Chapter 4 - THE SHADOW OF LONDONThe decision to prosecute Lord Reginald Fitzroy hit English high society like a thunderbolt.
By the following week, headlines from the London Daily Gazette to the Morning Post were screaming about the "Scullery Maid of Ashborne" and the "Battle of the Dukes." Caricatures were printed depicting Julian as a tyrannical giant crushing parliamentarians, while others painted Clara as a scheming temptress who had faked her injuries to seduce her employer.
Inside Ashborne, however, a strange and delicate haven was being formed.
Under Dr. Evans’s strict orders, Clara remained resting in the East Wing, but she was no longer confined to her bed. As her collarbone began the slow, painful process of knitting together, she was permitted to walk the gardens and spend her afternoons in the grand library.
It was during these quiet afternoons that the dynamic of the estate shifted completely.
Leo no longer spent his days locked in the nursery with strict governesses. Whenever his lessons ended, he sprinted straight to the library, where Clara sat by the window. Together, they read stories of knights, ancient kings, and distant continents. Clara taught him French nursery rhymes, showed him how to draw birds, and helped him practice his breathing exercises whenever his lungs began to wheeze.
And every afternoon at four o'clock, without fail, the heavy oak doors of the library would open, and Julian Montgomery would step inside.
He dropped his formal stiffness at the threshold. He sat on the rug near the fire with his son, building wooden block castles, while Clara watched from her armchair.
For Clara, it was a breathtaking, terrifying transformation.
The icy, feared Duke of Ashborne was dissolving before her eyes. When Julian laughed at his son’s silly jokes, his deep voice filled the room with a richness that made Clara’s heart flutter in her chest. When he brought her tea himself—ignoring the scandalized looks of the footmen—his fingers would brush against hers, sending electric shivers straight down her spine.
"You shouldn't be serving me, Your Grace," Clara murmured one rainy afternoon, taking a porcelain cup from his hands.
"I am not serving you, Clara," Julian replied, sitting on the velvet footstool beside her chair, looking up at her with those intense, dark-grey eyes. "I am thanking you. Look at him."
He pointed toward the far corner of the library, where Leo was happily engaged in building a fort out of heavy encyclopedia volumes.
"Before you took that blow for him," Julian said softly, "Leo barely spoke ten words a day. He hid in corners. He thought he was weak because of his lungs. You gave him courage, Clara. You gave him his childhood back."
"He gave me something too," Clara admitted, looking down at her tea. "He reminded me that I was a human being. For three years, I was just a uniform. A pair of hands that scrubbed floorboards. Your son looked at me and saw a friend."
Julian reached out, his long fingers gently touching the edge of the white linen sling supporting her arm. His touch was so feather-light, so reverent, that Clara forgot how to breathe.
"You were never just a uniform, Clara," Julian whispered, his gaze dropping to her lips before rising back to meet her eyes. "I was blind for three years. I walked past you a hundred times in those corridors, so buried in my own grief that I never looked at the light standing right in front of me."
Clara’s heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. "Your Grace... Julian... you mustn't say such things. The trial is next week. If the newspapers hear that you are... that we are..."
"Let them print whatever they damn well please," Julian said, his voice laced with a fierce, quiet passion. "I am the Duke of Ashborne. I have spent my entire life obeying the rules of my station, and it brought me nothing but an empty bed and a silent house. I will not let a bunch of gossiping old lords tell me who I am allowed to care for."
Before Clara could answer, the library doors flew open.
Carson stepped inside, his normally imperturbable face pale and disturbed. He held a silver tray with a sealed letter bearing a dark red wax seal.
"Your Grace," Carson said quickly, his voice tight. "An urgent dispatch from our legal team in London. Lord Fitzroy’s family has hired Sir Anthony Croft."
Julian’s face hardened instantly. "Croft? The most ruthless barrister in the Old Bailey?"
"Yes, Your Grace," Carson said grimly. "And Sir Anthony has just issued a formal subpoena for Miss Higgins's presence in London. The trial begins in four days. But there is worse news."
Julian took the letter, tearing it open. As his eyes scanned the page, his knuckles turned white, crushing the paper in his grip.
"What is it?" Clara asked, fear rising cold in her chest.
"Croft has tracked down your father's old business partners," Julian said, his voice dropping into a deadly whisper. "They are planning to present forged ledgers in court claiming that your father, Thomas Higgins, did not lose his money in the crash—but that he stole twenty thousand pounds from his investors and hid it in an offshore account before he died."
Clara gasped, rising from her chair so fast her injured shoulder throbbed with agony. "That is a lie! A monstrous, vile lie! My father died penniless! We had to sell my mother's wedding ring just to pay for his wooden coffin!"
"I know it's a lie, Clara," Julian said, standing up and wrapping his arms around her, pulling her close against his chest despite her sling, holding her securely as she began to tremble with rage and grief. "They are trying to break your spirit before you ever reach the witness stand. They think if they blacken your father's memory, you will back down and forfeit the case."
Clara buried her face against Julian’s coat, smelling the warm, comforting scent of cedar and tobacco that belonged only to him. She absorbed his strength, feeling the rock-solid beat of his heart against her cheek.
She pulled back, looking up at him with eyes full of blazing, absolute resolve.
"Take me to London, Julian," Clara declared. "They ruined my father once when he was alive. I will not let them murder his name in his grave."
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Julian looked at her, his heart swelling with a fierce, powerful adoration that he knew, in that exact second, had crossed the line from gratitude into undeniable, eternal love.
"Then pack your trunks, my sweet Clara," Julian swore, kissing her forehead softly. "We leave for London tonight."
