The two female visitors in their pastel gowns—one pale pink and the other paler blue—blended perfectly with the faded decor of the drawing room. The once hunter-green wallpaper had been leeched of color over time and was now a wan pea shade.

Miss Thorne receded to the back of the room after introductions.

Nick wished he could be so lucky.

“Lady Claxton, Lady Lillian, so good of you to call.” Nick heard the stiffness in his tone and felt tension echo in every muscle of his body. He had no experience making polite conversation with ladies.

Formidably statuesque, the marchioness stood only a few inches shorter than his six and some feet. She lifted a pair of spectacles hanging on a beaded chain around her neck to inspect him. Beginning with his boots, she inched up until her magnified gaze snagged on his face. The scar always drew women’s notice eventually, like a freakish magnet.

Most recoiled. Lady Claxton did not.

“But for that single green eye, you’re the very image of your father.”

“So I’ve been told.” Nick didn’t smile.

No compliment had been intended. The lady’s thin lips puckered in a disapproving frown, as if she’d taken too much lemon in her tea. Apparently, he’d failed whatever test she meant to put him to.

He spared a glance at Miss Thorne, who’d seated herself on a stiff-backed settee in a shadowy corner, clever enough to avoid the old dragon’s further notice. Apparently, she wasn’t at all interested in saving him from the unpleasantness of the noble ladies’ visit.

“What can I do for you, Lady Claxton?” Some quick, meaningless favor, Nick hoped. He wasn’t interested in passing anyone’s test.

“For me, Your Grace? No, no, I’ve come to assist you. First, let me say how good it is to find you at home. Enderley Castle is too grand, too essential to the good of the village to stand empty long.”

“I promise I’ll do my best to never leave Enderley unoccupied.” He glanced again at Miss Thorne, but she was studying her hands as if a particularly intriguing novel had been tattooed on her skin.

“We shall hold you to that promise, Duke.” The granddaughter, Lady Lillian Portman, spoke with such a smoky huskiness to her voice that a shiver of dread worked its way up Nick’s spine.

She was a fetching feminine specimen. Auburn haired, blue eyed, and amply curved in all the best places. Even his scarred face didn’t seem to put her off. When he glanced at her, she licked her lips. Slowly.

Pretty but not at all subtle.

Lady Claxton gestured at the young woman. “My granddaughter has just come out, Your Grace.” The steel-haired woman enunciated carefully so there’d be no mistake. The girl was on the hunt for a husband, and he was her intended prey. “I understand you’ve been awhile in London, Your Grace.”

“Indeed.” And will soon be returning. “I’ve lived there most of my life.”

“We are all eager to return to London once the Season commences,” Lady Lillian enthused. “It’s so diverting.” When she giggled, her entire body quivered. “Usually,” she purred, spearing him with a hungry glance, “there is little to entertain a young lady in the countryside.”

“We’d like to aid you in remedying that.” Lady Claxton finally lowered her lens, ceasing her appraisal of every item in the room, and turned her disconcerting gaze his way. “As the lodestar of Barrowmere society, it is your duty to entertain.”

Nick’s head had already begun to ache. Aid him, indeed. “What did you have in mind, Lady Claxton?”

“A ball.” The noblewoman’s wrinkled face lifted in a beaming smile.

“Oh, say you will.” Lillian’s voice lost a bit of its seductive quality when she whined. “I’ve not danced in ages.” She cast her grandmother a pouty moue, plumping out her perfect Cupid’s bow lips. “Have I, Grandmama?”

Lady Claxton raised her spectacle glass toward his steward. “I’m sure even Miss Thorne would agree. A ball will lift all our spirits.”

“Dancing does tend to make people merrier.” Miss Thorne sounded so intrigued with the notion that a muscle in Nick’s jaw twitch began to twitch. If she thought she could finagle him into playing host to a country house ball or any other frivolous entertainment, she was gravely mistaken.

“I can’t provide the remedy you require, Lady Claxton,” he said as decidedly as he turned down noblemen in the den.

“But you must. You’re the Duke of Tremayne. Your father may have grumbled and groused, but he did his duty by the village and always hosted at least one ball each year.”

A hammer began pounding inside Nick’s head. He longed to reach in, pull it out, and smash the whole drawing room to rubble.

“Sometimes the duchess encouraged him to host two in one year,” Miss Thorne put in unhelpfully. “What date would you suggest for the ball, my lady? And what would you require?”

“Soon. Very soon, indeed.” Lady Claxton’s eyes bulged. “As to what’s needed, only what every such event requires. Food. Drink. Musicians. A ballroom. Surely the servants at Enderley know. The duke and duchess were such gracious hosts.”

