Prologue
A man's ruin can be measured in two ways: by the emptiness of his coffers, or by the fullness of his regrets. Reginald Montague was an expert in both.
The letter lay on his desk, a single sheet of heavy vellum that felt like a condemnation. It was not addressed to Father, or even to Reginald. It was cold, precise, and utterly final.
The transaction is concluded. The debt is settled. Do not return.
It was signed with a single, slashing initial: R.
Outside the window of his new, modest San Francisco townhouse, the world was alive with the clatter of cable cars and the promise of a new century. But inside, the air was thick with the ghosts of the old one. The ghost of his wife's laughter in a Boston drawing-room. The ghost of his daughter's trusting hand in his. He had traded those ghosts for solid walls and a clean credit line, and the silence they left behind was deafening.
He had told himself it was for the best. Lucas Rutledge was a Duke, a titan of industry. Emmeline would want for nothing. She would have security, a title, a legacy—all the things he had squandered. He had spun a fantasy of her in silks, presiding over a vast estate, and had almost convinced himself it was a father's last, desperate act of love.
But the Duke's words stripped that fantasy bare. The transaction is concluded. It was not a wedding announcement; it was a receipt.
Reginald's gaze fell upon a small, painted miniature on the mantel. It was Emmeline at twelve, her eyes bright with a intelligence and spirit that had both thrilled and terrified him. He had once promised her the moon. In the end, he had sold her to a man made of stone.
A sob, raw and ugly, escaped him. He had not sold her to avoid being broke. He had sold her because he was already broken, and he could not bear to face the pieces alone.
Two thousand miles away, in a fortress of dark timber and darker stone, his daughter stood at a dust-covered window. She watched the relentless Arizona sun set the mesas on fire, and she did not weep. The man who had taught her to waltz, to dream, to believe herself treasured, had delivered her into the care of a man whose eyes were winter and whose heart was a locked vault.
The transaction was, indeed, concluded. But as Emmeline Montague, now Duchess of Blackrock, watched the day die in a blaze of defiant color, she knew one thing with a chilling certainty that would have frozen her father's blood.
The reckoning was just beginning.