Page 27 of A Bride for the Ruthless Duke

She kept her eyes forward, fixed on the altar or the window above it, and when the cousin gave her hand into the clergyman’s keeping, the prayer book in her grasp trembled with a small, steady motion she neither stopped nor hid.

Lady Augusta spoke softly beside him. “Poor child.”

Theodore heard her, though he kept his attention on the woman approaching him.

The clergyman began. His voice moved through the church with practiced solemnity, and the service unfolded in the proper order, each word ancient enough to make private misery feel briefly irrelevant. Theodore answered where he was required to answer. Ellen did the same.

Her voice was low and even and clear.

When the moment came for the vow, the clergyman turned to her. “Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband?”

The prayer book trembled once.

Ellen lifted her chin, and her answer came without a break. “I will.”

The words were steadier than Theodore had expected, steadier than any sold woman’s voice at the altar beside a stranger had any business being. Somewhere in the locked room of his estimates, a figure adjusted itself a fraction upward, and he permitted the correction.

The clergyman turned to him. “Wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife?”

Theodore looked at the woman beside him.

For the first time since she had entered the church, her gaze turned briefly toward him. Only for an instant. Long enough for him to see fear there, carefully mastered and not quite concealed.

At twenty, she ought to have been standing beside a man she had chosen. Instead she stood beside him.

“I will,” Theodore said.

The ring came next.

Her hand was cold when he took it. Cold even through the glove. As he slid the ring into place, her fingers tightened around his, not from affection, nor even trust, but the way a person braces before stepping into deep water.

Theodore held her hand a moment longer than the ceremony required.

Her pulse fluttered beneath his touch.

Then she seemed to realise he had noticed, and her fingers withdrew at once.

The clergyman pronounced them man and wife.

Lady Augusta lowered her head.

Henry did not lift his.

A strange stillness settled over the church.

Theodore released his bride’s hand.

His bride. The word was heavier than he had bargained for.

They walked back down the aisle together as the Duke and Duchess of Rosanne, past Augusta, who observed the bride and not the groom, past Henry, who remained bent over his own disgrace, and out into the grey morning where a small knot of the curious had gathered to see a duke enter into matrimony.

The murmurs began at once, nothing loud enough to be improper, nothing quiet enough to be missed.

Ellen kept her eyes forward, and Theodore wondered whether she heard them. He suspected she heard every word.

They had not exchanged one word since the altar steps, and they did not exchange one now.

The carriage door closed behind them with a solid click, and silence followed.