Chapter 7
The chapel doors opened from within the side corridor, and Anne heard everything.
She stood just beyond in the alcove, already fully dressed in ivory silk that fell in structured, elegant folds around her frame, the fabric catching the dim light as she breathed steadily, trying to keep herself anchored.
Her dark chestnut hair had been pinned into soft waves beneath a simple veil, and her gray-blue eyes remained fixed on the doors ahead. She expected to be terrified, but more than anything, she felt a strong desire for the day to be done with.
She was being looked at as if she had been chosen by the Duke under mysterious circumstances, and though they would eventually have to accept her position, she remained under scrutiny until then.
Behind her, the final adjustments had already been made.
There was nothing left to fix, nothing left to delay, and the time had almost come for her to walk down the aisle.
The guests had taken their seats, whispering among themselves.
She strained to hear them, but all she could catch was a general murmur.
“I do not know if I can do this,” she sighed.
“It is rather late for that,” Eleanor chuckled, adjusting her veil.
“Not the marriage. I mean the ceremony with so many people watching. It will be so… well, you both got such small and intimate ceremonies, while I am going to be surrounded.”
“Like wolves around a rabbit,” Margaret mused. “But you will be fine. If you want my advice, you should enjoy it, for it will be over before you know it.”
Anne wished that her friends knew the truth. All she had told them was that the Duke had bought her horse and that she had agreed to be his wife. They knew nothing of what her mother had done, and if she had her way, they never would. It was too shameful.
The alcove felt smaller with all three of them in it because of everything unspoken hanging between them.
Margaret stepped behind Anne and carefully adjusted her hair. “If you keep standing there like that, people are going to assume you have already decided to run.”
“I have not decided to run,” Anne said immediately, though her voice was tighter than she intended.
“You have,” Margaret replied lightly, stepping back to inspect her handiwork. “You are simply debating whether to run toward him or away from him.”
“That is not helpful,” Anne muttered.
“It is distracting you, at least.”
Eleanor laughed softly. “She is right in one respect,” she said, tilting her head slightly as she studied Anne. “You will have to go in one direction, although you are not frightened enough to run. You are thinking too much for that.”
Anne exhaled slowly, forcing her hands to remain still at her sides. “There is nothing to think about anymore. The decision was made.”
Margaret arched a brow. “By whom?”
“By me. I am not desperate enough to marry a man unless I want to.”
Eleanor did not immediately respond. Instead, she studied her for a long moment, as though measuring the weight behind the answer rather than the answer itself.
“What you want and need are not the same thing. Come now, Anne. We know that you would not have chosen this if it were not necessary.”
“But I did! I wanted to stay with my horse, and there is nothing more to it.”
“Do you promise?”
Margaret gave a small sigh. “Eleanor, do not start interrogating her right before she walks down the aisle.”
“I am not interrogating her,” Eleanor protested. “I am trying to understand what has happened.”
“That is worse,” Margaret muttered under her breath.
“There is nothing to understand,” Anne insisted. “This is not a complicated matter at all. It is a practical match, precisely the sort that dozens of ladies have every year. We cannot all have love matches like you two.”
She did not mean to sound bitter, but she did anyway.
“That is what people say when they are trying to survive it,” Margaret replied gently.
A brief silence settled between them, broken only by the distant sound of voices from the chapel. Anne briefly balled her fists against her skirt before she forced them to relax.
“You do not have to convince us,” Eleanor said. “We are not the ones you are marrying.”
Anne’s jaw tightened slightly. “I am not trying to convince anyone.”
“No,” Eleanor agreed. “You are trying not to feel anything about it.”
Margaret looked between them, then sighed softly. “I will say this as plainly as I can before Eleanor turns this into something unnecessarily profound.” She folded her hands in front of her. “You are marrying a man the entire county has opinions about.”
“I am aware,” Anne said.
“And you have known him for what, days?” Margaret continued.
“Long enough to know that he will take care of me,” Anne replied evenly.
Margaret exhaled and stepped to the side, smoothing a crease in Anne’s sleeve that did not exist.
“I only care that you are not walking into this thinking it will remain exactly as it is now,” she said more quietly. “People change once the vows are said, sometimes before they even finish speaking.”
“Dorian Blackwood is not a surprise I am unprepared for. Should it change suddenly, I will be ready for it. Besides, it is not as though we are to spend much time together. He will have his life, and I will have mine.”
“And yet you say that as though you are convincing yourself more than us.”
Anne did not answer immediately. The silence that followed was not empty. It was full of everything she had not said since her father died, everything she had learned to keep contained because there had been no room for it elsewhere.
He was supposed to be with her on her wedding day, and he was not.
“It is a practical match,” she said again, quieter. “It is necessary. That is all it needs to be.”
