What the Hart Wants - Fiona Davenport Page 0,1

society. Wishing to sweep aside their humble origins, Dex had paid a considerable sum to fund Lilah’s debut, and he expected her to reward his investment with the dividend of a society marriage.

Which meant she’d have to surrender her liberty to a man who valued only three things in a woman:

Biddability, silence, and the ability to bear children.

But unlike her brother, she had no burning desire to marry a title—or marry at all.

The bird chirped, returning her to the present.

“I’m sorry, my friend,” she said. “Here, I have a treat for you.”

She held up a piece of bread, and the bird pecked at it, ruffling its feathers as if in thanks. Ripples of iridescence shimmered across the creature’s back. The bird looked out of place in the aviary—a bright exotic prisoner among the dull, earthy colors of plants, which might once have conformed to aesthetics, but were now choked by ivy.

Four years of neglect had turned Clayton House into a ruin, as if the soul of its late owner, the twelfth Duke Molineux, had permeated into the fabric of the building and rotted it from within. And well, he might. Lilah shivered at her childhood memory of him—a beautiful youth whose exterior concealed a blackened heart. Soulless gray eyes, which glittered with mirth at the discomfort of others.

The whole line was rotten to the core. The first duke had earned his title from a grateful Henry Tudor after distinguishing himself in battle. But his successors had gained notoriety, which increased with each generation. The tenth duke had narrowly escaped the gallows after a spate of murders. The eleventh had been killed in a duel within a week of inheriting the title after compromising six young women in a single night. As for the twelfth—he’d debauched his way around London before ending his life in the manner by which he’d lived it—drunk, naked, and in the arms of a harlot—leaving a penniless widow who’d been turned out of the estate before he was cold in his grave.

Lilah lifted her hand, and the bird launched into the air and disappeared into the ivy. She would have freed it, but it would never survive in the wild. It had lost its independence, as she would lose hers if married.

Why was it that a woman was expected to marry in order to find fulfillment? Could she not thrive as an individual in her own right, rather than as half of a pair? If Dexter expected her to yield her liberty, it would have to be with a man who saw her as an equal.

And such a man did not exist, except, perhaps, Sir Thomas, who, for all that he was a baronet, at least appreciated the value of the lower classes.

She scattered the rest of the breadcrumbs on the ground and stepped back to let the more timid inhabitants of the aviary seek their bounty in peace. Closing the door behind her, she picked her way across the ground toward the main building.

Clayton House was a large mansion built during the Jacobean era, but through the years, each incumbent had added layers of ostentation, as if to establish their superiority of rank. To Lilah, the building served a purpose, for it was a reminder of the evils of society. It served to inspire her Essays on Patriarchy, and it provided her with respite from Dexter’s admonishments and Dorothea’s attempts to turn her into a lady.

She crossed the main hall and entered the library, where row upon row of books filled the shelves, their colors clouded with a thin film of dust, punctuated by occasional fingerprints, evidence of Lilah’s trespass. Plucking a book from the shelf, she traced the title on the spine, running her fingertips across the smooth surface of the gold embossing. Byron’s Hours of Idleness. Published when he was younger than her.

Might her poems be published one day? What would it feel like to have her name embossed in gold on the spine of a book?

She smiled at the notion of realizing her dream.

A creak echoed outside, followed by a faint scratching. The sounds of London always filtered through the air—a voice from the street at the bottom of the drive, the cry of a bird, or the soft creaks as the fabric of the house expanded and contracted in the ever-changing temperature as day turned to night, summer turned to winter. Or perhaps it was one of the many rats which resided in the bowels of the building.

Lilah sat in an