Tamed by her Duke (Seductive Mysteries #4)

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

“ Y ou’re getting married ?”

This was how, two days later, Grace learned the details of her own betrothal—over breakfast, as she was trying to scoop out a sliver of grapefruit with her spoon. At the sound of Frances’ voice—and Grace’s first thought, before anything else, was that she’d never heard Frances sound like that, not even when she’d seen Frances clobber a woman in the skull with a log —Grace’s grip slipped so profoundly that she nearly stabbed herself directly in the palm with the narrow utensil.

The sliver of grapefruit went flying. Grace didn’t even know why she tried. It was never worth the effort. Oranges existed, after all.

Putting down the offending citrus, Grace glanced up at her friend. Frances was waving a copy of The London Times with uncharacteristic fury. Her cheeks were so bright that they nearly matched her bright red hair. Frances’ husband, Grace’s brother Evan, was doing nothing to soothe his wife’s temper. Instead, he looked as though he might be even angrier than Frances.

“Good morning,” Grace said pleasantly—because no matter how dramatic these events, she would never, ever lose the little sister instinct to see if she could drive her brother insane. “What’s this, now?”

“Married!” Frances repeated. “This says you’re getting married .” Her mouth plumped into a frown, and Grace realized her friend was hurt, not angry. “This is the first I’m hearing of it, and it’s from the Times?”

Grace reached out to take the paper that her friend was still shaking at her. “It’s the first I’m hearing of it, too,” she assured Frances. “Well, the second, I supposed.”

She had considered telling her friends of her father’s dramatic proclamation. The day prior, she’d even drafted a letter. But she’d worried that a note that said, Dear all, I am to be married on Saturday next to someone was the kind of thing that would make her friends assume she’d been kidnapped again and was sending some sort of coded plea for help. And while it might have been fun to see her friends spring into action—as, the last time they’d done so, she’d been too busy actually being kidnapped to observe—Diana’s baby had colic, so it simply wouldn’t be polite to frighten them so.

“What does that mean?” Evan demanded, frown thunderous.

On the second attempt, Grace managed to grab the paper from a flailing Frances.

“Father,” Grace explained absently, scanning the page of newsprint. “Oh, no you don’t!” she added when she saw her brother pivot, as if he was prepared to take off in the direction of their father’s study. “For goodness’ sake, just sit—both of you. Let me read for a moment.”

She skimmed until her own name jumped out at her.

Lady Grace Miller is to be married. Lady Grace, the daughter of the Duke of Graham, was recently returned securely to her family after being assumed dead for a period of several years. During her absence, the late Duke of Hawkins was hanged for the crime of killing her, which he evidently did not .

“Do you know,” Grace muttered, half to herself, “they almost make it sound like they blame me for Hawkins’ death.”

Lady Grace’s father is, of course, esteemed Parliamentarian Frederick Miller, the Duke of Graham, whose political prowess led to the passing of such transformative laws as the Importation Act of ? —

“Did you get to the bit about the Importation Act?” Evan interrupted. “People rioted over that bloody law; it made the price of bread so high.”

“Shush,” Grace scolded. “I’m reading.”

Well, first she was skimming through the shockingly high amount of precious column space that was dedicated to her father’s various achievements. And then, at the very bottom of the article, it read, Lady Grace will be married to Caleb Gulliver, the Duke of Montgomery, at St. James’ Church, Saturday, by special license.

Grace’s jaw dropped.

“The Duke of—I’m being married off to that Scottish fellow?”

Evan looked murderous. “He didn’t even tell you?”

Grace couldn’t say she was entirely thrilled about that bit, either, but her father’s conduct was, at present, so far down her list of concerns that she scarcely even registered it.

“He told me I’d be getting married—and soon, this week—but not to whom. I can’t believe it’s that new duke that had everyone all in knots at the Tuwey ball.” She glanced down at the paper again, as if she expected, on second glance, to actually read Lady Grace will be married to some milquetoast English Lord, not the broad, brawny Scot she described, to his face, as “quite tall.”

“Why would he do that?” Evan growled, sounding as though he already had an answer, and that answer was because he’s an arsehole of the highest order . Grace’s brother and father had never quite seen eye to eye.

