Page 1 of A Bride for the Icy Duke
CHAPTER ONE
NORTH RIDING OF YORKSHIRE
“Lydia, darling! Get back here!”
Clawed branches ripped at Lydia Swinton’s clothing as she lurched through the woodland. Dusk had fallen, the final embers of day settling low in the sky. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she let out a choked sob.
Leaving York. Leaving forLondon. Lydia had never visited London before, but she knew of it—knew it was busy, noisy, overwhelming. And she also knew that her best friends would not be leaving with her. She would be alone.
Another harsh sound—too raw to be a sob—broke free. She swiped ahead of her blindly with her arms. Her father’s calls behind her melted into the encroaching darkness.
Good. If he was going to travel to London, he could do it on his own.
When her mother had died, he had awkwardly held her, her head on his shoulder, his arms curving around her back with the stiffness of a man not given to physical affection. “We shall contrive together,” he had told her. “Just the two of us. You’ll see.”
But for all she knew he was trying, she was a young girl—thirteen now, leaving girlhood behind in favor of adulthood—and he was a man. They had nothing in common. If it were not for her friends, Eliza and Marie Radcliffe, she would be lonely indeed.
Yet her father insisted she must leave them behind.
First she lost her mother, and now she would lose her home. Her friends. Everything that had made her life feel bright. All that was left was her father, who had never recovered from the loss of his wife a few months earlier.
Well, neither had she. And leaving the last place that had memories of her would be a blow too far. Too much. Her chest hurt, and she rubbed at it with the heel of her hand as though she could scrub away the pain. More tears blurred her vision, spilling down her cheeks, their paths cool in the night air.
She stumbled through some bush and came face to face with a pond. Here, her father’s voice had faded into the night breeze. Finally, truly, she was alone.
The water almost seemed to mock her. There was little light left, but what there was, the surface of the pond reflected back to her. Moving more out of instinct than conscious thought, she movedcloser. Her chest rose and fell with each breath, and she wanted to turn, to run, to demand her fatherlistento her for once in his life.
But desperation had her slipping her shoes and stockings off. The frozen moss burned her bare feet with its chill, but she ignored the discomfort as she stared down into the dark, endless surface of the pond.
Logically, she knew the water must have an end—and probably not a deep one. But as she stared into its depths, she could trick herself into believing that there would be no floor, nothing to support her if she stepped in.
She sucked in a ragged breath as she took the first step. Then the next. The water was so cold it almost burned, and although it was barely night, already patches of brittle ice lined the surface. So cold. Her teeth chattered. Yet she kept moving, welcoming the pain, letting it distract her from the overwhelming hurt in her chest. Before her mother’s death, she had not known a heart could hold so much pain. Although she knew it could not be true, she felt as though the organ itself was splitting apart. Her mother had been the only person in the world who had understood her, and now she was gone.
All this time, Lydia had been living in the memory of her mother, burying her face in her mother’s perfumed shawl and reading her mother’s favorite books. She would wander the hallways and recall conversations they’d had. In the library, she would curl up in her mother’s favorite armchair and pretend the cushions were her mother sitting underneath her, preparing to read her a story.
All this would be gone in London.
Her breath grew harsher as the water reached her thighs. She was no longer crying, but she didn’t know if that was due to shock. Her chest felt tight, as though breathing itself was a challenge she could not overcome. She no longer felt her feet, but the water felt like icy knives in her legs.
Laughter reached her, the sound so incongruous that she stopped, blinking and looking up. Shadows wrapped around the tree trunks. The laughter sounded male, but it was not her father—the timbre of the sound was different. Rougher, sprightly, perhaps. That of a young man rather than an older one. If anything, he sounded a little like the stable boy they employed, the one who was a mere couple of years older than she.
But surely it could not be the stable boy.
Confusion and indecision had her pause, her feet sinking into the mulch and the water slicing her into ribbons. She shuddered, arms wrapping around herself, as the shadows parted to reveal a man.
No, a boy.
No, older than a boy. He was taller than her, although not quite as tall as her father. His shoulders, too, were not as wide. But as he approached, she saw he had grown out of the awkward, lanky phase that boys so often went through. Definitely not the stable boy.
The laughter stopped as suddenly as it arrived. He stared at her, soaked in the water of the pond and drenched in the last remaining light from the sky above. When next he stepped forward, the movements were jerky.
“Miss?” he ventured, extending a hand, although he could not quite reach her without entering the water himself. He stopped right by its edge. “What are you doing, miss?”
Lydia tightened her hands into fists by her chest. Whatwasshe doing? What did she hope to achieve here? She was so cold she could hardly think straight. All she knew was that there was kindness in his voice, and she had felt as though she had been empty for months, and now, finally, someone had come along to fill that forgotten place inside her.
She let out a ragged sob. One, then another. Messy, raw sounds that racked through her and threatened to send her tumbling headfirst into the dark water.
“Miss!” After a second, she heard a splash, and then hands were on her arms, hauling her backwards into a warm body. The boy cursed, using words Lydia had never heard before, and set an arm around her waist as he hauled her back to the shore. Disoriented, she made no objection, merely crying harder when he stood her upright again.
