Page 35 of The Duke’s Sworn Spinster (A Duel and a Wedding #1)

Chapter Three

“ Y ou,” Vanessa whispered. She recognized him—or not him, exactly, not his face but his voice. He was the priest from the confessional. The deep, masculine richness of his voice was not something she could easily forget.

Except this was no priest. She did not know who it was, but she certainly knew that the wild, dangerous-looking man in front of her was not a member of the clergy.

“Vanessa!” Lord Langdon spluttered, pulling himself up onto his feet. She glanced back at him to see that he was glaring from her to the man in the doorway. “Who is this man, and how do you know him?” His eyes grew wide in horror. “Have you been—are you dallying with this gentleman?”

“Upon my honor, silence yourself!” Lord Forthwell exclaimed, shocking Vanessa, who had not expected her father to say anything reproachful to Lord Langdon. “Do not you know who this is? Show some respect to His Grace, the Duke of Thornfield!”

The Duke of Thornfield…

Another wave of faintness washed over her. She had accidentally confessed her sins to the Duke of Thornfield?! One of the most powerful, feared, and ruthless men of the ton?

She swallowed, her mouth and throat suddenly very dry.

“I am sure that my son meant no harm,” the Marquess said into the tense silence. He was looking at Langdon with a sharp, nervous expression. “He was merely surprised by His Grace’s familiarity with your daughter.”

Vanessa understood the implication in his words, and from the look on her father’s face, so did he, but before he could say anything, Langdon spoke.

“Y-your Grace!” he stammered, and Vanessa felt a momentary rush of vindictive pleasure to see that Langdon sounded as intimidated as she felt.

He lowered himself into a shallow bow then straightened up.

“Pardon me, I did not recognize you. However, it does not change the nature of my question: what are you doing here, and how do you know my betrothed?”

“She is not your betrothed anymore,” Thornfield said, and Vanessa’s mouth fell open. Never in her life had she heard a man speak with such certainty and authority.

“I beg your pardon!” Langdon cried, taking a step further. “How dare you! She most certainly is my betrothed, and that will not change just because you have come barging in here to?—”

“Have you accepted his proposal?” Thornfield asked, ignoring Langdon and turning directly to look at Vanessa.

“No,” she said. “Lord Langdon had just asked me to marry him when you arrived, but I had not yet responded.”

“I have asked her father!” Langdon shouted. “And he has accepted my suit! The marriage contract is all but signed!”

“That is true,” the Marquess said quickly.

“Marriage contracts can be broken if both parties agree,” the Duke said dismissively, still not looking at Lord Langdon. “And this one will be broken—because Lady Vanessa is going to marry me.”

The Marquess and Marchioness of Pedington both gasped.

“You, Your Grace?” Lord Forthwell repeated, stunned.

“Marry Vanessa?” Lady Forthwell echoed.

Vanessa felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under her.

“Yes,” the Duke said, his eyes coming back to rest on Vanessa’s. “Your daughter caught my eye the other day, and I have been eager to find her ever since. I wish her to become my wife. The next Duchess of Thornfield.”

A stunned silence filled the dining room. Vanessa could not believe what she was hearing. The Duke of Thornfield wanted to marry her. Questions raced through her mind. Why? When did he decide this? How could she marry a man she did not even know?

The silence was broken at last by Lord Langdon, who stepped forward, his whole body shaking and his hands balled into fists.

“This is preposterous!” he snarled. “Lady Vanessa is promised to me.

“Perhaps the contract is not yet signed, but we had a gentleman’s agreement, Forthwell! Your honor is at stake, as is the honor of your entire family!”

Vanessa’s father looked from Langdon—red in the face and furious—to the Duke, who seemed calm and patient, to the Marquess and Marchioness, who both looked pale and angry. At last, he drew himself up.

“Y-you are right,” Lord Forthwell finally stammered, and he turned to the Duke, his body stooping slightly as if he were afraid to stand up to the man.

“Your Grace, I do apologize. We are, of course, honored by your interest in our daughter, but as Lord Langdon so rightly points out, I have already agreed to marry my daughter to him instead. I am… Well, I am very sorry.”

