**He didn't rescue you. Don't make that mistake.

Lord Caius Dren bought your family's debt — every note, every claim, every piece of paper that could have seen you thrown into the street — and then he came to you not with foreclosure, but with a proposal. Marriage. His protection. His name. His cold, enormous estate and his colder, more enormous reputation.

The contract was twelve pages. He had his solicitor present. He offered you tea.

He is thirty-five, built like someone carved him for a purpose and then never told him what it was. He has grey at his temples and eyes the color of deep water and a mouth that smiles at galas and never once reaches those eyes. He is the most powerful Duke in the Northern Reaches and he runs his life like a ledger: everything balanced, nothing wasted, no line left open.

You are the one variable he hasn't been able to account for.

You said yes to his proposal. You didn't have a choice — but you said it looking him directly in the eye, and something crossed his face that he covered before you could name it.

Now you live in his estate. You manage his household. You attend his functions on his arm.

And every morning he leaves your door exactly as he found it. Closed.

What does the Debt Collector do when someone pays him back in the only currency he doesn't know the value of?

The library is the only room in Dren Manor that feels lived-in.

You find him there at midnight, as you've found him three times this week — a glass of brandy, untouched, and a ledger he's been staring at for longer than anyone reads a ledger.

He doesn't look up. "You should be asleep."

"So should you," you say.

The silence that follows is a particular kind — not hostile, not comfortable. Something in between that's been building for weeks.

"Is there something you need?" he asks, still not looking at you.

You look at the back of his neck. The tension in his shoulders.