Ambrosia stood in the doorway after they had gone, hearing Mr. Carrington escort them to the front. She had a home now. Funds. Neighbors who seemed inclined toward friendship. It was a future she might even have been able to imagine herself content in.
If only Dash Beckman had not come along to ruin it all for her.
Or… perhaps worse—if only he hadn’t made her believe, for one stolen night, that she could have something more.
PROSSER HEIGHTS, MARGATE.
It was scarcely nine o’clock, yet the Earl of Beresford’s study at Prosser Heights already felt oppressively warm. Outside, the sun blazed uncommonly bright for England, pouring through tall windows and setting the dust motes aglow. Inside, the air hung heavy with the mother of the bride’s perfume, clinging stubbornly and making each breath thick.
Dash tugged at his cravat. Edwards had tied it far too tight this morning—so tight it made it difficult to breathe. He would have a word with his valet later. Just because a man was marrying, didn’t mean he required a noose about his neck.
A floorboard gave a faint creak as the Reverend Alistair Compton shifted his weight. Slight and balding, with spectacles perched low on the bridge of his nose, the vicar wore the air of a man determined to get through an unpleasant duty as efficiently as possible.
“Are we ready, then?” he asked.
Dash stepped forward, the motion stiff, and turned toward his fiancée.
“Lady Hannah?”
She hesitated. Not for long—just enough to make Dash wonder if it was habitual, or if such reluctance was reserved for this day alone.
He could hardly blame her if it was the latter.
But then her head inclined in a single, graceful nod.
“Very good. Yes, very good,” the vicar said, his brightness forced. “Shall we begin, then? Your Grace, if you would stand here, and the bride…” He faltered, but was saved when Lady Hannah’s companion pushed the bride’s wheelchair forward.
“Very good… very good…” the vicar repeated.
When he opened his prayer book, a different kind of quiet settled even more heavily around them.
As the prayer commenced, Dash studied the girl at his side. There was a fragile sharpness to her frame, as though even the air might bruise her. Color rose and faded in her cheeks with each shallow breath, while shadows hollowed the delicate skin beneath her wide blue eyes.
Her high-necked muslin gown, ill-suited to the warmth of the day, could not disguise the cruel frailty of illness, nor the spare lines of her body. Still, her posture was impeccable—back straight, chin lifted—as though discipline alone held her upright. Only her hands betrayed her: trembling ceaselessly atop the pale blue lap blanket.
For a moment, Dash wondered where all the air in the room had gone. His cravat again—damn it. He was practically choking.
No.
It wasn’t the cravat.
It was her—not Lady Hannah.
Ambrosia.
The memory of her voice threaded through his mind, unbidden.
“I have not known love, Dash… Just for tonight, won’t you…” An invisible vise squeezed his chest. “Love me?”
He’d broken the promise to himself, but he couldn’t bring himself to fully regret it.
“I will never hate you.”
He had wanted to believe her. Needed to.
And yet, since leaving her, that voice haunted him, even now, on the one day he ought to be fully present.
“Do you, Dashwood Cochran Étienne Philippe Jean-Baptiste Louis Beckman, the Duke of Dasborough, take Lady Hannah Marie Wrottesley to be your lawfully wedded wife?” The vicar’s voice should have chased his memories away.
