How to Catch a Duke in Ten Days by Violet Hamers
Chapter Nineteen
Antony’s first knock on Lady Hermione’s door wasn’t answered though he could hear someone maneuvering about inside.
“Lady Hermione?” he called to her, letting her know it was him. This time, the door handle moved. As the door was pulled open, the face of Lady Hermione was revealed in the moonlight that shone through her chamber windows. She had stopped crying, though her face was still red, blotchy, and tear stained. He ached to see she had been crying so. Part of him wanted to lift his hands to her cheeks and wipe those tears away, but he couldn’t. Not now.
“Your Grace, I think it best you are not here,” she said tightly, looking down at the floor and the door threshold between them.
She is no longer calling me Antony. It cut surprisingly deep, not that he could be surprised by it.
“I need to speak to you. Now,” he said, gesturing for her to let him in. She didn’t look comfortable at the idea, but nevertheless, she let him in. She retreated from the door and crossed the room, stopping by the window at the far side of the chamber, so she was lit completely by the moon. The silvery light made her hair so pale, it almost looked white, and her dress shimmered. She was ethereal.
He closed the door behind himself and took a few uncertain steps into the room as he built up the courage to speak. He had made his decision on what to do, but it would not be easy to accomplish this, especially to say it and bear the pain on her face that he would no doubt cause.
He thought of all sorts of convoluted and complicated ways to say it, but in the end, he went for the simplest option. “I will marry you.” His words startled her so much that she leaned on the window behind her, placing her hands there as if to use it to keep her standing.
“You will? Why?” she asked.
“Because I have wrecked your reputation now–”
“That is not the reason.” Though her voice was quiet, the words were spoken with so much strength that she cut across him. He fell quiet for a second and placed his hands on his hips, feeling the discomfort between them radiate. It was so different to the thrill and the heat they had shared in the library. “A few minutes ago, you were prepared to throw my reputation as good as over the clifftops that are beyond this house, just to keep your vow not to marry. Why have you changed your mind?”
“It is difficult to explain. Complicated,” he said, looking away from her. He couldn’t keep looking at her. If he did, he was likely to get caught up in his desire for her again and pull her down to the bed that wasn’t far from them.
“I may not be the brightest individual, but neither am I devoid of intelligence. I am sure I could understand the reason,” she said tartly. Her spirit tempted him to smile, but he clamped down on it, thankful he was turned away so that she would not see any trace of the smile.
“This will be a marriage of convenience, Lady Hermione.” As he said the words, he found strength with them and turned back to look at her. He straightened his spine and kept his expression stern, keen for her to see his conviction.
“Convenience? Why?” she asked, stepping away from the window. “What just happened hardly seemed convenient to me. In fact, ever since you and I met, there has been something between us. Why can’t our marriage be about that?” He kept his face as stern as possible.
“Because it cannot,” he said, his voice so sharp that she reeled away from him, backing up toward the window. “This will be a marriage of convenience to avoid any damage to your name and your family’s; it will be nothing more. You will expect no kind of devotion from me as I will expect none from you.”
It hurt to say the words. He could all too easily think of the way Lady Hermione had looked up at him as he pleasured her, enraptured with him. He wished to take her to the bed beside him, pleasure her again until she looked at him with adoration. Maybe this time he would please her with his tongue instead, until she was mad for him. That can never be.
“No devotion?” she asked, her eyebrows shooting high. “You wish to ignore everything that has happened between us up to this point? Forget it ever happened–”
“That is exactly what I wish to do.”
“But… why?” she asked, stepping away from the window again. As she walked toward him, he moved away, fearful that if she touched him, he would capitulate to her. “You just said in the library that you had feelings for me, that you were falling–”
“Pray, do not repeat what I said.” He turned his back on her as though he could turn his back on the entire situation.
“Why? Tell me why?” she said insistently, walking round him until he was forced to look her in the eye. “Why must we forget it all?”
“Because I vowed never to marry for two reasons.” The explanation came from him surprisingly easily. Perhaps it was the port making his tongue looser or a desire to make her stop looking at him with such hope; either way, the explanation came. “One, so that my brother would someday be Duke instead. Two, because I fell in love and was to marry once before. That ended so cataclysmically that I know what love is worth in this world.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that love is worth nothing!” he said so strongly that she took a step back from him. “It is merely an idea, an illusion, limerence that we all get caught up in. We run around like drunken fools when we think we’re in love, yet the headache the next day is heartache instead. It lasts longer, and it leaves scars too. I will not have another scar placed on my heart. Not for anyone.”
For a second, silence followed his words. He could see there were tears in Lady Hermione’s eyes again. She was blinking, evidently trying to stop them from falling. Part of him wanted to envelop her in his arms and promise her that he would care for her. He already did care for her after all, but it was better to do this now, rather than suffer such tragedy again in the future.
“Caring for someone only brings heartache, Hermione,” he said, losing her title for the first time. “So, I will not let myself do that with you.”
“It seems my heart has not learned the same lesson, because it is aching now,” she said, not lifting her eyes to him but levelling them somewhere in his chest instead.
“That is why this,” he gestured between the two of them, “will be a marriage of convenience only. No care, no love, no…” he motioned toward the bed, struggling for the word to describe what they had shared in the library.
“Passion?” she offered. It didn’t feel a good enough word to his mind. Yes, there had been passion there, but the intensity of it had been different to something that could so simply be described.
“However you wish to describe it, it will not happen again.” He figured if he could restrain himself from Hermione forever more, then perhaps he could still hold true to his promise to Fergus. Without children, Fergus could still someday be Duke. “We will marry, but it will be a marriage in name, and that is all.”
