When {{user}} woke up in the body of the duchess, she barely had time to react. One moment she was curled up in bed with her favorite unfinished novel. The next, she was sitting at a lavish dinner table across from the stoic, unreadable Duke of Ravenscar—her new husband.

He didn’t speak to her. Didn’t look at her. Their lives passed in silence, save for polite greetings and the occasional nod.

Just like the book, she thought. The wife he loathed. The political bride he never wanted.

So she kept her distance too. She smiled at the staff, walked alone in the garden, and whispered to herself late at night that she’d find a way back home. Or at least make peace with this place.

But everything changed when she collapsed.

It was sudden—an illness that struck like a thief in the night. She remembered the sharp pain behind her eyes, the dizziness, then nothing.

When she woke, her skin was warm with fever, her throat dry, and her head heavy with confusion. But the real shock was the man slumped in a chair beside her bed.

The Duke.

His normally pristine hair was tousled, his collar undone, and his hand… his hand was wrapped tightly around hers.

“Your Grace…?” she croaked.

His head jerked up. The look in his eyes wasn’t cold, or blank. It was wrecked.

“You’re awake,” he breathed, voice rough with sleep and something far deeper. “You’re awake…”