Page 80 of How Not to Marry a Duke

He had placed it there that morning, telling himself it was merely a precaution. A safeguard against precisely this eventuality. He had not truly believed he would need it—had not wanted to believe he was the sort of man who could not recite simple vows without assistance—but his hands were already moving, reaching into his coat, drawing out the folded paper before his pride could intervene.

Twenty-nine, he thought, the number surfacing unbidden. This is the twenty-ninth letter I have written her. The twenty-ninth confession I did not intend to make.

The paper trembled in his hands. His handwriting stared back at him—cramped and urgent, the marks of a man who had written in the grey hours before dawn whilst his heart beat too fast and his thoughts refused to order themselves into anything resembling sense.

"I wrote this the morning after the tower," he said. His voice came out rough, scraped raw by the tightness in his throat. "I did not intend for anyone to read it. I did not intend—" He stopped. Swallowed. The congregation had gone utterly silent; he could hear the creak of pews as people leaned forward, the soft rustle of fabric, the distant cooing of pigeons in the eaves. "I did not intend to fall in love with you. I had forty-three reasons why I ought not to. I made a list."

Florinda's breath caught. A small sound, barely audible, but he heard it. He heard everything about her. Had been hearing everything about her for nine years, cataloguing the rhythms of her voice and the patterns of her breathing and the particular quality of her laugh when she was surprised into genuine amusement.

"Forty-three reasons," he repeated. "And not one of them mattered. Not one of them could make me stop."

He unfolded the letter.

"I counted the gold threads in your hair."

His confession emerged without his permission, pulled from the page and given voice by an impulse deeper than intention.

"Fourteen, the first time. In the garden at the palace, when you were playing pirates with the children and your feet were bare and I thought—" His voice cracked. He pressed on regardless. "I thought I had never seen anything so beautiful in my entire life. I thought if I counted the threads, I could contain it. Make it manageable. Make it a thing I could fold up and put away and not think about every moment of every day."

The church had disappeared. The congregation had disappeared. There was only Florinda, her eyes fixed on his face, her hand still clasped in his, her pulse beating against his palm in a rhythm he had memorised without meaning to.

"I stopped counting after a thousand."

One thousand, four hundred and seventeen, his mind supplied unhelpfully. That was the exact number, on the morning of the third day after she fell, when I realised I would never be free of her.

"You are beyond measure." He looked up from the letter. Met her eyes. Found them bright with tears that had begun to spill down her cheeks, tracking silver lines through the dusting of powder her sisters had applied that morning. "You have always been beyond measure. I was simply too much of a coward to admit it."

From the congregation, someone made a choked sound. Charlotte, probably—she had been remarkably invested in this wedding since learning it would involve a duke. Or perhaps Margot, who had been clutching Lord Raventhorn's arm since Florinda appeared in the doorway and had not released him since.

Frederick did not look. Did not want to see anyone except the woman before him.

"I cannot promise you a life without scandal." The letter shook in his hand; he steadied it with an effort of will that cost him more than he cared to admit. "The ton shall talk. The gossip columns shall feast upon us for months, possibly years. My mother shall have opinions about everything from the arrangement of the silver to the names of our children. I cannot promise you ease, or comfort, or any of the thousand things a duchess ought to expect."

His voice had steadied now. These were his own—not the formal vows he had memorised and forgotten, but the truth he had been carrying for nine years, at last given shape and sound.

"But I can promise you this." He set the letter aside. Took both her hands in his. Felt the cool press of her fingers, the fine tremor that matched his own. "I shall count every day I am given with you. I shall measure every hour in gratitude. And when I am old and grey and my counting has lost all meaning, I shall look at you and know—know—that you were worth every number I ever learned."

Silence.

Then Florinda laughed.

It was not the response he had expected.

He had braced himself for tears—she was already crying, after all. He had prepared for sentiment, for emotion, for the kind of overwhelming feeling that had driven him to write twenty-nine letters he had never meant to send.

He had not prepared for laughter.

"You impossible man." Her voice wavered between mirth and tears. Her hold on his hands had tightened until her knuckles went white. "You absolute, ridiculous, impossible man."

"I am aware I am not⁠—"

"I made a list too."

Frederick blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"The night after the ball. After you proposed in front of three hundred people and made a complete spectacle of yourself—" She released one of his hands and reached into the bodice of her gown. His pulse stuttered at the impropriety of it, at the flash of skin and the rustle of fabric and the way several members of the congregation made scandalised sounds that suggested this was not standard wedding procedure. "I made a list. One hundred and seven items."

One hundred and seven. The number struck him like a physical blow. The same number she had cited nine years ago, standing in his stable with her chin raised and her cheeks flushed, announcing that she had come to conduct an experiment.