Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
“Do not cry, Papa,” Emmeline whispered, though her own throat had tightened so badly around the words that they scarcely sounded steady.
Lord Weston gave a short, uneven laugh beside her. “I am doing no such thing.”
He was, of course. She heard it in the slight roughness of his breathing and saw it in the shine he could not quite blink away when he turned to look at her. His arm was warm and trembling very faintly beneath her hand.
For one moment, Emmeline could not seem to think of the altar ahead of them, or the vows she was only steps away from speaking. She thought only of her father and the strange, almost painful mix of relief and grief moving through her at once.
The chapel was small.
Only a narrow aisle, polished wood, pale morning light falling through tall windows, and the few people required to witness what was about to happen.
Margaret sat near the front with her father, her hands clasped too tightly. Lord Calham lounged carelessly with Aaron sitting beside him in a dark little coat, his wooden horse absent for once, which somehow made his effort at dignity more touching.
The Duke stood waiting at the altar.
He didn’t look like the dazed, love-struck grooms of her girlhood stories. He looked grave. Severe. A man executing a strategy, his jaw set.
Then his eyes lifted.
The impact hit her low in the stomach with a sudden, heavy heat. The vast, vaulted church vanished, leaving only the heat of his gaze. Every line of him—the broad slope of his shoulders, the hard precision of his mouth—looked like a promise of something carnal.
She felt the sudden, frantic thud of her pulse at the base of her throat.
In a few moments, the law and the church would give her to him. But as his eyes devoured her, she realized she was already his.
“Ready?” her father asked softly.
No, she thought.
“Yes,” she answered with the smallest nod.
Then they walked.
She felt her body with a terrifying, raw clarity: the heavy drag of her gown, the frantic thud in her ribs, the heat of the morning light. She had expected a riot of joy; instead, she felt a solemn, heavy ache. And beneath it, a dark, pulsing thrill she was ashamed to name.
The Duke stood like a statue, his iron restraint acting as a catalyst for her own trembling.
When they reached the altar, her father placed her hand in the Duke’s. The contact was a jolt. His skin was a brand, his grip steady and possessive even in its formality.
Lord Weston lingered for a fraction of a second before he stepped back, leaving her alone with the Duke. Emmeline didn’t look at her father. If she broke her gaze from the Duke’s, she would shatter.
The vicar’s voice droned on, a rhythmic hum against the silence of the stone walls.
“Rowan Huntley, wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife?”
“I will,” the Duke said.
The depth of his voice vibrated through the floorboards, hitting Emmeline in the center of her chest. He looked at her, his gray eyes fixed on hers.
“Emmeline Greene, wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband?”
The silence stretched. Emmeline felt the weight of her father’s stare, the sharp prickle of Margaret’s anxiety in the front pew. She swallowed, her throat tight.
“I will,” she whispered.
The Duke reached for her hand then, his fingers broad and calloused as they slid the gold band home. The metal was cold, but his skin was a furnace. He squeezed her hand. The brief pressure made her gasp before the vicar made the final sign of the cross.
“I pronounce that they be man and wife.”
Rowan turned her toward him. The church felt like it was shrinking, the high ceilings pressing down until there was only the scent of his cologne and the hard line of his body.
Then, he bowed his head slightly. “Your Grace.”
The title sounded absurd from his mouth, directed at her. A faint, helpless warmth moved through her.
“Your Grace,” she returned.
They drove back to his London house for the wedding breakfast in a blur of motion and congratulations. Everything remained deliberately modest: only the necessary guests, a quiet meal and the handful of toasts politeness demanded. No orchestra. No crush of well-wishers. No public spectacle.
It should have made the whole thing feel smaller. Instead, it seemed to sharpen every feeling because there was less noise to hide inside.
By the time they entered Ironford House again, Emmeline had become too aware of the strangeness of each new movement. A servant bowed lower to her than anyone had before. The very air of the place seemed to tilt toward her.
It was unnerving. It was also, she could not deny, relieving.
Because her father was now safe. No matter what the marriage did or did not become, no matter what she would one day learn of Rowan’s heart or her own, the immediate terror that had shadowed her for so long had loosened at last.
The wedding breakfast had scarcely begun when she saw the first small disturbance.
Aaron had drifted a little apart from the others. One of the guests—Lord Vale—had cornered him near the edge of the room and was bending toward him with what was no doubt intended as kindness.
“And are you pleased to have a new mama, eh?”
Aaron’s shoulders had gone rigid.
Emmeline moved before she fully thought it through.
“Aaron,” she said, smiling as she came up beside them, “there you are. I was beginning to think all the cake would vanish before we found you.”
Lord Vale straightened, startled into retreat by her interruption.
Aaron looked up at her with visible relief.
“It is not yet gone?” he asked.
“Not if we are quick.”
The Duke arrived at the same moment from the other side, his expression cooling at once when he took in the scene.
“My son is not to be interrogated on family matters,” he said, and though his tone remained perfectly civil, Lord Vale flushed anyway, muttered something about not meaning any harm, and withdrew with suspicious haste.
Aaron looked from one to the other of them.
Emmeline held out her hand. “Come. Let us rescue what remains.”
