Page 81 of Wedded to the Ruthless Duke

“I am not talking about that dress though that gown is another conversation to have entirely.” Althea blushed the color of a beetroot as she spoke though Grace wasn’t sure if it was fury or embarrassment that drove her to it. “Tabitha? Have you found them?”

“What is she looking for?” Grace asked her father.

John rubbed his brow tiredly and shook his head, intimating that she didn’t really want to know the answer to such a question.

Tabitha returned and in her hand was a bundle of scandal sheets.

“Not those again.” Grace returned her teacup to the nearest table with a loud clink. “Mother, I’m well aware that I am the scandal sheets’ favorite topic of conversation. I have read them enough these last few days. I do not need them read out to me again now.”

Althea shook out one of the scandal sheets, clearly intending to read it aloud despite Grace’s words.

“Listen to this — the Duchess of Berkley —”

“Althea!” The sudden sound from John made them all jump. Grace leaned back in alarm as her father leaned forward in his armchair, just enough so he could look over the back of the chair, shooting daggers with his gaze at his wife. “She has said she doesn’t wish to hear it. Do you take pleasure in embarrassing our daughter?”

Althea looked as if she had been struck. She lowered the sheet in her grasp and closed her lips. She looked down at the floor too. The sudden change in her countenance was so abrupt that Grace didn’t know what to make of it. She could have sworn that her mother blinked rather rapidly.

Wait… is she holding back tears?

“I am sorry I am such an embarrassment to you,” Grace said to her mother. “It was not my intention to humiliate you or anyone else for that matter.”

The guilt raged inside her once again. She wondered if Philip had left her side so fast the day before because he could not forget these scandal sheets either. Despite the fact he’d tried to, losing himself in their passion, perhaps he was haunted by the words so much he had been determined to escape her at once.

She felt her heart crack in her chest. She breathed deeply, trying her best to ignore the feeling.

“Grace,” Tabitha murmured, still clutching to one of the scandal sheets in her hands. “You should see this one. It only came this morning.” She walked forward, bearing a sheet that looked very familiar to Grace.

“I have seen it. I read the article yesterday.”

“No, Grace. This is a reprint. Look,” Tabitha urged the sheet into her clutches.

Grace unfurled the sheet and looked down at a section her cousin was pointing toward. There, printed in black and white beneath the previous day’s article, was another awful accusation.

‘The Duchess of Berkley — seen out in public. There was shock and incredulity yesterday in Covent Garden when the Duchess of Berkley was seen to nearly cause an accident with an unsuspecting carriage. With her lack of skill, it’s said the Duchess was seen to lose control of her horse. By the Grace of God himself, it is fortunate that no one was hurt in the incident. What’s more, it’s now known that the Duchess was riding unaccompanied. It’s being whispered she rode like a lunatic on her own, so desirous she was to escape her new home and husband. What a humiliation for the poor Duke of Berkley!’

Grace stood slowly from her seat, her hand shaking around the paper.

“This is absurd,” she muttered, anger tightening her gut at the way the incident from the day before had been twisted into something it was not. “For God’s sake, why do they always look for a story where there is none?”

“You are a duchess,” Tabitha whispered in a very gentle voice. “I’m so sorry. They have high expectations of you now.”

“Pah! They had the same expectations when I wasn’t a duchess. And as for being a duchess, shouldn’t that make me separate from their expectations?” Grace countered, turning and tossing the sheet into the flames. Her mother flinched as her father started to smile. “I am free to do as I like, and they should not be able to do this to me anymore.”

As she turned, intending to flee the room and head home at once, she barely caught sight of her parents’ expressions, but what she did see there startled her. Her father was still smiling, clearly proud of her words, but in Althea’s face too, there was also a small smile.

Wait… is she proud of me too?

CHAPTER27

Philip looked up from the business accounts he had been reading in his study. His steward had not long left, and together they had made a plan of where to move his money next in the farms at his country estate to ensure the tenants were well taken care of, but there would also be enough investment to ensure profits.

In his concentration, he had not noticed the arrival of a carriage though the sudden voices in the corridor alerted him to the presence of someone. He turned in his seat and looked out of the window, craning his neck to look at the drive.

There was a carriage there on the gravel. Judging by the way the stable boy looked rather flustered as he took control of the horses, the carriage had arrived very quickly indeed.

“Where is he?” the unmistakable voice of Eleanor raged down the corridor. The butler muttered some reply which was drowned out.

“Eleanor, please be careful,” Dorian said, his loud steps intimating that he was running after her.

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