Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
The wedding did not happen for three more weeks. Three weeks of Alice contemplating her choices. She could at least acknowledge that it had been her impetuous desire to see him suffer that had condemned them both to this fate.
Now she was to marry the man who had been the reason behind her parents’ deaths.
Her aunt kept telling her to try, as though by trying, she could somehow overcome all the reasons she despised him.
At least, during their courtship, he only rode to the house to see her twice.
Her aunt had wedding clothes made up for her, and for all intents and purposes, it seemed like a perfectly ordinary marriage.
“He is a Duke,” her aunt chided again on the morning of the ceremony, which was to be held in Kent—where she lived—rather than in London. It would be a small affair, only including the closest of family members. At least, Alice reflected, he did not want the marriage any more than she did.
“I cannot like him, Aunt,” she murmured, lip trembling. “And you can’t expect me to.”
Her aunt merely sighed and stepped back. Alice stared at her reflection critically in the mirror. She would never be a beautiful bride, despite her wishes of being one—once. Before the accident, she had dreamed of her very own handsome prince coming to sweep her away.
Ah well.
Dreams turned to dust in the cold light of reality. She had no prince, and she would be limping up the aisle of the little village church rather than walking up it on her father’s arm.
She blinked back unexpected tears at the thought.
“Your mother would be happy for you,” her aunt reminded, as though sensing the direction of her thoughts. “Remember that.”
“If it weren’t for the Duke, my mother would be here for my wedding day,” Alice groused, nipping at the hem of her ivory skirts.
Her aunt had nothing to say to that.
Although the village church was not far away, Alice needed a carriage to take her there and back again, her leg not up to the task of carrying her the short distance.
Besides, brides were probably supposed to be elegant and refined on their wedding days, not sweaty, their hems dirtied from walking down village lanes.
When they reached the church, her misgivings hit her all over again. The Duke would be inside, waiting for her, and then she would be married to the very worst man on the planet. It was a cruel twist of fate. Irony at its worst.
Her uncle waited for her in a red waistcoat and large black coat, a grin on his face even though Alice wanted to curl up and run the other way. She cursed her body for making that impossible. Then she cursed the Duke for being the reason why such a thing was impossible.
“Right then,” her uncle bellowed, holding out his arm. “He’s done his part.”
Alice presumed ‘his part’ was turning up and standing inside.
“Now it is time to do ours.”
“Must we?” Alice clung to her uncle’s arm. She could say no at the altar, she knew, but if she did—
Well, there would be no guarantee she had a home to return to. As far as her relatives were concerned, they were washing their hands of her after having secured a marriage with one of the most eligible bachelors on the marriage mart.
Alice knew she would probably never marry anyone else if she turned him down now. She knew her reputation was ruined—and even if by some bizarre twist of fate it wasn’t, she had no prospects. She knew all this. And still, her futile heart hoped there might be a way out of this still.
Instead, the door opened and the organ filled the air as her uncle nearly dragged her down the aisle. Her stick clattered against the stone of the floor, and she hated the way she limped, almost as much as she hated the way the Duke watched her with those icy orbs as she approached.
He had no right to look at her as though he was filled with misgivings, when the misgivings were hers.
Still, he took her hand and helped her beside him, making no comment about the way she retained her stick.
He merely nodded at the rector, who began the ceremony.
Alice’s hands were damp. One was in the Duke’s; he held it with a gentle grip that was still hard enough that she knew she would not be able to escape even if she wanted to.
Minutes passed in a blurry rush.
The Duke swore that he would love and honor her, and she swore that she would love and obey.
The world took on a glassy feel as he slid a ring onto her finger, and the gold sat there unfamiliarly.
Then, in a show that made her want to hit him—and she would have done if she were not so much in shock—he scooped her off her feet and carried her to his waiting carriage.
“My stick,” she gasped. “Put me down!”
“Very well.” Surprisingly gently, he placed her on the path outside the church. In spite of the otherwise glorious weather, it had begun to hail, and she wondered at that. The meaning of it, and what it signified for their marriage.
He watched her with no affection on his face. Of course, it would be hard for him to feel anything approaching tenderness for her, but he looked at her as though she was nothing more than a thorn in his side.
An epiphany arrived just then. One so eccentric and bizarre that it just may help assuage her feelings and put everything to rights. One that made her smile sweetly up at him a moment after.
Yes, she had been forced to marry him, but perhaps that was a blessing in disguise. As his wife, she had access to parts of his life that she could never have reached as a mere spectator.
She could ruin him just as thoroughly as he had ruined her.
As for her—she was a Duchess now. She had a title. She had status. And she had more material things than she could shake her stick at. This was so much more than she had ever expected, and certainly far more than she had ever wanted.
