“Take Off the Wedding Dress,” the Duke Said Coldly. “This Marriage Is Just Revenge.” — But When His Fingers Touched Clara’s Bare Skin, His Carefully Planned Vengeance Became a Prison Neither of Them Could Escape.

PART 10

London in April was a different world.

The trees along the Mall were budding pale green, the flower girls at Covent Garden were doing brisk business, and the ton had returned from their country estates with appetites sharpened for fresh gossip. The Duke of Westford and his bride had been absent from society for nearly five months — an eternity in a world that fed on spectacle.

The carriage stopped before the Westford townhouse. Clara looked up at the familiar gray facade. It had been a prison when she left it. Now it was just a house.

Arthur stepped out first, turning to offer her his hand. She took it, descending onto the pavement with the easy grace of a woman who had not been ill, who had not been broken, who had not spent her wedding night unfastening her own dress in front of a stranger.

Barnaby bounded out behind her, nearly tripping the footman.

“Your beast has grown,” Arthur observed dryly.

“Your boots have grown more interesting to him,” Clara replied. “He has developed a particular fondness for the left one.”

The front door opened. Higgins stood there, his face breaking into a smile that he quickly suppressed in the name of professional dignity.

“Welcome home, Your Grace. Your Grace.”

“Thank you, Higgins.” Clara stepped inside. The house still smelled the same — beeswax, old wood, lavender. But something had changed. The shadows in the corners seemed less menacing. The silence no longer felt like a held breath.

“Shall I have tea brought to the morning room?” Higgins asked.

“Please.”

Clara walked through the house, her hand trailing along the banister. She paused at the study door. The room where Lord Henry had died. The room where Arthur had confessed his regret.

She pushed the door open.

The fire was unlit. The room was cold and still. But it no longer felt like a mausoleum. It felt like a room.

Arthur appeared behind her. He did not say anything. He simply stood there, his presence warm and solid at her back.

“I used to think this house would always feel like a cage,” Clara said quietly.

“And now?”

She turned to face him. “Now I think a cage is only a cage if you are trying to leave.”

Arthur reached out, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. His fingers lingered on her cheek.

“The season begins in three days. There will be a dozen balls, two dozen dinner parties, and at least three opera performances where every lorgnette in the audience will be aimed at us.”

“I know.”

“Lady Harrington has already sent a note expressing her eagerness to see us.”

Clara smiled. “I am sure she has.”

Arthur’s hand slid down to rest on her waist. “Are you ready for this, Clara? Once we step into that ballroom, the performance begins again. The lies. The masks.”

“Who said anything about lies?”

Clara reached up, straightening his cravat with practiced ease.

“I did not lie at the Harrington Ball, Arthur. I told them I had chosen you. I told them I was perfectly content. I told them you were a passionate man who could not wait to have me.”

She smoothed the fabric of his lapels.

“It was not a lie then. It is not a lie now.”

Arthur’s eyes darkened. He pulled her closer, his mouth hovering near hers.

“You are a dangerous woman, Duchess.”

“You are just realizing this?”

He kissed her. It was slow and deep, entirely inappropriate for the middle of the afternoon with the door open and the servants moving about the house. Clara did not pull away.

Barnaby let out a sharp bark of approval.

The Westford townhouse came alive that spring.

The first ball of the season was at Devonshire House. Clara wore a gown of pale gold silk that caught the candlelight like liquid sunlight. She had chosen it herself, paid for it herself, and when she descended the staircase, Arthur had stood at the bottom, utterly speechless.

“You are staring,” she had said.

“I am memorizing,” he had replied.

The carriage ride to Devonshire House was short. The ballroom was overflowing. When they were announced — His Grace, the Duke of Westford, and Her Grace, the Duchess of Westford — the room fell into a hush that was quickly filled with furious whispering.

Arthur offered his arm. Clara took it.

“Shall we, my love?”

“Let us give them something to talk about.”

They moved through the crowd like a matched pair, impossible to separate. Arthur’s hand never left the small of her back. Clara’s smile never wavered. They danced every dance together. They laughed at each other’s whispered jokes. They looked at each other with a heat so genuine that even the most cynical dowagers were forced to look away.

Lady Harrington cornered Clara near the champagne table.

“Your Grace. You look positively radiant. The country air seems to have agreed with you.”

“Enormously,” Clara agreed. “I highly recommend a winter in Somerset. The isolation is bracing.”

Lady Harrington’s eyes narrowed, searching for the lie. She found none.

“Your father has been notably absent this season,” the older woman ventured.

“I would not know.” Clara took a sip of champagne. “I have not seen him.”

The words were simple. They were also final. Lady Harrington, for all her sharp angles, understood. She nodded once and retreated.

Arthur appeared at Clara’s side, a glass of scotch in his hand.

“What did the old harpy want?”

“Confirmation that I am happy.”

“Are you?”

Clara turned to face him. The chandeliers blazed overhead. The music swelled. The entire ton was watching, waiting for the scandal to crack open.

She set down her champagne glass. She reached up, cupping Arthur’s face in her hands.

“I spent my entire life being traded by angry, desperate men,” she said softly. “I was a commodity. A debt. A weapon. I never once imagined I could be anything else.”

She rose on her toes and kissed him, right there in the middle of the ballroom, in front of three hundred gasping aristocrats.

“Until you.”

THE END