“This cannot be the end of it,” Emmeline whispered, though she could already feel that it was.
“It will not be.” A deep, steady voice came from beside them.
Emmeline turned sharply to see the Duke of Ironford standing just behind her shoulder, his expression unreadable save for the hard purpose in his gray eyes. He looked between her and her father and bowed his head slightly, the movement grave.
“My lord. Lady Emmeline. I must apologize.”
Emmeline’s mouth tightened at once. Apology. The word landed too gently for what had happened. He stood there like a man making a formal regret after knocking over a glass of wine, not like the man who had just wrecked her wedding and left her standing on the edge of public humiliation.
Her father answered before she could. “Your Grace, this has been an unfortunate tangle, but?—”
“No,” the Duke said, and the calm force of the interruption made both of them fall silent. “It has been my fault. My men intercepted Lady Emmeline and brought her where she should never have been brought. Because of that delay, this morning has been ruined, and the responsibility for repairing it is mine.”
Emmeline lifted her chin. “And how, precisely, do you propose to repair it?”
Her tone came out sharper than she intended, but she did not regret it. Let him hear the anger. Let him feel some portion of what his competence, his authority, his certainty had cost her.
His gaze settled on her at once, and she was infuriatingly aware of how direct it was, how little he seemed to blink when looking at her.
“I will find Foxdale,” he said. “I will speak to him myself, duke to duke, and I will make the circumstances plain. He will hear that what happened today was a mistake, and he will be given every reason to set this right.”
Her father exhaled with visible relief, as though the mere fact that a man of such rank had spoken with certainty should be enough to pull them all back from the brink.
“That is exceedingly generous of you, Your Grace.”
But there was something too hard in Emmeline’s chest still, something that refused to soften.
“He seemed very decided when he left,” her father added, almost apologetically. “I fear he took the matter rather personally.”
“I daresay he did,” the Duke said coolly. “Even so, it is my duty to try.”
The word struck Emmeline strangely. She knew that brand of duty; it was the arrogance of a man who believed he could rearrange the world to fit his conscience.
“And if he refuses?” she asked.
Her father turned slightly at the question, perhaps hoping she would not speak so plainly, but Emmeline could not stop now. She needed him to answer without hiding behind confidence and polished assurances.
“If he will not listen, what then? What happens to me?”
Something in the Duke’s face shifted. His heavy, stormy gaze pinned her in place until the chapel and the gravel and her own father dissolved into a blur.
There was only the sudden, sharp scent of his cedarwood cologne and the way the air between them seemed to vibrate, pulled taut by the gravity of his stare. It was a look that stripped away her defenses, leaving her raw and visible.
“Then I will marry you myself.”
Her breath caught.
Emmeline felt a hot shiver run down her spine. Her pulse leaped. Her fingers tightened in the folds of her gown.
For one moment, she simply stared at him, lost not in the offer itself, which ought to have horrified her, but in the way he said it. As though he had already decided he would do it if it came to that, and the world would have no choice but to move accordingly.
She did not know him beyond the hard cut of his voice, and yet the thought tore through her: if such a man touched her as though she belonged beneath his hand, he would not feel distant. He would not feel like a marriage of convenience, politely arranged at a gentleman’s convenience.
He would feel overwhelming.
The thought flashed through her so quickly, so vividly, that she nearly hated herself for it.
“My God,” her father breathed, all but sagging with relief. “Your Grace…”
