THE DUKE OF GREYTHORN(Book 1 in the Greythorn series)

CHAPTER 3 - WAITING MY TURN (ELIZA POV)

The kitchen was warm with bread and steam and sister-noise.

Margaret rolled dough at the table, sleeves dusted with flour. Anne kneaded beside her, frowning at the lumps. Beatrice counted beans by the window. And me? I was at the hearth, pretending to watch the pot, when really I was watching the road.

The rain had stopped hours ago. But my skin still felt damp. Like I hadn’t left that hill. Like I was still standing in the mud with him watching me.

“The Duke of Greythorn,” Margaret said for the third time. She didn’t look up from the dough. “You stared right at him, Eliza. Father would have had a fit.”

“I wasn’t staring,” I lied. My cheeks burned. “I was asking if he was hurt.”

Anne snorted. “You were looking at him like he was the last scone in the tin.”

“Stop it,” Margaret warned, but there was no bite in it. She sighed instead. The sound mothers make when they’re tired. “You’re the youngest, Eliza. You wait your turn.”

I nodded. I always nodded.

Margaret, Anne, and Beatrice—three elder sisters, all unmarried, all watching the road every spring for a suitor who never came. Our father had no dowry. No land to spare. What hope did they have if I started looking at dukes?

It wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be proper.

So I didn’t say his name. I didn’t know it anyway. He hadn’t asked for mine. Thank God. I couldn’t have given it.

But I could still feel his hand on my waist. Just for two seconds. Heat through wet wool. Like he’d meant to catch me and then regretted it.

I pressed my palm to the edge of the table to stop the shaking.

“Your face is red,” Clara, the youngest, said from the floor. “Was he handsome?”

“He was a duke,” I said carefully. “That’s all.”

Margaret gave me a sharp look over the dough. “And he’ll marry some lady in London with silk skirts and a dowry. Not a Marlowe girl with mud under her nails. Not when we three are still here.”

“I know,” I whispered.

I did know. I told myself I knew every night as I lay in bed listening to the wind on the moors.

But my hands still remembered the weight of him. My chest still rose too fast when I closed my eyes.

That night I couldn’t sleep. I slipped from the room I shared with Clara and went to the tiny shelf by the hearth. My Bible. Hidden between the pages was a wildflower I’d plucked on the way home. Purple. Plain. Nothing special.

Except it was the one near his boot. The one he’d looked at before he looked at me.

I didn’t know why I kept it. It was foolish.

I traced the scar I imagined on his jaw with my fingertip. Then I snapped the book shut and shoved it back on the shelf.

“Stop it, Eliza,” I told the empty room. “You have three sisters before you. You have chores. You have no business dreaming about a man who doesn’t know your name.”

Outside, the wind howled across the moors.

Somewhere, Greythorn Hall stood dark against the sky. And somewhere inside it, a duke who didn’t know my name was probably trying just as hard not to think of me.

I hoped he failed.

Then I felt guilty for hoping it.