“The Duke Is Gay and Impotent,” Her Stepsister Mocked When Clara Was Forced to Marry Him—But His Wedding-Night Confession Revealed Why She Had Really Been Chosen

 PART 3

The meeting didn’t happen that morning after all. Mrs. Gable returned to say his grace had been called away on estate matters, and it would wait until evening.

The day crawled. That evening Clara sat at her vanity in pale silk, brushing her hair with unsteady strokes. The door opened.

Anthony had already shed his coat and cravat. His shirt hung open at the collar, and for the first time since she’d met him, he looked less like a cold duke and more like a man carrying something heavy on his shoulders.

“I’ve thought all day about how to say this,” he admitted, dragging a hand through his hair. “I’ve kept this secret so long, I’ve nearly forgotten how to say it aloud.”

“Then say it plainly,” Clara said. “I’d rather have the plain truth than a comfortable lie.”

He crossed to the door and turned the lock. Clara braced for coldness. Instead, he knelt before her chair and took her hand in both of his.

“The rumors about me. That I’m not a whole man.” His jaw tightened. “I let them spread myself. They served me. Three years ago my father died suddenly — and not from natural causes, I believe, though I’ve never had proof enough to say so aloud until now. I’ve spent every year since watching the man I suspect of it. If society believed I was weak and broken, no one looked too closely at what I was actually doing.”

“And Jane,” Clara said. “I heard you last night. A trust. A guardian.”

Something flickered across his face — surprise, then a kind of tired resolve. “Jane is my father’s daughter. Born years after my own mother died — he never remarried, and never made her public. A widower and a woman he never wed, and a daughter born of it — it would have followed her the whole of her life as a stain, whatever affection he felt for her mother. So he did the only thing he believed would protect her. He set up a trust in her name, funded quietly over years, and named his own brother — Silas — as trustee and guardian. A Hastings had to sign for a Hastings, he used to say, and no solicitor would ever think to ask why one brother watched over another’s private affairs.”

“And Silas has been stealing from it,” Clara said slowly, understanding arriving in pieces.

“For three years. My father discovered it not long before he died. I believe he meant to remove Silas as trustee and finally claim Jane as his own, openly, whatever the scandal. I believe that is why he died before he had the chance to do either.” Anthony’s grip on her hand tightened. “I hid Jane here the moment I understood what Silas was capable of. As a maid, where no guardian’s letter would think to look for her.”

Clara sat with that for a long moment — the shape of it settling, cold and enormous. “There’s one more thing you should know,” she said finally. “The solicitor who brought your marriage proposal to my stepmother’s house. Someone in your family circle put my name forward. Not you.”

Something shifted, quick and careful, across his face. “I didn’t know that. I was told the introduction came through a colleague of my father’s. I never thought to ask further — I was grateful simply to find a bride who would draw no questions.” He paused. “If it truly came from Silas, I don’t yet understand why. But I intend to find out.”

Clara sat very still, turning that over. A man who had stolen from his own niece had also, somehow, steered a stranger’s name into her husband’s path. It did not feel like coincidence. It felt like being chosen by two men for two different reasons, neither of which had asked what she wanted.

“You’ve given me the truth tonight,” she said quietly, drawing her hand back from his, “only because there was no longer any way to hide it from me. You locked a door and married me before I ever had the chance to ask a single question that mattered. I understand why. I even understand that Jane’s life depended on it.” She met his eyes. “But you didn’t trust me with the truth, Anthony. You simply ran out of places to keep it from me.”

He went very still. “You’re right,” he said, after a long moment. “I told myself I was protecting Jane. I never once asked whether it was fair to you.”

“No,” Clara agreed. “You didn’t.”

She rose and crossed to the window, arms wrapped around herself, the candlelight throwing her shadow long across the stone floor. Behind her, she heard him stand, but he didn’t come closer.

“What would you have me do,” he asked quietly, “that would make this right?”

“I don’t know yet,” Clara admitted. “I only know that I have spent eight years being someone’s convenient shadow, and I will not spend the rest of my life as another one — even a kinder one.” She turned to face him. “I don’t hate you for the secret, Anthony. I hate that I was never given the choice to keep it with you, instead of being handed it after the door was already locked.”

He nodded slowly, and there was no argument in it — only a kind of grim, absorbing shame that told her the words had landed exactly where she’d meant them to.

“Then I will give you the choice now,” he said. “Whatever it costs me.”

Clara didn’t answer that night. She let him leave the room without another word between them, and lay awake long after, listening to the rain begin against the windows, wondering what a duke’s version of choice could possibly look like for a woman with nowhere else to go.

She did not yet know he intended to answer that question literally — and that the answer, when it came, would matter more to her than any declaration of love he could have offered instead.