A Business Arrangement
The travel from public coffee spot to office desk consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The rain had turned his hair dark, plastering it to his brow in a way that made him look younger, more dangerous—the man she remembered from moonlit gardens, not the one who had let her go without a word. Nova’s breath came in short, sharp bursts. The brick was cold through her damp spencer jacket, and his hand remained on her arm, a brand even through the sodden wool.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, and her voice was steadier than she felt. “I don’t know you.”
But the lie died on her tongue as his gaze dropped to Toby. The boy had gone still, his small hand wrapped around the strap of his satchel, his face lifted to the stranger with an expression Nova had learned to recognize. Toby was calculating. Assessing. Seven years old and already reading a room like a creditor reading a ledger.
The Duke of Ashworth crouched down, bringing himself to the boy’s eye level. Water dripped from the brim of his hat, but he didn’t seem to notice. His voice was low when he spoke, pitched for Toby alone.
“You bear my mark, lad. The crescent on your shoulder. Do you know what that means?”
Toby’s chin lifted. “It means I’m yours.”
Nova’s stomach dropped. She had never told Toby the full truth—never explained the pale, half-moon scar that marked his skin from birth. She had only said it was a family trait, something that made him special. But the boy was clever, too clever by half, and he had clearly been drawing his own conclusions for years.
Sebastian rose, and his jaw was set—no, not that. She forced herself to catalog his expression like a trained observer, not a woman drowning in memory. His mouth was a thin line. His gaze did not leave her face. The clock tower in the square chimed the quarter hour, and the sound seemed to pull him back to the present.
“Come inside,” he said. “We can’t talk in the street.”
“Inside where?”
He gestured toward the building behind her—a tall, narrow townhouse wedged between a chandler’s shop and a printing press. The windows were dark, but the brass knocker gleamed in the rain. “My study. I keep rooms here for business.”
“I don’t think—”
“Toby is wet.” Sebastian’s voice was flat, unarguable. “He’s shivering. Whatever you think of me, however much you hate me, you will not let that boy stand in the rain while you decide.”
Toby looked up at her, and there it was—the equal parts hope and trust that she had never been able to deny him. Nova pressed her lips together, counted to three, and nodded.
The study was smaller than she had expected, and more personal. She had imagined a grand desk, leather chairs, walls lined with law books. Instead, the room was cramped and comfortable: a single tall window looking onto a narrow courtyard, a worn Persian rug, a desk cluttered with correspondence, and a gas lamp that hissed softly as they entered. The air smelled of ink, coffee, and the faint trace of cedar.
Sebastian lit a second lamp in the corner, bathing the room in amber light. He shrugged off his greatcoat, hung it on a hook by the door, then turned to tend to Toby. Nova watched, frozen, as he knelt before the boy and began to work the buttons of Toby’s wet coat with steady, practiced hands.
“I’ll build up the fire,” he said, as if speaking to himself. “There’s a blanket on the chaise. And biscuits in the tin on the shelf.”
Toby’s eyes went wide. “Biscuits?”
“Sebastian.” Nova’s voice cracked. “What are you doing?”
He didn’t look at her. He was pulling off Toby’s shoes, checking his feet, rubbing warmth back into the small, pale toes. “What should I be doing? Letting him freeze while we dance around old wounds?” He rose, crossed to the hearth, and struck a match against the mantel. The kindling caught, and flames licked up the chimney. “No, Nova. This boy is mine. That means he’s my responsibility.”
“Seven years too late for that.”
That made him turn. The firelight caught his face, illuminating the lines around his eyes, the faint gray at his temples that had not been there when she knew him. He looked tired. Not angry—tired. The expression of a man who had been carrying a weight for a long time.
“Seven years too late is better than never,” he said quietly. “But I’m not asking for forgiveness. I’m asking for a conversation.”
Toby had found the biscuits. He was perched on the chaise, wrapped in a wool blanket, his small feet tucked beneath him as he munched, his gaze darting between the two adults. Nova felt a pang of guilt—she had raised him to be observant, to be careful, to know when danger was close. But this didn’t feel like danger. It felt like something else entirely.
She moved to the window, keeping distance between herself and the Duke, and looked out at the rain-streaked glass. “What conversation is there to have? You ended it. You sent me away. Your mother delivered the letters—three of them, each one colder than the last, each one telling me to stop embarrassing you with my presence. And then you married Lady Ashworth, and that was that.”
His laugh was short, bitter, and utterly without humor. “Is that what they told you?”
“They were your letters, Sebastian. Signed with your seal.”
“I never wrote you a single letter.” He moved toward the desk, pulled open a drawer, and withdrew a stack of papers bound in a black ribbon. He held them out to her. “I wrote you twenty-three. I left them in the hollow of the oak tree by the river—the same place we used to leave notes for each other. You never answered a single one.”
Nova’s hand trembled as she took the stack. She knew the ribbon that bound them; she had given it to him, a length of dark velvet she had worn in her hair. She had never seen it again after the night he vanished.
“He never told me,” she said, her voice scarcely a whisper. “Your mother came to my rooms. She said you had been called away to Kent, that the engagement was a mistake, that you had realized your duty to your name outweighed your feelings for a merchant’s daughter.” She swallowed. “And then I found out I was pregnant, and I knew I couldn’t stay.”
“You should have told me.”
“I could not find you!” She turned from the window, the letters still clutched in her hands. “I went to your townhouse. I waited outside your clubs. I asked everyone I knew if they had seen you. And then your mother had her solicitor pay me a visit, and he told me that if I persisted in my ‘delusions,’ he would have me charged with harassment and my father’s business would suffer.”
His face went pale. “She didn’t.”
