Chapter Twenty-Eight

Fortunately, in the face of discovering the shocking truth hidden inside himself, Giles maintained his equilibrium. “Why the haste? We were just getting to know one another.”

Lord Munge spoke in a drawl. He had dark lines set deeply on either side of his mouth. “The more we know, the harder we find it to overlook our dislike.”

A heated argument burst out between the duke, the earl, his wife, and the clergyman. They were all speaking at once. Apparently a few details had yet to be ironed out.

Dropping the pretense, Giles addressed Lady Sophie. “How did they talk you into this? Blackmail?”

She and the second woman exchanged a glance. He’d already had his lifetime’s full of such glances the other day when Holbrook and Miss Emery had intruded upon him. Giles made a noise of disapproval but caught himself. He narrowed his eyes, studying the two women more carefully.

And there it was. The truth. It was so obvious, he almost laughed aloud. Because nobody was looking for it, nobody had seen it. Fools. One needed a certain turn of mind. And though he could no longer paint, his mind was sharp as ever, turning and turning in the particular way unique to him.

They caught him staring. He gave them a significant look and darted his eyes between them, raising his brows in question. Lady Sophie scowled and turned away. The second woman paled, eyes as wide as a cornered animal’s about to face her death by a hunter’s hand.

Giles raised his brows in a question to which an answer was not required. Just as well that it wasn’t. The second woman probably wasn’t capable of giving any response but denial. The secrets she kept weren’t anything people readily owned. Indeed, most never acknowledged it, which he’d always thought was a shame.

Now, though, it assumed new significance. It wasn’t simply a shame. It was heartbreaking.

With a few strokes of a clerk’s pen, he and Lady Sophie could be married in a minute’s time. They knew nothing of each other except that they’d shared an instant dislike. If forced to share their lives, they would probably be miserable for the rest of their years. Yet two people who were in love couldn’t think of being married. Ever.

In the face of such rank injustice, his complaints about his arm became nothing more than petty. In the matter of building a better world, however—that’s where he was truly helpless.

There would be no marriage today. He wouldn’t demand to know how Silverlund had secured a special license on their behalf. Another example of the duke abusing his power and influence would only enrage Giles further. The thing to do now was thwart him, and Giles was well practiced in that pursuit.

He addressed the woman next to Lady Sophie. “As a point of interest, you are?”

“Miss Abigail Cartwright, my lord.” She curtsied. “Her ladyship’s companion.”

“By ‘her ladyship,’ you mean Lady Sophie, not her mother?”

Miss Cartwright confirmed with a shallow nod.

Giles drew himself up, affected his most imperious expression, and let his voice boom. “Cease this nonsense.”

Silence settled over the group. Giles’s command was ducal, a point on which he would not dwell. “You have an unwilling groom. An unwilling bride. Tell me how you plan to compel us to the altar.”

Silverlund remained cold and reserved. “You will do as I say.”

“Your hand is weaker than I believed, if that’s your answer.”

Lady Munge stared at Lady Sophie. “My daughter is prepared to do as her father and I ask.”

It was impossible that either the earl or his wife knew their offspring’s secret, else Miss Cartwright would not have been allowed to be present. But they knew enough, or were close enough to discovering, to have blackmailed her here.

Lady Sophie gave Giles the sort of look usually reserved for piles of rotten cabbage. “I will.”

“As will you, Giles.” Silverlund spoke with deadly certainty.

“If you seriously expect me to do as you say, I have a few choice words on my estimate of your mental state.”

“I do indeed expect you to stay, whatever you might care to say. Your choice words have never mattered a whit to me. You’ll do it because it’s high time you learned to become a proper duke.”

Giles sneered. “You don’t care what sort of duke I am. You want nothing more than to control me. That’s all you’ve ever wanted. This isn’t about marrying me to a woman of a good family. For all this trouble you’ve gone through is nothing but a game to exert your power over me.”

“If you insist, then I will compel you. You know I can, because I know you’re eager to protect the identity of a certain old maid lately in your company.”

It came to that, did it?

All eyes in the room turned to him. Lady Munge wore unabashed interest on her face, as if she wouldn’t mind knowing this person’s identity and rather hoped it was somebody she knew.

Without warning, the duke tucked his walking stick under one arm, grabbed Lady Sophie by her gloved hand, the churchman by his frock, and dragged them both toward the altar. At the end of the long walkway, he turned. “Come, Giles. This is your last warning.”

Lady Munge gasped and approached her husband, but he held up a hand and shook his head. Miss Cartwright sent Giles a pleading look.

The churchman, perhaps recalling that underneath the layers he wore rested a pair of bollocks, however shriveled, cleared his throat. “Now, see here, Your Grace—”

Silverlund slid his gaze toward the man and silenced him with one deadly look. “See here. I happen to be a very close personal friend of the archbishop. You’ll do as I say or he will hear about it.” The duke looked back to Giles, his voice echoing in the empty space. “Defy me now and you’ll wish you could break a thousand arms in favor of what I will do to you.”

At the front of the church, in the far left corner, a narrow door opened. Two faces appeared. The group at the altar didn’t notice they now had an audience hiding in the vestry.

But for Giles, all it took was seeing. He drew himself up straight, with all the poise of the unbroken man he used to be. His arm ached. He ignored it.

Lady Munge gasped when Giles began marching slowly down the aisle. The stone beneath his feet was worn concave by centuries of worshippers processing in and out. The air was chilled in the way a dark place had when no warmth penetrated the walls, no matter how high the heat on a long and relentless summer’s day.

Somewhere in the back, Miss Cartwright had started weeping. Though she tried to stifle the sounds with a handkerchief pressed to her mouth, the sniffles broke through the tense atmosphere. Giles vowed that he would make this up to Lady Sophie and Miss Cartwright in a way that only he, the Marquess of Ashcroft, could manage.

The duke straightened. He might even have smiled a bit. Giles cared not. He came close to the group. Lady Sophie had gone pale. The churchman looked deeply uncomfortable, glancing between the bride and the man who would be her father-in-law. He might have been locked in indecision, but by failing to act, he’d picked his side.

So had Giles. There was a woman here who would be his destiny. It wasn’t Lady Sophie. At the front of the church, Giles went left. Shouts broke out. He ignored them and kept walking…straight to her.