Page 18 of Duke of no Return (Wayward Dukes’ Alliance #23)
CHAPTER 18
Seven days later…
I t was remarkable, Johnathan thought, how little London had changed.
The streets still clattered with the same carriages. The same vendors shouted at the same corners, peddling chestnuts and lace. The same sooty sky stretched above the same houses with their white-painted shutters and iron fences, as if none of them had noticed the world had shifted.
He had changed.
Frances had changed.
Their carriage rolled past the iron-wrought gates of Hargate House, and the footmen snapped to attention with wide eyes and stunned expressions. No one had expected them. The duke had been gone more than a fortnight. Rumor likely had him dead in a ditch or halfway to the Americas.
Let them think what they pleased.
Johnathan stepped out first, offering Frances his hand as she descended in her traveling gown, her face composed, chin lifted, gaze unflinching.
“Do you think they will remember how to bow?” she murmured to him, lips barely moving.
He smirked. “If not, we will teach them again.”
Inside, the staff scurried like startled hens. Mrs. Tilling, the housekeeper, looked on the verge of fainting until Frances smiled and offered kind words.
“Thank you for receiving us so graciously, Mrs. Tilling. I know we gave you no notice.”
The older woman blinked, straightened her cap, and gave a rather regal curtsy. “Welcome home, Your Grace.”
Johnathan was not sure which of them she addressed. He liked that.
They ascended the stairs to his suite, their steps echoing in the quiet hush of a house reacquainting itself with its master. Or perhaps—for the first time—meeting the man he had become.
Johnathan removed his gloves slowly once inside the sitting room. “I wonder how long it will take for word to spread.”
Frances had already shed her cloak and tossed it across a chair. “I give it until supper.”
He laughed. “You are generous. I give it until tea.”
She turned toward him, her expression softening. “Are you ready?”
He tilted his head. “For the scandal? The sniffs of disapproval? The wide-eyed shock at the reprobate duke returning from Gretna Green with a wife who refused to be bartered?”
“Yes,” she said, “for that.”
Johnathan crossed the room and kissed her forehead. “Let them stew in their propriety.”
By the time they emerged for dinner, the first note had arrived.
An invitation.
Frances opened it slowly at the drawing room hearth. It was from Lady Brunsford, who was notoriously swift at gathering gossip and even swifter at using it to seat herself next to scandal at her table.
“An invitation to her dinner party this Tuesday,” Frances said, holding it between two fingers as though it might bite. “Apparently, she has heard the most thrilling rumors.”
Johnathan leaned back in his armchair, sipping his wine. “She wants to see if you are real.”
Frances tilted her head. “Shall we go?”
“Only if you want to be stared at and whispered about for four straight hours.”
She grinned. “Sounds like any Tuesday in Mayfair.”
More notes followed in the days after. Some polite. Some pointed. A few scandalously bold. One simply said, Is there any truth to what is being said?
Johnathan scrawled on the back in Frances’s hand: Yes. And more.
The Society pages printed a full column on their return by Thursday.
By all accounts, the Duke of Hargate has returned from the northern wilds with a bride most improper—and most determined.
Frances laughed over it at breakfast. “Most determined? I will have that engraved on my tombstone.”
Johnathan kissed her wrist. “Not before I put it on your stationery.”
On Friday evening, they dressed in full evening attire.
Frances’s gown was a rich forest green silk, understated but commanding. She wore no diamonds, no feathers, no showy family heirlooms—only the sapphire ring he had given her, and the quiet confidence of a woman who owed nothing to anyone.
Johnathan’s valet had laid out his finest black tailcoat, pressed and perfect. He donned it with a sigh, glancing into the mirror.
He recognized the man staring back.
But the difference now?
He did not detest him.
As they rode to Lady Brunsford’s in the carriage, Frances reached across the seat and laced her fingers with his. “There is no-one I would rather?—”
He turned to her. “Step into the beehive with.”
She nodded once. “Precisely.”
When they stepped into the bustling parlor, the entire crowd turned.
It was not a metaphor. Conversations stopped. Heads swiveled. Fans fluttered violently.
A sea of satin and velvet gave way to the Duke of Hargate and his scandalous runaway bride.
Johnathan smiled as if nothing were amiss. Frances smiled as if she were being welcomed.
And they moved forward together.
The buzz started before they even reached their hostess, Lady Brunsford.
“She is wearing green.”
“The duke actually brought her back.”
“I heard she threatened her father with a pistol.”
