Page 1 of The One With the Wayward Duke (The One With the Wanton Woman #5)

THAT DAMN CRUMB. THAT tiny piece of crumbling cookie.

One would think that a life altering decision shouldn’t be made on such a small speck of food.

But…ugh…that damn crumb. If it hadn’t been for that tiny morsel just placed so perfectly—or rather, so imperfectly—she might have gone through with it.

The event. The day. The whole damn thing.

She might have made the biggest mistake of her life, and the worst part, she might never have known how life was supposed to be lived.

So though Lady Freya was damning that tiny fragment of food, she was also thanking it. For without that paltry particle of provision dangling from her betrothed’s face, she might have married him.

She might have gone through with the whole wedding and then she would be on her way to the honeymoon with him.

And that was the part that made her shudder.

Thinking of that pink leatherbound book and all its positions of passion…

she couldn’t see herself doing any of those poses with Frank, the man with a dangling crumb.

Marriage was about passion and intimacy, loving the other person through good and bad.

Nay, not bad, the worst. If you couldn’t love a person through their worst, you didn’t deserve to be married to them.

So when Freya saw that pitiable crumb dangling from the side of Frank’s mouth and she recoiled, she knew the truth then and there.

If she couldn’t like the man through that small incident, she would be certain to much less love him through worse—God only knows how much worse marriage got than dangling particles.

A cringe followed closely by a wince chased their way up her spine.

“Freya,” one of her sisters called to her. Hands were shaking her shoulders. “Are you listening to me?”

The haze diminished from Freya’s eyes and she took in the five sets of eyes upon her.

Five sisters and one of them was trying to talk some sense into her.

Blinking hard, she took in Audra’s face.

Or was that Ameliea? No, it was Audra. Her widowed eldest sister had married for true love, so she should know a thing or two about matters of the heart.

“What were you saying, Audra?” Freya asked, mindlessly smoothing the skirts of her wedding dress.

Her sister’s voice took on a commanding tone, one that she reserved only for crisis situations. Well, if there ever were to be a crisis situation among the sisters, this would be it. Her wanting to flee her own wedding surely qualified as a catastrophe.

“I was saying that you need to follow your heart, dear sister.” Freya absorbed the words numbly.

Then another sister, Phyllis stood in front of her, bending her head to catch Freya’s eyes.

If anyone else was going to say something about love, it would be Phyllis, who had just fallen head over ears for Stephen.

Surely she would have some more tangible advice to implement.

Nope. “You must listen to your heart. It’s the only way to live a life that you’re proud of.

It doesn’t matter what anyone else says. ”

Follow your heart…Listen to your heart. That was the trouble.

Freya thought she had been following her heart, and now she was questioning how it had led her to this point.

Mere steps from the aisle. Waiting friends and family.

Written vows left only to be spoken aloud.

How had her heart led her this far? It was plain as day that she didn’t love Frank.

Yet he stood, behind the door and just over a dozen yards away, waiting to marry her.

Whispering sisters huddled around her while she lost herself in thought again.

She knew it was possible to find love. Her cousins had done it.

Her sisters had done it. She could do it.

Just…not with Frank. There wasn’t a glaring reason—besides that damn crumb—that she could pinpoint for not wanting to marry Frank.

There was just the fact that when she stopped to think about it, she didn’t truly love him.

Why she hadn’t stopped to think of that before today was beyond her?

She had gotten caught up in the handsome suitor, the calls, the ring, the excitement about a wedding.

He had been charming, or something, and he was all that she could see.

And then she had just seen one crumb too many.

And just to be clear, she only saw one crumb, and that was one too many.

And if one crumb was one too many, then that crumb-bearer was most certainly not the man she could do life with for the rest of her days.

What did she want? The first image that came to mind were the meditation cabins that Phyllis was starting. Her sister had such a clear goal of what she wanted to do with her life and with love that Freya wanted to be part of it, but she didn’t know how.

And what about love? Well, that was an untamable beast, so it seemed.

How could she follow her heart when her heart didn’t know exactly what it wanted?

Then another vague picture came to mind, but she didn’t give it much credence.

It was a picture of a man she once knew, but it didn’t make much sense.

So while she didn’t know what she wanted exactly, she was certain of one truth: she didn’t want to marry Frank.

And another truth followed close behind that one. She didn’t want to deal with the mess that her rejection was about to create. The chaos would be overwhelming, and she might feel sucked under the tide again.

No. There was to be no sucking. There was only to be running. And fast. Preferably in a carriage to somewhere hidden and far away. It didn’t matter precisely where. Just somewhere that no one would look for her. Her decision firmly set, she voiced it.

“I’m going to run.”

But the sisters must not have heard the faintly spoken and unexpected vow because they continued their hushed murmurings, inadvertently ignoring the very subject of their chatter.

So she addressed them by name until each one stopped talking and looked at her, “Audra. Amelia. Phyllis. Alice. Florence. Listen to me. I’m not going to marry Frank. I’m going to run.”

“What?”

“Why?”

“How?”

Under the attack of these small jabs of questions, Freya held firm. “I can’t marry him. I don’t love him. So I’m going to run. Now. And I need your help.”

“Are you sure?”

“Do you really want to—”

“We’re behind you,” Alice’s voice cut in and spoke above the rest. “Well, we won’t be directly behind you, but we support you, Freya. You’re our sister.”

“But how is she going to—”

“We’ll create a diversion,” Phyllis chimed in with a wide grin.

“How?”

“Can we really do it?”

Alice took on the role of the commander. “Audra, as soon as Paulina, the bridesmaid that just walked down the aisle, is in place, you’re going to march quickly after her. When you get to the front of the church, just start singing—”

“What should I sing?”

“Pick anything, but make it long. The rest of us will wait here guarding the doors so no one can follow her.”

Damn it. Someone might follow her. She hadn’t thought of that.

Would Frank come after her? Doubtful. He had professed his love, but did he really love her?

The real her? The way a man could fully love a woman?

Her head was swimming. She needed out. Now.

All of her sisters were behind her, supporting her, and she knew Paulina would understand after the conversations they had had together. It was now or never.

She turned her back to one door—the one leading to a life of marriage with a nice enough man—and she faced another door—the one leading to…anything but that.

And she fled. And she didn’t look back.

All she heard was Audra’s voice singing out a beautiful ballad as she raced out the front door of the church on her way to a future she never expected.