They emerged into the courtyard, the spring sunlight making her squint. The duke released her arm, but only to turn and face her fully, his shadow swallowing hers against the pale stone.
He leaned in, his mouth so close to her ear that the fine hairs on her neck stood up. “You did well, Duchess.”
She swallowed hard, her own voice vanishing. “Your Grace, please. I do not need your placations.”
“It isn’t a placation,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, resonant thrum that seemed to vibrate in her very bones. “It is a fact. And as long as you bear my name, no one will ever make you feel inadequate again. I have you now, and I don’t let go of what belongs to me.”
Above them, the bells began to ring, sending the news out across the fields. Rose listened to the iron clangor, waiting for it to feel like victory or defeat.
She only found the hollow, aching space in between.
The wedding breakfast began with the clamorous arrival of two hundred guests, each determined to outdo the next in volume and spectacle. Carden Hall’s ballroom had been transformed overnight: every surface polished to a blind shine; every wall swaddled in floral arrangements that threatened to suffocate anyone caught standing too close.
Rose found herself at the epicenter, a rare animal put on display for the gawking masses.
As she entered on the duke’s arm, the tide of bodies closed in, a crush of hands, lips, and quick, feather-light words of “Congratulations, Your Grace!” and “Never thought he’d do it!”
The words landed like darts, sticking to her skin. Every gaze stung, from the greedy sizing up of her dress and jewels, to the way people watched how she carried herself in the duke’s orbit.
His Grace guided her forward, his touch as gentle as it was inescapable. The pressure of his palm at the small of her back was both anchor and leash, and for the space of a few steps, she allowed herself to lean into it. At the threshold to the ballroom, he angled toward her, his mouth nearly at her ear.
“Did you wish for a kiss at the altar?” he murmured.
She stiffened, aware of the churning sea of witnesses behind them. “You are incorrigible.”
“And you are blushing.”
“I am not,” she lied, and hated how girlish the denial sounded. He only smiled.
“Would you rather I play the stoic husband? Refuse to look at you until the guests have gone home?”
She willed herself to a scowl, but her lips betrayed her, quivering at the corners. “I’d rather you stopped performing for their amusement.”
“And for yours?”
She refused to answer, fixing her gaze on the frosted glass doors ahead, which the footmen now swung wide.
They stepped into a room ablaze with sunlight and laughter. Rose’s mother and father stood at the far end, flanked by her siblings in a loose phalanx of polite boredom.
She caught the faintest glimmer of pride in her father’s eyes, and the matching shadow of envy in her sister’s. The crowd parted as the newlyweds walked the length of the ballroom, a slow-motion gauntlet.
The duke’s hand slipped away as he surrendered her to the head table, but the loss of contact left her unbalanced, as if she might tip sideways without his touch.
Rose tried to fix her mind on the first course’s flavor, but instead, she kept stealing glances at her new husband, who occupied the center of attention with an ease that made her ache with both admiration and annoyance.
He laughed at the right jokes, dodged the wrong ones with a glancing wit, and dispatched every challenge with a smile. Whenever he looked at her way, which he did often, the chatteraround her seemed to fade, replaced by a low current of electricity that ran under the table and into her bones.
Across the room, Rose caught the eyes of a woman. Lady Rutledge, she remembered. She had positioned herself at a vantage point near the center of the ballroom. The dowager countess had already cycled through three different gentlemen for the opening dance, but her gaze rarely strayed from the duke.
When he caught her looking, Lady Rutledge lifted her glass in a private toast and held the stare a heartbeat too long. In Rose’s mind, the countess must have been only one of a long string of mistresses the duke had entertained. She tried to put it out of her mind, but the thought was hard to dispel once it had landed.
Courses came and went, each one as elaborate and delicious as the first, and Rose stared at her wine glass until her vision blurred. The room shifted, the decorum loosening as alcohol and time did their work.
“Are you unwell?” her sister Violet whispered.
Rose forced a smile. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
