Page 47 of How Not to Marry a Duke

It did not feel ordinary. It felt like a thing that had been denied its purpose.

Carthedge Hall rose in the distance—grey stone and formal gardens and a future that waited for him with the patience of the inevitable. Somewhere inside, Penelope was probably writing letters or consulting with his mother about wedding arrangements. Somewhere inside, his duty waited.

Frederick flexed his hand again.

And rode home.

Chapter Fourteen

The Investigation

The offices of Thorne & Associates smelled of old paper and regret.

Frederick had been staring at the same clause for seventeen minutes. Seventeen, he thought, before he could stop himself. As though counting the minutes might somehow make the words rearrange themselves into something less damning.

They did not.

The leather of his chair creaked as he shifted. Dust motes drifted through the afternoon light, suspended in the air like questions he was not yet prepared to ask. The room pressed close around him—shelves of leather-bound ledgers climbing toward a ceiling stained yellow by decades of candle smoke, the faint scratch of a clerk’s pen from somewhere beyond the door.

“Your Grace?” Mr. Thorne peered at him over wire-rimmed spectacles. “You appear troubled.”

Frederick tapped the page. His finger left a small smudge on the parchment—evidence, he supposed, that dukes were as capable of perspiring palms as common men. “This clause. Section four, subsection three.”

He read it aloud, though the words had already carved themselves into his memory: “‘The bride shall be delivered unto the marriage in a state of unblemished virtue, such virtue to be attested by examination should any party raise question of same.’”

Thorne’s chair gave a small squeak. “A standard provision, Your Grace. Common in contracts of this nature.”

“Is it?” Frederick looked up. The solicitor’s face was carefully arranged into an expression of professional neutrality, but there was a tightness around his mouth that suggested he found this conversation about as comfortable as sitting on broken glass. “I have seen betrothal contracts before, Mr. Thorne. My father’s solicitors drew up three of them for my sisters. None contained language this…”

He searched for the word. Specific seemed inadequate. Suspicious seemed too honest.

“…thorough,” he finished.

Thorne’s spectacles caught the light as he inclined his head. “Perhaps Lord Ashworth wished to be thorough.”

“Or perhaps Lord Ashworth anticipated a challenge.”

The words hung between them like smoke from a discharged pistol. Thorne’s hands moved to his desk—straightening papers that did not require straightening, aligning a pen that was already perfectly aligned. Frederick had spent enough years reading men across negotiating tables to recognise discomfort when he saw it.

He had also spent enough years on battlefields to recognise when someone was deciding whether to lie.

“Your Grace.” Thorne’s voice had gone careful, measured. “I must advise caution. If you are suggesting⁠—”

“I am suggesting nothing.” Frederick set down the contract. The parchment whispered against the desk like a secret being buried. “I am observing. There is a difference.”

A very small difference, he did not add. The sort of difference that would not survive close examination by anyone with functioning eyes.

* * *

He had come to London three days ago, telling himself it was estate business.

There were always matters requiring attention—investments to review, parliamentary votes to consider, the endless machinery of a dukedom that did not pause simply because its master had developed an inconvenient obsession with contract law. The estate business had taken half a day. The rest of his time had been spent here, in this chair that smelled faintly of hair oil and anxiety, reading and rereading a document he had signed eighteen months ago without bothering to examine the particulars.

He had been numb then.

He had not cared about particulars.

He cared now, which was perhaps the most damning particular of all.