He stepped away from her, seeing the tears that were spilling out of her eyes now. “Good night, Lady Hermione,” he said, finding her title once more. His voice broke slightly as he bid her goodbye; it was no longer filled with the harshness that had been there before, just a sadness. It was him fighting his temptation to apologize and wrap her up in his arms.
“Good night… Your Grace.” She used the formal address and stared down at the floor. Hearing the address made a pain bloom in his chest as he left the room.
This is for the best. He assured himself as he walked down the corridor, though nothing about it felt good at all.
* * *
Hermione felt numb. She was sat in the drawing room at a small table, surrounded by the preparations for the wedding that were scrawled out on parchment. On one side of her was the Dowager Duchess and on the other was Rufus and Cordelia.
Every so often, beyond the window to the garden, she caught a glimpse of Officer Stenham and Phoebe together, wandering the garden with a maid in tow as a chaperone. Phoebe looked incredibly happy, and Hermione tried to take comfort in that.
At the end of the day, this is all for Phoebe. Is not the marriage a good thing? Yet, Hermione found she could not be happy. Her sadness was emphasized by Antony’s absence. He had left the house early that morning and hadn’t been seen since.
“I think we should scale back a little,” the Duchess said as she ticked off a list. “We do not wish to spend too much money.” Hermione said nothing; she still felt numb as the Duchess passed her a piece of parchment.
“Is that necessary?” Cordelia asked, her voice so strained that Hermione looked up to her, startled by the sound of it. She barely sounded like her aunt at all. “Do we not wish it to be a celebration?”
“I agree with Her Grace,” Hermione said simply. It hardly felt like a celebration to her. “Scaled back celebrations will be for the best.”
“Oh good, I am glad you agree, dear,” the Duchess said, tapping the back of her hand. Hermione tried to take comfort in the action. The woman was kind, sweet, and about to be her mother-in-law, yet all Hermione could feel was guilt, for the Duchess was as tricked as Antony was. “I do so hate needless expenses.”
“Really?” Rufus looked shocked to say the least. Hermione wriggled in her seat, trying to turn away from her father’s purpling face. She knew as soon as the marriage was done, he would be asking the Duke for a loan to pay off his debts, but with the Dowager Duchess holding the purse strings, clearly it would not be as easy a task as he first thought.
“Oh, yes,” the Duchess said with a nod. “Now, Hermione, what do you think? Roses or lilies for the wedding?”
Hermione smiled softly at how the Duchess had lost the title of ‘Lady Hermione’, clearly intending to welcome her into the family, yet her smile vanished the next moment as the emotion was replaced by guilt.
“Oh, roses, surely,” Cordelia answered for her. “Lilies are so often a funeral flower. We wish this to be a happy occasion!”
You are one of the few people who think it a happy occasion, Hermione thought to herself as she turned her eyes out of the front window, hoping to see Antony return with his carriage at any moment, yet he did not.
“About the money, Your Grace,” Rufus said, leaning forward across the table. He moved so close to Hermione that she moved her hand across the surface, preparing to pinch him through his sleeve to make him be quiet. “Is it really necessary to be so tight with the money? After all, I wish my eldest daughter to have the perfect wedding day.” He affected a sweet smile, the kind that Hermione hadn’t seen for a long time, and patted her hand, purporting to some kind of affection. She would have recoiled from it if she could have done it without drawing attention to herself.
“Well, you can contribute to the expenses for the wedding if you want things to be more extravagant, I am sure, Lord Branigan,” the Duchess said with ease. “I simply wish to make sure that the expense is not too much from our side.”
Hermione turned her eyes to her father, seeing his nose reddening with each second.
“But I–” Before he could say anymore, Hermione pinched him through his sleeve, glad that the Duchess was looking down so much at her notes, and she hadn’t noticed. Rufus merely shot her a dark glare in return, angered to have been quieted so.
“I hope we are not putting you to too much trouble, Your Grace,” Hermione interjected before her father could speak again. She may not have been able to stop her father’s plan from being enacted because of her own weakness to Antony’s power over her, but she could do all she could to protect his money from her father’s clutches. She would rebuff any attempt Rufus made in that direction.
“No, of course not,” the Duchess said, looking up with such a smile that it lit up her features completely. Hermione was greatly touched to see the change in her countenance. “Every cloud has a golden lining as they say. I am just so excited to see my son is getting married at last and to someone as lovely as you.” The guilt radiated inside of Hermione.
“Silver lining. The phrase is silver lining,” Rufus said, a little more tartly than she would have preferred. She stepped on her father’s foot under the table, earning another sharp glare.
“Is it silver? How odd, they always look golden to me,” the Duchess giggled at herself.
“They do to me too,” Hermione said, overwhelming pleased when the Duchess smiled at her, clearly warmed by her agreement.
“Perhaps we should discuss the date?” Cordelia said with excitement as she clapped her hands together, rather like a child would when promised they could visit a confectioners’ shop.
“Oh, yes,” the Duchess said, sitting straight in her chair once more. “I have sent a messenger off this morning to speak to the local vicar about obtaining a special license.”
“A special license?” Hermione felt her mouth go dry with surprise. Such things allowed marriages to happen very fast indeed.
“Yes, we shall see what comes of it later,” the Duchess smiled.
“If all goes well with that, perhaps we could put in a date of a week from today?” Cordelia asked.
“One week?” Hermione said, nearly falling out of her chair in surprise. She had one week until she married Antony, one week until she had to vow herself to a man who had vowed never to love her for their entire lives together. Can I do that?
