Ronan Vale turned out to be nothing like his father, which, Wren decided within the first five minutes of meeting him, somehow made the entire situation considerably worse rather than better.
She'd expected someone polished and calculating, a younger echo of Corwin Vale's smooth, patient menace. Instead, she found herself standing in the manor's small private garden with a tall, visibly uncomfortable young man who kept adjusting his collar as though it had personally wronged him, glancing at the door every few seconds like he half expected someone to burst through it and rescue him from this exact conversation.
"I want to say, before anything else," Ronan began, clearing his throat, "that this entire arrangement was not my idea. In any capacity. I found out about it roughly the same way
