Kate’s old townhouse loomed beneath the storm-blackened sky, lit only by the occasional streak of white lightning. It looked empty. Barren.

Foreboding clogged her throat.

What if Aunt Havens was here, in the dark, in the rain? What if she were somewhere else entirely and they never found her?

Slowly, they drove around the townhouse. The front was closed up. The stoop bare. No signs of life, or even of a recent disturbance. Although if anyone had come by, their footprints would have long since washed away in the barrage of rain.

She gripped the edge of the squab and squinted through the sheets of rain as they rounded the corner toward the rear of the townhouse.

The high balcony was empty and dry. Its doors locked and undisturbed.

But there below, in the dark swamp of the grass, sat a thin, shaking form.

Aunt Havens.

Choking, Kate fumbled with the door and threw herself from the landau before it could even come to a stop.

She landed hard on her knees, hit the rocks instead of the grass, but sprang up without feeling her torn skin and raced through the ankle-high mud.

“Aunt Havens!” she screamed. “Aunt Havens, I’m here! I came for you!”

The bent figure just kept trembling.

Kate slid in the mud, scrambled, kept going. She dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms about her aunt’s cold, wet limbs.

Aunt Havens sneezed and kept shivering.

“You’re going to be fine,” Kate said softly, hugging her tight. “We’ll get you home and get you warm. We’re here now.”

Footsteps splashed behind her as Ravenwood raced to her side. He pulled Aunt Havens up and into his arms.

Something white fluttered from her pelisse to the ground. Something small and familiar.

Kate scrambled to rescue the fallen scraps from the mud.

Her best evening gloves. The ones Aunt Havens had taken without asking. Each hand now boasted an intricately embroidered dahlia, exactly like the one Ravenwood had gifted Kate in his private garden.

The day she had told Aunt Havens she thought she might be falling in love.

Kate held it to her chest and tried not to sob. The keepsake. She’d fought with her aunt, yelled at her, accused her of not knowing her own mind… and all she’d been trying to do was give Kate something to remember her by.

She would wear them for the rest of her life.

Ravenwood nestled Aunt Havens in the landau. He covered her with the blanket and shucked off his greatcoat to give her added warmth.

Kate wrapped her arms about him and kissed him.

“You’re freezing.” She frowned. He was soaked to the bone. “You need to get dry, or you’ll get sick, too.”

He shook his head. “Don’t worry about me. The important one is your aunt.”

“You’re both important. I won’t risk anything happening to either of you.”

She started to take off her pelisse.

He wouldn’t let her.

“Stay warm,” he ordered. Then sneezed. His hands shook as he held the reins. “We’ll be home soon.”

She hoped so. They had to. What if Ravenwood and Aunt Havens had both caught pneumonia?

Her throat tightened and she tried not to panic. “I’m never leaving either of you ever again.”

As soon as they pulled up at Ravenwood House, she sent half the footmen to fetch surgeons and instructed the other half to help her turn Ravenwood and Aunt Havens’ bedchambers into clean, warm sickrooms.

Because of her aunt’s age, the surgeons didn’t want anyone else present in Aunt Havens’ sickroom. They suggested Kate go to her own bedchamber and try to rest.

She went straight to Ravenwood’s.

“I’m fine,” he said, despite wracking shivers. “Get some sleep.”

“I’m a duchess,” she reminded him as she warmed his hands in hers. “I do what I want.”

He smiled. “Not ‘a’ duchess. My duchess.”

“Yours forever.” She crawled into bed beside him and wrapped him in her arms.

She loved him too much to ever let go.