Page 71 of The Duke and the Runaway Bride

Edwin tried to focus on some of his business accounts. He looked at the numbers in his ledgers, trying to make sense of them, but they all blurred together. Before coming to the study, he had lain awake and was unable to sleep. He wished he had not been so stubborn and had taken Beatrice to his bed.

He sighed and pushed the documents aside. The single candle on the desk flickered, casting a long shadow on his face.

He could not think about the future until he could see the future, and with the scandal circling about London, the future was as blurred as the numbers in his ledgers. All he had to do was prove that Miss Jennings was behind it and then bring her to justice.

No, all I need to do is to take my wife into my arms.

He got up from his desk. He could not concentrate, and that was because all he could think about was Beatrice. He blew out the candle and went straight back to his room. Before approaching the connecting door, he checked that his shirt was neat, and then he knocked on the door.

There was no answer, so he knocked again, a little louder this time. Still, there was no answer. When he knocked for a third time and still got no answer, he worried that something was wrong.

He tentatively opened the door, looking into the darkness.

“Beatrice?” he whispered.

He wished he had brought the candle from his study.

“Beatrice?” he repeated, louder this time.

Still, no answer.

A bad feeling grew in the pit of his stomach. He did not believe she could sleep this soundly, and that could only mean that she had been taken ill. He went to her bed, not calling her name a third time. He leaned down and reached for her.

What he found—or rather did not find—surprised him. He flung back the covers to see that the bed was empty, even in the darkness.

It calmed him momentarily. She was not sick in bed, and nothing bad had happened to her. Yet, she was not in bed, and that brought back his worry. She had come to him before bed and he had rejected her, and now she had disappeared to somewhere else in the manor.

The Duke glanced around the room, just in case she was sitting in the chair or standing by the window, but he didn’t see her. He left the room and made his way through the manor.

He did not know where she had gone, but certain places made sense. She might have gone to the kitchen if she craved something in the middle of the night, or perhaps to the library to read, or to the sitting room to relax.

He did not like that his wife was up alone during the night, but he would find her and comfort her. He wished she had come to his study when she could not sleep.

Edwin did not find his wife in the kitchen, library, or sitting room, nor any of the hallways and corridors in between. He found himself in the empty drawing room, with the intent to go back to her room in case she had retired there.

It was then that he heard someone try to get into the manor through the backdoor.

His mind immediately went to Agnes, and a horrible thought came to his mind. She had ordered someone to come to his estate and take Beatrice from him, just as she thought Beatrice had taken him from her.

Edwin ran to the backdoor. It was not someone entering the manor—they must already have gotten to Beatrice, and now they were leaving with her. He would not let it happen, and once he stopped it, he knew he would be able to trace it back to Agnes, and their problems would be over.

When he got to the door, the handle turned. Edwin pressed himself against the wall so that when the door was opened, he would not be seen. The door swung toward him, and he used his hands to slow it slightly at the end so that it would not hit him.

The intruder pushed the door shut. His eyes widened, and he stifled a cry when he saw Edwin behind him. The Duke grabbed him by the neck and pushed him back against the wall with a thud.

“Who are you!” the Duke demanded.

He pulled back the hood, only to be met with a most surprising sight. There was no man before him, but his wife in men’s clothes. He quickly unhanded her and took a step back.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “Were you running away?”

“What? No!” Beatrice cried.

“And why are you dressed—” Realization dawned on him. They had spoken of it previously. “You snuck out into town, didn’t you?”

“I-I did it for us,” Beatrice stammered out.

“What?” the Duke asked, confounded by the whole thing. “What are you talking about?”

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