Nick couldn’t hold back a bitter chuckle at that. His mother was friendly, warm, gracious—all that a duchess should be—but his chief memories were of his father sulking in corners and stoking meaningless arguments with guests.

“We could provide food and drink for a ball . . .” Miss Thorne started blithely, as if he wasn’t even in the room.

Lady Claxton beamed. Lady Lillian clapped her gloved hands in quick little pats of excitement. Nick clenched his jaw so hard he heard a click and feared he’d cracked a tooth. When he caught Miss Thorne’s eyes, he shot her a glare, which seemed to dull her enthusiasm.

“But if you intend for the event to take place soon, I’m afraid the ballroom at Enderley is not available,” she said resignedly, shooting him a happy now? glare.

Nick returned a tiny nod of satisfaction.

“I’m afraid,” she continued, “the room is in need of repairs.”

All the sweet relief fizzled. Repairs? There’d been no mention of repairs in her inventories or her communications with his solicitor.

Lady Claxton let out a long-suffering sigh. “We could offer the ballroom at Claxton Hall, I suppose. Of course, it’s smaller than Enderley’s.” The elderly noblewoman tapped her bottom lip with a gloved finger. “Will we have your support, Your Grace, and a promise to attend?”

Nick didn’t like making promises, especially those he didn’t intend to keep. “I’ll assist in whatever manner I’m able,” he hedged.

His half-hearted commitment seemed to please the noblewoman. “I thought you would be a different sort of Tremayne, Your Grace.” She arched a thin gray brow. “Perhaps it’s a boon that you are.” She stood, apparently ready to depart.

Nick took a deep breath and felt the tightness in his chest loosening a smidge. That had been easy. Quick. As well as any task he dreaded could have possibly concluded.

When Miss Thorne stood, he rose too.

“I shall save you a spot on my dance card,” Lady Lillian whispered as he steered her toward the entrance hall.

Miss Thorne shot him an inscrutable glance over her shoulder.

“Do you ride, Your Grace?” Lady Lillian pressed a gloved hand to his forearm as if they were strolling through Hyde Park.

“Only in carriages.”

“Pity. I find nothing so invigorating as a dash across the fields on a sunlit morning.” As she stepped outdoors, the young woman looked around the estate. Her eyes lit when she spotted Tobias’s brawny figure leading a horse out of the stable yard.

“Now that’s a fine specimen.”

Nick swallowed a guffaw when he realized the debutante was referring to the horse, not his servant.

“In fact . . .” She held a hand over her brow to block the sun and peer through narrowed eyes. “That raven coat and mane puts me in mind of Hades from the Lyle stables. Has the viscount sold you one of his stallions?”

Before Nick could explain that he had no interest in or knowledge of Enderley’s stables, Miss Thorne appeared at his elbow. She wedged herself between his body and Lady Lillian’s to approach Lady Claxton, who was making her way toward the stairs.

“Send any details you have regarding provisions for the ball, my lady.”

“Yes, of course,” the older woman said. “We shall prepare a list of all that’s required. Come along, Lillian. Don’t dawdle.”

Nick helped each lady into the Claxton carriage, even offering one palm up gesture in return for Lady Lillian’s frantic waves as the vehicle rolled away. Their departure loosened more knots of tension. Somehow he’d lost nothing in the bargain, except the cost of food and drink. A small outlay of funds to finance the ball? Nick considered that a worthwhile expense if he could be back in London before the dancing began.

He turned to find his steward hovering nervously on the threshold. “Was that true, Miss Thorne? About the ballroom?”

“Yes, unfortunately. The plaster is peeling and there was a good deal of water damage last winter. May I show you?”

“Lead the way.”

He didn’t truly need her to guide him. He remembered the ballroom with perfect clarity. Once, he’d stolen down while his parents hosted a ball and spied his mother dancing with one of the local noblemen. He’d never forget the sight of his father seething in the shadows.

Thomasina Thorne used a key to unlock the double doors, then gripped each handle and pushed them open, giving Nick his first glimpse of the room in decades. Dust bellowed out and he pressed a finger to his nose to keep from sneezing.

A musty scent hit him, and he noted a scar on the far wall. Water had trickled down, warping and discoloring the wallpaper. A matching dark splotch stained the ceiling.

“We try to keep the damp from the rest of the house. Rain comes in from an opening in the outer wall, or possibly the roof. We’ve had a mason out to look, but he couldn’t find the source.” She bit her lip before turning to say, “He said he’d need to take part of the wall down to find the problem, and it was a cost the previous duke refused to bear.”

Not a cost Nick wished for either, but he could hardly lease a country house with a rotting ballroom.