“He said he didn’t know who it was going to be,” Grace said, still distracted.

Evan choked on the mouthful of tea he’d just taken. Frances whacked him on the back in a manner that did not necessarily seem productive.

Grace ignored them both, her mind whirling through the details of her very brief encounter with the duke—the duke who would, in four days’ time, be her husband. Their conversation had been short, but now she felt certain that, somehow, she’d managed to say or do something ridiculous and had conveniently blocked it from her mind.

She decided she was mostly confident that she’d only said the one idiotic thing. Small blessings.

“You seem rather…sanguine about all this,” Frances said carefully, peering at Grace like she expected this odd behavior to be accompanied by a physical sign of illness.

“Well, I’m a bit surprised that it’s—him.” Grace waved at the paper.

It was now Frances’ turn to look surprised. “Oh, do you know him? Is he nice?”

“Not really,” Grace confessed. “We spoke the other night for—oh, less than a minute.”

“He’s a surly bastard is what he is,” Evan said, having finally recovered from his choking fit. “And I shan’t let Father get away with this. I’m going to fix this, Grace.”

“Oh, don’t bother,” Grace sighed. She slumped back in her chair with a sigh as her brother and friend looked at her like she’d sprouted a second head. “It won’t do any good,” she added, tone more pragmatic. “He’ll just dig his heels in— especially now that it’s been made public,” she added. “That’s probably why he did it this way in the first place.”

Evan nodded, though he didn’t look happy about it. “So we couldn’t argue without him being able to say, ‘Well, everyone’s expecting it now, so we can’t go back on our word’.”

“Precisely,” Grace said.

Frances looked torn between being horrified and impressed.

“I—who would even think like that?” she asked.

Grace shrugged. “You don’t become a leader in Parliament by not being strategic. The man knows how to get what he wants.”

“I don’t like this,” Evan said firmly, as if his dislike had any chance of altering the course of events laid out before them.

Grace pinned her brother with a dry look. “How utterly shocking,” she deadpanned.

Frances looked anxious. “What are you going to do about it?”

Grace felt a sense of…well, she supposed she wouldn’t quite describe it as fatalism. Yes, she felt curiously resigned to this marriage, particularly now that she saw it discussed in black and white in front of her. And she knew, deep down, that the old Grace would have fought harder.

But the new Grace, the current Grace, the one who had spent years battling every moment of every day… This version of her was tired . She was tired of the whispers, tired of putting on a good face, tired of wondering where she would go next. This, at least, was a direction. She didn’t know if it was a good direction, but at least it was something .

And the Duke of Montgomery had been surly and taciturn, quite frankly veering into rude, but at least he wasn’t ancient . She hadn’t noticed any horrifying odors about his person—which was impressive, honestly, in the crushing heat of a ballroom. He did not have, as far as she knew, a long string of previous wives who had all died under mysterious circumstances.

He could still turn out to be a horror, it was true—but what man couldn’t? But at least she didn’t already know that he was a horror. That wasn’t nothing.

There was also his physical stature, which Grace had found to be—not unpleasant.

Frances was still peering at her curiously.

“Nothing, I suppose,” Grace said in response to her friend’s query. “Or rather, I suppose I’ll get married.”

Evan swore into his teacup, long and fluid and inventive in his epithets. Frances was quieter, though she still looked worried.

Grace was wrong, she realized later, not to pay more attention to that worried look.

In the days preceding her wedding, she was kept busy doing all the things that, truth be told, her mother ought to have helped her with—ensuring her trousseau was in order, confirming with the seamstress that her dress would be ready in time, packing up the things that she’d move with her to her husband’s house.

Penelope Miller, however, never the most assertive of women, had, Grace learned, become even more passive in the years of her daughter’s absence. Though she dutifully joined her daughter on all her errands, Grace felt acutely aware that she was the one leading the charge, so to speak. If she’d left matters up to Penelope, Grace would have ended up moving to her marital home with naught but her old cotton nightgowns.

