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 6

For three seconds, the only sound in the great hall was the crackle of the fire and the howling of the wind.

Diana stared at the man who had broken her heart, humiliated her in front of London society, and indirectly forced her into the arms of a cold, terrifying duke.

She expected rage. She braced for it the way she had braced on the ballroom floor — waiting for the sharp, agonising twist of old pain.

Instead she felt nothing but a dull, detached annoyance.

They were tracking snow onto her clean floors.

“Viscount Rexford.”

Her voice was flat. It carried easily across the stone room.

Simon’s mouth opened and closed.

Then he looked at her. Truly looked at her.

She was not the desperate, clinging girl from the Langdon ballroom. She stood tall in dark, rich wool, the heavy keys of the estate at her waist, frost still melting on her shoulders from the open door. She looked formidable.

She looked like a duchess.

“Diana.” It came out as a whisper. “Good God. I did not realise. I did not know this was Rothwell’s land.”

“It is,” she said smoothly. “Mrs. Higgins?”

The housekeeper materialised from the shadows. “Yes, your grace.”

“Take the Viscount’s staff to the kitchens and give them hot tea. Prepare the blue guest chambers in the east wing for Lord and Lady Rexford. They will be staying until the storm passes.”

“Yes, your grace.”

Lydia finally looked up, her teeth chattering, her face blotchy with cold.

“Diana? Is that you?” She squinted. “It is freezing in this horrible place. Tell your servants to draw a bath immediately.”

The absolute entitlement of it grated along Diana’s nerves like a nail. She did not let it show.

“The servants will attend to you, Lady Rexford. Follow Mrs. Higgins.”

Lydia scurried after the housekeeper, dragging her maid with her.

Simon did not move. He stood in the centre of the hall, staring at Diana with a mixture of awe and regret.

“You look—” He swallowed. “You look well, Diana.”

“I am well, Lord Rexford. I suggest you go and warm yourself. The east wing is draughty, but it is better than dying on the moors.”

She turned to walk away.

“Diana. Wait.”

He stepped forward, reaching out as if to catch her arm.

He did not make it.

“Touch my wife, Rexford, and you will regret it.”

The voice came from the top of the grand staircase. Low. Lethal. Vibrating with a dark, controlled promise.

Simon jumped back as though he had been burned.

Benedict descended the stairs.

He was not wearing his coat. He wore only a white linen shirt, open at the throat, and dark trousers. He looked massive, predatory, and entirely unbothered by the cold. His grey eyes were locked onto Simon with a stare that promised absolute destruction.

He reached the bottom of the stairs and walked directly to Diana. He did not look at her. He positioned himself slightly in front of her — a physical barrier between her and her past.

“Your grace,” Simon stammered, shrinking back. “Our carriage broke. We were travelling to Edinburgh. I swear to you, I did not know this was your estate.”

“It is,” Benedict said.

The words dropped like stones.

“You are under my roof. You will eat my food. You will sleep in my beds.” A pause. “But if you speak to my wife without her express permission, if you look at her for too long, or if you ever attempt to touch her again — I will have my gamekeeper escort you off my land, and see that you never set foot on it again.”

“Do you understand me?”

Simon nodded frantically, entirely stripped of his Mayfair arrogance.

“Yes. Of course. Forgive me.”

He practically ran down the corridor after his wife and the housekeeper.

Benedict watched him go until he disappeared around the corner.

The tension rolling off his broad shoulders was palpable. He was a tightly coiled spring, ready to snap.

Diana looked at his back. The urge to touch him — to soothe that sudden, violent protective instinct — was overwhelming.

She reached out and placed her hand flat against his back, between his shoulder blades.

The muscle flinched under her palm.

“I was managing him perfectly well, Benedict,” she said softly.

He turned around. His eyes dropped to her face. The lethal anger was still there, but it fractured as he looked at her, revealing something entirely different underneath.

Something desperate.

“I know you were,” he said, his voice dropping to a rough rasp.

