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The Duke Disguised Himself as a Footman to Meet His Bride — What He Overheard Left Him Speechless

The Duke Disguised Himself as a Footman to Meet His Bride — What He Overheard Left Him Speechless

Chapter 9

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The silence in the cellar was absolute.Amelia read the last line twice, then looked up at Lucien with eyes full of horror. "I'm not being married off to pay his debts," she said slowly. "I'm being sent away to London, to your house, a hundred miles from here, so there's nobody left to sit by Kit's bed at night." Her voice cracked at last. "So that one quiet night, she'd take one spoonful too many, and everyone would say what a mercy it was."Nan began to cry.Lucien folded the letter and held it as if it were made of glass. "She'll be twenty-one in ten years," he said quietly. "Silas couldn't afford to wait ten years. He needed the money from my marriage settlement to keep his creditors away just long enough for a sickly child to die."He looked at Amelia. "I came here to find out whether you were good enough to be my wife. I'm ashamed of that now. All this time, you've been fighting a war alone.""Not alone anymore, Amelia," he whispered. "Am I?""No," Lucien said. "Not anymore."Silas let him out of the cellar at dawn because a house with a duke to impress could not spare a single pair of hands. And they began that very morning.Dr. Thorne made up a bottle of harmless tonic—sugar water and a little iron—in a brown bottle identical to Mrs. Gaunt's. Nan switched them in the linen basket. Every evening, Mrs. Gaunt measured her poisonous spoonfuls into the girl's cup, and every evening, she was pouring nothing but syrup.For three days, Lucien played the obedient footman by day and met Amelia in the cold cellar at midnight—the one place nobody else ever went.And on the third morning, Kit Hartwell sat up in bed, asked for an egg, and ate two.Amelia came down to the cellar that night with her eyes shining, and threw her arms around Lucien's neck before either of them remembered she wasn't supposed to. "She laughed today," she said into his shoulder. "She laughed at Nan's cat. I haven't heard her laugh since she was four."Lucien held her and didn't say anything at all, because he wasn't sure his voice would work.But Mrs. Gaunt noticed, too. On the fourth morning, she stood in Kit's doorway, watching the girl feed crusts to the window sparrows, and her face went gray. She went straight to Sir Silas's study and closed the door.That same afternoon, Basil Crowther came down the back stairs unexpectedly and heard Ambrose Pike, in a moment of pure panic over a missing cufflink, whisper to the footman: "Forgive me, Your Grace, I can't find it anywhere."
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The Duke Disguised Himself as a Footman to Meet His Bride — What He Overheard Left Him Speechless

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