The Dissolute Duke. Sophia James

was in not being killed by it, for with only a small movement things could have been so very much worse and I may never have walked again or even spoken and according to Doctor Cameron there might have—’

      He stopped her by raising one hand. ‘Are you nervous?’

      For the first time she could ever remember in her whole entire life, Lucinda blushed. She felt the slow crawl of blood fusing her cheeks and held her hand up to the heat.

      ‘Why would you say that?’

      ‘Because you confided in me once that you talk too much when you worry.’

      Her mouth dropped open.

      Such a private honesty and one that she had never let another soul be privy to. She seldom shared her secrets, keeping them close to her heart instead, safe from derision or discussion. When and why had she told him such a thing? Perhaps the wine had made her speak? The exasperating fact of her lack of memory was both tiring and worrying.

      ‘Surely you remember. It was just before I kissed you.’

      Should she tell him that only a minuscule recollection remained from the time that they had shared in his chamber? His nakedness. The wine. His mouth upon her breast. Her nipples hardening.

      Now that was new. Sitting up, she tried to remember some more, but couldn’t. A new resolution firmed. He had taken her maidenhood without her consent and now would pay for it.

      The laws of the land were there to protect the innocent and every Lord in his position had been brought up to acknowledge such a code. Ethics safeguarded chaos. When such tenets were broken, this was the result: a hasty marriage between strangers, flung together by the flimsy strands of expedience.

      ‘I was foolish to come to your house in the first place, your Grace, and more foolish to stay. This is my penance.’ She kept her tone distant, formal, just a polite conversation. When she leaned forwards she caught sight of herself in the wide shiny silver of an unused platter. Her cheeks were worse, even in the few short hours since leaving her chamber. She doubted she had ever looked quite so awful and her groom’s handsome visage just made everything a hundred times more humiliating. Shallow, she knew, but in all her girlhood fantasies she had not imagined herself appearing so very bedraggled at her own wedding feast.

      Lord Fergusson came up behind them, placing one hand on each of their shoulders. ‘If you can have a marriage like I had for forty-three years, then you will be well blessed.’ His old eyes brimmed with kindness.

      Tay Ellesmere simply looked across at her. Answer this as you will, he seemed to be saying, shards of irritation noticeable.

      ‘Indeed, Lord Fergusson,’ she replied, remembering Mary-Rose, his beautiful wife, who had passed away suddenly the previous summer.

      ‘But may I offer you a few words of advice? What you put into a marriage is what you get out from it and agreement is the oil that smoothes the way.’

      ‘Then with all the agreements between us, ours shall run most smoothly,’ Alderworth observed.

      He had changed the meaning of the word ‘agreement’, but Lord Fergusson did not understand his reference. Her new husband’s hands were in his lap. Fisted. Not quite as indifferent as he made out to be. Another thought struck her. Every knuckle had been grazed as though he had only recently been in a fight. Was that why his eye was black and his jaw cut? Please, God, let it not have been her brothers who had hurt him.

      ‘I knew your uncle, Duke.’ This was said tentatively. ‘The Earl of Sutton.’

      ‘Unfortunate for you.’ Her groom’s tone was plain ice and Lord Fergusson left as quickly as he had come, a frown on his face as he scrambled away.

      ‘He is an old man who would do you no harm, your Grace, and he has only just lost his wife. Besides, this is a wedding and people expect—’

      He broke in before she had finished. ‘What do they expect, Lucinda? All that is between us here is dishonesty and farce. The charade of a marriage and the farce of a happy ever after. And now you want me to lie about an uncle who was not fit to be around children, let alone one who—’ He stopped suddenly, his green eyes as dark as she had ever seen them, fathomless pools of torture. The real Taylen Ellesmere who lived beneath all he showed to the world was evident, the pain within him harrowing.

      ‘You speak about yourself as a child? This uncle, the Earl of Sutton, he was your guardian?’

      Only horror showed now, though the shutters reflecting emotion closed even as she watched and the implacable ruthless Duke was back.

      ‘Enjoy your day, my dearest wife, because there are not many left to us.’

      With that he stood and walked out of the room.