She Fled Her Wedding — Then Found the Duke Escaping on the Same Train
Chapter 2
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At 31, Annora had thought herself too old for a fresh species of humiliation."Where were you going?" she asked."Lynmouth."She closed her eyes. "Of course you were. You, too. My sister has taken rooms there. I thought she would let me in.""I have a house, naturally. It would have been inconvenient if you had needed to ask somebody."He accepted that in silence. She wished he would argue. His steady courtesy had been one of the things she thought she could build a marriage upon; now it seemed a polished surface beneath which she had never bothered to look.After a moment, he said, "I left a letter.""So did I.""That is something.""Do you think so? Mine began with a sentence about how grateful I was. It was an appalling letter. I had to write three versions before I could make it sound sufficiently unlike a refusal."The Duke looked at her. "What did it sound like?""A woman who had been abducted by her own regrets."He sat down. The little movement brought his face into the light from the window. There were dark hollows beneath his eyes. She had noticed them at dinner the previous evening and assumed he was attending to important business. She had been grateful for his distraction; it had allowed her to swallow almost nothing without being observed."I said I was unequal to the occasion," he told her."Were you?""Yes.""So was I."They looked at one another across the distance the wedding breakfast was supposed to have closed.It had not been a forced marriage. That was the difficulty. There was no cruel guardian to blame, no debt collector at the door, no threat hanging over either family. Annora's father had money enough; Piers had considerably more. Two sensible adults had considered a sensible arrangement and agreed to it while a procession of delighted relatives mistook their willingness for joy.Annora had liked him. She liked him still, though she would rather have bitten her tongue than admit it at that moment. He was attentive without being familiar. He never interrupted her father even when her father deserved it. His letters were beautifully punctuated. At their first dinner, when she had caught her sleeve on a chair, he had quietly freed it before anyone could remark upon her clumsiness.None of those things explained how to marry him."What time is it?" she asked.He consulted his watch. "A quarter past 10:00. The wedding was at 2:00.""My father will have found the letter.""My secretary will have found mine.""You did not give it to your mother?""No."