Page 72 of How Not to Marry a Duke

Frederick had told her Thomas was alive. She had believed him—or thought she had believed him. But believing and seeing were two utterly different things.

Penelope could not breathe.

She stood frozen at the edge of the ballroom whilst her father—no, not her father anymore, just Ashworth, stripped of everything he had valued—was led away by the King's guards. Whilst her mother was carried out, no longer a Lady, merely Mrs. Ashworth now. Whilst three hundred guests whispered and stared and stored away every detail for tomorrow's gossip.

She heard none of it. Saw none of it.

She could see only Thomas. Baron Wellow, the King had called him. The title felt unreal—a fairy story, a dream she would wake from. But Thomas was real. Thomas was here.

He was older. Thinner. His face had been carved by years she knew nothing about—lines around his eyes, a weathering to his skin that spoke of sun and salt and distances she could not imagine. But his eyes were the same. Brown and warm and looking at her with the same desperate hope she had seen in them three years ago, when he had pressed a ring into her palm and promised her forever.

She had buried that ring with a lock of her hair. A private funeral for a private grief, held in the garden at midnight because her father had forbidden her to mourn publicly.

It was better this way, he had said. Better to forget. Better to move forward.

Better for whom?

"Penelope." Thomas was moving toward her now, the crowd parting before him—before a baron now, she thought wildly, and wanted to laugh. His voice cracked on her name—a sound she had heard in dreams, in the quiet hours before dawn when grief pressed heaviest upon her heart. "Penelope, I am so sorry. I tried to come back. I tried⁠—"

She was moving before she knew she meant to. Crossing the distance between them, her silk skirts rustling against the marble floor, her eyes fixed on his face—on the face she had mourned, the face she had wept over, the face she had never expected to see again outside of dreams.

"You were dead." The words tore from her throat, ragged and raw. "I grieved you. I wore black for a year. I wept until I thought I should drown in it."

"I know." He stopped before her, close enough to touch but not touching. His hands hung at his sides, trembling. "I know, and I am so sorry. I ought to have been cleverer. Ought to have found a way to send word." His voice broke. "I thought of you every day. Every single day. I never stopped⁠—"

Free.

The word rang through Penelope like a bell. Free. She was free. Not a widow, not a betrothed, not a pawn in her father's schemes—a wife. Thomas's wife. She had been Thomas's wife all along, and he was alive, and he was standing before her with his heart in his eyes and his hands trembling at his sides.

She looked at him—at the man she had loved when she was eighteen and foolish and certain that love was enough. At the man she had mourned for three years, whose ring she had buried in her garden, whose memory she had been forced to set aside for a duke she did not want.

She thought of the Duke of Carthedge—kind, honourable, willing to release her without a single word of reproach. She thought of the life she had been promised: the title, the wealth, the social standing that would have made her one of the most powerful women in England.

She thought of Thomas's hands, callused now from labour she could not imagine, still trembling as they reached for her.

"I never wanted to be a duchess." Her voice came out stronger than she expected—clear and certain, carrying across the ballroom. "I only ever wanted you."

She took his hand.

The crowd erupted—gasps, whispers, one startled laugh that might have been delight or horror. Penelope did not care. She laced her fingers through Thomas's, feeling the roughness of his palm against hers, and let him lead her toward the ballroom doors.

"Where shall we go?" she asked as they crossed the threshold.

"Anywhere." Thomas's voice was thick with emotion. "Anywhere you wish. I have spent three years dreaming of this moment. I do not care where we are, so long as we are together."

The doors closed behind them.

And Penelope, for the first time in three years, felt herself begin to breathe.

* * *

Frederick stood in the centre of the storm and let it rage around him.

The King's guards had escorted the former Lord Ashworth from the ballroom—just Ashworth now, stripped of everything he had valued, bound for a ship to the very colonies where he had sent his daughter's husband. Mrs. Ashworth had been carried out, weeping. The guests were talking over one another, voices rising in a cacophony of shock and speculation and barely-concealed glee.

Tomorrow's papers would be extraordinary.

Across the room, Edward caught Frederick's eye and inclined his head—a silent acknowledgment, perhaps even approval. Beside him, Queen Ella was watching the ballroom doors through which the new Lord and Lady Wellow had disappeared, her expression soft with something that looked very much like hope. A dancing master made baron. A disgraced daughter restored. It was the sort of ending Ella had always believed in, even when no one else did.