg your pardon?” Eleanor managed at last, pressing a gloved hand to her chest as she struggled to regain her breath. Her corset, laced too tightly for her liking, made the effort all the more laborious.

“Did you say Viscount Blackthorne? The very same Viscount Blackthorne whose fiancée reportedly fled the country in a cloud of scandal? The man who wears mourning black as though it were his personal coat of arms? The one who, if the whispers are to be believed, stabbed a man in Vienna over a disputed hand of whist?”

Her father, Lord Ashford, did not join in her jokes. His face, lined with the cares of a man who had spent his life balancing pride and debt, remained as unyielding as the oak paneling behind him. “I said exactly what I meant, Eleanor,” he replied, his voice clipped with the disdain he reserved for moments when his daughter’s wit veered too far from propriety. “You are to be his wife.”

“Splendid,” Eleanor muttered, rising from the velvet settee where she had been perched. The room seemed to close in around her, its heavy drapes and somber portraits suffocating in their silent judgment. She paced toward the fireplace, where a low fire crackled, casting flickering shadows across the marble hearth. Her voice rose with each syllable, a mix of sarcasm and barely concealed panic. “Perhaps I ought to send the poor man a congratulatory note. ‘Dear Viscount, my sincerest apologies in advance for my incorrigible sarcasm and my utter inability to curtsy without wobbling. I do hope you enjoy your new bride, who spends her evenings reading French literature and cannot sew a straight stitch to save her life.’”

“Eleanor.” Her mother’s voice, soft as a breath, barely pierced the thickening tension in the room. Lady Ashford sat in her usual armchair, her delicate hands folded in her lap, her expression a mixture of resignation and quiet pleading. She had always been a fragile counterpoint to her husband’s sternness, a woman who seemed to carry the weight of their family’s troubles in the faint lines around her eyes.

But Eleanor was already spiraling, her thoughts racing faster than her words. “Will we at least receive matching daggers as a wedding gift? I assume dueling is part of the marriage contract, given the Viscount’s reputation. I should very much like one with an emerald hilt—green would suit my eyes, don’t you think?” She turned to face her parents, her hands gesturing wildly, as though she could ward off the absurdity of the situation with sheer theatricality.

Lord Ashford stood slowly, his movements deliberate, as though each motion was a reminder of his authority. “You will marry him, Eleanor,” he said, his voice low and unyielding. “And you will do so with the dignity befitting our family’s name. Your brother’s gambling has cost us everything, our savings, our reputation, our future. Viscount Blackthorne—”

“—is buying me,” Eleanor interrupted, her voice sharp enough to cut through the heavy air. “Let’s not dress it up in pretty words, Father. You’re selling me to settle our debts, to ensure we don’t lose the estate, to buy my status before we’re reduced to penury. And I assume you’ll pay my dowry promptly, lest the Viscount change his mind and we’re left with nothing but shame.” Her words spilled out in a rush, each one laced with a bitterness she hadn’t fully realized she felt until that moment. “One way or another, our debts will be paid off, won’t they?”

Her father looked away, his jaw tightening. For the first time, Eleanor noticed the faint tremor in his hands, the way his shoulders sagged ever so slightly under the weight of his decisions. A heavy silence fell over the room, one that even Eleanor, with all her sharp-tongued bravado, could not bring herself to mock.

Two Days Later

Thornwick Manor, Essex

Henry Blackthorne was not what Eleanor had expected. She had braced herself for a man worn down by life’s cruelties, older, perhaps, with gray streaking his temples and a bitter edge to his demeanor, shaped by the heartbreak of a fiancée’s betrayal or the weight of whispered scandals. Instead, the man who greeted her as she stepped from the carriage was something else entirely. He was tall, impossibly tall, his frame towering over the footmen who scurried to assist with her trunks. His broad shoulders strained against the tailored lines of his charcoal waistcoat, and his hair, blacker than the rumors that swirled around him, fell in subtle waves that caught the sunlight. His face, all sharp angles and brooding intensity, was the sort that could make poets weep and duchesses swoon. And oh, how the duchesses tried.

Eleanor noticed them at once as she crossed the threshold of Thornwick Manor’s grand marble foyer. The finely d