A quick inquiry led her to discover that the duke’s London residence was just on the edges of Mayfair—a shockingly remote location for a duke , and a far cry from Graham House’s location in Grosvenor Square—but not out of the realm of respectability. Perhaps she’d even like living in a slightly less central location, she allowed. Fewer prying eyes. And the duke’s house might be slightly closer to Evan and Frances’ new townhouse than was Graham House.

“Silver linings,” she reminded herself.

What this meant, when pulled all together, was that by the time Grace was ambushed by her friends, it was the morning of the wedding itself.

She looked up from her dressing table to find all three of them looming behind her with fierce frowns on their faces.

“Good Lord,” she gasped, pressing her hands to her bosom. She was only half laced into her stays, thank goodness, or else she’d have injured herself with the force of that breath. “Don’t sneak up on people like that. Goodness!”

Diana crossed her arms. “You’ve been hiding from us,” she accused.

Grace turned in her seat to look at them. “I have not,” she protested. “I was arranging everything. You might have noticed, but I’m getting married today.”

She gestured to the light blue dress with silver embroidery that lay draped, ready and waiting, over the end of her bed.

Diana narrowed her eyes. “Yes, strange that you did not speak to us about this wedding. Don’t you find it strange, Emily?”

Emily, too, crossed her arms. “I do indeed find it strange, Diana,” she confirmed.

Grace gave them a quelling look. “You’re being ridiculous,” she scoffed. “I’ve just been occupied. You know that there’s always plenty to do before a wedding, and I didn’t have much time to do it all.”

Frances nibbled on her lower lip, and Grace realized, with a jolt of surprise, that her friends weren’t annoyed. They were concerned .

“It’s all going to be fine, you know,” she told them. “I’m not upset about it, not really. Do I wish my father had been a bit less high handed? Yes, of course. But he’s been like this for more or less my entire life, so I’ve had time to get used to it.”

“I guess,” Emily said gently, dropping her arms back down to her sides, “what we’re wondering is why you aren’t upset. I mean…you don’t know anything about this man.”

This might have been true, but Grace did not think it was fair . By now, she knew how her friends had all ended up married, after all—even if she tried not to think too hard about the details, in Evan and Frances’ case.

“ You ,” she said, pointing to Diana, “also did not know your husband when you married him—excepting, I might add, for the fact that you thought he was descended from a murderer. My murderer,” she tacked on, just for a bit of extra emphasis.

“ You— ” She turned on Emily. “—fought your husband tooth and nail before you were married because he thought himself interested in your sister . You were then, as I’ve been told, married under the auspices of scandal.”

Finally, she turned her accusatory finger to Frances. “And don’t even get me started on you.”

Her friends looked chagrined—though, in truth, not nearly as much as Grace would have hoped.

Diana, naturally, was the first to break back to her natural mulishness.

“Andrew and I kissed before we were wed, I’ll have you know. You and this Montgomery person haven’t even spoken , if Frances is correct.”

“Benedict and I kissed, too, now that I think of it,” Emily said musingly.

Frances was gazing at the ceiling with interest. “I’ve never kissed anyone,” she said. “Certainly not anyone’s brothers. In fact, I don’t even know what kissing is, but please don’t tell me. I enjoy the mystery.”

Grace ignored this, instead focusing on the other two.

“So your argument,” she summarized, “is that you’re worried about my marriage because I didn’t have a scandalous alleyway embrace?”

“No,” Emily allowed.

“Yes,” Diana declared. “Though hallways are also permissible.”

Suddenly Grace was chuckling. Oh, they were so dreadful , these wonderful, marvelous friends of hers. Her laughter set off theirs, and soon she was being pulled from her vanity seat and into an embrace.

“Thank you for your concern,” she said, her words muffled by half of Diana’s shoulder and a length of Frances’ arm. “You are all incorrigible, but you are utter dears, and I adore you.”

“We love you, too,” Emily said, her height putting her head atop Grace’s. “And we will always look out for you. So while we hope that you are right about this duke of yours, we will be there if it turns out that things are not as you hoped.”

“Montgomery is big, but I bet Andrew could thrash him,” Diana said. “Andrew is forever complaining that he never gets to spar properly, ever since he returned from that backwater in Canada where he lived for a while. He’d love to do it, I’m sure.”