Frances kept her chin high, her fingers curled loosely around Johnathan’s arm. She had been stared at before—but never like this. This was not a debutante’s appraisal. This was something hotter, more charged.
“The bishop was none too pleased,” Frances murmured from the side of her mouth, keeping her smile serene as they passed a cluster of gawking matrons. “But he eventually conceded that Gretna Green or no, we are quite thoroughly married.”
Johnathan smirked. “A signed license and a Scottish blacksmith have a funny way of making that point stick.”
“Especially when your barrister delivered it in triplicate to every legal office in London,” she added dryly.
A ripple of laughter danced in her voice, but the edge beneath it was real. They were here not because they had begged forgiveness—but because they had made it impossible for society to deny them.
It was curiosity wrapped in condemnation.
And Frances did not flinch.
Lady Brunsford greeted them first, her jeweled headdress catching every drop of candlelight like a crown. “Your Grace,” she said, curtsying with the kind of precision one used when dealing with dangerous creatures. “And Lady Frances. Or perhaps… Duchess?”
Frances smiled. “Whatever you prefer. I answer to both.”
Lady Brunsford blinked, then gave a sharp little laugh. “Delightful. Come. The drawing room is eager.”
They were paraded through the reception like rare animals, stopping at each knot of society to nod and offer pleasantries. But Frances noticed the looks: the women whispering behind lace fans, the men raising their brows, the younger debutantes gaping with barely veiled admiration.
They were not shunning her.
They were watching to see if she faltered.
And Frances Seton—Duchesse Hargate—did not falter.
“I heard Lady Morton has not been seen since,” someone whispered behind a fan. “Imagine, her own mother?—“
“She sent flowers,” another voice murmured. “To their graces. No card, but… everyone knows.”
Frances’s spine stiffened at the mention of her mother, and her heart fluttered. Just once.
When Lady Milford approached with a haughty smile and said, “My dear, you have caused such a stir. Jilting Cranford at the altar, a duel, an elopement—one might think you were trying to end up in the scandal pages.”
Frances raised her teacup in mild salute.
“Lady Milford,” she said sweetly, “if I wanted to end up in the scandal pages, I would have married your cousin instead.”
The nearby ladies erupted in laughter. Lady Milford’s expression stiffened.
Johnathan leaned in close, murmuring, “That was cruel.”
Frances sipped her tea. “She will be fine. She thrives on barbed remarks.”
He chuckled, eyes gleaming. “You are terrifying.”
“I am your wife.”
“Exactly my point.”
But it was not all snubs and veiled insults.
A young girl—barely more than a debutante—approached her near the refreshments with wide eyes and trembling hands.
“I just wanted to say,” she whispered, “I think what you did was brave. No one ever tells us we can say no.”
Frances blinked.
Then she reached out and took the girl’s hand. “You can. You always can.”
The girl nodded, then slipped away into the crowd.
Frances turned toward Johnathan, who had witnessed the exchange. His expression was unreadable.
She arched a brow. “What?”
He shook his head, voice low. “You are changing the world, and you do not even know it.”
She looked around the room. The whispers. The awe in the eyes of the young and the old alike.
Maybe he was right.
She was no longer the girl pressed into a corset of expectations and duty.
She was something else now. A woman in control of her own destiny.
And the ton could either catch up—or be left behind.
The moment came just before supper, when Lady Brunsford tapped her glass and called the room to attention.
“My lords and ladies,” she announced, “in honor of our most notable returnees, the Duke and Duchess of Hargate, I have asked His Grace to offer a toast.”
Every head turned.
Johnathan did not even blink.
He stepped forward, taking the offered glass of champagne, and looked at Frances first. Only her. Only ever her.
Then he turned to the room.
“I will not speak long,” he began, and the room chuckled lightly—because everyone knew he had a gift for words.
“But I will say this… It is easy to judge what you do not understand. It is even easier to cling to the rules that keep you comfortable. I have lived among those rules for years. I have broken more than my share. And I have seen what happens when they crush people beneath them.”
He lifted his glass.
“I married a woman who refused to be crushed.”
Frances felt her throat tighten.
“She is not a scandal,” he continued. “She is not a mistake. She is not a lesson to be whispered about. She is the bravest person I have ever known. And I am honored—beyond honored—to be her husband.”
Then—quietly, steadily—applause broke out.
A slow ripple that grew and grew until the room filled with it.
As the applause faded and glasses were raised in earnest, the ballroom once again hummed with voices. But the tone had changed. There was less speculation now and more reluctant admiration.
Frances moved among them with practiced ease, her hand resting lightly on Johnathan’s arm as they made their way through the crush.
