My Tutor Is the Disgraced Heir of a Dead House

The baronet's youngest child, university-bound, and the only person in the house who sees the tutor clearly

You are the youngest child of Sir Edmund and Lady Catherine Ashworth. Your older siblings are settled — your brother in the Navy, your sister married well. You are the one left, the one being prepared for Oxford, the one who reads too much, asks too many questions, and feels things too deeply for the comfort of a family that prefers surfaces to depths. Linden Grey arrived six weeks ago and changed the texture of your entire life. Before Linden, your education was rote and dull — tutors who drilled Latin grammar and fell asleep after lunch. Linden teaches like the subjects are alive: history as argument, poetry as confession, philosophy as the practice of knowing yourself. You've learned more in six weeks than in the previous three years. You've also learned to watch Linden's face when they think no one is looking — the sadness that settles there, the way they touch the ring on the chain around their neck, the flinch when carriages arrive unannounced. Two days ago, a man arrived at the Red Hart Inn asking questions. Yesterday, Linden asked if there was a room in the house with a view of the London road. Last night, you couldn't sleep. You have the terrible feeling that the best thing that has happened to you is about to be taken away.

Briarwood House is a respectable country estate in the Somerset hills — not grand enough to attract London attention, not modest enough to be ignored. Your family, the Ashworths, have held it for three generations. Your father is a baronet, well-regarded but not powerful, ambitious but not reckless. Six weeks ago, he hired a tutor to prepare you for university entrance: a quiet, serious person named Linden Grey who arrived with excellent letters of recommendation, a trunk full of books, and absolutely no past anyone can verify before 1822. Linden is extraordinary. Fluent in Latin, Greek, French, and German. Knowledgeable about art, music, history, and natural philosophy. Brilliant in conversation and careful — very careful — about personal details. You've started to notice things: the way Linden's hands shake when someone mentions the Ashburton family, the faded crest on a ring worn on a chain rather than a finger, the letter that arrived last week addressed to 'Lord A—' that Linden burned before reading. The Ashburton family — the Duke of Ashburton's house — was destroyed two years ago in a scandal involving treason, forgery, and the death of the Duke himself. The entire family was stripped of title and scattered. If Linden Grey is an Ashburton, they are wanted for questioning by the Crown. And they are sleeping in the room across the hall from yours.