Chapter 19 #2
He needed to leave. Needed to escape this suffocating room before he said something that couldn’t be unsaid or did something that would confirm every whisper about his dangerous nature.
“If you’ll excuse me,” he said, already moving toward the door. “I find I require fresh air.”
Behind him, he heard Ashford mutter something to Hartley—too quiet to make out the words but carrying a tone Edmund recognized. Mockery. Derision. The sort of casual cruelty that men employed when they believed themselves safe from consequence.
Edmund’s hand was on the door handle when Ashford’s voice carried clearly across the study: “Poor girl. To get tied to Rothwell’s scandal. One almost pities her.”
Edmund froze.
“And what sort of wife,” Hartley added with wine-loosened tongue, “allows herself to be tied to such—”
He didn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t, because Edmund had crossed the room with speed that belied his size and now stood over Hartley’s chair with an expression that made the older man’s protest die unspoken.
“What did you say?” Edmund’s voice emerged barely above a whisper, but every gentleman in the study heard it clearly.
“I—that is, I merely—” Hartley stammered, his earlier boldness evaporating under Edmund’s cold fury.
“You were discussing my wife,” Edmund said, each word falling like stones into still water. “And my daughter. Please, continue. I’m most interested in hearing your observations about the ladies under my protection.”
“Daughter?” Ashford’s voice cracked slightly. “But I thought—”
“You thought what, precisely?” Edmund turned his attention to the younger man, and satisfaction flared in his chest when Ashford shrank back in his chair. “That Lillian Gray is my ward only in name? That she’s some shameful secret I’m attempting to legitimize through marriage?”
The silence that followed was absolute. Even Lord Blackwood, standing by the fire with his port glass frozen halfway to his lips, seemed afraid to breathe.
“Let me clarify something,” Edmund continued, his voice still carrying that dangerous quiet.
“Lillian Gray is the daughter of James Gray, who was my dearest friend. Her mother was a woman James loved but could not marry due to circumstances beyond his control. When he died, he entrusted me with his daughter’s welfare.
I have honored that trust by providing her a home, an education, and every advantage I can offer. ”
He paused, letting the words settle before delivering the blow that would silence speculation.
“She is not my natural child. She is my daughter by choice and by honor, which makes her worth more than any accident of birth could provide. And anyone who suggests otherwise—anyone who spreads poison about either her provenance or my wife’s character—will answer to me personally.”
The threat hung in the air, unmistakable despite being wrapped in civilized language. Edmund saw understanding dawn across several faces—the realization that they’d pushed the Dangerous Duke too far, that whatever tolerance he’d been exercising had reached its end.
“Now,” he said, voice dropping another degree into ice, “I believe it’s time my wife and I returned home. This evening has been... enlightening.”
He turned and strode from the study without waiting for response, leaving shocked silence in his wake. His boots were loud against marble as he crossed the hall toward the drawing room where female voices drifted through partially open doors.
Edmund didn’t bother knocking. Simply pushed the doors wide and stepped inside with enough force to make several ladies start in surprise.
Isadora sat near the fire, teacup frozen halfway to her lips, her face flushed in a way that suggested the conversation here had been no kinder than what he’d endured with the gentlemen.
Lady Fairfax and Lady Blackwood occupied nearby chairs, their expressions suggesting they’d been thoroughly enjoying whatever poison they’d been spreading.
“We are leaving,” Edmund announced without preamble.
Every eye in the room turned toward him. He saw surprise flicker across several faces, calculation in others. But his attention remained fixed on Isadora, who was staring at him with an expression he couldn’t quite decipher.
“Your Grace,” Lady Fairfax began, her voice carrying forced cheer, “surely you’re not departing already? We’ve barely begun to—”
“We are leaving,” Edmund repeated, striding across the room to offer Isadora his arm. “My wife finds herself fatigued, and I have no desire to extend this evening further.”
The excuse was transparent—they’d been here barely three hours, and Isadora looked anything but fatigued. But something in Edmund’s tone must have communicated that arguing would be unwise, because Lady Fairfax subsided with a weak smile.
Isadora rose with fluid grace, setting down her teacup with hands that trembled slightly. “You’re quite right, Your Grace. I find myself rather... overwhelmed by Yorkshire hospitality.”
The subtle irony in her voice suggested she’d endured her own battle while he’d been occupied with the gentlemen. Edmund felt fresh fury kindle in his chest at whatever these women had said to put that brittle edge in his wife’s tone.
She placed her hand on his offered arm, and Edmund covered her fingers with his own—a gesture of possession and protection that he knew would be noted and discussed the moment they departed.
“Thank you for a lovely evening,” Isadora said to their hostess, the lie delivered with perfect courtesy despite the frost beneath her words. “Your Christmas decorations were particularly... inspired.”
