Page 112 of A Lady of Means
“Who the hell are you to interrupt my wedding?”the Duke objected.
“Who am I?”Her soldier flicked up his brows.“Who amI?”
“If I may—” The Vicar stepped forward to interject, but when both men looked at him, he held up his hands and took a step backward with his Bible folded over his chest.
Devyn put a hand on his chest.“I’m the man that she was supposed to marry.But I died in battle.I’m the man who wrote her letters nearly every day for almost two years.I know she has a scar on her arm from where she fell off a horse when she was eleven,” He was close enough now that his thumb traced a pattern on her forearm, and she couldn’t help her eyes fluttering closed for the smallest second before remembering they were in God’s house full of witnesses of the highest social caliber.
“Just there,” he continued, a dark storm in his eyes.“She can tell you where all eight of my tattoos are, I can tell you with my eyes closed where all the freckles are on her face.And I know that she can play Mendelssohn with no music in front of her, but she prefers Elgar.She knows that I allegedly died in battle because I refused to leave a man behind, and she was angry, so very angry with me.I wasn’t supposed to do anything stupid.I was supposed to come home,” he turned to her.“To you,” he said, bending lower, closer, to her.
“And so I did.Here I am,” he gestured his arms wide, a broad and boyish smile cracking open on his handsomely scarred face.“A battle-scarred soldier.Marching under no banner but yours, my lady.Here to return your words back to you,” Moria gasped at the familiar book he pulled from his jacket and wrapped her shaking hands around.“Promising you my own name, my family, my soul for the breaking.So you tell His Grace, and you tell me, what will it be, my lady?”
Moria looked down at the book she’d clutched to her chest.She meant what she’d said in the note she’d left.It didn’t mean as much to her now; but she felt protective of her words, her book on full display for everyone to see.Her secret love on display for all to see.
The Duke stepped between them.“That was some speech,” he turned to Moria, pointing a finger in her face.“I trusted you.We made plans, remember?”He said in a whisper that only she could hear somehow over the clamor of her heart and the collective chin wagging from the audience of their current melodrama.
The Duke placed a hand on his hip.“I can’t believe that you would betray me like this.I could have made you a duchess, there’s so much I could have given you, and you do thishere?”He shook his head, confusion racing headfirst into ire, filling his eyes and his voice.“Today of all days you publicly stab me in my back like some common tavern wench with no loyalty, actually a tavern wench would know her place better than-”
“That is the last time you speak to her that way,” Devyn wedged his body between them, his hands placing her behind him.“Or it is the last time you will draw breath.”
“You would threaten a Duke over a cheating whore like her?”
“I would die for her!”Devyn roared in his face, still clutching the skirt of Moria’s dress in one hand, placing his body in front of her like a shield.Moria could barely see for the tears in her eyes.
“This man needs to be arrested,” the Duke called, looking for someone to support his claim.
What?No.
She was the criminal here.
If anyone deserved punishment it was the culprit.After his words, the effort he must have gone to to retrieve her words, the way he’d promised her his body and then so quickly demonstrated his claim wasn’t for show by stepping between her and the Duke?
Her decision made, Moria grabbed onto Devyn’s arm.She wasn’t letting anyone take him away from her.Not ever again.
“Actually,” Perry cut in, Tristan nodding in a silent show of encouragement.“Not to ruin such an impassioned speech, but I have to cut in here.”
He made his way between the two men, placing himself in front of his brother the way his brother had done for him, repeatedly, in the past.
“Brother, what are you doing?”Devyn said in a lowered tone.
“What I should have done long ago,” The Earl of Clairville adjusted himself to his full height to address the Duke.“You cannot have this man arrested.Technically speaking, he is an Earl.The true Earl of Clairville.And I’m sorry to say, Your Grace, he hasn’t committed any crimes.”
“Not yet, at least,” Devyn sneered in the Duke’s direction.
“Why don’t we all discuss this in private?”The Vicar suggested.Moria looked over her shoulder at the people assembled, her eyes falling on her family, her friends.The Vicar was right, he offered Moria his arm to lead her toward the sun-streaked transept.She took it.They could finish this conversation and she could say all that she needed to say without an audience leering.
“Moria, wait!”It was Olivia coming to catch up to her from her perch on the altar steps.She fixed the incredibly long train of Moria’s gown, then took the book from Moria’s hands, and kissed her cheek.“We are with you, whatever you decide.Don’t let?—”
“I think she’s already made her decision, Olivia,” the Duke cut her sister, her perfect baby sister, off with a mocking jeer.Moria had heard enough.She had her words back, she had her family’s blessing, she’d seen the Duke’s true colors.She had to move forward with her decision like she should have done in that cottage behind the mews.Before then.
With a grunt, she pulled the paste-stoned tiara from her head.Then, she flung back her veil in a bevy of lace and tulle.There was a collective gasp from the assembled crowd.
“You know what?”She turned to face the guests seated in pews, the weight of her lies and her masks pressing in when it was long past time to let them go.“He's yours,” she took the crown in her hand and broke it into a third.It broke rather easily, actually.
She hurled a piece into the crowd.It landed near a guest with a thud, the crowd fell silent.
“Half the people in this room are mad at me over the book that was printed, and the other half think I don’t deserve to be here.If you were hurt by the burn book, I’m sorry.I wasn’t the only one who wrote in it, but I’m still sorry.I know many of you didn’t come here because you were happy for me, you wanted to see what kind of duchess I would make.Apparently a bad one.I think everybody looks like royalty today, but you can try it on for size, see if the title fits as well as you’d imagine when he insults you,” she found Devyn’s eyes, “and the man you love, in front of you.”
She hurled another piece of the paste crown, Gretchen caught it in one hand.
