The carriage gleamed black and gold in the morning sun, its wheels still damp with dew. Two footmen stood ready, their gloved hands at their sides, as trunks were strapped to the rear. The Wycliffe crest was embossed on the door, a cold emblem of her new life.
Evelyn stood at the edge of the gravel drive, her gloved fingers clutched around her mother's. She wore a dark blue traveling dress, cinched at the waist and elegant, modest. A fine bonnet shaded her face, but her eyes were bare and shining.
Her father cleared his throat. His shoulders were square, but his eyes betrayed the weight of goodbye.
"You'll write us."He said.
"Every week." Evelyn replied softly.
"Every three days," her stepmother corrected, pulling her close. "And not just polite nothings. Tell me what you eat. What the house is like. What… what he is like."
The last words were whispered into her ear. Her mother's embrace tightened, fiercely maternal, painfully brief.
From the corner of the house, Evelyn's younger sister Clara born from her stepmother peeked out and ran forward.
"Sister, are you a princess now that you married a prince?" She clutched Evelyn's hand. "Do you feel like one?" Clara asked, her bright eyes filled innocence.
Evelyn knelt, cupping Clara's cheek with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Yes. I feel like someone who's about to live in a castle with a dragon." She said, her voice tinged with sadness.
Clara giggled, and their mother gasped faintly, but Evelyn kissed her sister's forehead before standing.
Nathaniel approached from the carriage, cloaked in black. He offered his arm without a word, his face composed. Distant. He had been quiet since the wedding night, polite but impenetrable. The kiss at the study still lingered on Evelyn's lips, not for its passion, but for its chill.
She turned to face her family one last time.
Her father gave a curt nod, blinking furiously. Her mother was dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief embroidered with Evelyn's initials. Clara waved both arms with the desperate enthusiasm of a child who doesn't yet understand distance.
"Be brave, my darling",said Lady Ashcombe
"I'm not brave, Mama. But I will try." Evelyn hugged her, her eyes filled with reluctance.
She took Nathaniel's arm.
"Are you ready?" Nathaniel said quietly.
She didn't answer. Instead, she climbed into the carriage.
The door closed behind her with a soft but decisive thud.
As the carriage rolled down the path, Evelyn leaned slightly forward to watch her family grow smaller through the window. Her mother's shawl billowed in the wind. Her father's hand remained raised in solemn farewell.
And Clara was still waving and jumping now, as though trying to catch up.
Evelyn pressed her fingers to the glass.
"Goodbye," she whispered. "Goodbye to girlhood. Goodbye to home."
Ahead lay the Wycliffe estate. Her husband, the Duke and a life of unknown.
She leaned back, her spine straight, her pulse unsteady.
Beside her, Nathaniel finally spoke.
"Regrets?"
Evelyn closed her eyes and sighed.
"None yet."
He nodded once, approving.
But she kept her eyes on the road behind her, long after it disappeared.
Wycliffe Manor - The Garden Lake
The gardens behind Wycliffe Manor stretched into a quiet wilderness rarely tended by gardeners. Moss crept up broken statues, and willow branches dipped low like gossiping women leaning over secrets. Juliana Wycliffe often came here when she wanted to be alone with her thoughts, or with the pages of a novel no governess would have approved.
Today, she carried Clarissa tucked beneath her arm, a dog-eared copy with soft pages that smelled of damp earth and old tears. The air was thick with the scent of lilac and overripe plums. Somewhere deeper in the brush, a warbler sang high and frantic.
She walked slower than usual, her slippers silent against the moss. This corner of the estate felt untamed and beautifully so.
As she rounded the bend of a crumbling stone path, she caught sight of movement through the trees.
Ripples.
She froze.
Beyond the ferns, just beyond a curtain of weeping willow branches, the small lake shimmered like silver glass under the dappled afternoon light.
And there...there was a man.
Naked.
His back was to her, his body half-submerged as he waded out into the water. The sunlight caught the line of his spine, the wet planes of his shoulder blades, the powerful motion of arms that pulled through the water with effortless grace. He dove, and for a moment the lake was still.
Juliana clutched her book tightly against her chest, breath caught, skin flushed hot beneath her bodice. She should leave. She had to leave.
But she didn't.
Instead, she took two steps back behind the gnarled trunk of an old elm and pressed her back to the bark, peering carefully through the vines.
It was him. Thomas.
He surfaced with a toss of his head, dark hair slicked back, droplets gliding down his neck and chest. He looked like something out of a novel, wild, unpolished, a man made by the earth rather than society. No cravat. No practiced smile. Just raw, sun-kissed strength and the curve of sin at the edge of his mouth as he exhaled and floated lazily on his back.
Juliana's heart pounded. She felt heat pool low in her belly, shame and desire warring inside her chest.
"You are a lady," she reminded herself. "This is vulgar. Beneath you."
But her hands trembled. She didn't look away.
Her mind spun. She had seen the bare chests of sculptures, paintings in Rome but this was not art. This was sweat and breath and heat. This was the man who looked at her like he knew things noblemen never would. This was him, unguarded and free.
He stood there completely, gloriously unashamed.
She gasped too loud.
A branch cracked underfoot.
His head turned sharply at the direction of the noise.
Their eyes met.
Juliana's eyes widened in shock.
For one long moment, neither moved. The breeze died. A bird startled from a tree, its wings the only sound in the charged silence.
Thomas blinked. His expression shifted, startled, yes, but not angry.
Juliana's mouth parted.
Mortified, she fled.
Branches clawed at her skirts as she ran, heart slamming against her ribs, the image of his body burned behind her eyes. Shame scorched her cheeks, but deeper than that, deeper than propriety and fear was desire.
She would not forget what she had seen.
And part of her didn't want to.