The Duke's Hound Hated Every Woman He Courted — Until a Young Lady Walked Through the Gate
Chapter 12
Theme:
Font Size:
24px
Percival Ravenhurst was tried at the summer assizes. Forgery was a hanging crime in those days, and the court was ready to make an example of him and sentenced him to death. It was the Duke who wrote to the judge, and he wrote with a steady hand:Edmund, he said,would not have wished a gallows. The sentence was commuted to transportation for life to New South Wales, and Percival sailed that autumn with the convict ships, where it is said he never quite understood how a dog had undone him.Baron Marlowe's name was cleared by Michaelmas. The Duke paid every debt that had ever borne a forged signature, and more besides. He raised a stone in the churchyard at Bristol with an inscription Isolde chose herself.He kept his promise: she stayed at Ravenhurst Park, not as a bride, not as a Duchess, but as the widow of the man whose brother had finally learned to listen.In the evenings, at first, they spoke only of Edmund. The Duke told her things she had never known: how Edmund at ten had tried to sail a hat across the lake; how he had once given his own pony to a tenant's child and then lied about where it had gone. And Isolde told him in return what Edmund had said of him in the long summer of her 19th year. The Duke listened to every word without once saying it could wait until morning.The fire was lit in the long brown study again.Somewhere in the second winter, so quietly that neither could have named the day, the evenings stopped being only about Edmund. On the anniversary of the quarry, they walked up to the churchyard together. The grass was green, and the stone was plain, and Sovereign lay down in front of it with a long sigh, his great head on his paws. He did not growl. He did not watch the gate. For the first time in all those years, his amber eyes closed."He has finished waiting," murmured Isolde."I think we both have," the Duke replied. He drew a breath. "I have never been good at this. I was taught that explaining oneself was weakness, and I have found it is the opposite. So let me explain, and you may refuse me, and I will not need to be cold about it: over these two years, I have come to care for you in a way that has nothing to do with my brother's ring. I should like to court you, Isolde—properly, with your permission, and without a single carriage."Isolde looked at him: this proud, silent, imperfect man who had once knelt in the mud and begged a dog to stay still. She thought of the 12 women who had come up that drive to be inspected and judged; none of them had ever been asked."You may walk me back to the house," she told him. "We shall see what happens on the way."And Sovereign, without opening his eyes, thumped his tail once against the grass.