Page 5 of His Stolen Duchess

The horse-drawn carriage pulled up at the church right on time.

Georgina sat with her uncle, who looked so proud of her that it almost broke her heart in two. There was so much she wanted to tell him and talk to him about, but she knew he wouldn’t understand, so she bit her tongue as she so often had to do.

She wore an ivory silk dress, its empire waistline adorned with intricate embroidery along the bodice and sleeves. The fabric embraced her curves with effortless grace, yet despite its elegance, the dress did nothing to ease the unrest that weighed on her heart.

“The guests are waiting,” her uncle commented.

Georgina emerged from her daydream to see that the carriage door was open, and the footman was waiting for her to disembark.

She looked out the carriage door at the church.

No one stood outside. They were all inside waiting, including the Earl of Abbington.

She recalled the conversation they’d had only a few hours earlier. The way he had looked at her when he thought she came over to let him claim her before their wedding night. The way he looked at her when she confronted him about Dottie.

I can’t marry such a beast!

Georgina turned to her uncle. He smiled pleasantly at her, but she could see the flicker of impatience in his eyes. He was a patient man, but there were some circumstances in which his patience could only be stretched so far.

“Um… Uncle, I-I must… relieve myself.”

Uncle Francis blinked. It took him a few seconds to respond. “Now?”

“Well…” Georgina’s leg jiggled furiously as she spoke, “I need to go when I’m nervous. And it’s my wedding day, so I am feeling quite anxious at the moment.”

“Can’t you wait until after the ceremony?” he hissed.

“No. Not unless you wish me to soil this wedding dress.”

“Georgina!” he reprimanded her.

“This isn’t a joke, Uncle. I need this. Now,” she insisted, then looked around, spotting a large grove of bushes close to thechurch. She turned back to her uncle and pointed at them. “I’ll go in there. It won’t take a minute.”

“Are you out of your mind?” he asked through gritted teeth. “You want to relieve yourself in the bushes next to the church?”

“Well, would you prefer if we went back home instead?”

Her uncle grunted. “Just make it quick. And will you please not stain your dress? With leaves or dirt or…anything else.”

“Oh, come on, this is not the first time I’ve relieved myself beside a church,” she blurted out.

Uncle Francis growled, “Georgina.”

“Nowthatwas a joke, Uncle Francis. I thought it might lighten the mood.”

Francis closed his mouth, took a second, then spoke. “My mood will be considerably lightened once you are a married woman.”

For a moment, she glanced at her uncle, and a wave of guilt crashed into her. No matter how stern he was with her, she didn’t feel good about tricking him. He was still family, after all.

Perhaps if I told him about Dottie… about how Lord Abbington had treated her…

Once the thought entered her mind, every rational part of her disagreed. Uncle Francis wasn’t a bad man, but he was a man of theton; he wanted his family to maintain appearances, to be respectable. In the past, when Georgina’s sisters—Juliana and Emily in particular—did not fit that standard, he retaliated vehemently.

She could not tell him the truth. Even if she did, he’d drag her to the aisle and tell her to tolerate her husband’s ‘missteps’.

Georgina took a long breath, steeled herself, and hopped from the carriage.

She cast a quick glance at the church entrance, barely catching the flowery yet tasteful decorations her sisters had helped with choosing, and walked spryly toward the bushes.