Page 90 of A Wounded Duke's Passion
Bridget shook her head. “If he loved me, he would have already come to see me, but he has not.”
“Maybe he has an equally good reason for staying away,” Anna said. “Perhaps His Grace has surmised that he would be unwelcome given that the two of you were allegedly engaged in an intimate encounter. Or maybe he fears that you do not wish to see him.”
Anna’s words seemed too fantastic to be true, but Bridget wanted to believe them. “You have become terribly reasonable,” she said.
“I have been listening to David too much,” Anna said. “He would want me to reassure you.”
“And you do not wish to reassure me?” Bridget teased.
“Of course I do,” Anna replied. “I am pleased to see that you have not lost your wit as a result of this ordeal.”
Bridget let her shoulders slump and sank further into her pillow and the bed linens. Fatigue pulled at her eyelids. “I am still so very tired,” she murmured.
“That is to be expected. Shall I fetch the physician?” Anna asked. “Are you in pain?”
Bridget’s thoughts drifted to Anthony. “No,” she lied.
There was no point in telling the truth. The pain of a broken heart could not be cured by a physician, no matter how gifted he might be.
Chapter 40
“Ensure that Lady Bridget receives these,” Anthony said. “Even if His Grace refuses to see me, those gowns are hers.”
The butler left the gowns in the care of a maid before vanishing into the house himself. Anthony took a steadying breath and rolled back his shoulders, trying to look like a composed man. Inside, his emotions were a tempest of contradictions. He did not want to be at Crampton House; he desperately wanted to be there. Anthony could not repeat his errors. It was time to move forward.
It was much easier to resolve to make changes than it was to actually enact them, though.
The butler returned. “I am to escort you to His Grace’s study.”
Anthony stifled a sigh of relief. He followed the butler to the study, lightning thrumming through his veins. If Bridget’s father would not see reason, he was unsure of what he would do, but he could not let Bridget suffer the same fate as Lady Hastings. He clenched his jaw, as he entered the study.
It was a lavish room, larger than Anthony’s own study. The Duke of Norfolk was seated by the fire. He gestured toward the empty chair beside him. There was no formal greeting or even the façade of friendliness. Anthony supposed that he deserved that. He lowered himself into the chair and fixed his gaze on His Grace.
“I understand that you are rather vexed with me, Your Grace.”
His Grace scowled. “There is no need to stand on ceremony, Hamilton. You have disgraced my daughter and cost her a respectable suitor. It is apparent that you care little for formal conventions.”
Very well, then.
“I am unsure that I would call the Marquess of Thornton a respectable suitor.”
“He was more respectable than you.”
Anthony clenched his jaw. “Bridget detested him. She was repulsed by him.”
Norfolk’s scowl deepened. “She would have married him. It was her duty as my daughter to think about what is best forour family and not to ruin everything by engaging in liaisons with the likes of you or anyone else.”
“Her duty or not, she did not love him,” Anthony said. “She tried to avoid marrying him.”
“Did she try to ensnare you?” Norfolk asked, his anger overtaken by horror.
Anthony sighed. “No.”
He told Norfolk almost everything—Rose’s scheme and how he had participated in it with Bridget. He told about how he had fallen in love with Bridget but hesitated out of loyalty to Anastasia and his guilt about Lady Hastings’s situation.
“And so,” Anthony concluded, “I have arrived with the two gowns that I owe her, and I wish to have Bridget’s hand in marriage if she will agree.”
Norfolk pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “I do not know that you have left me much of a choice,” he said. “The whole ton knows that you were in the gardens unchaperoned with my daughter, and both of you appeared disheveled when Thornton and Lady Hastings confronted you. She must marry someone as quickly as possible, and you have deprived me of her other suitor.”
