She turned at once, her heart lurching at the sight of him rushing toward her. “Papa?—”
He reached her quickly, taking her hands in his, his gaze moving over her as though to confirm she was truly there, unharmed.
“Where have you been?” he demanded, panting. “We sent men after you, and then?—”
His gaze flicked briefly toward Rowan, confusion settling in.
Behind him, Emmeline saw the guests; some were already leaving, others lingering, their movements slowing now that she had arrived, their voices rising again, whispering, watching.
Something was wrong.
“I—there was a mistake,” she said, her voice tightening slightly as she looked back at her father. “I was taken to the wrong chapel.”
“Come,” he said quickly, guiding her gently toward the side, away from the growing attention. “We must speak.”
The Duke followed a step behind them. Emmeline felt that awareness of him again, even as her focus shifted to her father.
“What has happened?” she asked as soon as they were out of earshot.
Lord Weston’s expression faltered.
“You took too long,” he said, his voice lower now, strained. “When you did not arrive, I sent men to look for you. They went toward the village and returned with… with talk.”
Emmeline’s stomach tightened. “What sort of talk?”
He hesitated. “A lady,” he said slowly, “a bride, passed through the inn not long ago. She offered her wedding dress in exchange for another’s clothes. She fled.”
A chill ran through her spine, but she didn’t speak.
“And when the Duke of Foxdale heard this,” her father continued, his grip tightening slightly on her hands, “he assumed it was you.”
Emmeline felt the ground shift beneath her. “He… what?”
“He called the wedding off,” Lord Weston said quietly. “It’s too late.”
Chapter Three
“Too late?” Emmeline heard her own voice, but it did not sound like hers. It sounded thin, wrong. “No. No, that is absurd. He cannot simply leave because of gossip. Papa, this can still be fixed.”
Her father’s face crumpled in a way she had never seen before, not even in the bleakest months after her mother’s death. The sight of it made something cold and terrible spread through her chest.
They stood in the quieter strip of ground behind the chapel now, shielded from the road and most of the guests, but not from the ruin of the morning. She could still hear movement at the front, carriage wheels shifting, doors closing, voices carrying in low, excited murmurs that no longer tried to hide themselves.
They were speaking of her.
It had happened so quickly that her mind had not yet caught up with it. One moment, she had still been a woman on the edge of marriage, standing within reach of the life she had chosen for practical reasons, and the next, she was something spoken about, stared at, pitied, perhaps mocked.
A feverish heat climbed her throat, spreading across her cheeks in a flush that felt like a crime.
She looked at her father’s trembling hands and tried to summon the crushing weight of their ruin, but her heart betrayed her. It beat with a rhythmic, terrifying lightness. She felt like a bird watching the cage door swing open.
But her father would not be able to handle this scandal. The fragile stability he had clung to was gone, and as she looked at the silver hair at his temples and the sudden, hollow slope of his shoulders, the lightness in her chest turned to lead. Her freedom had a price, and he would pay for it.
“We can still go after him,” she said, more urgently now, tightening her grip on her father’s hands. “He cannot have gone far. If someone explains that it was a misunderstanding, then he will see reason. He must.”
Lord Weston shook his head, with the slow defeat of a man who had already seen the door close and knew it would not open again.
“He was angry,” he said quietly. “And set in it. I tried to reason with him. He would not hear me.”
