Page 10 of Duke of Rath

Eccess was ecstatic as he laughed drunkenly, saying how marriage to a stranger was a very amusing jest.

Irevrence, through his rebellious nature, noted it wouldn’t work out anyway.

Enveigh only glared at him from under his dark locks, his steely gaze hiding an ache. “You’re doing something the rest of us are too cowardly to do,” he’d said.

And Fortyne noted only that he was making a mistake because if he was going to marry, he should have found a wife with a dowry and connections. Marriage should be a lucrative transaction, not an act of charity.

All of them, however, were dying to see Dorian’s bride, just as he was.

He knew only that she was eighteen, and her name was Miss Patience Rose.

Her family was on the other side of the aisle, all of them rosy-cheeked and blond with blue eyes. And they were all fidgeting with excitement. If she was anything like them and like John, who had looked quite angelic, she would be very pleasing to the eyes.

Finally, the organ began playing solemnly, the notes echoing against the walls, and a nervous shiver passed through Dorian. Something cracked in him. He was not one to run away from danger. He’d saved Joanna, Spencer’s wife, from death. He regularly won boxing matches. He had called at least a dozen duels, for God’s sake.

But something about seeing the woman he’d be tying himself to forever was unbearable.

He turned away from the door, moments ticking by in the violent beats of his heart. His chest felt too tight, his stomach a knot, and his pulse beat like a war drum in his injured hand.

He heard the creak of the doors and the rustle of clothes as the guests turned around to see her, murmuring excitedly. His glove-free left palm was slick with perspiration, and he wiped it, quite unduke-like, against his black pantaloons. As time stretched thin, he heard her slow and light steps. Lord, could this please be over?

This torture would be the penance for his greatest sin. This marriage, a small step towards redeeming the unforgivable.

There was no way back now. He had to face his fate. See his jailor, his executioner in a bridal dress.

He turned around.

His gaze fell on her.

Time stopped.

No, it didn’t just stop.

It stopped existing.

Everything vanished except a small, sweetly rounded, blond figure with large blue eyes and a perfect, angelic face. The sunlight that fell through the stained-glass windows of the church seemed to make her glow with a soft golden light, her hair a halo around her head. Her big eyes sparkled. She had high cheekbones in a soft, full face. A straight, pretty nose. Plush lips the color of a pink rose, with a defined Cupid’s bow, and a lower lip fuller than the upper one. She had generous breasts, a distinct crease between them visible above her collar line. She had rounded shoulders and was all curves and softness—a young woman full of life. Even the old muslin dress that, he guessed, had been white in its early days but had become grayish-yellow, didn’t change the strange, exuberant sensation of freefalling that had spread through his stomach.

Dorian had seen much beauty in his life. The glamorous women of the ton, his own elegant home with the magnificent art that his father and ducal ancestors had collected. He had traveled to the Mediterranean and the Alps and Scotland. Every month, he frequented the most beautiful sex workers London had to offer in Elysium. He’d seen breathtaking sunsets, landscapes, the magnificence of the sea.

But with that angelic face, that innocent smile, that look of genuine kindness, she held a kind of inner light—one that couldn’t have been any more different from the darkness that he carried within him.

With a terrifying awe he knew it.

Never in his thirty-two years had he seen anything as beautiful as Miss Patience Rose.

His bride.

4

Patience walked down the aisle, unable to feel her own body.

The nave stretched out before her with its gorgeous, clean mosaic floor, and to her left and right were the pews filled with people, every one of them staring at her. Because of the blinding light, she couldn’t see the most important person…the man who stood waiting for her at the end of the aisle.

The man who would own her, command her, do with her as he pleased. A shiver ran through her. She was going to marry a complete stranger who had enough power and wealth to arrange this marriage without ever seeing her.

Why did he want her so?

To her left, her family wore their best clothes, her mama and sisters in oft-repaired bonnets decorated with snowdrops, their cloaks with visible patches and seams closing the holes. Her papa, in his usual beige coat and breeches, had washed his mane of curly white hair, and his balding forehead and red cheeks shone. His bright blue eyes held an air of adoration and love because she was going to marry the duke and save them.