Duke of Thunder (Regency Gods #1)

Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

“ T he day has finally arrived!”

Helen looked up from the toast that she was too nervous to eat to find her cousin beaming ear to ear.

Being, as she was, entirely out of patience for nonsense of any sort, Helen had no recourse left but to scowl at him.

“One might think it was your wedding day,” she said. “Are you sure you don’t plan to object, to try to marry the duke in my stead?”

To her abiding frustration, George did not seem put off by her poor attitude.

“Buck up, dear cousin,” he said to her jovially, snatching the ignored toast from her plate and patting her on the head like she was a dog. “You’re useful for once. Try to enjoy it.”

“God, he is so awful,” Patricia murmured under her breath when George practically skipped his way out of the breakfast room.

Helen, alas, was too put out to enjoy that, either.

She hadn’t slept well, not after her conversation with her husband-to-be the previous day. She’d spent a restless night plagued with the idea that Xander had given her something to work with, some shred of information that would help her understand him if only she could put the pieces together.

After all, for all his blathering about the impenetrable coat of dukeliness that he had to wear at all times or whatever other nonsense he’d been shilling, she had cracked his icy exterior.

For a few moments, for the space of one too brief, breathless kiss, he’d been Xander again. The man, not the name or the title.

All that remained was the question of which version of him would stand at the altar today. Was she to be wed to the Duke of Godwin or to the man who had made her fall apart in his arms?

The question haunted her all through her preparations, through donning the outrageously expensive gown that had been quickly made by an army of seamstresses, through coiffing and pinning her hair and donning a set of jewels that had been loaned to her by Catherine Lightholder.

Lady Catherine had been perfectly kind about it, making the necklace—an ornate thing made of pearls and sapphires—out to be some sort of family item that had been worn by passels of Lightholder brides, but Helen assumed the real truth was that her future sister by marriage had taken pity on her. She’d seen the country bumpkin and assumed she’d had nothing suitable to wear for a ducal wedding.

It was true, which made it sting all the more. Helen’s father had never given her any of her mother’s jewelry, and, if it still belonged to the estate, George wasn’t about to waste it on a cousin he clearly despised.

Helen struggled not to feel like an imposter as their carriage rolled up in front of the church, which was already crowded with onlookers.

Nobody in the ton was going to miss the Duke of Godwin getting married, even if it was to some little nobody from…Scotland, was it? Oh, God, it couldn’t be America, could it? Somewhere too far to matter, certainly, as London was obviously the epicenter of the universe.

“You’ll be all right, Helen,” Patricia whispered, squeezing her hand. “I know it.”

For her sister’s sake—because it all came back to that, in the end, for Helen—she tried to force a smile.

“I hope so,” she said.

The crowd on the sidewalk didn’t even bother to hide their flurry of whispers as Helen crossed into the church, which made the silent interior almost alarming in contrast. Still, as she sucked in a deep, steadying breath, she noticed that the building smelled nearly identical to the church she’d grown up attending in Northton. It was a trivial detail, particularly as Helen had never been particularly religious, but it gave her sufficient fortitude to survive those last few minutes while George buzzed like a happy little bee.

She forced his words back until they became nothing but a dull drone.

And then—finally, too soon—it was time.

The instant the doors opened to the main sanctuary, Helen’s eyes snapped to Xander’s, seeking an answer. Who would meet her today in the church?

At first, she couldn’t tell; then, as she grew closer, she saw…something in his expression. She couldn’t say what it was, not with any certainty, but it was enough to light a spark of hope within her.

The emotion might have been inscrutable, but it was there . Xander was there .

He covered it quickly, his composure settling over him like armor.

“Your Grace,” she murmured to him when he reached the altar.

“Helen,” he said in return, with an infinitesimal nod.

And that was all, right up until the bishop signaled that it was time to say their vows. Just her name. It wasn’t much, but it wasn’t nothing.

And Helen wondered if she should dare to hope.

“You know, I feel as though I am quite the matchmaker. Don’t you think I’m a matchmaker, Hugh? Do you think I should market my services? I feel as though the matrons would pay top dollar for my help. Would you like to be an investor?”

Xander pointedly ignored Ezra when he approached with Hugh Blackwood, the Duke of Nighthall, and another of their cousins.

“I absolutely cannot see how you plan to take responsibility for this, Ezra,” Hugh said, not quite patiently, though perhaps not as impatiently as he might have done, either.

Too many people in this bloody family had a soft spot for Ezra.

“Well, I sat them together at a dinner party, and they had a simply smashing time. Tell him, Xander. Didn’t you have a nice time?”

For Christ’s sake. Of all the things to mention, Ezra would pick the one of which Xander had the least desire to be reminded.

Yes, he had enjoyed a highly pleasant dinner with Helen, teasing and scheming. And then he’d had a few more pleasant times with her, and now she was his bloody wife, and he’d ruined everything.

After all, he’d been entrusted with seeing Helen safely off to a peaceful, if not overly loving, marriage tucked in some idyllic corner of the country. Instead, he’d trapped her here, made her a minnow among sharks.

The idea filled him with dread and self-loathing.