“She did. And so I left. I took what I had and I moved across the city, and I raised our son in a two-room flat above a bakery, and I taught him to read and write and add sums, and I never once told him his father was a man who would let his mother threaten me.”
The fire crackled. Toby had stopped eating, his biscuit frozen halfway to his mouth, his eyes wide. Nova forced herself to breathe. She had never spoken these words aloud before. They sat in her chest like stones, and to release them was both relief and pain.
Sebastian was very still. When he spoke, his voice was rough, the edges frayed. “I never married. I never even courted another woman. I spent three years searching for you, Nova. Three years, until my father’s death forced me to take up the duchy and I had to stop tearing apart the city and start running an estate.”
“Your mother—”
“My mother is dead. She died two years ago, and I have still not forgiven her.” He stepped forward, and this time Nova did not retreat. “I did not know about the letters until her solicitor confessed on her deathbed. She hired a clerk to imitate my hand. She was determined to separate us because you were not titled, not wealthy, not suitable.” He paused. “And she succeeded.”
The silence stretched between them. The rain drummed against the glass. Nova could hear Toby shifting on the chaise, could feel his gaze on her, but she could not look away from the Duke.
“Why are you telling me this now?” she asked.
“Because Beckett Covington has begun asking questions.” Sebastian’s voice hardened. “He has a network of informants across the city, and one of them reported seeing a boy at a market stall with my eyes. My exact eyes. Beckett is not a man to let a coincidence lie.”
The name sent a chill down her spine. She had heard it whispered in the lower circles of London—a merchant prince with ambitions above his station, a man who had clawed his way out of poverty and now sought to control the city’s trade, its politics, and its noble families like a puppet master. “What does he want with Toby?”
“He wants leverage.” Sebastian moved to the desk, pulling open a drawer to withdraw a leather-bound ledger. “The Covingtons have extended credit to half the peerage. They own debt, Nova. They own secrets. They are looking for any weakness they can exploit to elevate themselves, and a duke with a hidden heir is a weakness worth exploiting.”
Nova wrapped her arms around her middle. “What do you propose?”
“I propose you come back.” He saw her expression shift and held up a hand. “As my employee. My private secretary. There’s a desk in my study at Davenport House, and I need someone I can trust to organize my correspondence and manage the household accounts. You’ll have a salary, a room, and Silas will guard Toby around the clock.”
“Silas?”
“My security chief. He was a sergeant in the Horse Guards before I recruited him. If Beckett’s men try anything, Silas will intercept them long before they reach Toby.” Sebastian placed the ledger on the desk and opened it to a page marked with a ribbon. “Look.”
Nova approached reluctantly. The page was filled with dense handwriting—dates, sums, names. She recognized several of the titles immediately. “This is Covington’s debt register.”
“The Covingtons keep meticulous records. So do I.” He tapped the page. “This is what I’ve paid over the past five years to buy up the debts of my fellow peers. They think they hold the city in their grip, but I’m tightening my own hold. The question is whether I’ll be ready before Beckett decides to act.”
Nova studied the ledger, her mind racing. She knew ledgers. She had grown up in her father’s counting house, had learned to read numbers before she could read words. This was meticulous work—and dangerous work. If the Covingtons discovered Sebastian had been systematically buying up their leverage, they would retaliate.
“Why me?” she asked. “Why not hire a clerk? You could find someone with more experience, more discretion.”
“Because I trust you.” His voice was quiet, and for the first time, she saw something vulnerable in his face—a crack in the careful armor he had built. “Because you are the mother of my son. Because you deserve to know the truth, and because I will not let you vanish again.”
Toby appeared at her side, the blanket dragging on the floor. He looked up at her with those impossible eyes—Sebastian’s eyes, the color of storm clouds, flecked with silver. “Mama, there was a man. At the market today. He watched me for a long time, and then he followed me, and I lost him in the crowd, but I think he might have seen where we live.”
Nova’s blood went cold. She crouched down, taking his small shoulders in her hands. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to worry you.” He looked at Sebastian, then back at her. “But maybe we should stay with him. Just for a little while.”
She closed her eyes. The rain had begun to ease, the drumming on the window softening to a gentle patter. When she opened them again, she met Sebastian’s gaze. “It’s business,” she said. “A post as your secretary. A room for Toby and me. I’ll take it, but this isn’t a reunion. It’s an arrangement.”
He inclined his head, a single, graceful gesture. “Of course.”
“I’ll want the terms in writing, and I’ll want an advance on my wages. And I’ll want your word that Toby is your priority—not revenge against the Covingtons, not your pride. Him.”
“My word.” He extended his hand. “You have it.”
Nova looked at his hand for a long moment. Then, deliberately, she reached past it and closed the ledger. “I need to go home and pack. We’ll return in the morning.”
“Silas will accompany you.”
“Fine. But he stays outside.” She straightened, gathering Toby’s hand in hers. “I’ll see you at Davenport House, your Grace.”
She didn’t look back as she left. But she felt his gaze on her all the way to the door, and she felt the weight of the letters in her hands—twenty-three of them, never delivered, never read. She would read them tonight, she decided. She would read them all, and she would let herself feel whatever pain they brought.
Toby tugged at her sleeve as they stepped out into the rain. “Mama, is the Duke really my father?”
Nova looked down at his small, upturned face. The crescent mark at his collar was visible beneath his damp shirt, pale against his skin. She thought of the letters in her hands, of the twenty-three messages she had never received, of the years that had been stolen from both of them.
“Yes,” she said. “He is.”
They left the way they had come, and the study door closed behind them.
The study door opened without a knock, and Lord Cole Covington strolled in with a smirk. “The Duke of Ashworth, employing his lost love as a clerk? How convenient for a bastard to be hidden in plain sight.”