Page 6 of The Duke’s Caught Bride

He closed his eyes, drew in a breath, then released it.

“Fine.” The word emerged clipped and final. “I will instruct my men to assist in the search. Satisfied?”

It was not a question designed to receive an answer. Alice nodded anyway.

The Duke walked to his driver, who had maintained his position beside the carriage with the rigid attentiveness of a man determined to witness nothing. “Bearmoor House. Make sure they both get inside the house and don’t wander away.”

The driver nodded. The Duke opened the carriage door.

Freddie, who had been watching the proceedings from inside the carriage with the fascination of a naturalist observing an unusual species, leaned forward. “Aren’t you coming, Papa?”

“Not yet.” The Duke’s voice softened imperceptibly when he addressed his son. A shift so subtle Alice might have missed it if she had not been watching his face with the desperate attention of a woman mapping unfamiliar terrain. “I must inform the guests that there will be no wedding today. And I must collect your brother.”

Freddie considered this with the gravity of a child weighing a serious proposition. “Will you bring cakes?”

The Duke’s eyes narrowed, and he shook his head. “Do you honestly believe that you have earned it through your behavior today?”

The boy’s lower lip trembled slightly. For a second, Alice thought she saw the Duke’s eyes soften. However, it did not last.

“Once you learn manners, my boy, you will earn a reward.”

Alice climbed into the carriage. The interior smelled of leather and cedar and the faint trace of a child’s muddy energy. Freddie shifted to make room for her.

The Duke closed the door. Through the window, Alice caught one final glimpse of his face: set, controlled, and carrying something she could not name.

The carriage lurched into motion. The service yard fell away behind them, and with it, the life she had planned to abandon.

Before long, they had arrived at Bearmoor House. Alice was not surprised in the least when Freddie jumped out of the carriage. She followed him silently into the foyer.

Freddie glanced at her with the assessing look of a child deciding whether an adult was worth taking seriously. “Are you still going to run away?”

“I wasn’t…”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You don’t need to lie to me.”

Alice opened her mouth, a retort ready on her lips, but before she could speak, another young boy entered the foyer.

He was Freddie’s twin brother. Alice had heard his name was Charles. He was thinner than his brother, neater in his bearing, with the same brown hair but much neater than his brother’s. His eyes found Freddie immediately, and something in his face loosened, a tension Alice recognized from years of watching for her own sister across crowded rooms.

“Freddie!” The name emerged in half-relief, half-reproach. Charles crossed the foyer in quick strides and caught his brother’s arm. “You disappeared. I thought…” He stopped, glanced at Alice, and the sentence died unfinished.

“I was fine, Charlie,” Freddie said, with the breezy nonchalance of a child who had never properly worried about anything in his life. “I followed the lady. Papa’s marrying her now instead.”

The words landed in the foyer with the subtlety of a dropped tray. Alice watched understanding dawn across Charlie’s face in slow, careful increments: confusion giving way to assessment, assessment to a kind of wary curiosity.

He turned to her. His gaze was direct and measuring, devoid of Freddie’s easy enthusiasm but also free of suspicion. He looked at her the way a naturalist might study an unfamiliar plant: with patience and attention, withholding judgment until the evidence had been properly considered.

“Lady Alice Haraway,” Alice said, bobbing a curtsy that felt absurdly formal under the circumstances but which her upbringing refused to abandon. “It is a pleasure to meet you properly, Lord Charles.”

“Charlie,” he corrected. His voice was softer than his brother’s, pitched lower, each word chosen with evident care. “And the pleasure is mine, My Lady.”

The politeness was impeccable, delivered far too formally for a child his age. Alice found it rather endearing, though.

The Duke entered behind the woman she had seen with them at the church, closing the door with a firmness that suggested he preferred his conversations contained. Miss Leyton, she assumed, and if the woman’s worried look was anything to go by, she was not looking forward to any conversation with him. He looked as he had in the service yard: controlled, composed, and carrying an air of barely contained energy, like a storm held behind glass.

“After today’s… developments, I will be marrying Lady Alice. She will be staying with us until the wedding.” The announcement was delivered to the foyer at large with the flat efficiency of a man reading a shipping manifest. “Which will take place in the next few days. In the meantime, you will treat her with the respect due to your future stepmother.”

Charlie’s eyes flicked from his father to Alice and back. “People say it’s bad luck for the bride to see the groom before the wedding,” he remarked.