Page 2 of A Virgin to Tempt the Duke

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 notknoweach 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 assureyou, Lady Anna, I will enjoy our union thoroughly.” His voice dropped, close to her ear, and the words were quiet and precise ashe 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.