Page 15 of Matters of a Duke's Heart
The words came out as she needed them to. She could only hope they did not sound as hollow as she thought they did to her own ears.
Duty was the pillar she lived by, and while her mother had encouraged her to follow both her heart but be mindful of duty, Felicity knew a choice needed to be made.
For her family, for a little boy she did not know, and for her own future.
It was time to stop hoping for love in the sea of face at every ballroom, and time to take her place in society.
“I have not officially proposed yet,” he reminded her with a wry smile, as if he himself wasn’t quite sold on the idea. “I ought to.”
“You ought,” she agreed.
“Lady Felicity,” he began, inhaling slowly. His eyes tracked over her face as if searching for her uncertainty as much as his own showed. “Will you do me the honor of marrying me? Of wedding if only for convenience. Be a maternal figure at your own pace to my son, and a duchess for me. I will not control you, nor demand anything else of you. Everything else is of your choosing. All I ask is that you help me with Alexander and remain faithful.”
His voice cracked as he requested her faithfulness. Felicity paused, wondering why the well-composed man would falter at that.
Felicity was already nodding, for she faced a man who she thought was honest if not a little too sharp, a man who didn’t know entirely how to show his care and love for his son, a man who hid himself behind a facade when he needed.
But beneath…
Was there something softer? Had he endured a terrible hurt, as the ton whispered, regarding his late wife?
“I will,” she finally said. Because what other option did she have? Her mother would rather wail to the skies and do something awfully drastic than endure Felicity rejecting a duke. With Daphne also being potentially matched with the son of another duke, then both their marriages would raise the Merriweathers’reputation. I have my part to play, she told herself. I cannot risk rejecting this.
“And what may I do for you in return?” the duke asked, giving her a hesitant smile.
Felicity gave him a tight smile, the reality sinking heavily into her limbs. She shook her head, indicating nothing. Was he not already providing enough?
With the way her mother had been speaking, it was as though the duke was saving Felicity from spinsterhood. That alone was something she ought to be grateful for. “Just do not leave me wandering any dark pathways alone again.”
The duke gave a short laugh. “I will ensure that you are always chaperoned. I truly am sorry for that night, Lady Felicity. I do not usually act so… terribly.”
Felicity didn’t know what to make of the declaration, and time would only tell regarding his personality, but for now, she only smiled a little more.
It was not quite an affectionate promise to watch over her himself. It was formal and businesslike, but it was something. Perhaps the Duke of Langdon was not as stoic as the ton—and she herself—had thought.
It is only a marriage of convenience, nothing more, and I will come to terms with such things.
***
After Felicity had endured her mother’s happiness and declaration of a hastily thrown engagement ball—of which Felicity outright refused if the wedding was only in four days—she finally slipped away to the solitude and comfort of her chambers.
Once she shut the door behind her, and had shut the world out completely, Felicity began to crumple. Everything she had held back all day, from the moment the Duke of Langdon had entered the drawing room, to the final statement of her mother saying she had to plan a wedding breakfast while disregarding the duke’s claim of handling everything necessary, it all crashed over her.
Felicity shuddered beneath the wave of her emotions as she realized that it was not just the meeting that day, or the way her life had been turned upside down so suddenly and so drastically.
It was an accumulation of it all. The endless suitor dances, the smiles that made her cheeks ache, the visits and the hopeful expression on her mother’s face, only for it to fall in disappointment when Felicity announced yet another rejection she had delivered.
She was adrift, flung beneath the weight of her own sorrow, and a hard gasp rattled from her tight chest. What had she done? Heavens, what had she done?
What life had she agreed to? A mother to a son that had already lost his own, a duchess to a rude albeit handsome duke, a wife to a husband who didn’t want her at all… just a lady to fill the role.
Felicity was simply a doll, wasn’t she? A ragdoll to be pushed and moved wherever anybody wanted her. She had to dutifully go on, take a step here, and look there, and say yes and agree, and that was all her life would, and could, be.
“What have I done?” she whispered aloud, staring out at her bedroom. Her bedroom that would no longer be hers in four days.
Because…
The room spun.
