PART TWO — The Secret Beneath the Rot

By sunrise, Bath had a new scandal.

By noon, half the county knew.

By evening, the story had already acquired details that had never happened.

Lady Elinor Wren had supposedly trapped the Duke of Ravensmere into marriage.

The duke had supposedly threatened Viscount Harcourt.

Someone claimed Lucien Vale had proposed to her on his knees beneath the moon.

Someone else insisted the Rotting Duke had cursed her father.

None of it was true.

The truth was considerably more complicated.

Three days later, Elinor stood in Ravensmere House and began to understand why.

The estate was enormous.

Beautiful, in a mournful sort of way.

Tall windows overlooked endless autumn fields. Portraits of dead ancestors lined the walls. Fires burned in every major room, yet the house remained strangely cold.

And everywhere she went, she noticed doors.

Some locked.

Some guarded.

Some that Lucien avoided entirely.

Her new husband had been polite since their marriage.

Almost painfully so.

He never raised his voice.

Never touched her without permission.

Never demanded affection.

He gave her rooms of her own and told the servants that she was mistress of the house.

But he rarely stayed near her for long.

And every evening, just before dinner, he disappeared.

On the seventh night, Elinor followed him.

She found him in an old library at the far end of the west wing.

The room smelled of dust, leather, and medicinal herbs.

Lucien stood beside the fireplace with his coat removed.

His shirt sleeve had been rolled above his left elbow.

Elinor stopped breathing.

There was an old scar running from his shoulder toward his ribs.

Not one scar.

Several.

Deep, uneven marks disappearing beneath his shirt.

She stepped forward.

Lucien turned.

His expression hardened.

“You should not be here.”

“What happened to you?”

“Nothing that concerns you.”

“That is not true.”

His jaw tightened.

“Elinor.”

“I am your wife.”

“On paper.”

The words struck harder than he intended.

She saw regret flicker across his face.

But he did not take them back.

Instead, he reached for his coat.

Elinor noticed the small bottle on the desk.

Then another.

And another.

Apothecary mixtures.

Bandages.

Medical instruments.

Old handwritten notes.

Her eyes moved across the papers.

Dates.

Names.

Treatments.

Failed treatments.

Physicians from London.

Physicians from Edinburgh.

Physicians whose names she recognized from medical journals.

Her fingers stopped over one page.

“Eleven years?”

Lucien said nothing.

“You have been ill for eleven years.”

“Not ill.”

He turned away.

“Injured.”

Elinor looked at him.

“What happened?”

For a long moment, he remained silent.

Then he said quietly:

“The war.”

She waited.

Lucien stared into the fire.

“I was twenty-six. My regiment was retreating through a village when a powder wagon exploded.”

His voice remained calm.

Almost emotionless.

“That night, three men died beside me.”

He touched the scar beneath his collar.

“I survived.”

Elinor looked at his stiff hand.

“And afterward?”

“The wound became infected.”

“Surely a physician could—”

“They tried.”

His laugh was bitter.

“Seven physicians.”

He turned toward her.

“Two surgeons.”

“Three apothecaries.”

“And every one of them eventually told me the same thing.”

Elinor whispered, “That you would die.”

Lucien nodded.

“So I stopped attending society.”

He looked toward the dark windows.

“People are remarkably uncomfortable around a man who reminds them that the body can fail.”

That sentence stayed with her.

Because suddenly she understood.

The rumors.

The isolation.

The name.

The Rotting Duke.

It had never been about some monstrous nature.

It had been society’s cruel way of turning another man’s suffering into entertainment.

Elinor walked toward the desk.

She picked up one of the journals.

“You have been treating this yourself.”

“I have had little choice.”

“You have been researching it.”

“For eleven years.”

She looked at the shelves.

Hundreds of books.

Medical texts.

Botanical manuals.

Apothecary journals.

Her expression changed.

“You have not stopped trying.”

Lucien’s eyes met hers.

“No.”

“Then neither will I.”

He stared at her.

“You don’t know what you’re offering.”

“I am not offering anything.”

She placed the journal down.

“I am staying.”

His face tightened.

“You married me to escape another man.”

“Yes.”

“And now?”

Elinor stepped closer.

“Now I am discovering that I may have accidentally married the only man in England who never tried to own me.”

For the first time, Lucien looked away.

His composure cracked.

Only slightly.

But enough.

Elinor saw the loneliness beneath it.

And she understood something else.

The duke did not fear dying nearly as much as he feared being loved only out of pity.

So she did something he clearly did not expect.

She did not touch him.

She did not promise to save him.

She simply picked up the oldest medical journal on his desk.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “we begin again.”

Lucien looked at her.

“With what?”

“A clean table. Better records. New physicians. Old remedies worth testing.”

She smiled faintly.

“And absolutely no more accepting the word impossible from men who stopped looking for answers years ago.”

For several seconds, he said nothing.

Then, very quietly, Lucien laughed.

It was the same warm laugh she had heard on the terrace the night they met.

Only now she understood what it cost him.

And somewhere beyond the walls of Ravensmere House, winter was beginning to gather.

Neither of them yet knew that the most dangerous secret was not the illness hidden beneath Lucien’s scars.

It was the name of the man who had made certain that every physician investigating the duke’s condition eventually gave up.

And when Elinor found the first missing page from an eleven-year-old medical journal, she began to suspect that Lucien Vale’s suffering might not have been entirely accidental.