“Then why did you intervene?”

He stepped closer. The heat radiating off him cut straight through the chill of the hall. He looked down at her, searching her eyes for any lingering trace of grief — any residual affection for the pathetic man who had just stood dripping in their hall.

He found none.

“Because I do not like him looking at what belongs to me.”

It was not a romantic declaration. It was a territorial claim.

Diana’s breath caught in her throat. The heavy emerald on her left hand suddenly felt very warm.

“I am not a piece of land, Benedict. I am not one of your coal mines.”

“I know that better than anyone,” he said, quieter now. “You have never once asked my leave for anything, and I would not want you to start. But I will not stand in my own hall and watch him look at you as though he still has a claim.”

“You are the only thing in this godforsaken world that I actually want to keep.”

He did not wait for her to respond. He pulled his hand back, turned on his heel, and walked down the corridor towards his study, leaving her standing by the fire with her heart pounding a frantic, entirely new rhythm against her ribs.

The Rexfords stayed for two days.

It was a miserable forty-eight hours. Lydia complained incessantly about the cold, the food, and the lack of proper society — though once, when she thought no one was listening, Diana heard her tell her maid, in a small, tired voice, that she had thought the shipping money would fix something in her marriage, and it hadn’t fixed anything at all. Simon spent the entire time looking like a man marching towards the gallows.

He watched Diana.

That was the unbearable part. He watched her constantly, with a sick, desperate regret. He saw the way the servants deferred to her. He saw the sharp, unquestionable authority she wielded. He saw the way she corrected Mrs. Higgins on the flour order in three sentences, and the way the housekeeper thanked her.

And most agonisingly for him, he saw the way the Duke of Rothwell looked at her.

Benedict did not play the part of a loving husband. He did not need to. He was simply present.

When they sat in the drawing room after dinner, Benedict did not take a chair across the room as was customary for a host. He sat in the chair directly beside Diana’s. He handed her tea without being asked — the way she took it, which Simon had never once bothered to learn. He listened when she spoke, with his whole face, and he answered her as though the answer mattered.

He commanded the space around her, creating an invisible, impenetrable fortress that Simon could not cross.

On the morning of the third day, the roads were cleared enough for the carriage to be repaired.

Diana stood on the front steps in her heavy fur cloak, watching the footmen load the Rexford trunks. The wind off the moors was bitter and clean.

Simon lingered near the door. Lydia was already huddled inside the carriage, complaining about the draught.

“Diana.”

She did not turn immediately.

He glanced nervously at the heavy oak doors behind her, and then stepped out onto the step, lowering his voice.

“I must speak with you. Just for a moment.”

“Make it brief, Lord Rexford. It is freezing.”

He looked down at his boots, then back up at her.

And she saw it — the thing she had been waiting three months to see and no longer needed. He looked older. The charming, easy confidence he had worn like a new coat in London was gone. What was left was the tired reality of a man who had married for a fortune and quickly discovered that it had bought him nothing he actually wanted.

“I made a mistake,” he whispered.

The admission clearly cost him. His hands had begun to fidget.

“I see that now. You are magnificent, Diana. I was a fool.”

He waited. She could feel him waiting.

He expected a reaction. He expected her to soften — to offer a tragic smile, to acknowledge the grand lost love they had shared, to give him the absolution that would let him sleep tonight.

Diana looked at him.

She looked at his weak chin. His nervous hands. His desperate need for validation.

“You did not make a mistake, Simon,” she said.

Her voice was calm. There was no malice in it at all. It was simply the truth, laid out flat.

“You made a choice. You chose comfort. You chose ease.” A pause. “You are exactly where you belong.”

Simon flinched as though she had struck him.

“And I,” Diana said, her eyes drifting up over his shoulder to the heavy stone walls of Felburn rising behind her, “am exactly where I belong.”

She did not wait for his answer. She turned and walked back inside, letting the heavy doors close behind her with a definitive, booming thud.