Page 16 of Married to a Frozen Duke
"She asked me not to actively hate her."
"And?"
"And what?"
"Can you? Not actively hate her?"
Alexander was quiet for a long moment. "I don't know. She's a Coleridge."
"She's also, by your own account, a person. A rather interesting one, from the sound of it."
"Interesting is generous."
"Fine. Not boring then."
"No," Alexander admitted. "Not boring."
"When's the wedding?"
"I haven't proposed yet."
"But you will."
"Tomorrow. In their garden, which apparently contains vegetables. Visible ones."
His cousin laughed. "How horrifying! Vegetables in plain sight. Whatever is the world coming to?"
"Pray, be silent, Frederick."
"Make me, Your Almost-Married Grace."
Alexander threw a cushion at his cousin's head, missing by a mile. Some things, at least, never changed.
But tomorrow...
Tomorrow everything would change.
Tomorrow he'd propose to a young lady with brown eyes and a sharp tongue, who excelled at being invisible and thought he probably lay awake at night wondering how his life came to this.
She wasn't wrong.
He did.
Chapter Four
The eighth Duke of Montclaire stood before his mirror at the unconscionable hour of seven in the morning, practicing the most important speech of his life with all the enthusiasm of a man rehearsing his own eulogy.
“Miss Coleridge,” he addressed his reflection, which looked about as convinced as he felt. “I am here to offer you the position...no, that’s not right.” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Miss Coleridge, circumstances necessitate that we… oh, Heavens.”
“Having trouble with your romantic declarations?” Frederick’s voice from the doorway was entirely too cheerful for the hour and the occasion.
“What are you doing here?” Alexander didn’t turn from the mirror, still adjusting his cravat with obsessive precision. “It’s seven in the morning.”
“Well, well, I couldn’t miss my dear cousin’s proposal day, could I? It’s not every day one watches a man march to his matrimonial doom with such spectacular resignation.”
“Your support is, as always, underwhelming.”
Frederick threw himself into a chair with his characteristic disregard for furniture. “What support would you like? Shall I write you poetry? ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, you need a bride, and a Coleridge will do’?”
