A Virgin to Tempt the Duke (Dukes of Surrender #4)

Chapter 1

“Move your feet.” Jonathan’s grip on her arm was like a vice, her cousin’s fingers gripping the white silk of Anna’s sleeve as he hauled her from the cobblestone street up toward the church steps.

The morning was grey and cold, the street still half-asleep. Anna stumbled to keep up with the Viscount Edgeware in shoes she had never worn before, shoes she had found on her bedroom floor two hours ago when the housemaid had shaken her awake with downcast eyes.

“Now,” he pressed as he tightened his grip.

“Jonathan…” She pleaded softly as she pulled back, nearly losing her footing on the wet stone, which quickly emboldened her. “Jonathan, stop this, please!”

“Stop making a spectacle of yourself.” He did not even look at her. His sharp jaw was set, his pale brown eyes fixed on the church door ahead like a homing beacon. “You are embarrassing us both,” he hissed through gritted teeth.

“There is no us in this, cousin.” She planted her heels, hoping they would take root. “I woke up this morning and found a wedding dress laid out for me. You did not ask me… no, you did not even tell me!”

“I am telling you now.” He yanked her forward again, and she stumbled into step beside him as they walked. “Lord Birchall—”

“Lord Birchall!”

“—obtained the license three days ago. Everything is arranged. The only thing left to arrange is you, and I suggest you do so quickly. My patience is running thin.”

Three days.

The words landed like stones in her empty stomach, and her eyes began to prickle with salty tears she would soon spill.

“You have known for three days?” she repeated.

“I have known considerably longer than that.” He finally glanced at her then, and Anna saw the cruel impatience on his face; she was just a letter he wanted to seal, send off, and be done with.

“The finer details required time to settle. I told you when it was necessary for you to know. It is not personal—”

“It did not occur to you…” Her voice broke and trailed off against her will, and she hated herself for it.

She swallowed a breath and forced herself to set her shoulders back.

“It did not occur to you,” she continued, “that I might have something to say about marrying a man I have met all of two times?”

“You had a Season, following the required mourning period for your mother. You had your chance to do this on your own,” he said as they reached the top steps. “You did not choose, so I have chosen for you. That is that.”

“He has a reputation, Jonathan…” She was begging now, and she knew it. She hated it yet could not stop herself from trying anything to avoid her fate. “Everyone knows what he is. Lady Ascott’s niece said when he was courting her that he had put his—”

“I cannot believe that you take into consideration such drivel.”

“She was seen… with bruises on her!”

“That is mere gossip,” he said, a door slamming in her face. “And even if it were not, it is none of your concern. You are my responsibility, and I have made this decision for you.”

“It is my life—”

“You will be his wife, not his judge. If you behave yourself, you will have nothing to worry about, I am sure. Now…” He stopped just shy of the church doors and turned to face her fully, their eyes meeting for the first time that morning.

“Anna. It is done. It has been done since the license was acquired. The only question now is whether you walk in with your head held high, or make a fool of both of us in the street, which you seem intent on doing. I sincerely hope it will be the former.”

She looked at him, at the face she had known all her life and one she once respected.

She scoffed inwardly at the thought. It was the face that had told her very kindly, when she was twelve years old, that her father’s library would need to be sold.

The face that had always been solving a problem, and the problem had always been her.

She drew her hand back.

And she slapped him.

It was not elegant, the way she did it. It was the first time she had ever slapped anyone. Her hand connected with the side of his jaw, open-palmed and desperate.

Jonathan jerked back with a grunt, and for one bright, terrifying second, his grip slipped from her arm.

Now is my chance.

She ran as fast as she could in silk down the stairs. She made it all of four steps before a hand closed tight around her wrist.

“Jonathan, let me—”

Except, it was not Jonathan’s hand.

The fingers were broader, and they did not grip so much as strangle, with all the strength of a boa constrictor. It was pressure that stopped the blood from flowing, turned her wrist to something mechanical, a lever made of bones, precisely controlled.

Anna was spun and steered in a single motion, and then there was cool stone against her back. The shadow of the church loomed over her—

Lord Birchall stared down at her.

He was broad like a barrel through the chest, heavy in the jaw, and he was looking at her with an expression that she recognized from the two times they had met.

