She Grabbed a Stranger to Escape Her Ex — Not knowing He’s a Duke!

Chapter 10

They were married in the spring, in the garden at Fen Ditton, because Clara refused to set foot in a church in a white gown and have the whole of London watch her do it. The Duke of Blackwood married Clara Ashworth in the ruined orchard where the sheep had been, with Lily as the only witness under ten, and Aunt Helena standing in the kitchen doorway crying into her handkerchief.

The roses were in bloom. Clara had planted them herself.

She wore a dress she had made. It was not white. It was the color of old cream, and she had sewn pearls into the hem that she had bought with her own money from the first year’s rent of Fen Ditton, because she had paid off the first two hundred pounds of the debt and intended to pay the rest.

Lily stood beside her in a dress that matched, and Clara had done her hair herself, loose and soft the way the girl liked it, and Lily had said, You look like a painting, and Clara had kissed the top of her head and said, So do you.

The Duke of Blackwood watched his wife walk toward him across the grass of a house she was buying back from him at four percent interest, and he did not think about the gallery. He did not think about the bargain. He thought about the card room, and the dark, and the way she had said say it anyway when he had tried to let her sleep on it.

He thought about the chair in her kitchen that had been empty for four months.

He thought about the rest of his life.

That night, when the last guest had gone and the candles had burned low, Clara sat on the kitchen floor with her wedding dress puddled around her and a glass of wine in her hand, and she let herself feel the shape of what had happened.

She had been ruined. She had been finished. She had been a woman that eleven people in London sent Christmas cards to out of pity. And then she had done something desperate—the most desperate thing she had ever done—and it had saved her.

Not because the Duke of Blackwood had been kind. Kindness could have been withdrawn. Kindness could have been a whim.

Because he had looked at the worst thing in himself and refused to let it win.

And she had done the same.

The kitchen door opened. He came in and sat down on the floor beside her, boots and all, and did not say anything.

“Lily is asleep,” he said after a while.

“Did she say anything?”

“She said that you are the best thing that ever happened to this family. She said I should have married you in November.”

“Children are very wise.”

“They are. They know things that grown men spend years being too afraid to admit.”

He took her hand. Her fingers were flour-dusted from the morning’s bread, and there was ink on her thumb from the letter she had written to Della, and she was wearing a wedding ring that she had bought herself because she had insisted.

“Are you happy?” he asked.

“I am terrified,” she said. “And I am happy. And I think they are the same thing.”

“Good. I am terrified too.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder.

“I have something to tell you,” she said. “I have been keeping it for two months.”

“What is it?”

“The piano.” She felt him go still. “I found it. The dealer in Bath still had it. He had kept it in his storeroom because he could not sell it—it was out of fashion, he said, too old-fashioned for modern drawing rooms. I bought it back. It is in the parlor. I was going to tell you tonight.”

He was quiet for a long moment.

“Clara.”

“I know it is foolish. It is an old piano. It is worth nothing.”

“It is worth everything.”

He kissed her temple.

“Everything.”

They sat on the kitchen floor until the candle burned out, and then they sat in the dark, and the Duke of Blackwood held his wife in the house she had bought back from him penny by penny, and he did not let go.

Outside, the wind moved through the new roses. The orchard was quiet. The glass house was not coming back, but something else was growing in its place.

Clara closed her eyes.

She thought about the card room. The dark. The stranger who had offered her the better half of a terrible bargain.

She thought about the chair that had been empty for four months.

And she thought about the answer she had written at four in the morning, in a house that was not hers, by a candle she did not need.

Yes. And I will tell you the whole of it before Monday.

She had told him the whole of it. And he had stayed.

THE END