Page 2 of Her Beast of a Duke

“Father.” It was Hermia who brought them both down, as always.

Isabella could only stare at her sister as a terrible feeling grew in her stomach. Her eyes went over Hermia’s shoulder, and her stomach ultimately dropped to her feet.

For the Earl of Stanton, her husband-to-be, was not at the altar.

The church began to fade out around her, but she caught enough of Hermia’s low words. “Isabella, my dearest sister… I am so sorry. Lord Stanton… he has not arrived yet.”

“What do you mean he has not arrivedyet?” she questioned sharply, but there was no need to echo the statement. Isabella could see the vacant space with her own eyes.

The altar was empty where it should not have been. Lord Stanton should have been there in his blonde-haired, easy-smiling glory, ready to take her as his wife.

He hadpromised.

He had made endless promises.

And yet—he wasnot there.

“Isabella.” Hermia’s voice was quiet, coaxing, as if she feared for an unraveling of Isabella’s composure.

She was sorely mistaken, for Isabella had long wrangled those urges and quelled them into fake smiles and clever turns of conversation or solutions.

“Isabella, do come over here with me.”

Without waiting for her say-so, Hermia led Isabella over to the side of the aisle where the confines of a small room could shieldthem from peering eyes. Once they were within, followed by their parents and the Duke of Branmere, Isabella whirled on Hermia.

“How do you know this is not some horrid mistake?” she asked harshly. “Perhaps he is late. A carriage accident… a… a bout of nerves! We are both young to wed, with him only five-and-twenty. I can wait.”

“Indeed,” Lord Wickleby insisted. “We will give him an hour. It is a stretch, but I have faith in Lord Stanton. He is a good man and has not always been known for his punctuality. We shall?—”

“We shall not give him any grace.”

Isabella tried to restrain the glare she whipped around to give her brother-in-law, Charles, but she was shocked by the Duke’s intercession. “What do you mean?”

Dressed finely in his usual dark attire, his beard was neatly trimmed, and the eyes of dark blue that had never quite been readable to Isabella yet were to Hermia, fixed on her now. Beneath the Duke’s stare, Isabella’s composure threatened to crack.

“I already sent some of my footmen to Stanton’s townhouse,” he told her slowly, his eyes cutting to their mother, as if wondering whether Isabella would break out into hysterics like her. “Your betrothed is gone, Lady Isabella.”

“How do you?—”

Her demanding question was cut off by Charles producing a piece of paper—a note, written not on expensive, thick parchment paper, the likes of which he used when quoting poetry and prose while wooing Isabella.

This was done hastily, as an afterthought, and her heart lagged horribly.

She snatched it right out of Charles’s hand upon recognizing Lord Stanton’s handwriting.

“Where was this found?” she asked.

“Stanton’s butler passed it to my footman. He said that the Earl handed it over himself,” Charles told her.

Isabella turned her back on them, her heart pounding. She didn’t want to see the worry and concern in their eyes, nor did she want any of them pressing her on what the note said, not until she had digested it herself.

My dearest Isabella,

Forgive my hasty note, but I am sorry. I cannot marry you. I will never love you, and this arrangement of ours must end before we cannot come back from such a grave mistake.

Perhaps you will forgive me one day.

Somehow both numb and enraged at once, Isabella loosened her grip on the note. Her body flooded with ice—no,bothice and fire, and she didn’t know which felt worse.