Page 6 of A Bride for the Icy Duke
“And then… annul said marriage?”
He nodded curtly. “I believe that would be the best course of action.”
Lydia pressed her fingers against her lids, watching as light bloomed in red flowers, wishing she could just wake up and escape this awful nightmare. Over the years, after she had last met Alexander, she had dreamed about him coming into her life and sweeping her off her feet. But since then, nine years had passed. And, in her daydreams, she had imagined that he’d fallen madly in love with her.
Instead, she had this. A man who refused to hug her even at the worst moment of her life, and a father lying dead in the next room. Not even at her mother’s passing had she felt so alone. Abandoned in a world that seemed to be doing its best to impress upon her its cruelty...
“I made this arrangement with your father,” Alexander said now, still kneeling at her feet, though he seemed too large, too present, for the gesture to be a supplication. “Do you accept?”
“Do I accept… your hand in marriage?” she croaked.
“I can marry us this afternoon. Let the world think it happened just beforehand.”
Lydia hadn’t precisely dreamed of romance for a long time—she was currently being courted by a gentleman almost twice her age who had been married twice before. But she had always hoped for something better thanthis. A quick marriage for the pure purpose of security when all she wanted to do was collapse on the floor and grieve her father.
After coming to London, he had tried. She had known, even if he couldn’t always articulate it, that he loved her. Adored her. She meant more to him than anything else in the world.
And that, finally, was what pushed her into making her decision. If he had requested this, arranged it for her sake, she could not deny him. This was his final wish.
“I accept.”
The wedding passed in fragments. Cold stone beneath her feet. The rector’s impatient fingers drumming against his prayer book. Alexander’s profile, carved from ice, as he spoke vows that sounded like terms of business.
I, Alexander, take thee, Lydia...
The words meant nothing. Everything meant nothing. Her father was dead, and she was marrying a stranger who had once been kind to her, and now looked at her as though she were a burden he’d agreed to shoulder out of obligation.
He did not kiss her.
“There,” he muttered as they emerged into pale winter sunlight. “It’s done.”
Done. As though their marriage were a distasteful task to be checked off a list.
The funeral blurred past, black crepe and hollow condolences, and her father’s coffin disappearing into the earth. Then the will, read in clipped tones by a solicitor who kept glancing nervously at the duke. Everything entailed away. Everything gone.
And then the journey.
Two days in the carriage with a husband who barely acknowledged her existence. Two days of watching the landscape shift from London’s soot-stained buildings to rolling countryside, the silence between them so complete she could hear every creak of the springs, every breath he took.
She wanted to speak. Wanted to ask him something—anything—that might crack the shell of ice surrounding him. But what could she say?Do you remember me? Do you remember that night?
The questions died on her tongue.
By the second evening, as dusk painted the sky in shades of violet and grey, they finally turned down a tree-lined drive.Through the window, she caught her first glimpse ofHalston Manor.Stone ramparts softened by large windows, golden light spilling onto frost-covered grounds.
“We are here.”
Lydia jumped at the sound of Alexander’s voice. She turned to find him watching her, and something flickered in those winter-blue eyes. It vanished before she could name it.
The carriage came to a halt. Alexander descended without waiting for assistance and held out his hand. She took it, feeling the warmth of his palm through her glove, and let herself hope—just for a heartbeat—that perhaps inside, things would be different. Perhaps he would show her the chambers he’d mentioned, perhaps they would dine together, perhaps they could at leasttryto make this marriage something more than a legal formality over the coming year.
His fingers curled around hers as she stepped down.
“Welcome to Halston Manor,” he said quietly.
They entered an entrance hall glowing with candlelight. A tall, stern-faced butler materialized, bowing. “Your Grace. Your Grace.”
“Philips. Is everything prepared?”
