“Papa.” Mary turned to her father. “Stop.”
Lord Langham blinked at her as though he didn’t quite recognize her.
Mary faced the Duke. Her heart hammered beneath the seed pearls of a wedding gown she had already worn for one failed ceremony this morning. “You cannot be serious.”
“I am always serious.”
“We do not know each other.”
“Irrelevant.”
“We have done nothing but argue since I walked through that door.”
“Also irrelevant.” He held her gaze. Something shifted behind his eyes, a flicker of impatience or something closer to it. “Our families are entangled beyond repair, Lady Mary. Your sister and my brother have been missing for four months. A child bearing both their marks has appeared on my doorstep. Every drawing room in London is dissecting the scandal as we speak.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “We need stability. I will acquire the special license, and we will wed within the week.”
Lord Langham exhaled as though he had been holding his breath for six months. “Perfectly reasonable. The only secure solution. Mary, this is a gift.”
A gift. Mary looked at her father, then at the Duke. Two men in a room, negotiating her future as though she were a clause in a contract. She had woken this morning and dressed for a wedding she did not want, and now she stood in a stranger’s parlor being handed to another groom like a parcel that had been misdelivered.
The Duke turned to her. “I asked you, Lady Mary. Not your father.”
His eyes found hers, and something in the directness of his gaze made her breath catch in her throat.
He was not asking for permission. He was asking for her answer. There was a difference, and Mary felt it.
She thought of Charlotte. Of Tommy, sleeping upstairs in a borrowed crib. Of her father’s face on the vestibule floor, gray and crumbling. Of the whispers that would follow her through every ballroom and morning call for the rest of her life if she walked away.
She thought of the baby’s weight in her arms and how right it had felt.
Mary exhaled. “Yes.”
The Duke nodded once. He turned to Lord Langham. “I will handle the license and arrangements. The ceremony will take place here, five days from now. Small. Private with only a handful of guests.”
Lord Langham seized the Duke’s hand and pumped it with both of his own. “Your Grace, I cannot express—you have saved us! Truly.”
The Duke extracted his hand. “You should go, Langham. There is much to arrange.” He looked at Mary. “Take your daughter home.”
Mary stiffened. “I would like to see my nephew one more time before I leave.”
Lord Langham gripped her arm. “Mary. Lower your voice.” He glanced at the door. “The walls have ears. The child is under His Grace’s protection. That is enough.”
The dismissal landed harder than anything Grentport had said to her that morning. Mary looked at her father and saw the same thing she always saw: a man who chose safety over feeling, every time. He would not fight for a glimpse of his grandchild. He would not risk another scene.
She turned to the Duke and curtsied. The silk of her gown rustled against the floor.
“Your Grace.”
The Duke studied her for a moment. “Throw that gown away,” he said. “I will provide a new one.”
Mary held his gaze for a beat longer than was necessary. Then she turned and followed her father out of the parlor, through the entrance hall, and into the daylight, where the carriage waited, and the rest of her life had rearranged itself without her consent.
“You look beautiful.” Isabella squeezed Mary’s hands and held her at arm’s length, her dark eyes bright intensely; Isabella had always been a woman determined to find joy in an impossible situation.
The chapel was small, tucked into a side room of Blackholm House, and the pews held fewer than a dozen people. Lord Langham sat in the front row, clutching his hat. Beside him, Isabella’s parents and younger brother occupied the second pew. Three days’ notice had not left much time for enthusiasm.
Mary smoothed the front of her new gown. It was simpler than the one Grentport’s money had bought. Cream silk, fitted at the bodice, with a lace overlay on the sleeves. No seed pearls. No train that required two hands to manage. She could breathe in this dress, which felt like a small mercy on a morning when everything else was suffocating.
The ceremony was brief. The rector opened his prayer book and addressed the Duke first.