“Violence aside,” Frances interrupted, “we shall all look out for one another. No matter what. That’s what friends are for, aren’t they?”

Grace merely nodded, her throat suddenly too thick with tears to say anything else.

Caleb stood at the back of the church, hands clasped behind his back, and tried to ignore the twittering of the little English birds as they fluttered around. Apparently, the wedding of a duke to a different duke’s daughter was enough to bring out half the city, even if Caleb had—he could admit it—essentially purchased the girl from her father.

Well, no. The Duke of Graham had paid Caleb to take the girl, he supposed, given her rather significant dowry. But there was evidently some concern about the girl’s virtue, her reputation in tatters or whatever nonsense English aristocrats called it when their girls had dropped out of a chaperone’s sight for more than three minutes.

So, Graham had wanted the girl married off, to quell gossip. Caleb had wanted a wife. So, what if he was accepting a bride sight unseen? She didn’t need to be beautiful. In fact, an ugly woman might be preferable, given Caleb’s own questionable looks. She might not be as repulsed by him, if she hadn’t planned on being wed to a handsome man before her reputation had gotten so scuffed.

The only thing Caleb had paid for was the special license—which was highway bloody robbery, if you asked him. Given his druthers, he’d have whisked the girl to Scotland, where they could have been married over an anvil, without all the pomp and circumstance, but this had been Graham’s one stipulation: that the lass be wed in London, where everyone could see.

Despite the inconvenience of this—and the way Caleb chafed at being manipulated by the other duke—he’d agreed. It was still the most convenient way he would find himself a wife.

And that was what mattered. Convenience. Accomplishing his goals and then getting the hell out of London.

It didn’t matter if these uptight Londoners disliked his stature and his scowl, of if the ladies kept sniffing in his direction and the gentlemen frowning, as if it was Caleb’s job to hold his face in a manner appealing to their wives. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t getting married in his plaid, as he would have done if he’d been home in Scotland. It didn’t matter the identity of the girl.

Except suddenly, it did.

For the doors opened in the back of the church and his bride entered. And it was her. The woman from the ball. The intriguing one who’d smirked at him, laughed about his height, and then fled.

Experience had told Caleb that surprises were nearly always bad. This, he decided, was very probably bad.

For one, she was not ugly. No, she was chestnut-haired and bright eyed, her cheeks pleasantly rosy in a way that suggested the flush was natural, not rouge. She was rather too pale, but all these well-bred ladies were taught to see the sun as their mortal enemy, so he couldn’t fault her for that, he supposed.

For another, she looked like she, too, felt this whole wedding was an inauspicious mess. Before she walked toward him, her arm held tightly in her father’s grasp, she paused, sucked in a breath, and squared her shoulders, as if summoning the courage to go on.

Worst of all, as she approached, she did not once look him in the eye. Not as the vicar droned on from the “dearly beloveds” all the way through to when he turned to Caleb for the vows.

“Caleb Gulliver,” the ancient man intoned, “wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy state of matrimony? Wilt though love her, comfort her, honor her, and keep her, in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as you both shall live?”

Caleb felt as though he could commit to approximately half of these. He intended to honor her and be faithful, to be sure. He certainly wouldn’t put her out should she fall ill. The loving and comforting parts, however, were entirely out of the question. He supposed they could see how things went, for living together. They’d do so until he had an heir, at least.

Despite his misgivings about all the vows demanded, Caleb responded as was expected.

“I will.”

“And you, Grace Miller, wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy state of matrimony? Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honor, and keep him in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto him, so long as you both shall live?”

Finally, during the priest’s recitation of her vows, Grace’s eyes flicked, however briefly, to Caleb’s face. He stiffened. Had she looked at him during the “obey and serve” bit or the “love” bit? If she intended to rebel against wifely obedience, that was one thing—he didn’t plan to be around her enough to give many orders, in any case.

But if she’d looked up during the part about love… Well. She would be sorely disappointed. He had no intention of there being love between them, nor, honestly, even affection. This was merely an arrangement that benefitted them both. She’d get an escape from scandal; he’d get an heir.

