Page 61 of His Illegitimate Duchess

E ver since the day they’d arrived back in London, Duke Colin Talbot had been living under a cloud of dread.

He constantly had this awful sense of foreboding deep in the pit of his stomach, like God was trying to tell him something about what awaited him, but he chalked it up to the stress of the Parliamentary proceedings, the gloomy weather, and London’s bad air.

And then they went to that damned ball.

Now that the moment he’d been dreading for weeks had arrived, Colin felt an almost frightening calm settle over him.

He'd read accounts of men who were led to (and saved from) the gallows, as well as the memoirs of several war heroes, and he instinctively recognised the state he was in as the resigned (but dignified) acceptance of one’s fate they all had written about.

His wife, whom he loved more than anything in the world, had discovered his deceit and his cruelty, and he had to face the possibility that she’d never look at him the same way again.

But unlike during other battles he’d fought during his life, Colin wasn’t going to lash out in this one. He’d had enough time these last few months (especially during the quieter moments, like when he would watch his wife read) to think about what he wanted, and he’d decided on two things:

He wanted magic to be real; if not magic, then at least time travel. He wanted to go back in time and not say what he had said, not do what he had done.

He also wanted to give his wife something that no one else could, to enrich her life like she’d done his.

But there was no doing either of those things now, was there?

“Lizzie,” he started, but she interrupted him, whispering, “Don’t.”

She raised her head from where she had been crying among the tatters of her once-glorious sunset-coloured dress. “Is it true?“

Colin, who had stood up and moved to sit on a chair to her right, didn’t immediately respond, so she continued. “Is what Lady Helena said true? Did you ruin my life for your own amusement or some deranged form of revenge?”

Colin paled. “Have I truly ruined your life?” He asked sadly.

“Answer my question, Talbot.” Her voice was devoid of all feeling.

She stood up and, with great trouble, walked over to her escritoire and sat down. She was facing him now, but wasn’t looking at him.

“It’s true, in a way,” he responded evasively, not knowing how to explain the things that he himself had only recently realised.

“We used to be friends, you and I. But then that was over, and I couldn’t get the thoughts of you out of my head.

You wouldn’t even look at me any more, and I was so angry… ”

He stopped, forcing himself to take several deep breaths and gather his thoughts. He wanted to reach for her in order to anchor himself, but (correctly) gauged that she would not be receptive to his touch, so he put both his hands under his thighs to keep them in place.

“Before I ruined our friendship, I had thought we would have two or three seasons of dancing, witty repartee, smiles and laughs, and then time would cure me of this… affliction . I was burning up without you, while you were cold as ice, and then you announced your engagement to that uninteresting, unworthy man!” Colin’s entire face twisted in distaste.

“Did you want your toy back just because another boy was playing with it?” Elizabeth mocked him.

“I… acted without thinking. That’s what I meant when I said it was true in a way, how it happened is accurate, but your ideas on why it happened are not. My actions were reprehensible, but I didn’t know what else to do. I just didn’t want to feel that way any more.”

“Oh, you mean you didn’t want to feel that way for someone as unworthy as me? Or did you think no one should want me? I still remember what you said about me behind my back!”

“I apologised for that!”

“When?” Elizabeth asked with a grimace that indicated he was out of his mind for claiming that. “Regardless of the motive, your little plan backfired on you, because you were forced to marry me.”

He’d never seen her like that; she was almost distressingly beautiful in her fury. He felt himself catching the fire from it.

“No one forced me to marry you! No one can force me to do anything, you should know that by now.”

“So, you’re saying you wanted to marry me,” she said mockingly. “How rich!”

“Confound it, Lizzie! There aren't enough words to describe what I want! I want to give you the world, I want to be the only reason for your smile, I fear this is some new disease. I am truly unwell,” he admitted and suddenly deflated, all his previous anger gone.

His wife frowned. For a moment, her confusion seemed to overshadow her anger.

“So, you’re claiming that you contrived that humiliating scene in order to… marry me? Not ruin me?” Her face reflected how much she struggled with believing the idea.

