Page 102 of The Enslaved Duet

I had no dreams of my own, and a wedding felt like it should be a dream.

I felt as if I was living one as I woke up on my nineteenth birthday and prepared for my life to change again just as dramatically as it had the year before.

Mrs. White was already pulling the red velvet drapes open and directing the other maids to lay out my breakfast, air out the gown, and arrange the make-up just so on the vanity for when the hair and face girls came to do me up to the nines.

I didn’t want to get out of bed.

My stomach knotted, bound in Shirbari knots as complicated as my feelings about my wedding day.

In one sense, a great one, I was more excited than I’d ever been. The secret wish I’d germinated in the fertile earth at the center of my soul was about to bear fruit.

I was going to transform like Cinderella from slave girl to aristocrat in only a number of hours. Pearl Hall would be my permanent home, and Alexander my forever Master.

It should have been pure euphoria coursing through my veins, but it was tainted with the lead poison of dread.

Alexander hadn’t made any declarations of love or any further steps to ingratiate me into his life. He still kept his separate bedroom and only joined me when it suited him. He was still demonstrative after sex and careful with me whenever something reminded either of us of the baby, but otherwise, he remained oddly detached.

I worried he wasn’t marrying me for the right reasons. That he wanted a war with the Order and a reason to fight with Noel, and I was the kindling and the flint.

Just another tool for him to use.

I was quiet after my shower as the group of servants fluttered around me, doing my hair, make-up, and nails while they tittered about the guests and the food and, of course, the handsome bridegroom.

“You’re so lucky,” the girl painting my lips a deep red told me. “He’s the loveliest bloke I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

“Not everything pretty is good,” I told her somberly.

When she only blinked at me, I smiled to soften the blow, and she took my words to be a joke, laughing girlishly with her friends at my wit.

“You look beautiful, love,” Mrs. White said, sniffing into a lace handkerchief as she stared at my finished complexion in the mirror.

I did.

In fact, I didn’t think I’d ever looked lovelier than I did for my wedding.

My hair was curled in big, loose waves spilling to my waist, only one lock pulled back over my left ear and pinned with one of the poppies from my field. The dress had been chosen for me by Alexander, just as my entire wardrobe at Pearl Hall had been, and as with the rest of his choices, it suited me perfectly. It was Grecian style, clasped over the shoulders with golden closures shaped like thorns with a deep dip in the front and back that exposed huge swathes of my summer-kissed skin and the indecent swell of my breasts. It was the perfect dress to complement my thorny pearl and ruby collar, which glistened as regally as a crown at my throat.

I looked like a princess ready to walk down the aisle to her prince.

Tears surged to the surface for what felt like the hundredth time already that day as I thought of the lie in that illusion.

I was no princess, and Xan, for all his titles and money, was no prince.

We were just two thoroughly fucked-up people who had found a little solace in each other.

And I was the idiot who had gone above and beyond that to fall in love with him.

“Jesus, marra,” Douglas said, showing up in the doorway to my room with both hands clasped over his mouth. “Would you just look at your pretty face?”

I couldn’t help but laugh at him as he came forward to brush a kiss against my cheek.

“I just had to sneak a peek atcha before the ceremony, so I dashed up from the kitchen. They’re probably making a right mess of things, but this was worth it.”

“Thank you, Douglas,” I said, taking his hand in a squeeze before I could let him leave.

I wished desperately that any one of my siblings or Mama was here, but Douglas was the next best thing, and I wanted him to know that. Stupidly, tears filled my eyes as I looked at his chocolate brown gaze, and I couldn’t properly voice the sentiments.

“I know, ducky,” he told me softly, patting my hand. “I know. Listen, I’ll be out to watch the ceremony before I chain myself to the kitchen for the feast. I’ll be the one cheering inappropriately at the back.”