It was like he was signing on a land manager, or a solicitor, albeit one that he was promising to keep in his service for the rest of his days. One didn’t love one’s solicitor.

Her voice was low but steady, her eyes on the vicar, as she said, “I will.”

It would be fine, he assured himself. He’d make matters clear to her.

“Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?” the vicar asked.

The Duke of Graham stepped forward grandly, looking smugly satisfied that they’d gotten to the portion of events that involved him. There was an awkward bit with the hands—Caleb again felt a pang of passionate longing for the simplicity of Scottish ceremonies—and then Grace’s fingers were in his, long and slim and cool.

They were a distracting presence as Caleb said, “I, Caleb Gulliver, take thee, Grace Miller, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold…”

It was the simple intimacy of the gesture that put him off, he told himself as he mindlessly echoed the vicar’s prompts. That was why he didn’t like this hand holding bit. It was the very thing he was trying to discourage, after all.

There was a bit more droning after that; Grace spoke her vows, the same as his this time, and didn’t look at him once through the whole thing. He slid the ring onto her finger. It was too big by several sizes and hung loosely about her knuckle. She had to close her hand to stop it from falling off as the vicar pronounced them man and wife in the eyes of God. It got in the way of the pen as she signed the parish register to provide signatory proof of the validity of their union.

And then— bloody finally , he thought—the whole thing was over. He dropped Grace’s hand.

“Come along,” he ordered her as the gathered guests ceased their polite smattering of applause and began to get to their feet. “We’ve a long journey ahead of us; no time to waste.”

She’d followed him, almost as if by rote, when he’d first started speaking. She stuttered to a stop as she took in the remainder of his words.

“But—we’ve the wedding breakfast,” she said, sounding puzzled. “My mother, she’s arranged for a wedding breakfast.”

Graham hadn’t insisted on a wedding breakfast, so Caleb was not going to be attending any such foolishness. If the other man thought otherwise? Well, that was his problem, now wasn’t it?

He shrugged. “Everyone else can go,” he said shortly. “As I said, we’ve a long ride. We haven’t the time.”

The confused furrow between her blue, blue eyes deepened. “Your house is in Mayfair,” she said carefully, like she was putting something together and didn’t like the look of it one bit.

Ah, well, he’d best let her have the whole of it, then.

“Nay,” he said. “I’d not live in London if ye paid me a king’s ransom. No, we’re going to Montgomery Estate.”

Her eyes grew wide, her soft, plush mouth opened slightly.

“We’re going to Scotland? ” she asked, sounding horrified.

It wasn’t Scotland, but for a city-bred lass like her, it was probably near enough to the border that it amounted to nearly the same thing. He didn’t waste energy correcting her.

“We’re going north,” he said. “To my estate. And I’d just as much spend two days on travel, not three, so if ye’ll come along now.” He drew himself up to his full height as he spoke. It was time she understood that he was not open to arguments, protests, or negotiations. The sooner she accepted that, the better. Then they could get through this ordeal.

Then she could come back to London, if she felt like it. Not with their children, naturally; he’d not have any heir of his raised by soft southerners. But his new duchess could go wherever she pleased, once she’d done her duty by him.

For now, though, she would go where he pleased. And where he pleased was on the road. Right now.

Grace gave a quick glance over to a trio of women—the same trio, he realized absently, that he’d seen her with at the ball that night—then nodded, squaring her shoulders for the second time that morning.

“Very well,” she said. “Let’s go, then.”

She kept her head held high as she swept out of the church and allowed him to hand her up into the carriage. He climbed in after her, swiftly closing the door and rapping on the ceiling to let the driver know they were ready.

Her haughty look remained in place as the carriage rumbled over the cobbled streets. If he’d noticed her not looking at him before, now he found that her gaze felt heavy. And that made him irritable.

So, though he knew himself to be no prize, he lounged back in the seat, letting himself take up as much room as possible—which, given his size, was a great deal of space, indeed. He let his legs spread wide and smirked, the implication unmistakably lewd, as he let the full force of his burr warm his voice.

“If ye’re hungry for a look, lass, all ye need to do is ask.”