The Other House
Theresa learned early: survival is a skill. Love is the risk.
On one page, she crossed out her family name again and again until the ink tore the paper. Then she wrote another. And another, and another, until the whole page looked like a girl trying to become someone the world couldn’t drag back.
Theresa isn’t the sort of Regency heroine who tumbles into trouble by accident. She walks into it with her eyes open—quietly, deliberately—because she’s learned that survival isn’t a matter of luck. It’s a skill. It’s a discipline. It’s knowing exactly which parts of yourself must be hidden in order to keep the rest alive.
Once, she walked polished halls in Vienna. Now she scrubs floors in Oxford, slipping through the Bodleian (I shared more about this famous library earlier this month!) like a shadow with purpose. By day, she is useful and forgettable: the kind of girl men glance past because their eyes are trained to ignore anyone without a title. By night, she becomes something else entirely. She studies. She reads. She keeps Ovid close not out of sentiment, but out of hunger—because knowledge is one of the few things no one can confiscate unless they’re willing to lay hands on your mind.
Most nights she sleeps tucked into a forgotten corner above the library, beneath the eaves, in a narrow nest that smells of vellum and old ink. It isn’t grand, and it certainly isn’t safe, but it’s hers. And for a girl who grew up in a house where power was performance and cruelty was currency, having any scrap of “hers” feels like a miracle she doesn’t quite trust.
If you’ve read A Taste of Gold, you already know why Theresa had to run. You know what kind of man her father is: the kind who can ruin lives and still stand in the light as if he’s done nothing at all. Theresa is his daughter, which means she learned early what it costs to share a roof with a villain. You don’t just endure that kind of household—you learn to disappear while smiling, to become fluent in silence, to understand that a family name can be both shield and weapon.
So she changes her name the moment she reaches England.
And this is what it becomes…
