Page 35 of The Duke’s Caught Bride

He watched her out of the corner of his eye as they moved through the room. The green gown emphasized the curve of her waist, the fullness of her breasts, the way her body moved through space.

Kenneth, against his better judgment, could not look away from her. His gaze only strayed when a figure appeared in the doorway.

John Fletcher, the Baron Tidswell, entered with the pompous stride that he favored. Tall and thin, he could perhaps have been described as a man of class, were it not for the permanent expression of discontent on his face.

“Forgive my tardiness, Harcourt,” he announced as he approached the refreshments table. “I do apologize profusely.”

Harcourt nodded and gestured to Alice. “Your Grace, may I present the Baron Tidswell. Tidswell, this is the Duchess of Bearmoor.”

Tidswell nodded. His eyes were sharp, assessing, and they moved over Alice with a thoroughness that made Kenneth’s fingers tighten around his wineglass.

“Your Grace.” He bowed. “A very great pleasure. The county has been eager to make your acquaintance. The circumstances of your marriage have, if you will pardon the observation, generated no small amount of curiosity.”

Alice’s smile did not waver, but Kenneth saw the slight stiffening of her shoulders beneath the green silk. “How kind of you to take an interest, My Lord.”

“Interest is too modest a word. Fascination, perhaps. The story is the stuff of romance novels, is it not? A sister vanishes on her wedding morning. A duke, left at the altar, makes an offer to the remaining sister with a haste that suggests either remarkable pragmatism… or remarkable desperation. And here you stand, bearing the title that was meant for another.” Tidswell picked up a glass of wine and took a long sip. “Society does so love a narrative with dramatic turns. I imagine the drawing rooms of London have scarcely discussed anything else this Season.”

Around them, conversation ceased, and eyes turned to the small group.

“I believe,” Alice said, her voice steady and clear in the hushed room, “that Society’s fascination says considerably more about Society than it does about my marriage, My Lord.”

Kenneth set down his glass. “Lord Tidswell has a gift for… dramatic narration,” he said, his voice clipped. “It is a talent he employs with remarkable consistency, regardless of the subject. Some men find that the stories they tell about others reveal more than they intend about themselves.”

Tidswell’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “You misunderstand me, Your Grace. I admire decisiveness. When a man knows what he wants and acts upon that knowledge without hesitation, it speaks to a clarity of purpose that this distracted age too often lacks.” He raised his glass toward Alice in a gesture that managed to be both courteous and vaguely proprietary. “To the new Duchess. May your tenure be every bit as… substantial as your predecessor’s.”

He let his eyes glide over Alice’s figure, a smirk curving his lips.

Kenneth did not raise his glass. He eyed Tidswell, allowing the silence to stretch until Harcourt cleared his throat and launched into an anecdote about a misadventure involving a prize ram and a drainage ditch that required no participation from anyone except its teller.

Alice turned to Kenneth and attempted a smile. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Kenneth’s hand found her arm and squeezed gently.

Tidswell’s eyes remained on them. “To new beginnings,” he said. “However they arrive.”

Kenneth drank. The wine burned down his throat, and he held Tidswell’s gaze over the rim of his glass and wondered, not for the first time, what exactly the Baron wanted from a family he had no legitimate claim to and showed no sign of releasing from his attention.

Chapter Eleven

Alice slipped away from Kenneth’s side with an excuse about refreshments and moved toward the far end of the room, where the retired naval captain was expounding on the strategic failures of the French fleet to a baronet who appeared to have stopped listening several minutes ago.

She needed distance. Not from Kenneth, but from the pressure of performing at his side, of smiling at introductions and absorbing the quick, appraising glances that followed each new handshake. Every eye in the room had cataloged her: the cut of her gown, the curve of her hips, the way her hand sat on Kenneth’s arm.

She lifted a glass of ratafia from the tray of a passing footman. Too sweet. She held it anyway, grateful for the occupation it provided her hands.

Near the fireplace, two women stood close together. Lady Ashton, wife of the Baronet, and Mrs. Forsythe, whose husband owned the textile concern east of the village. Their heads were angled toward one another at the conspiratorial tilt Alice recognized from every assembly and drawing room she had ever attended. The tilt that preceded gossip.

She was not meant to hear. The room’s acoustics, however, conspired against their discretion. The marble surround of the fireplace acted as a sounding board, carrying their lowered voices across the gap between them and the punch table where she stood turning her glass by its stem.

“… vanished the morning of the wedding, you know.” Lady Ashton’s voice was pitched at the frequency reserved for confidences their speaker fully intended to be overheard. “Simply gone. No letter, no explanation.”

“One can hardly blame her,” Mrs. Forsythe replied. “Bearmoor has buried one wife already. A young woman might think twice.”

“Or a young woman might think once, look at the alternative, and decide that a duke who has buried one wife is still preferable to no husband at all.” Lady Ashton lifted her glass. “I’m told the sister was practically on the shelf. Twenty-one and not a single offer. One can see why she seized the opportunity.”

Alice set her glass down. The ratafia trembled against the crystal rim.

“Seized is generous,” Mrs. Forsythe said. “I heard she engineered the entire affair, had Lady Rachel removed from the church by confederates. The timing was too precise to be a coincidence.”