It was a peculiar attentiveness that was too fixed, too still.

It was like he was deciding whether to be patient or not, as if it was a game to him.

It made her blood freeze. She tried to think desperately of an escape.

“My lord.” She kept her voice level, or at least tried to. “Please. I am asking you to reconsider—”

“I heard what you were asking your cousin, Lady Anna.” He said it pleasantly, but his hand did not loosen. “I’ve learned that you’ve been asking since the carriage. There is no need to play—”

“I am serious, my lord. This is not a game, this is my life.”

“I am not playing,” he said, and his grip tightened slowly and deliberately until it began to really hurt.

Jonathan had never touched her like this.

“This… what you want, what my cousin has arranged… w-we are not suited to one another! We do not know each other! There is nothing between us that could make either of us—”

“You’ll know me well enough.” His pale green serpentine eyes moved over her face, and he grinned. “I do intend to see to that.”

Anna gulped. She was losing not only her freedom but her hopes of a family. She knew enough about Birchall to know she would never bear a child to him.

“We will be miserable.” She kept her chin up even though her wrist was going numb now. “Both of us. I cannot give you… Oh, I do not wish to…”

“It is of no import—”

“I am sure that there are women who would welcome your attentions, who would choose this willingly!”

“But I choose you.” He said it simply, like a correction.

Like she had misunderstood a very basic fact.

“And I assure you, Lady Anna, I will enjoy our union thoroughly.” His voice dropped, close to her ear, and the words were quiet and precise as he leaned in.

“Whether or not you share that enjoyment is ultimately not a condition I require. Do you understand?”

She went as still as a statue. Her throat grew dry as dust. He stepped back with a look of grim satisfaction at her silence and straightened his coat.

After a moment, his expression had rearranged itself into something almost cordial by the time Jonathan appeared at his elbow, red-faced and panting.

“She is ready now,” Lord Birchall said, as if he had just resolved a minor inconvenience. “Seems the girl just needs a firm hand.”

Jonathan nodded, and they walked her into the church and up to the altar between them in absolute silence. There was no music played, no flowers adorning the pews. Even a funeral march would be more festive.

I must try again. I must escape this fate.

“Please,” she said, her hazel eyes thick with tears she refused to shed. “Please. I am here against my will. I have not given consent.”

She was not proud of it, the way her voice came out high and strange. She turned toward the priest, a thin man with an even thinner mouth and sad gray eyes, as though he might be different from other men, as though the cloth might mean something.

“The lady is distraught, Father,” Jonathan interjected, his voice as smooth as silk. “She is overwhelmed by the occasion, as women often are. Poor girl lost both her parents, and I have been caring for her ever since. It is time to see her wed, and we are grateful for such a splendid match.”

“It is not uncommon among young brides,” Lord Birchall said with a smile.

The priest gave a small sigh and looked at her over the top of his spectacles. It was an expression that was both pitying and unmoved at the same time. She held her breath as she waited for him to speak.

“My child,” he said. “This is the house of God. You will compose yourself and honor this sacrament with the dignity it deserves.” His gaze shifted briefly to Lord Birchall. “Young women sometimes require a steadying hand.”

She opened her mouth to scream.

“If you do not behave, there will be unfortunate consequences,” Birchall whispered to her under his breath before she could speak. His hand found the small of her back, and he pinched her.

The gesture was not visibly violent, at least nothing that anyone watching could have named—if there were even the requisite number of attendants for a wedding here.

The specific and deliberate pressure communicated everything it needed to.

Yet it was the shame of the pain that hurt more than the feeling itself.

She was helpless.

Anna closed her mouth, and the ceremony proceeded without incident.

She did not hear most of it. She kept her sobs inaudible, not wanting to give her cousin or Lord Birchall the satisfaction of hearing her sorrow. The priest’s words droned like when she was a child and used to hold a shell to her ear.

Anna closed her eyes and imagined she was by the sea, that her parents weren’t dead, and then she was brought back to the present moment as he slammed the bible shut.

She watched the priest’s mouth move, felt the ring placed on her finger.

I will survive this, somehow… she swore to herself.

“You may now—”