The Duke Was Forced to Marry the “Ugliest” Somerset Sister, a Woman Hidden Behind Black Crepe for Ten Years — But When He Removed Her Veil Before the Entire Court, Everyone Finally Learned Why She Had Been Hidden

PART 8

The urge to shrink away, to reach for the phantom barrier of her veil, clawed at her all the same — ten years of habit was not undone in a single evening. But she forced her hands to stay in her lap, kept her chin level with the icy ground, and let Arthur hand her down from the carriage without flinching from the raw Yorkshire air against her bare face.

Her leg screamed with every step, a deep, bone-grinding ache from the cold and the sheer terror of the night, and she leaned into him without pretense as her boot hit the gravel. He didn’t complain. He didn’t offer empty comfort. He simply wrapped his arm around her waist, taking the weight, and walked her up the stone steps and through the heavy oak doors.

The foyer smelled of beeswax and wood smoke. Mrs. Reed stood by the staircase, wrapped in a wool shawl against the draft, and stepped forward to take their coats. Her pale eyes fell immediately on Henrietta’s exposed face.

For ten years, servants had gasped. Dropped trays. Looked abruptly at the floor.

Mrs. Reed did none of it. She studied the ruin of Henrietta’s cheek, then lifted her gaze to meet her mistress’s eye, steady and unblinking.

“I kept the fire stoked in the library, your grace,” she said, her voice perfectly even. “And there’s a hot brick waiting in your chamber.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Reed.” Henrietta’s own voice sounded strange to her — clearer, sharper, unmuffled by layers of silk and crepe.

Arthur dismissed the housekeeper with a nod and steered his wife toward the library — the room where they had forged their strange, pragmatic alliance over ledgers and coal disputes. Tonight it felt entirely different. It felt like a fortress.

He guided her to the leather armchair by the hearth, then crossed to the desk and dropped the rolled deed onto the wood with a heavy thud.

“It is done.”

He unbuttoned the stiff collar of his uniform, shrugging out of the coat like a man finally laying down his arms after a long campaign.

Henrietta watched him from the chair, the raw, tight skin of her face pulling as she swallowed.

“Cumberland will talk. They all will. By tomorrow half of England will be writing letters about the monster you paraded through York.”

“Let them write.” He crossed to the fire, drove the poker into the coals, sent a shower of orange sparks up the dark chimney. “I don’t live in London. I don’t care about their letters. I care about this estate. I care about my land.” He set the poker down, turning to face her fully, his dark eyes locking on hers. “And I care about my wife.”

He crossed the room and crouched beside her chair — the sheer scale of him, a man who had broken horses and commanded battlefields, kneeling on a worn rug, was a strangely disarming sight. He rested his forearms on the armrests, boxing her in gently. She felt no desire whatsoever to escape.

“You’re in pain,” he said, reading her rigid posture.

“My leg.” The admission slipped out easily now — the need to perform invulnerability had evaporated the moment he’d pulled the pins from her bonnet.

“The cold makes it worse.” He reached down, lifted the hem of her velvet skirt just enough to free her booted foot, and rested her bad leg across his thigh. His thumbs pressed into the stiff, cramped muscle of her calf, working with a rough, effective grace. Heat bled through her stocking. The relief was almost unbearable.

“You shouldn’t be doing this,” she said, slumping back, eyes closing. “You’re a duke.”

“I’m a man taking care of what is his.”

They sat like that a long while — nothing but the crackle of burning logs and the steady rhythm of his hands working the pain from her limb. When Henrietta finally opened her eyes, he was watching her, studying the scarred half of her face in the firelight with no pity in his gaze, no morbid curiosity. Only a quiet, fierce possessiveness.

She raised her own hand, brushing her fingertips against the ridges of her cheek. No fabric between her skin and the air.

“I am not going to wear the veil anymore.”

The words left her before she’d fully formed the thought, cementing themselves into fact the moment they hit the air.

Arthur stopped rubbing her leg. He didn’t smile — he rarely did — but the hard, cynical lines around his eyes softened completely.

“No,” he said. “You are not.”

He rose, lifting her leg carefully, setting her foot back on the floor, then leaned down, bracing his hands on the arms of her chair, bringing his face level with hers.

He kissed her.

Not a tentative, frightened brush — a solid, deliberate connection, tasting of freezing rain and the sharp bite of brandy. He kissed her scarred cheek, the twisted corner of her mouth, and finally her lips, and Henrietta kissed him back, her hands steady as they tangled in the damp, dark hair at the nape of his neck.

For the first time since the fire, she did not feel broken.

She was the Duchess of Westford. The architect of this manor. The equal partner of the bear of Yorkshire. And she was, finally, entirely done hiding in the dark.

Outside, the storm had long since burned itself out over the moors — and inside the library, with the fire settling into embers and the deed to their future sitting signed on the desk behind them, neither of them reached for the veil again.

THE END.