“Isn’t it beautiful? Magical, even.” Miss Thorne stepped toward the middle of the room, lifted her arms, and spun around as if the sconces were lit and the walls glittered as they had that night Nick snuck out of bed as a child.

She swept the toe of her boot through the grit and dust to reveal the curving pattern in the parquet floor. “I love how the pieces of wood are arranged to suggest movement. Perfect for a ballroom. And the chandeliers.” She pointed skyward. The crystal-heavy light fixtures had been covered with white cloth and looked like enormous beehives ready to crush them both. “When they’re lit, it’s as if every star had been pulled down from the firmaments.”

She was the only beauty Nick could see in the room. Her vibrance trumped all the ruin and rot. He could even admire her sense of loyalty to Enderley, but he could never feel the same. “This place doesn’t deserve your lyrical praise.”

She deflated before his eyes, and Nick hated himself for snuffing out her joy. Her chin went down, tucked toward her chest, and the fingers she’d used to point to all the beauty she saw in the room curled into fists. “Perhaps it doesn’t deserve your loathing either.”

“Perhaps it does.” She didn’t know its secrets. If she did, Miss Thorne would have fled years ago.

“You think me naive, Your Grace?”

Nick gripped the back of his neck and stifled what he most wanted to tell her. That her faith in these walls was misplaced. That her belief that he’d come to cure all of Enderley’s ills was mistaken.

“Just look around you,” she urged. “Do you not see what this ballroom could be with repairs and a bit of cleaning?”

“I see unexpected expenses.” Hundreds of pounds to fix the wall. Hours of work to paint and scrub and polish the place back into a proper ballroom.

“But if you invested in repairs, you could host a ball next year and impress Lady Claxton and everyone else in Barrowmere society.” She smiled at him. An open, warm grin that made something in his gut flutter in ways that set him on edge.

The smile wasn’t for him, he told himself. She was simply imagining the ballroom alight, thronged with bejeweled ladies and gentlemen in their finery.

“I have no intention of hosting a ball, Miss Thorne.”

She flinched as if he’d burst whatever vision she had in her mind’s eye.

“I’m a dreadful dancer.” He didn’t know why he was admitting to his faults. Especially when he loathed the flicker of sympathy in her gaze.

“You could hire a dance instructor.”

“I don’t give a damn about balls. I have no interest in mixing with Barrowmere society. Gambling club owners, like lady stewards, have little cause for dancing.”

He’d touched a nerve. She bit her lip, tapped her fingers against her thigh in an angry tattoo. She opened her mouth, and he wondered if she might curse him to Hades. Instead, she snapped her jaw shut and strode past him, kicking up a cloud of dust in her wake.

Nick glared at the damaged wall, calculating the cost of repairs, trying not to think of the disappointment in her eyes.

A few minutes later, Wilder’s deep voice echoed to the high ceiling. “You’ve upset Miss Thorne.”

“I’m the one who should be upset.” Nick glanced back as the old man approached. “No one told me this place was falling to ruin.”

“Not as bad as all that, Master Nicholas. A few broken bits. Easily remedied.” Wilder matched Nick in height and stood shoulder to shoulder with him, hands clasped behind him. “’Tis your duty to see to improving the place now.”

“I will never reside here, Wilder. Nothing could compel me to think of this place as my home.”

The butler dipped his head, a semblance of a bow. “Your prerogative, of course. But the damage must be dealt with or it will fester. And repairs do take time.”

Nick side-eyed the butler. The man stared ahead, chest puffed, chin up, hands laced in that dutiful, obsequious way behind his back.

“You could do better than either of them, Your Grace.” Wilder’s voice was infused with the sort of rock-solid assurance Nick only ever felt about business matters. “Better than your brother or your father. You could be a good duke. Perhaps a great one. Succeed where they both failed.” The butler cast him a raised-brow glance. “Would that not be the very best revenge?”

Wilder’s opinion mattered to Nick, but he wanted none of what the old man described. Not the title, or the house, or all the troubles that came with them. But he understood the need to see an enterprise to its end.

“Three weeks, Wilder. That’s all I’ll give this place.” Nick pivoted on his heel and strode from the ballroom. He looked down both ends of the hall but detected no sign of Miss Thorne, just a few lingering whiffs of her floral scent. Ten long strides took him to her half-open office door.

She looked up as he approached, swiping at her cheek and then rising from her chair.

Before she could get out a word, Nick stepped inside. “The wall needs to be repaired. See to it, Miss Thorne. Whatever the cost.”

She blinked at him in shock. “I will. Immediately.”

Nick walked away, but her face lingered in his mind’s eye. Along with a shocked gaze, she’d offered him the hint of a smile.

He liked her smiles. Far too much.