“I didn’t know it myself at the time, but yes,” Talbot said with a nod. “I wanted to marry you all along. I just needed to give myself an excuse to do so, and I chose the wrong way to do it.”

“Why would you need an excuse?” She asked sincerely, and then it dawned on her. “Because I’m such an abomination? A stain on the Talbot name?”

The bitterness in her voice was painful for him to hear, but he was also surprised by her forcefulness. He’d never seen this side of her before.

My kitten has claws, he thought affectionately, despite how horrifyingly inappropriate it was to feel such a surge of attraction during the argument they were having.

“That’s not what I-,” he started explaining, but she interrupted.

“That’s exactly what you said!” Her anger was back. “And I’m glad to see all these months of marriage haven’t changed your opinion of me one bit!”

“I never said you were an abomination! And the issue here is not my opinion ; these are the facts of your parentage and upbringing. I regret the way I behaved, but it wasn’t I who invented these things,” he said defensively.

“They aren’t facts !” Lizzie screamed angrily through her tears as she wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

“I’m the daughter of a duke! My mother is a gentleman’s daughter!

According to the beliefs that you espouse, I ought to be good enough.

So what if they weren’t married to each other?

Your precious Ton doesn’t seem to place great importance on fidelity in a marriage, so why does it matter only in the case of my birth?

Either fidelity in marriage is important, or it isn’t.

Either governesses are good enough to raise the children of peers, or they aren’t.

You people need to decide. Why am I, the only innocent in this whole story, being ostracised and vilified?

I’m a good, chaste person who had done nothing wrong up until the moment when you caused all of London society to think me a title-hunting harlot! ”

Colin hadn’t realised he’d stood up at some point during her soliloquy. He had trouble understanding how he’d managed to mishandle the situation this badly. He’d intended to explain, apologise, smooth things over, and instead he’d offended her again and made her cry.

He started rubbing his chest to ease the tightness he felt in it.

“Get out, Colin, get out of my sight. I cannot bear to look at you,” she said, her voice hoarse from the screaming.

He never wanted to hear her utter his name in the throes of anger again. He hung his head in resignation. Perhaps it was better to take a break now.

“All right, we can talk more later,” he said in a conciliatory tone and headed for the door.

“I despise you! I wish I had never married you. You dishonourable, awful man! I shall never believe another word out of your mouth ever again!” She screamed all of it, sentence by sentence, a reproach for every step he took towards the door.

Colin couldn’t see where he was going because his vision was blurry. His hands were shaking, and something was buzzing in his ears. He closed the door and leaned his back against it to gather his wits. He heard a thud.

She must have thrown something at the door, he thought dispassionately, incapable of feeling anything. He slowly walked to his dressing room and sat there in silence.

Stevenson came in perhaps half an hour later to assist him in getting ready for bed. Colin’s anguish must have been apparent enough for the normally taciturn valet to break decorum.

“Is everything all right, Your Grace?” Stevenson asked after he’d returned the boots that the underfootman had cleaned in their place.

“I’m having a disagreement with my wife,” Colin replied in an even, emotionless voice, long past thinking about whether that was appropriate for his valet to know.

They must have all heard her screaming anyway , he realised. The whole household had always known when his parents had been fighting. What’s the point in pretending? He thought bleakly.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Stevenson said diplomatically.

Here I am , he thought as he sat in front of the dressing room fire later, no better than my father, having sentenced both of us to life in a household of misery, rebuke, and hurt.

But now he also understood his father in a way he’d never done before, for the prospect of a life of misery in the same house as Elizabeth was still more appealing than the thought of a life without her.

He listened at her door for a while but heard nothing. Then he went to bed, alone for the first time in months, taunted by the sight of all the E’s hidden among the intricate vines on the bedposts.

As Stevenson shaved him the next morning, there was a knock on the door of Talbot’s dressing room. It was Elizabeth’s maid, Mary.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, Your Grace,” she said hesitantly, and Colin’s heart started pounding at her tone.

He lifted his hand to Stevenson, who removed the blade from his master’s face. Colin sat up and looked at Mary’s pale face, then her hands that were clutching her dress.

“What is it?” he asked, almost breathless for some reason.