She would lose nothing by destroying him.
And he wouldn’t even see it coming.
Frederick peeked at his new wife with mistrust as he handed her into the carriage. Traditionally, he knew, marriages were celebrated with a wedding breakfast, but he felt as though there was little enough to celebrate.
It seemed his new wife agreed. She had not stopped scowling at him since she had first arrived at the church.
A shame he couldn’t fully dislike her. She acted as a reminder of everything he had done as a boy—everything terrible. But he found her defiance intriguing, and the spark in her eyes made him wonder if her passion extended beyond hatred.
Oh, she could hate him and bed him. The two were not mutually exclusive.
He could find her defiance intriguing and still find it ignited the kernel of his own rage.
He could want her and despise her in equal measure.
That was the nature of humans; they did not experience things in isolation.
He did not hate her the way she evidently hated him, but that was not to say he liked her either.
He placed the stick beside her and climbed in opposite. After banging on the roof to tell the coach driver to set off, he examined his new bride. She eyed him with hostility, that gleam in her eyes promising vengeance.
“It is not a long ride to London,” he murmured eventually into the tense silence and cocked a brow at her. “As no doubt you recall from when you journeyed there yourself.”
She met his gaze with a glare of her own. “And back again. If you had not arrived at my aunt and uncle’s house, they would have been none the wiser!”
“Am I supposed to applaud your dedication?”
She shrugged a little. “I don’t care what you do. You have gotten everything you wanted.”
“Is that so?” He couldn’t help himself, irritation rising up his throat at her dismissal. “And what do you know of what I want, wife?”
“You are a powerful and wealthy Duke—is there anything in the world you still want?”
Frederick narrowed his eyes. “As it happens, yes. Plenty of things. I can hardly just demand my every whim be fulfilled.”
“I doubt that. You have the affluence and influence to see it happen.” The corner of her lush lips curled. “After all, you evaded justice for the death of my parents,” she finished a little more quietly.
And there it was. He should have known it was coming.
“Justice,” he said evenly, pressing his palms against his thighs so he wouldn’t show how much they were sweating. “And what do you judge justice to be in my case?”
“Hanging?” She let the word sink to the ground between them for a moment, assessing his reaction. “A life for a life—it seems fair. Really, you took the lives of two honorable people, but I would settle for just the one death in return.”
Frederick leaned back a little. “You would rather I died…?”
“Should I not?” She grabbed the skirts of her dress and dragged them to her knees, revealing two stockinged legs.
Both were thin, but while one still retained its ordinary shapeliness, the other looked…
twisted was the only way he could think of to describe it.
Mangled. Under the white of her stocking, he could not see the skin, but he could see the way the muscle had shrunk, misshapen, and disused.
He had done this.
He’d known, of course, that she had not escaped unscathed. He had visited her, after all, and she had told him to get out of her sight. He had known. He’d seen her limp and judged it to pain her.
But seeing the empirical evidence before his very eyes was a different sensation altogether.
The world felt as though it was swaying, as though he had taken his last breath before being plunged under ice water. He was helpless to stop it as it closed overhead.
He would drown under the potency of this realization.
He had done this. Unintentionally, of course. He would never have hurt her intentionally.
But what did that matter?
He swallowed back the lump in his throat.
“I lost everything that day,” she was telling him in a low, heated voice, and it was all he could do to look up at her and meet her gaze. “And you continued living your life as though nothing had happened.”
He thought back to all the scandal sheets dragging his name. The days and nights lost at the depths of a bottle before he turned things around again. The sleepless nights tossing and turning as he relived that awful day in his nightmares.
Easy to look at him from the outside and think he had emerged unscathed; yet he could not tell her, this girl, that he had returned to that day more times in his memories than he could count, and that he had wanted to find ways of redeeming himself.
In his worst moments, he had prayed in an empty church and demanded to know why God had taken those innocent lives and not his.
Those days were behind him, but her words still scorched his soul in a way that reignited old wounds.
“I accept your hurt, and I know I deserve your ire,” he began, endeavoring to keep his voice steady, “but I will not allow you to make assumptions. You know very little about my life, dear Alice.”
She started at the sound of her name, and looked at him, shock in her eyes—and horror. “Don’t call me that.”
“We are husband and wife now, whether you like it or not. And while I have no intention of being cruel to you, and I hope that your new position will ease the magnitude of my mistake, I will not allow you to cast unfounded allegations at my head.”
“You don’t know how things have been for me,” she fired back.
“Then all you need do is tell me.”
“As though I would ever confide in you!”
“Then you will not find it surprising when I choose not to confide in you.”
Frederick turned to the window, watching the passing countryside and wondering what magnitude of mistake he had made by bowing to public pressure and marrying a woman who hated him so thoroughly.