Although the idea of her married off to someone else rankled, too. It always had. He could admit that to himself now. It was one foible he’d permit himself. He could be possessive over her now that she was his wife, damn it all. A man had to be allowed some concessions.

“I’d already made her acquaintance by that point,” Xander replied, ignoring Ezra’s question about enjoyment. “You didn’t introduce us.”

Ezra, rather than looking annoyed at the sidestep, seemed delighted.

“Indeed I did not,” he agreed. “Hugh, did you know that our dear cousin here asked me to invite Miss Fletcher—I beg your pardon, the former Miss Fletcher, now Her Grace—to the party? Asked me. To invite a woman!”

Hugh turned his intense stare on Xander. He looked so very like their grandfather, Cornelius, that some of the older members of the ton sometimes did a double-take when they saw him.

“Did he now?” he asked mildly.

Xander was unaffected. He remembered Grandfather Cornelius better than any of them, and the man had been terrifying to everyone except his grandchildren.

He returned Hugh’s look evenly.

“I will remind you not to gossip about my wife ,” he said coldly, and damn him if he didn’t enjoy the feel of those words on his lips.

Ezra looked even more entertained. Hugh gave him a look that Xander found irksomely inscrutable.

But they both shut their damned mouths, so that was something.

Xander turned back to scan the crowd, seeking Helen almost automatically. The wedding breakfast was, naturally, the best that money could buy, and the event had been crammed with the far-flung branches of the Lightholder family tree. They’d all turned out to see the head of the family wed, even if it was sudden and the bride unexpected.

Most of them even had the dignity to pretend that nothing was amiss about this scandalous marriage.

He spotted Aaron’s bulk, where he chatted with Ariadne and his own little sister, Clio. Further afield was Daphne, Hugh’s younger sister, who was entertaining her three young nieces, the daughters of their late second brother, Norman.

And finally, past them all, Helen, talking to?—

Oh, hell.

Xander crossed the room, fashionable skirts and well-tailored waistcoats swishing deftly out of his way as if they all recognized by some instinct that, no, really, now was not the time to interrupt the groom.

“Mother,” he said, a note of warning in his voice. “Good morning.”

Dinah Lightholder turned from staring regally down her nose at Helen to staring loftily up at her son.

“Alexander,” she said because she’d never been the kind to go in for nicknames. “I was just apprising your…bride here of what it means to be the Duchess of Godwin. I’m sure she would like to learn from an expert.”

There was a world of disdain in Dinah’s hesitation before the word bride . Xander didn’t let himself so much as blink. Of all the thousands of worries that had crossed his mind since he’d been caught with Helen in that bedroom, he’d known that his mother’s reaction was destined to be one of the most unpleasant.

Before her marriage, Dinah had been the pampered only daughter of the Duke of Nighthall—Hugh’s grandfather on his father’s side. The dual marriage between the Blackwood siblings and Ambrose and Miriam Lightholder had been the unification of the century, the kind of thing that dynasties were made of.

Dinah had seen it as nothing less than her due, going from being the daughter of a highly powerful duke to the wife of the most powerful duke.

She’d never quite forgiven her husband for dying so early, thus depriving her of all the years she might have enjoyed being the reigning queen of the ton .

And she’d never quite forgiven her son for inheriting the title.

Xander had put up with years— decades —of snide, biting little comments from his mother. He’d withstood them because he’d had no other choice. He was the duke. She was his mother.

But he’d be damned if he asked Helen to do the same.

“I see,” he said tightly. And then, because finally, something was going his way, the musicians started to strike up their instruments. The dancing was beginning.

“But you’ll have to excuse us,” he said smoothly. “My wife and I—” Again, the satisfying taste of those words. “—are set to open the dancing.”

His mother flicked a glance up and down Helen’s form, one that seemed to question whether the girl even could dance. Helen, fortunately, seemed rather too stunned to notice.

“Very well,” Dinah said before turning away from them with her nose pointed high in the air.

Xander felt his muscles relax, though he kept his posture strictly upright. As far as interactions with his mother went, that one was about as good as one could hope.

“My lady,” he said quietly, and damn him, that sounded good, too. “Shall we dance?”

Helen blinked as though the words startled her.

“Hm?” she asked. “Oh, yes. Of course. It would be my pleasure.”

When they moved onto the dance floor, he held her with exacting propriety. She, too, held herself away from him, not quite stiff enough that it made the dancing awkward but remote, somehow.

It was exactly the kind of behavior that Xander had asked of her. It was nothing like their dance together on that fateful night.

He hated it.

He hated it, but there was nothing to be done about it. This was what needed to be done. And so, instead of trying to meet his wife’s distant gaze, he watched as Ezra danced with Clio, smiling as he guided her through the steps she was still learning. He watched Hugh give an exactingly formal bow to Catherine, who laughed before accepting his hand and accompanying him to the dance floor.

They were all Lightholders, too, and they all had their duties.

But he was the duke. He had to lead by example.

It was all there was.

And so he danced with his wife, barely feeling her in his arms, doing nothing to draw her absent gaze back to him. He performed each step with precision. When the dance ended, he released her immediately and retreated. He bowed.

She curtseyed.

And when she walked away, he felt nothing .