Margaret looked at her for a long moment, then gave a small, resigned smile.
“Then at the very least,” she said, in a more familiar teasing tone, “try not to look as though you are walking to your own execution. It sets the wrong tone.”
Eleanor’s mouth curved faintly. “Or it sets the correct one, depending on how one views marriage.”
“Eleanor,” Margaret warned lightly.
“I am only saying.” Eleanor shrugged.
Anne’s gaze shifted briefly to the chapel doors again. Beyond them, the congregation awaited, and somewhere among them stood her future husband. The awareness of that alone was enough to unsettle her, though she refused to accept it.
“I am fine,” she said, quieter than before.
She was uncertain who she was speaking to when she said it, for in her heart she knew that she was convincing herself too.
The chapel doors opened, at last. Despite what she had expected, once she began to walk, she found that it was far easier than she had thought it would be.
The Duke stood at the altar, waiting. He had clearly learned how to hold himself steady in rooms full of expectation long ago. The chapel light fell across the dark line of his coat and the untamed ends of his hair, which refused to sit as neatly as the occasion demanded.
Anne spotted Lord Harrow standing beside him, looking entirely too comfortable for a man attending his friend’s wedding. He leaned slightly toward Dorian, his hands loosely clasped behind his back, his expression bright with open amusement.
She could not quite make out what they were saying, as she was not close enough to hear them, but it was evident that Lord Harrow was enjoying the discussion more than the two.
It was almost entertaining, in a way, as the Duke had always been known as the charismatic man who smiled while others felt a certain discomfort.
It was a good distraction as she walked down the aisle.
“You are nervous,” she heard Lord Harrow remark.
“I am not.”
Before they could say anything further, Lord Harrow’s attention shifted past him.
“Ah,” he said, his face brightening. “Now this is worth the journey.”
The Duke followed his gaze briefly, seemingly anticipating the cause.
Eleanor had reached the rest of those gathered near the front, her pale hair and bright eyes immediately drawing Lord Harrow’s attention in the way she always did to men. He turned without hesitation, as if the ceremony were optional.
“You look as though you are regretting your life choices,” he said pleasantly as he approached her. “Perhaps I might be a better one for you?”
Eleanor grinned at him, and Anne was once again grateful for the distraction.
“Alas, I am happily married,” she quipped. “You shall have to find another young lady.”
“That is the first disappointing thing I have heard all morning,” Lord Harrow groaned.
“Give it time,” she said coolly.
Anne could not believe how much her friend had changed, and she admired her for it. She wished to be outspoken in the same way, although she knew it would never happen for her. She was not the sort of lady people instantly thought was beautiful.
At last, a different kind of silence settled over the space, one that came from instinct. Conversations died down, and the guests’ attention turned to her.
The Duke did not move. He simply watched her walk down the aisle toward him. Lord Harrow stopped speaking mid-sentence.
Anne drew to a halt in front of the Duke, and for a brief moment, neither of them spoke. The space between them felt narrower than it should have, though nothing about it was improper. It had happened before, and she wished she knew quite why that was.
The Duke did not seem to be standing in a chapel at all, as though seeing her there altered something he had not accounted for. She held his gaze, unable to look away.
Reverend Collins cleared his throat and began the ceremony, his voice steady as though it was just another ordinary wedding. He spoke of vows and promises, as he undoubtedly did every week, but much of it faded into the background rather than landing with clarity.
The Duke answered when required. Anne did the same. Neither looked at the congregation, and neither looked away from the other for long. When the vows were finally said, there was a brief pause that felt heavier than anything spoken.
Reverend Collins hesitated, then continued, his voice slightly tighter than before. It seemed that he realized he was speaking to a duke, and now a duchess too.
“You may kiss the bride.”
The guests shifted, anticipation thick in the air.
Anne’s expectation was immediate. She assumed distance, formality, something performed for obligation rather than anything with a real meaning. Her gaze remained steady, though her body betrayed the faintest anticipation of restraint as her chest rose and fell.
Dorian did not move at once, and the pause was brief but noticeable. Then he stepped closer, just close enough that the space between them disappeared entirely.
His hand lifted and hovered briefly near her face before cupping it with unexpected care, his fingers steady against her cheek as though testing whether she would move away.
She did not.
Something in him softened—not outwardly, but in a way that she felt and could not deny.
Then he kissed her.
It was brief, controlled, and proper in the sense that no rule was broken and no witness could object, but it was not empty. It carried something restrained, something that Anne could not explain.
When he pulled back, the distance between them returned too quickly. Anne did not move immediately, and neither did he.
Applause broke through the chapel, and the Duke leaned slightly closer so only she could hear him.
“For a practical arrangement,” he murmured, “that felt remarkably unwise.”