The Arizona sun was a merciless brass gong, hammering the world into silence and shimmering heat. Inside the black-lacquered carriage, every beat of its glare felt personal. Emmeline Montague watched a single bead of sweat trace a path through the dust on the windowpane, a tiny, desperate river on a map to nowhere.
Opposite her, her father, Reginald Montague, mopped his florid face with a silk handkerchief that had seen better days. The lace was fraying. Emmeline noticed these things now. She noticed the worn patches on the velvet squabs, the faint smell of horse and desperation that no amount of lavender sachets could conceal. They were a moving tomb of former gentility, rattling toward their own execution.
"Stop fidgeting, Emmeline," Reginald muttered, not meeting her eyes. "It's unseemly."
"What is seemly, Father?" she asked, her voice unnaturally calm. "Being sold off to settle a debt? Is there a particular etiquette for that chapter in Debrett's? I must have missed it."
He flinched as if she'd struck him. "It is not a sale. It is a marriage. A brilliant, advantageous match to the most powerful man in the territory. You will be a Duchess."
"I will be a prisoner," she corrected softly, turning back to the window. The landscape was a study in harsh beauty: crimson mesas, stubborn stands of pine, and endless, aching sky. It was a world of freedom and brutal choice, a stark contrast to the gilded cage that awaited her.
"Lucas Rutledge is not a monster," her father insisted, a hollow echo of the assurances he'd been giving her for weeks. "He is a businessman. A man of… few words."
"They say his last wife died of silence," Emmeline said, the words hanging in the stifling air.
The carriage jolted violently, and Emmeline's hand shot out to steady herself against the doorframe. Through the dust-clouded window, their destination rose into view.
It wasn't a ranch. It was a fortress. Blackrock Keep was hewn from the very mountain itself, a grim edifice of dark timber and darker stone. It commanded the valley below with a cold, predatory arrogance. No welcoming lights gleamed in its windows; they were like the slitted eyes of a granite dragon, watching their approach. A high, spiked palisade surrounded it, and the only entrance was a massive gate that looked as if it could withstand a siege.
The carriage rolled to a stop before the intimidating structure. The air, even inside the coach, grew colder. The driver, a man who had been paid too well to ask questions, jumped down and opened the door with a nervous flourish.
Standing there, framed by the monstrous gateway, was a man who could only be the Duke.
Lucas Rutledge was tall and broad-shouldered, but there was no warmth to his physique, only a sense of hard, unyielding mass. He was dressed not in the buckskins of a rancher but in a severe black broadcloth suit, impeccably tailored and devoid of ornamentation. His face was all sharp planes and angles, his hair the colour of gunmetal. But it was his eyes that stole the breath from Emmeline's lungs. They were the pale, flat grey of a winter sky before a snowstorm, utterly devoid of light or feeling. They scanned her, from the practical travelling bonnet to the scuffed toes of her boots, with the dispassionate assessment of a man inspecting a new breed of cattle.
"Montague," he said. His voice was low, a dry rasp like stone grinding on stone. It held no greeting, no welcome.
"Your Grace!" Reginald practically fell out of the carriage, bowing and scraping. "A triumphant journey! May I present my daughter, Emmeline—"
Rutledge's gaze cut to her father, silencing him mid-grovel. "The priest is waiting. My time is limited."
He turned and walked into the shadow of the Keep without another word, without offering a hand to help her alight. The expectation was clear: follow or be left behind.
The wedding was conducted in the Keep's great hall, a cavernous room dominated by a monstrous stone fireplace that held no fire. The walls were hung with trophies—not of elk or deer, but of weathered human skulls and the bleached-white sigils of rival cattle barons, grim testaments to the Duke's ruthless expansion. A severe, nervous-looking priest stood by a simple table, a Bible clutched in his white-knuckled hands.
Emmeline stood beside the Duke, her father sniffling sentimentally to her left. She could feel the cold emanating from Rutledge, a chill that had nothing to do with the room's temperature. He repeated his vows in that same emotionless rasp, the words "to have and to hold" sounding like a legal contract clause. When it was her turn, she hesitated. The words, "I do," stuck in her throat, a final, fragile barricade.
Her father dug his fingers into her arm, a silent, desperate plea. She looked at him, at the fear and avarice warring in his eyes, and knew there was no cavalry coming. There was only this.
"I do," she whispered. The words were ashes in her mouth.
The Duke did not kiss her. He simply took her hand. His grip was like iron, cold and unfeeling, and he slid a heavy gold band onto her finger. It was several sizes too large. The metal was shockingly cold against her skin.
"It is done," Rutledge stated to the room at large. He released her hand as if discarding a tool. He turned to her father and took a single, sealed envelope from his inside pocket. "The deed to your new property in San Francisco. Our business is concluded. My man will see you to the border of my lands. You will not return."
The finality in his tone was absolute. Reginald Montague took the envelope, his hands trembling with a mixture of shame and triumph. He dared one last look at his daughter, a look that begged for understanding, or perhaps forgiveness, before scurrying after the Duke's stern-faced foreman without a backward glance.
And then, she was alone with her husband.
The silence in the hall was profound, broken only by the mournful sigh of the wind outside. The Duke looked down at her, his wintery eyes giving nothing away.
"You will find your quarters on the second floor," he said. "You will not bother me. You will not enter the west wing. Your needs will be met. In return, you will provide the appearance of a wife. Your bloodline for my legitimacy. A simple transaction. Do you understand?"
Emmeline Montague, now the Duchess of Blackrock, lifted her chin. The too-large wedding band felt like a manacle on her finger. A spark of the fire she thought had been extinguished flickered in her chest. She met his emotionless gaze, and for the first time, her voice did not waver.
"I understand perfectly, Your Grace," she said.
She understood she was in a prison of stone and ice. She understood her husband was a man without a heart. But as she stood there, abandoned and purchased, the first seeds of defiance took root. The transaction was concluded, but the terms of engagement, she decided, were yet to be written.