Page 49 of Married to a Frozen Duke
Gone was the elaborate wedding dress, the carefully styled hair, the duchess-in-training appearance. Instead, she wore a simple blue wool dress that had seen better years, a plain white shawl, and her hair was pulled back in a simple knot. She looked like a governess. Or a merchant's daughter.
Or, he realized with uncomfortable clarity, like herself.
She made her way through the crowd with surprising grace, ignoring the stares and whispers, and sat down beside him as if it were perfectly normal to find one's duke husband wrapped in a blanket by a common room fire.
"Feel better?" he asked.
"Drier, at least. You?"
"I'm contemplating whether one can die of mortification."
"If one could, we'd both be dead by now."
"True."
A serving girl appeared with bowls of soup and bread. It was simple fare, some sort of vegetable and barley concoction, but it was hot and Alexander was surprised to find he was actually hungry. Dying of embarrassment apparently worked up an appetite.
Ophelia ate with unexpected enthusiasm, tearing into the bread like she hadn't seen food in days. Then again, she'd been sick twice that morning and barely touched the wedding breakfast, so perhaps she was starving.
"This is good," she said, sounding surprised.
"It's peasant food."
"It's hot food, which makes it magnificent." She paused. "Have you ever had simple food before? Just basic, filling, no-fancy-sauce food?"
"Of course not."
"You should try it sometime. It's oddly satisfying."
"I am trying it. Right now. In a blanket."
"And?"
He took another spoonful. "It's... adequate."
"High praise from you."
They ate in surprisingly companionable silence while the storm raged outside and the crowd around them gossiped. Alexander caught more fragments about their wedding, each version more elaborate than the last. Apparently, in one version, Ophelia had tried to run and he'd dragged her back. In another, he'd fainted too. In yet another, the Archbishop of Canterbury himself had had to be called to decide if the marriage was valid.
"We're becoming a legend," Ophelia observed, obviously hearing the same stories.
"A horrible legend."
"Still a legend. In a hundred years, people will probably still talk about the wedding where the bride was sick on the groom."
"Wonderful. My contribution to history."
"It could be worse."
"How?"
"You could be forgotten entirely. At least this way, you're memorable."
"I preferred being dignified."
"Did you? Because dignified seems rather boring."
He looked at her incredulously. "Boring? I'm a duke. Dukes aren't boring."