He took it at once.
The Duke’s gaze dropped to their joined hands for one brief second, and something in his face tightened too subtly.
She led Aaron toward the table where the cakes had been laid out among polished silver and pale flowers, and his solemnity eased almost immediately.
By the time he had chosen a small slice and begun to eat it with the concentration of a scholar handling a rare manuscript, Emmeline felt some of the strain in herself ease too.
“You like it?” she asked.
The boy nodded with dignified fervor.
“Good. I should be very sorry if my first duty as your stepmother were to let you have poor cake.”
Aaron blinked up at her, then laughed—a short, startled sound, as though he had not expected to.
It warmed her immediately.
She looked up only to find the Duke watching them from across the room.
His gaze remained fixed on the spot where her hand rested on Aaron’s shoulder.
The habitual horizontal line of his brow smoothed, the deep, permanent crease between his eyes vanishing for the first time since she’d known him. His chest expanded in a slow, heavy breath that seemed to deflate the rigid tension in his frame.
The air in the room suddenly felt too thin, too hot. A single muscle in his jaw worked, a sharp, rhythmic pulse that betrayed the stillness of the rest of his face.
He turned away then.
A little later, while Aaron had been lured into some discussion with Frederick about whether horses preferred oats to apples and Lord Weston was being held hostage by Viscount Dunbrook’s opinions on claret, Emmeline stepped into the passage just beyond the breakfast room for one breath of quiet.
That was when she heard the Duke speak.
“What do you mean you found nothing?”
She froze instinctively.
The footman stood before him, head bowed, the posture of a man already braced for displeasure. Rowan’s voice was low, but there was iron in it.
“I went everywhere you instructed, Your Grace. Every stationer on the list and three beyond it. They all said the paper was of fine quality, but none would swear it was theirs. I could not find the exact seller.”
Emmeline’s fingers tightened on the doorframe.
What paper? Is this about Juliet?
The Duke’s shoulders had gone hard. “Did anyone see the contents?”
“No, Your Grace.”
“Good. Keep asking. Quietly.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
The footman bowed and hurried away.
Emmeline stayed where she was only another second before stepping back into the breakfast room, her mind already racing.
By the time the Duke returned, his expression had been smoothed again, though not fully enough to hide from her.
Guests began approaching in little waves after that.
Frederick was the warmest, of course, all effortless irreverence and perfectly timed relief. He bowed over Emmeline’s hand with exaggerated elegance.
“My warmest congratulations, Your Grace. I see marriage has not extinguished you entirely.”
“Give it an hour,” the Duke said dryly.
Frederick grinned. “You see? Still alive.”
That loosened something in her. He had a way of making the room feel safer simply by refusing to take it with full seriousness, and after the weeks she had had, Emmeline found herself grateful for every moment in which someone else carried the strain lightly.
Margaret, by contrast, approached with the expression of a woman who had every intention of loving the bride and distrusting the groom simultaneously.
“I am very happy for you,” she told Emmeline first, embracing her tightly.
Then she turned to the Duke.
“And if you hurt her,” she said pleasantly, “I shall make it my life’s work to ruin your peace.”
Aaron, who was close enough to hear, let out an involuntary giggle.
Lord Weston made a pained sound. “Margaret.”
“What?” she asked innocently. “Surely it is your job to threaten the husband, but someone must do it if you are overcome with emotion.”
That earned a real laugh from Frederick and, to Emmeline’s surprise, the slightest shift at the corner of the Duke’s mouth again, though it was gone almost before she could be sure she had seen it.
Lord Weston shook his head, then turned to the Duke in earnest. He held out his hand.
“Whatever her friend may threaten,” he said, his voice rougher now, “I wish you both every good thing.”
The Duke took the hand firmly. “She will be cared for.”
The words were simple. They still reached Emmeline more deeply than perhaps they ought.
Then her father turned to her, and whatever composure he had been holding broke at once.
He drew her into his arms with a sound she had not heard from him since her mother died, half-breath, half-sob, and held her so tightly that she felt six years old again.
“Papa,” she whispered.
He did not let go immediately. She felt the small shake in him. Heard the muffled sniff he tried and failed to hide.
“I will not be far,” she said softly against his shoulder. “You know I will not.”
He nodded, though it took him a moment to manage it. When he finally drew back, he was smiling, even as his eyes were filled with tears.
Before she could say more, the Duke appeared at her side.
“It is time.”
Just that. And yet the words changed the whole room.
The wedding breakfast had already begun to loosen at the edges, guests gathering gloves and exchanging final wishes. It was time to go. Time to leave London and step fully into the life she had just taken.
Aaron was summoned, Lord Weston gave Emmeline one last look full of everything he could not say, and then the Duke offered her his arm.
She took it.
Outside, the carriage waited.
The morning had deepened into bright afternoon, sunlight glancing off the lacquered panels, horses stamping lightly. Aaron climbed in first with the assistance of a footman and at once pressed himself to the window.
Emmeline followed. the Duke entered after her, and across the street behind them another carriage stood ready for Miss Harrow.
The door shut.
For one suspended second, silence enclosed them.
Then the wheels began to move, and London started to slide away beyond the glass.