They moved toward the door together, Edmund’s hand still covering Isadora’s where it rested on his sleeve. He could feel her trembling—not with fear, he thought, but with suppressed rage that matched his own.
The hallway beyond was mercifully empty. Their cloaks appeared with suspicious speed, delivered by servants who’d clearly been listening at doors and knew their Duke’s temper well enough to anticipate swift departure.
Edmund helped Isadora into her cloak with movements that were gentler than he felt, his hands lingering briefly on her shoulders. “Are you well?” he asked quietly.
She turned her face up to his, and he saw fury blazing in hazel eyes that had been warm when the evening began. “They suggested Lillian was your natural daughter. That I married you knowing about your... indiscretion. That my father must have been desperate indeed to accept such a match.”
Edmund’s jaw clenched hard enough to make his teeth ache. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.” Her smile was sharp as broken glass. “I smiled and nodded and played the devoted duchess while they picked apart every aspect of our marriage with surgical precision. Just as you asked me to do.”
The accusation stung because it was accurate. He had asked her to perform devotion, to charm society into accepting their arrangement. And she’d done exactly that while enduring vicious speculation about her character and judgment.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the apology emerging rough and inadequate.
Isadora didn’t answer. Simply looked at him with those large, expressive eyes and kept walking. He moved faster to keep up with her.
Finally—finally—they were outside in December cold that felt cleansing after the suffocating atmosphere of the house. Their carriage waited, breath from the horses forming white clouds that dissipated into darkness.
Edmund handed Isadora up with careful attention, then climbed in behind her. The door closed with a solid thunk that felt like prison bars opening rather than closing.
As the carriage lurched into motion, Edmund let his head fall back against the cushions and closed his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said again into the darkness. “For exposing you to that. For asking you to endure their poison while smiling as though nothing was wrong.”
“You called her your daughter.”
Edmund’s eyes snapped open. Isadora sat across from him in shadows, but he could hear something in her voice he couldn’t name.
“What?”
“When you defended us. I heard you through the study door.” She leaned forward slightly, and lamplight from outside caught her face. “You called Lillian your daughter. Not your ward. Your daughter.”
Edmund swallowed hard. “She is. In every way that matters.”
“Then why—” Isadora stopped, shaking her head. “Why do you treat her like she’s made of spun glass? Why do you keep her locked away when you’re willing to claim her as yours in front of the very people whose opinions you’ve been so desperate to control?”
The question struck at truths Edmund had been avoiding since Lillian’s arrival. “Because claiming her is easy. Knowing how to actually be what she needs—that’s the impossible part.”
Silence settled between them, broken only by the crunch of wheels through snow and the jingle of harness. Outside, darkness had swallowed the landscape completely, leaving them isolated in their small bubble of lamplight.
“You defended me too,” Isadora said finally. “I heard that part as well. ‘My wife,’ you said. As though you actually—”
She stopped, but Edmund heard what she wasn’t saying. As though you actually cared. As though I was more than just a practical arrangement.
“You are my wife,” he said quietly. “Whatever else is true or false between us, that much is real.”
“Is it?” Her voice carried challenge he recognized. “Because three days ago you made it abundantly clear that our marriage was nothing more than—”
“I was wrong.”
The admission escaped before wisdom could stop it. Edmund sat forward, close enough now to see her eyes widen with surprise in the lamplight’s glow.
“I was wrong,” he repeated, the words coming easier now that he’d started. “You are… my wife. My family.”
Isadora’s breath caught audibly. “Edmund—”
“I will not pretend to be some great… romantic, but… I will not have anyone or anything belonging to me or my family insulted in that manner.”
“Belonging?”
Isadora’s voice was soft. Edmund avoided her piercing gaze.
How could he tell her that he had come to care for her more than he expected to?
The carriage swayed as they rounded a corner.
Outside, snow had begun to fall again—thick flakes that would soon bury the roads and trap them at Rothwell Abbey together.
“You are my wife. And when I defend you as my wife,” Edmund said quietly, “I mean it. You are… a mother to my ward, you are my responsibility and my family now. And as far as I can, I swear to protect…”
His voice caught at the look in her eye and he swallowed with difficulty.
“I will protect you. And your reputation.”
Isadora was crying—silent tears tracking down her cheeks in the lamplight. Edmund reached across the space between them, brushing moisture away with his thumb in a gesture more tender than he’d known he was capable of.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered. “Please. I do not wish to make you cry.”
“Then don’t say things like that when we’re trapped in a carriage and I can’t—” She stopped, shaking her head. “This is impossible. All of it.”
“I know.”
“We can’t just—”
“I know that too.”
But he didn’t pull his hand away, and she didn’t move back. They sat like that as the carriage carried them through falling snow toward home, connected by touch that said everything they weren’t quite ready to speak aloud.
And for the first time since James’s death, Edmund allowed himself to hope that perhaps—just perhaps—he might deserve happiness after all.