Page 56 of The Duke and the Wrong Bride

“Charlotte!” Lady Ramsbury appeared in the doorway suddenly. She saw the two standing there, blinking as if surprised to find Henry in his own home. “Your Grace, welcome back. I’m sure Charlotte has told you everything?”

“She did,” Henry said calmly. “And although I do appreciate my wife’s kind heart?—”

“As do I.” She stayed standing in the doorway. “And I promise we won’t be a bother. So quiet you won’t even know that we’re here.”

“Yes, well, despite that?—”

“Nathanial!” Lady Ramsbury shouted past Henry. “Let go of your brother!” She shook her head to herself and then swept down the stairs, past Henry and Charlotte. A touch on the shoulder as she passed, a quick, “Thank you again, Your Grace,” and she was gone.

“Told you,” Charlotte said.

Henry groaned and rubbed his eyes. “You will pay for this, you realize?” His meaning was clear.

To that, Charlotte simply smiled. “I expect nothing less.”

What followed were four days of chaos unlike anything that Henry could have imagined. And if it was only Lady Ramsbury and her children he had to deal with, it might have been bearable. But when adding Lord Ramsbury into the mix, the situation became infinitely more tumultuous.

Every single day, for three days straight, Lord Ramsbury swept through the home like a storm, unannounced, chasing his wife about while demanding that she return to him. But Lady Ramsbury was as stubborn as her daughter and refused to yield so much as an inch.

This caused Henry to do the only thing he could think of in such maddening times: hide. For three days straight, Henry would hide in his study as he attempted to work. Lord and Lady Ramsbury would fight as if they were trying to tear down the walls around them. Their children would create chaos everywhere they went. While Charlotte did what she could to keep Henry from breaking.

But break he would. Too much more of this and there was little doubt about that. He just hoped that when he did finally, Charlotte wouldn’t recoil from the monster hidden in the dark.

“Will you be reasonable!” Henry heard Lord Ramsbury cry out. “That’s all I ask!”

“Reasonable!” Lady Ramsbury screamed in reply. The force of her shouting seemed to make the walls shake. “Reasonable! You’re the one who won’t listen to reason! And you have the gall to say such things to me!”

“Me?!” Lord Ramsbury’s voice carried as if he was in the room with Henry. “I will remind you, wife, that you’re the one who left without warning! Not even giving me a chance to?—”

“To what?! To lock me up, so I would not be able to leave?!”

“To listen!” he shouted at her. “To give me a chance to explain myself!”

“Don’t bother!” she snarled back.

“Now, who is being unreasonable?”

The explosive sounds of Lord and Lady Ramsbury arguing battered the door and walls of Henry’s study as if they were standing right outside—as if they were doing so purposefully because they wished for him to hear them. Never mind that they were downstairs somewhere, likely sequestered in a room with the door closed because they assumed that would be enough to muffle their shouting. Which most certainly wasn’t.

“Don’t walk away from me!” Lord Ramsbury bellowed.

“Why not?!” she cried back. “It’s not as if you have anything to say worth listening to!”

“Will you just try and understand? I did it for us! For our daughter!”

“You did it for yourself! Don’t pretend this has anything to do with Beatrice!”

“Please, Letitia! If you just come home, I am sure?—”

“Home?!” Her high-pitched cry had Henry’s hair standing on end. “You want me to come home?!”

“Of course, I do!”

“Then cancel the marriage! Tell that friend of yours that you have changed your mind!”

“I can’t do that!”

“Typical!”

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