After Watching the Man Who Promised Her Forever Place a Sapphire on Another Woman’s Finger, Diana Asked the Lonely Duke for One Dance to Make Her Ex Jealous—But Before the Music Ended, He Whispered, “Marry Me.”

 PART 4

For three full seconds Diana simply stared at the rough texture of his cravat.

Around them the ballroom had begun to hum again, the applause dissolving into a low, frantic buzzing as two hundred people realised the Duke and the disgraced spinster were still locked together in the middle of the floor.

“Marry me,” Benedict repeated. He had not blinked.

“You are mad.”

“I am remarkably sane.” His voice kept that low, even cadence, as though he were reading out a clause. “I require a duchess. My estate in Northumberland is vast, isolating, and severely lacking a mistress. I despise London. I despise the women it produces. They are trained to expect poetry, grand declarations, and constant exhausting attention.”

His thumb pressed slightly into the silk at her waist — a grounded, anchoring touch.

“I have neither the time nor the inclination for any of it.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know you are standing in the wreckage of your own life, refusing to burn.” He said it plainly. “You have a spine. You understand that the world is a transaction.”

He held her gaze.

“I will give you a title, an income, and the satisfaction of grinding Viscount Rexford’s pride into dust. In exchange, you will run my household. You will not expect me to court you. And eventually, you will provide an heir.”

It was a contract delivered in the middle of a crowded dance floor.

“If you walk away now,” he added, “you go home a pariah. Tomorrow the morning calls will be full of false sympathy. Your mother will weep. Your father will look at you with that heavy, silent disappointment of his.”

Diana’s chest rose and fell quickly.

He was right. She could see the whole of it, laid out like a map. Her mother weeping into a handkerchief she would then fold and reuse. Her father retreating to his study with his antiquities. A country cousin in Bath. Muted colours for the rest of her life, and someone else’s children on her lap.

Or she could be a duchess.

Bound to a cold, ruthless man she did not know — a man who had just told her, out loud, in the middle of a ballroom, that he would never love her.

Who would respect her.

Who would arm her.

“Diana.”

The voice came from behind them, and it was a familiar smooth baritone, entirely stripped of its usual confidence.

Benedict did not release her. He merely shifted his stance, turning them both slightly so they faced the intruder as a single front.

Simon stood there. His face was flushed. His eyes darted between Diana’s rigid posture and the Duke’s hand resting intimately at her waist. Behind him, hovering near a marble pillar, Lydia Montrose looked like a frightened bird.

“Rexford.” Benedict said the name the way a man says something he has found on the sole of his shoe. “Are you lost?”

Simon ignored him. He fixed on Diana, and Diana watched him reach for it — the look of gentle patronisation, practised over three years, the soft concerned tilt of the head.

“Diana. What is the meaning of this? You are making a spectacle of yourself.” A pause, and then, softly, as though it were a kindness: “Let me escort you to your carriage. Penelope is looking for you.”

Something coppery flooded the back of Diana’s throat.

He had humiliated her. He had discarded her without a word, an hour ago, in front of the entire ton. And now he was standing here offering to manage her exit, so that his evening would not carry a stain.

“Miss Waverly is not leaving,” Benedict said. His voice dropped an octave. “She is currently engaged in conversation with me. You are interrupting.”

“Your grace, with respect.” Simon’s hands had come up, placating. “Miss Waverly and I are old friends. She is clearly distressed, and I am simply trying to protect her reputation.”

“Her reputation.”

Benedict repeated it softly. It was a dangerous sound.

“You abandoned her for a shipping interest less than two hours ago.” A beat. “Rexford, do not dress your cowardice as chivalry. It is insulting to my intelligence.”

He paused.

“And it is entirely insulting to my future wife.”

The word dropped between them like an anvil.

Simon physically recoiled. His eyes widened, and the blood drained out of his face, leaving the skin a sickly, mottled grey.

“Your what?”

“Wife,” Diana said.

The word clawed its way out of her throat before she could second-guess it.

She looked at him. The man she had thought she loved. Three seasons of saved dances and patient promises. He looked small. Stripped of his charming smile and his easy laugh, he was just a desperate man in a tight waistcoat, terrified of scandal.

“I have accepted the Duke’s proposal,” she said.

Her voice was remarkably steady. It rang out clear and sharp, carrying to the nearest row of onlookers.

“We are to be married.”

Simon’s mouth opened. No sound came out.

He looked at Diana. Then at the towering, immovable bulk of the man beside her. And then — she watched it happen, the exact moment the arithmetic completed itself behind his eyes — he understood that he was entirely outmatched.