To Vanessa’s surprise, the Duke looked amused.

“Lord Langdon is right about something,” he mused, clasping his hands behind his back as he looked thoughtfully around.

“Which is that the honor of your family is at stake. It has come to my attention that you, Lord Forthwell, are involved in some shady business dealings with Lord Langdon’s father, the Marquess of Pedington.

” He turned to stare at the Marquess, an eyebrow raised.

“I hate to do this the hard way,” he purred, “but I will if I have to. And while I should very much not like to have to take these dealings to the King, I will do so if you deny my suit.”

Another shocked silence filled the hall, this one even more tense than the last. Vanessa’s stomach squirmed. I told him that two nights ago, thinking he was the priest, she thought miserably. And now, he is threatening my father with it!

Her father, meanwhile, had paled. As she watched, he even began to shake.

“Dearest?” Lady Forthwell said, staring at her husband. “Is there truth in what His Grace says?”

“Of course, there isn’t!” snapped the Marquess, who had turned green and looked as if he might be sick. “That is a preposterous claim to make! Practically treasonous!”

The Duke gave the Marquess one skeptical look, and he sat down hard in his seat and put his head in his hands.

“I know nothing of any shady deals!” Lord Langdon proclaimed into the quiet that followed, but Vanessa would guess, from the shifty way he looked at his father bent over the table, that he was not telling the truth.

Lord Forthwell, meanwhile, hesitated. Vanessa could imagine what he was thinking: that if he acquiesced to the Duke’s request, he would be as good as admitting that he had taken part in some illegal dealings, but if he denied the Duke, he might face comeuppance from the Crown. She could see the conflict on his face.

At last, wilting like a flower in the noonday sun, he turned to her.

“The choice is not mine to make,” he said in a small, defeated voice. “It is my daughter’s. She is the only one who can accept or decline a marriage proposal.”

Oh, now I have a choice? Vanessa thought dully as everyone in the room turned to look at her. She knew what her father was doing: he did not actually care about what she wanted. He just wanted a way out of his conundrum.

Vanessa turned to look at the Duke. He was watching her with the same intense, heated expression that he had worn when he had first come into the dining room.

“I require a moment with the Duke,” she said, her voice very thin and very small.

“Absolutely not!” Langdon said at once.

“It would be most improper!” the Marchioness murmured.

But Vanessa held her ground. Raising her chin a little, she continued to stare directly at the Duke. “I require a moment alone with the Duke,” she repeated, more firmly.

“Very well,” her father said in a reedy, impatient tone. “You may speak in the hall, but you only have five minutes.”

Vanessa’s legs felt like they had been turned to stone, but somehow, she managed to force herself to walk around the table and out into the hall.

The Duke held the door open for her, and as she passed close to him, she breathed in his dark, masculine scent—like tobacco, evergreen, and molasses, all at once. It made her skin prickle.

Once they were out in the hallway, Vanessa took the Duke’s arm and pulled him away from the door to the dining room until she was sure they were out of earshot.

She could not believe she was touching the Duke like this, but she also didn’t have a choice.

They only had five minutes, and she had to say her piece.

Once she was sure they were far enough away, she rounded on him.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, her voice surprisingly hoarse and filled with emotion.

“How dare you come here and expose the things I told you in confidence! How dare you just waltz in here and assume I will marry you! How dare you—” But she was so incensed, she couldn’t even finish the sentence.

It didn’t help that he was looking down at her with a slightly amused expression, as if he didn’t take any of her objections seriously.

“You forget,” he said, a cool smile sliding across his lips, “that I am not actually a priest, Lady Vanessa, therefore the things you said to me were not actually in confidence.”

“It was implied that they were in confidence, even if you are not a priest,” she snapped back.

He took a step closer to her then, and she suddenly felt how small and fragile she was compared to him. He towered over her, and she felt herself shrink back. Intimidation flared in her chest. This was the Duke of Thornfield, and she dared to speak to him like this? To make demands of him?

