When they’d first glimpsed the ancient manor tucked away in the moors, her mother had taken one look at the frowning stone edifice and told Eleanor, “This will all be yours someday. You must remember to be grateful.”

For a very brief moment, Eleanor agreed. Far Hope looked like an etching in a book—moody and wonderful—and there was something about this wild, lonely land that made her feel like she’d stepped into a story. Her very own story, where there would be adventures and romance and—

Abruptly, she remembered that wasn’t the case.

Her story was already written, the book already closed and put back on the shelf. The beauty of Far Hope might indeed be hers, but there was no mystery or adventure here.

As per usual, her mother was never ill when she didn’t want to be, and so had accompanied the Lord Pennard and Eleanor down to Dartmoor for the nuptial celebrations. Eleanor had never really begrudged her the malingering—if anything, she was jealous of her mother’s ability to dodge work—but right now, in the face of this terrible marriage, it chafed. Especially since her mother was using her convenient good health to exhort Eleanor to her famous serenity when all Eleanor actually wanted to do was leap from the carriage and run as far as her legs would carry her.

“Anything else?” Eleanor had asked, trying and failing to sound composed. “Anything else I must do while I’m marrying a reprobate?”

“You must not do anything to jeopardize the marriage,” her mother said seriously. Gray shadows had moved over her face, turning her porcelain features into an ominous, inhuman silver. “You mustn’t, Eleanor. Nothing outrageous, nothing scandalous. The dukedom of Jarrell is the chance of a lifetime.”

Eleanor had nearly snorted at her mother’s warning, but her mother didn’t notice.

If Eleanor hadn’t done anything outrageous during her first twenty years of life, she hardly saw how it would happen out here in this gorse-ridden wasteland. “Of course, Mama.”

“And,” her mother pronounced, “you must not leave.”

“Leave?” Eleanor asked, not bothering to hide her incredulity this time. “Where would I go?”

She gestured out the carriage window to prove her point. They were surrounded by miles and miles of gorgeous but desolate hills. Heather, growing brown and rusty under the fading autumn light, covered everything. Fog laid heavy in the dips and valleys and the road was a single muddy track, occasionally diverted around cheerless granite crags. There was not another inn, house, or hovel for miles.

They might as well have been at the edge of the world.

Her mother had nodded then, satisfied. There was no escape.

* * *

She broke the first rule that very night. After they were received at Far Hope and allowed to rest, they took dinner with a sallow-faced Sloreley, who was already drunk and sulky beyond belief at Eleanor’s presence. He alternated between glaring at her and avoiding her gaze altogether; he practically flung her hand off his arm when they reached the table. When he scratched his neck under his lacy neckcloth, she caught a glimpse of a fresh love bite on the pallid skin below his ear.

Why was it that Sloreley could cavort with whomever he pleased and could show up to the dinner table with bites on his neck, but she was made to promise all sorts of good behavior when she’d been nothing but well behaved her entire life?

It wasn’t fair.

Sloreley gave her a glare and then drained his cup of wine, wiping at his mouth with his sleeve when he was finished.  A maroon smear was left on his silk jacket after.

Grateful. Her mother wanted her to be grateful?

No. No, she couldn’t be grateful. Far Hope was compelling in an Ann Radcliffe novel sort of way, with its medieval bones and with the moors all around, but it wasn’t worth this. It wasn’t worth Sloreley.

The door to the dining room had flung open then, sudden and sharp, and everybody at the table jumped—except for Sloreley, who simply froze with his fingers digging under his neckcloth like a schoolboy caught fidgeting.

A tall, muscular man stalked into the dining room, his sun-bronzed face spattered with rain. He wasn’t in dinner clothes, but riding clothes, his mud-flecked boots as far away from fashionable or appropriate as possible.

His features matched the house and the rain outside; they were like something from another time. A time of heathens and heroes. He had roughly hewn cheekbones and a powerful jaw, a high forehead and a rugged nose. His hair wasn’t powdered or curled decoratively—it was black as sin and pulled into a loose queue at his neck, and several strands had blown free on his ride to hang around his face.

In the glinting light of the candelabras, Eleanor could only make out the silver near his temples and sprinkled throughout the dark stubble covering his warrior’s jaw. A man well into his prime, then. A man old enough to be hardened.

Eleanor couldn’t stop staring at him. He was so unlike her father, and so unlike every preening youth she’d met in London. His very existence was forceful, his very being an energy that couldn’t be controlled or directed. His eyes were a blue so dark they were nearly black, and his mouth—

His mouth.

Firm and sculpted and a little cruel.

Eleanor shivered just to look at it.

“Apologies for my late arrival,” the man said. “Please forgive me.”

He said please forgive me like any other man would say fuck off.

The man strode over to the empty seat at the foot of the table and sat. His eyes met Eleanor’s from across the table—a flash of glittering indigo—and then he gestured for a footman to bring him something to drink.

“Your Grace,” Eleanor’s father greeted him. “How wonderful to see you. May I present my daughter, the Lady Eleanor Vane?”

The Duke of Jarrell looked over at her again, and this time, his eyes lingered over her face and neck, and then over the low neckline of her amethyst gown. When his eyes met hers again, his stare was unreadable.

“My apologies for your impending marriage, Lady Eleanor,” he said. “You are far too good for my nephew, but alas—he is too hopeless for me to release you. You are sadly needed.”

Her mother gasped softly. Her father sighed and took a long drink of sherry.

“No one seems to care that I don’t wish to be married either,” Sloreley pouted.

“Then it’s a good thing I don’t give a fuck about your wishes,” Jarrell replied. “Shall I carve the roast now?”

And then Eleanor broke the second rule and did something outrageous.

She fell in love with the duke.

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