He took a stumbling step backward, muttered something incoherent, and practically fled back towards the safety of his wealthy, trembling fiancée.

Diana watched him go.

The satisfaction she had expected did not come. What she felt instead was hollow and echoing and strange, like a room after the furniture has been carried out.

The game was over.

She had won, and to win it she had just agreed to build a life with a stranger.

Benedict looked down at her. He offered his arm.

“Let us leave, Miss Waverly. We have settlements to draft.”

She placed her hand on his sleeve. They walked towards the exit through a sea of aristocrats who parted in stunned, absolute silence.

The Waverly townhouse on Chester Street smelled of boiled cabbage and old wax.

It was respectable. It was aggressively modest. The rugs were worn thin by the doorways, and the upholstery in the parlour had been skilfully patched by Diana’s mother more than once.

At ten the following morning, Benedict, Duke of Rothwell, sat in the centre of that cramped room and looked absurd — a wolf forced into a birdcage. Across from him, Mr. Finch the solicitor had ink-stained fingers and the expression of a man terrified to breathe too loudly.

Diana sat on the edge of the sofa, hands folded, in a plain navy day dress with her hair pulled back severely. She had not slept. Every time she closed her eyes she saw Simon’s face, followed immediately by the flat grey stare of the man across from her.

Her mother was pacing the hallway, oscillating between ecstatic triumph and sheer terror. Her father, a quiet man who had spent his life studying antiquities, had signed the necessary papers, shaken the Duke’s hand, and retreated to his study.

“The settlements are exceptionally generous, your grace,” Mr. Finch mumbled, adjusting his spectacles. “An allowance of three thousand pounds per annum for the duchess’s personal use. The dower house in Kent, fully staffed, should heaven forbid she be widowed. And the immediate clearance of Mr. Waverly’s outstanding debts.”

Diana’s head came up.

She had not known about her father’s debts. Nobody had told her.

Benedict leaned back in the fragile armchair. It groaned under his weight.

“Are the terms acceptable to you, Miss Waverly?”

He was not asking the solicitor. He was asking her.

“They are beyond acceptable, your grace.” Her voice was careful. “They are entirely disproportionate to what I bring to this arrangement.”

“You bring exactly what I require. Sanity. Competence. A complete lack of hysterics.”

He stood. The room instantly felt smaller.

“Mr. Finch, leave the documents. We will sign them now. I have procured a special license from the archbishop this morning.”

Diana’s head snapped up. “A special license?”

“We are marrying today.”

“Today.”

“Is there a reason to wait?” His gaze pinned her to the sofa. “Do you require time to order a white lace gown? Do you wish to parade down the aisle of St. George’s while the ton watches and whispers about whether you are mourning Rexford?”

The blunt cruelty of it stung. She could not deny the truth of it either. A prolonged engagement would be a nightmare of gossip — she would be a spectacle for six weeks instead of one night.

“No,” she said quietly. “Today is fine.”

“Good. Pack whatever you need. We leave for Felburn immediately after the ceremony. It is a four-day journey north.”

Two hours later, Diana stood in a freezing, empty chapel in Mayfair.

There were no flowers. There was no choir. The only witnesses were a shivering clerk and her bewildered parents. She wore a heavy grey travelling gown, practical and entirely devoid of joy. Benedict stood beside her in a dark wool coat, staring straight ahead at the altar.

When the vicar asked for the rings, Benedict produced a heavy gold band set with a square-cut emerald. It was ancient. It was cold as he slid it onto her finger.

“With this ring, I thee wed.”

His voice was a low mechanical rumble. He did not look at her when he said it.

When it was over, there was no kiss. The vicar looked uncomfortable, clearly expecting some show of affection. Benedict merely turned on his heel, signed the register — Benedict Ashcombe, Duke of Rothwell — with sharp, aggressive strokes, and waited by the heavy oak doors.

Diana embraced her mother, who was crying tears of relief and anxiety in equal measure.

“You are a duchess, Diana,” Martha Waverly whispered fiercely into her ear. “Do not let him frighten you. You are his equal now.”

Diana looked past her mother’s shoulder at her new husband, standing at the window, staring out at the grey London sky with the expression of a man waiting for a train.

She did not feel like his equal.

She felt like property that had just been successfully transferred from one ledger to another.

“I will write to you, Mother.”

She walked down the short aisle, the heavy fabric of her skirt brushing the stone. Benedict opened the door for her and the cold wind bit into her cheeks immediately. A massive black travelling carriage with the Rothwell crest waited at the kerb, drawn by four restless grey horses.

He handed her up into the dark interior.

As she settled onto the velvet squabs, the reality of what she had done settled over her like a suffocating shroud.