“I apologize for repeating things that you told me in confidence,” the Duke said, surprising her into speechlessness.

His voice was slightly gentler than before, but his presence was no less looming and overwhelming.

“However, I felt that I did not have a choice if I was to convince your father to let me marry you.”

She narrowed her eyes, trying hard to think straight through her shock. “How did you even find me?” she asked at last.

“The livery on your coach. I had to ask around, but eventually, someone recognized it, and told me I was looking for the Earl of Forthwell. Or, more accurately, since it was a marriage proposal I was after, his daughter.”

“But—why?” she forced herself to ask, her voice breaking slightly.

“Why do you want to marry me? Why are you doing this?” His dark eyes swept slowly over her, lingering on her eyes and lips, and for a moment, as they smoldered above her, she thought he was going to say because he was bewitched by her beauty.

But that would be mad! He only saw me for the first time today—he could not see me through the lattice of the confessional.

The Duke hesitated, and she wondered if he was going to answer the question.

“You owe me this,” she murmured, and he blinked.

“I want to help you,” he said at last. “Your plight moved me, and I could not bear to see you married to a man who physically and emotionally harms you.”

Vanessa stared at him. “But… why? You do not know me. You are not obligated to help me.”

The Duke twitched slightly, and she thought she saw something dark and angry pass through his eyes, but then it was gone.

“If you must know, I am atoning for something,” he said finally, his voice rough. “Helping you will help me to make amends.”

Vanessa waited for him to elaborate, but when he did not, she swallowed. So, he was atoning for something, but he did not want her to know for what. She wanted to ask, but something in his expression told her it would be pointless.

“And will marrying you really save me?” she asked. “I do not know you—you could be as cruel and violent as Lord Langdon.”

“You do not know me,” he agreed, “but you know of me.”

Vanessa nodded. “Of course, I know of you.”

He looked amused. “And tell me, what is it that you know?”

“Not much,” she admitted. “Nothing definite. You do not attend social events and are rarely seen in Society. Instead, you prefer to be locked away in Thornfield Castle.” She looked him over.

“What you do there… I know not, but I have heard whispers about you, mostly from gentlemen who think they are not being overheard, that you are not to be crossed. That those who cross you and your moral code pay the price.”

To her surprise, the Duke smiled. It was his first real smile, and it made his otherworldly beauty seem less dark and unapproachable and more warm and friendly. Her lips parted slightly in her surprise, and she felt her cheeks flush.

“All of that is correct,” the Duke said. “And I am glad to know that this reputation precedes me. However, you have nothing to fear from me.”

“What if I cross you?” she asked quickly.

“That is not…” he trailed off, shaking his head. “You have nothing to fear from me,” he repeated. “No woman has anything to fear from me.”

Vanessa frowned. She had so many questions. The Duke’s answers were only making him seem more mysterious, not less. But if what he was saying was true, and he would not harm her… Well, she could not deny that was a better fate than marriage to Lord Langdon.

“You will have freedom in our marriage,” the Duke continued.

“Far more than you would have with any other man. You would have money, a title, respectability, and the freedom to do whatever you like. If you want to travel, you can. If you want to live in a castle in the Scottish Highlands and see no one, you can. It will be up to you.”

Freedom. It was a concept Vanessa had never considered before. Most women of her ilk did not get freedom. They got husbands and children. But what was freedom without love and affection?

I never wanted to be free of marriage. What I wanted was a happy one.

But the chance for a happy marriage had disappeared a long time ago. She had to be smart now. Practical. This was the best offer she was going to get. A life of freedom, safe from Lord Langdon. And free of my parents.

The thought brought a shocking amount of relief to her chest.

“All right,” she said at last, looking up into the Duke’s dark, wild eyes. “I will marry you.”

A flicker of relief passed over the Duke’s face. He almost smiled, but then it passed. Instead, he gave her his arm, and she shook it. The touch of his arm again brought her the same prickling feeling that she’d felt when his eyes had bored into her earlier.

“Good,” he said. “Then let us go break the happy news.”