“They say Cranford’s in Italy,” a woman whispered behind her fan as Frances passed. “Could not stomach the stares after that duel. Something about rest and warmer weather—but everyone knows he fled.”
Frances kept her expression smooth, but her mouth curled slightly at the corners.
Johnathan leaned close, his breath warm at her ear. “You see? I only ever wound their pride.”
She lifted her glass in silent acknowledgment. One less shadow to haunt their steps.
Frances met his gaze. And in that moment, she knew?—
They had won.
The party had thinned by midnight.
Lady Brunsford had retreated to a corner with her closest sycophants, already composing tomorrow’s retelling. Frances had spent the last hour gently outwitting every snide question and sideways comment, lobbed her way—and still somehow looked as though she had enjoyed herself.
Johnathan, however, needed air.
He slipped through a side door and out onto the Wexley’s darkened terrace, the din of conversation fading behind him like the last notes of an opera.
The night hung still.
Then—
“I wondered how long it would take you to flee the circus.”
Johnathan turned. William leaned against the stone railing, drink in hand, smirk in place.
Behind him, Maximilian appeared from the shadows with two more glasses of brandy and an easy grin.
“Well?” Maximilian said, handing Johnathan a drink. “Still breathing?”
“Barely,” Johnathan muttered.
“You know,” William said dryly, swirling his brandy, “if anyone else had stormed a church and kidnapped a viscount’s bride, he would be rotting in a cell by now.”
Johnathan raised a brow. “And yet here I am. Titled, free, and well-dressed.”
“A testament,” Maximilian added with mock solemnity, “to the resilience of ducal immunity—and the power of a very expensive tailor.”
William smirked. “Or perhaps the ton simply finds you more amusing now that you are no longer threatening to scandalize their daughters. Only their sensibilities.”
Johnathan chuckled. “They can try to make me respectable all they like. But I will always be the rogue who ran off with a viscount’s bride.”
William raised his glass. “To your triumphant return from the land of scandal and impulsivity.”
“Careful,” Johnathan said. “That is where you both live.”
“We prefer land of self-actualized autonomy,” Maximilian offered.
Johnathan gave a dry laugh. “You did not have to come tonight.”
“Did we not?” William asked. “Your toast nearly brought Brunsford to tears. The woman nearly spilled her drink in astonishment.”
“It was impressive,” Maximilian agreed. “You have come a long way from the rake who once got thrown out of White’s for throwing dice in a drunken rage.”
“I still maintain he cheated,” Johnathan said.
“And I still maintain,” William added, “that this is the first time I have seen you look like you actually belong somewhere.”
Johnathan stared into his brandy.
He thought of Frances. Of her sharp wit and steel spine. Of her hand in his. Of the way she had faced down a room full of wolves and smiled like she had nothing to lose.
He smiled.
“I do.”
Maximilian clapped a hand on his shoulder—carefully avoiding the healing wound. “Welcome back, then. Officially. I believe this calls for a drink.”
“You are already drinking.”
“We are celebrating,” William said. “There is a difference.”
Johnathan tilted his glass up. “To what?”
William considered. “To the Wayward Dukes.”
“To the ones who still believe in reckless decisions,” Maximilian added.
“And to the women who made them worth it,” Johnathan finished.
They clinked glasses.
And at long last, Johnathan felt… settled. Like the man he had been running from had caught up—and instead of scolding him, had offered him a second chance.
Later, after farewells and more murmured gossip, he found Frances waiting near the carriage, her arms crossed against the chill, her smile faint and tired.
“Well?” she asked as he approached.
“I survived.”
“Did they toast to your downfall?”
“They drank to our defiance.”
She tilted her head slightly, one corner of her mouth lifting in a slow smile. “Did you tell them the scandalous truth?”
“That I plan to worship you until my dying breath?” He opened the door for her. “Yes.”
Frances smiled as she stepped into the carriage, pulling him in after her. “Then let us go home, husband, so that you might demonstrate in private.”
“Minx.” He settled beside her, arm slipping around her waist.
As the carriage rolled into the night, leaving behind gossip and whispers and the weight of a thousand eyes, Johnathan leaned in close.
“You realize,” he murmured, lips brushing her ear, “they will write about us for years to come.”
Frances curled against his side. “I look forward to reading the tales.”
And as the lights of Mayfair disappeared behind them, Johnathan Seton—once the Duke of No Return—sat beside the only person who had ever truly understood him.
And to is surprise…
He did not want to go anywhere else.