She Ran From Her Unfaithful Fiancé Into a Dark Room—Unaware England’s Most Feared Duke Was Inside, Waiting in the Shadows.

Chapter 3

She opened her mouth, though she had not the faintest notion what she meant to say—

But the Duke of Jarnis had already stepped forward.

Not quickly. There was nothing hurried about him. He moved in the unhurried way of a man who had never once in his life needed to explain himself to anyone, and Pride felt the whole room take its breath at the sheer size of the presence he turned on them — the cold, commanding, untouchable man the whisperers had warned her about.

“Ah. Lady Bracewell. And the usual assortment of alarm.” His voice was calm, almost bored, and it cut through the hush like a blade through water. “You are just in time. You may be the first to wish us joy.”

Joy. The word hung in the air. For a full three seconds, nobody in the corridor so much as breathed.

Then the Duke went on, in the tone of a man making a pleasant announcement at his own table.

“Miss Ambrose has done me the very great honor of consenting to be my wife. We stepped in here to settle the matter privately, away from the crush. Mr. Renwick — an old friend of the house — was kind enough to be the first to congratulate us. Were you not, Renwick?”

Renwick — the man whose name Pride had never been told the Duke knew, the man whose smooth face had been working since the door opened — made a sound that might have been yes or might have been a man choking.

“There it is,” said the Duke pleasantly. “All quite settled. The Duke of Jarnis is to be married. You may tell whomever you like. I find I am too happy to keep it a secret a moment longer.”

The word happy, spoken in that flat, unhurried voice, did something extraordinary to the room. Lady Bracewell’s mouth opened and closed. Her niece appeared in the doorway behind her, round-eyed. A low, delighted hum began to spread along the corridor as the news traveled outward, person to person, candle to candle, like fire through dry grass.

Pride stood frozen in the firelight, her breath shallow, watching her own life be rewritten by a man she had known for perhaps eleven minutes.

It was exactly what she had wanted. It was the opposite of what she had wanted. She could not hold both thoughts at once, so she held neither, and simply stood there while the storm of it broke around her.

Lady Bracewell recovered first. A lady who has been handed the most delicious news of the season does not linger on questions of how; she curtsied, beamed, and was gone down the corridor within seconds, and the other guests streamed after her like water finding a channel, until the doorway stood empty and the sound of the house party’s collective gasp faded to a distant roar.

Renwick lingered. Pride saw him in the doorway, his smooth face working, and she thought for one wild moment that he might speak.

The Duke looked at him.

Renwick left.

The door swung shut.

And Pride Ambrose was alone with the man to whom she was now, in the eyes of England, engaged to be married.

The fire popped. The room seemed to expand to hold the silence.

She turned on him.

“You have lost your senses,” she said. Her voice shook. “Lady Bracewell is the greatest gossip in three counties. By breakfast half the north will know — by dinner, the whole of it. Do you understand what you have done? You have tied yourself to a woman you met eleven minutes ago. You have thrown yourself away — for me, to spare me a scandal that was not even my fault.” She was trembling now, with anger or something far worse. “And it cannot be undone. And I will not let you. I will not be the ruin of you, after you have gone and made yourself my savior. It is the most gallant and the most idiotic thing I have ever seen anyone do, and I will not permit it.”

For a long moment, the Duke of Jarnis simply looked at her.

Then the corner of his mouth lifted.

“Miss Ambrose,” he said, and there was that dry amusement in his voice again, warmer now, “I have been the Duke of Jarnis for two-and-twenty years, and in all that time I do not believe a single person has ever told me what I will and will not permit. I find it — refreshing. Do go on.”

“Do not laugh at me! This is my life you have spent!”

“I am not laughing at you.”

Something in his voice changed. The amusement drained out of it, and what was left was quiet and careful, and Pride felt her anger falter against it like a flame in a sudden wind.

“Sit down, Miss Ambrose.” He gestured to the chair across from his. “There, by the fire. Let me tell you what I have done and why. And then you may rage at me as long as you like — but at least you will be raging at the truth of it, and not at what you imagine.”

She did not sit. She stood where she was, arms crossed, chin up, refusing to be managed.

He waited.

And Pride, who had spent the whole of her life refusing to be managed, sat down anyway — because the man was waiting, and something in the way he waited told her he would stand there all night if she did not.

“First,” said the Duke of Jarnis, settling back into the great wing chair, the last red light of the fire carving the strong, scarred, forbidding planes of his face, “I have not thrown myself away. That is your fear, and it is a generous one — and it is wrong.”