Page 67 of How Not to Marry a Duke

"Mother." He held out the folder. "I need you to read this."

She took it with the wariness of a woman accepting a snake. "What is it?"

"The end of my engagement to Penelope Ashworth."

* * *

Frederick watched his mother read.

He watched her face cycle through disbelief, then confusion, then a dawning fury that transformed her features into a mask he had never seen before. Her hands—steady hands, hands that had held his as a child and slapped sense into him as a young man and clutched his arm at his father's funeral—began to tremble.

"A forgery." Her voice emerged low and dangerous, each word bitten off with precision. "He presented me with a forged annulment."

"Yes."

"He sat in my drawing room." She was not looking at him now. Her eyes were fixed on the documents, but Frederick suspected she was seeing Lord Ashworth's face—that carefully charming countenance, that calculated warmth. "He drank my tea. He called me family⁠—"

She stopped. Set down the documents with exaggerated care, as though she did not trust herself to hold them any longer.

"He called me family whilst lying to my face."

"I did not know." Frederick kept his voice steady, though he could feel the echo of her fury in his own blood. "Not until Thorne's investigation uncovered the truth."

"Of course you did not know. You were too honourable to question a gentleman's word." The Dowager's voice cracked like ice giving way. "I, however, ought to have known better. There was always a quality... calculated about Lord Ashworth. The way he pressed for the match. The haste with which the contract was signed." She pressed her palm to the desk, steadying herself. "I was so pleased that you had agreed to marry at all. After Spain, after everything... I thought any match was better than watching you disappear into yourself."

A pause. Frederick watched her wrestle with words he had never expected to hear.

"I was wrong."

* * *

Frederick did not know what to say.

His mother had never admitted to being wrong about anything in his entire life. He had seen her argue with bishops, outmanoeuvre earls, reduce his father's political enemies to stammering apologies—but he had never, not once, heard her confess to error.

"Mother—"

"I suppose you expect me to approve of this disaster." Her voice had steadied, though her eyes still held that dangerous glitter. She crossed to the window, her back straight, her shoulders rigid beneath the fine wool of her gown.

"I expect you to prefer honesty to fraud."

A long pause. The fire crackled. Outside, a carriage rolled past—early arrivals for the ball, perhaps, or servants delivering flowers.

"A low bar," the Dowager said at last, turning from the window. Her eyes—grey, like his own—held his without flinching. "And yet the Ashworths failed to clear it."

"Spectacularly."

"And Penelope? Does she know the extent of her father's deception?"

"I believe she suspected the annulment was irregular. But I do not think she knew it was a complete fabrication." Frederick thought of the letter Penelope had left when she fled to her father's estate—the guilt and relief mingled in every line. "She was as much a victim as I was."

"A victim who conspired in her own rescue at our expense." The Dowager's tone was sharp, but not without sympathy. "I do not blame the girl for loving where she ought not. I blame her father for building an empire of lies upon that foundation."

"Then we are in agreement."

"We are in agreement that Lord Ashworth must answer for his fraud. The question is how." She returned to the desk, her movements brisk and purposeful—the Dowager he knew, marshalling her forces for battle. "The ball is tonight. Three hundred guests have been invited to celebrate an engagement that no longer exists. What do you propose we do?"

* * *