Page 34 of Stolen By the Duke of Ice
Her aunt beamed at her before another took her place.
“My dear, the Duke needs your patience. He is as of yet, unwilling to show you his feelings, but I daresay that they are strong! And they are all for you!”
Dahlia nodded along, a smile on her face. She could see her cousins and the others smiling too, encouraging her. She felt disoriented. Her family had gone delusional. Shaking her head, Dahlia tried to breath normally, tried to still her racing mind.
They mean well. They do, but mine will never be a love story.
Chapter Eight
Dahlia looked around her bedroom for the last time. The next time she would be here, she would no longer be Lady Dahlia Hill.
Dahlia Thornscroft, Duchess of Icedale.
It still did not seem real. She walked towards her bed, the bed which had cradled her in her sleep, where she had dreamed of her future. Then she went to her desk and ran her hand over its smooth, polished surface. This was where Penelope Lovelace had been born. This was where she had found herself.
And now I must leave you.
Whether she was speaking to her chamber or to herself, Dahlia hardly knew, but what she did know was that everything was about to change. And with that, the woman that she was must change, too.
“Dahlia, my love, it is time.”
“Yes, Mama.”
Her mother looked around her room and sobbed at the missing items and furniture.
“Oh, my love, I had not imagined that it would be difficult for me as well.” She moved to her daughter’s vanity table. “So bare.”
“You said those exact words on my first year out in society. Do you remember?”
“Yes, and I remember how excited you were to go the apothecary and the perfumers to remedy the problem.”
“You and Papa would always bring me back something from your trips. I especially liked it when you had a gift from Paris.”
Teresa smiled for a moment then she looked suddenly at Dahlia as if just realizing something very important.
“Perhaps it would have been better if you had the chance to choose the gift for yourself.”
“Oh, Mama.”
“We haven’t always been there with you, your father and I, have we, Dahlia?”
“You mustn’t say that, Mama!”
“Oh, my dear.”
“You and Papa have always been there when I needed you. Truly, I have been loved. I have felt loved by both of you!”
“My Dahlia, my little flower.”
They embraced as only mothers and daughters could. After a while, they both straightened.
“Are you ready?” Teresa asked.
No.
“Yes,” Dahlia said with a smile for her mother.
At the bottom of the staircase, her father met her. For all his insistence on her marrying the Duke, now that the time had come, the Marquess wore an expression that was not quite happy. Indeed, to Dahlia, who knew her parents’ every expression, he seemed sad.
