To a duke.
The stylist steps back, admiring her work, and I stare at my reflection.
The flowers are delicate, romantic, woven through an elegant updo that makes me look like someone from a fairytale. The dress is one of Lady Hampton’s from her own wedding, altered to fit me. Simple but stunning. Ivory silk, fitted bodice, flowing skirt.
“You look beautiful,” the stylist says warmly. “The Duke won’t be able to take his eyes off you.”
I smile, and my mind drifts through everything that’s happened since that night Veil proposed.
Joseph’s comeuppance, for one.
It’s not something I asked for or even prayed for, but vengeance is the Lord’s, and well...
A few days after the proposal, Joseph had tried to come back. Tried to manipulate, to make me feel guilty, to convince me I was making a mistake. And Veil, calm and controlled and absolutely lethal, had security escort him off the property.
Joseph tried to threaten legal action. Said he’d go to the media about “the Duke stealing his fiancée.”
Damian Fox, Foxtown’s owner, had smiled. The kind of smile that made Joseph go pale.
“Please do,” Damian had said. “I’m sure the media would love to hear about your employment termination and why.”
Joseph left after that, and I haven’t heard from either him or Glenda since. I’ve forgiven them, of course, but I don’t know if I can ever trust them so easily again, with anything. Right now, I just don’t want to think about them. There are so much lovelier things to focus on, like the letter that I wrote to the duke as my wedding gift.
The day before the wedding, I’d surprised Veil with something I’d been working on for weeks. A love letter, published in the Tatler of all places, addressed to the Duke of Veilcourt. An apology, really. For running away from him on the balcony that night. For letting my fear of being hurt again override everything my heart was telling me.
I’d written it with one of his father’s pens, on Hampton stationery, and when the editor called to say it was their most-read piece in years, I’d wanted to crawl under a rock and never come out.
Because I may have been a little too honest.
Veil, naturally, has memorized the most embarrassing parts.
“But you’ll forgive me anyway, won’t you?” he’d said just this morning, catching me in the hallway with that devastating smirk. “After all, I’m the man who made your heart race like it’s never raced before.”
My own words. In print. In a nationally circulated magazine. Forever.
I’d turned so red I could feel the heat in my ears, and I’d covered my face with both hands because I could not look at him while he quoted my own published love letter back at me, I could not—
He’d pulled my hands down gently, still smirking, and kissed me so deeply I forgot why I was embarrassed in the first place.
He does that a lot now. Quotes the letter at the worst possible moments. During breakfast. In front of his mother. Once in front of Damian Fox, who had choked on his coffee.
I regret nothing.
Well. Maybe the heart-racing line.
But then earlier, while getting coffee in Foxtown’s main house, I’d overheard some guests talking. About a different article. A slyly written piece in some gossip column about how Foxtown’s “consecutive A-list weddings of late all involved brides who’d recently broken up with their exes.”
The implication was clear: Foxtown was where women came to rebound. To make rash decisions. To marry wealthy men on impulse.
I’d felt sick.
What if that’s what people think about me and Veil? What if they think I’m using him? What if the article damages Foxtown’s reputation and it’s my fault because I couldn’t handle Joseph showing up without causing a scene—
“Stop spiraling.”
I look up to find Sarah Fox in the doorway, Damian’s wife. She’s younger than I expected, mid-twenties at most, with a dimpled smile and an energy that fills the room the moment she walks in.
“Lady Hampton texted me,” Sarah explains, plopping down next to me with zero ceremony. “She said you were having a quiet breakdown over coffee and could I please come fix it before your makeup appointment.” She grins. “Her words, not mine.”
