They Mocked Her When Her Groom Arrived In A Farmer's Cart — He Was The Duke In Disguise
Chapter 16
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"I was not aware affection required pretense," Callum said mildly.Vivian's smile did not waver. "I am prepared to offer you a considerable sum to disappear quietly. Matilda may remain here, comfortable enough, and you may return wherever it is men like you go when their usefulness has ended. No scandal need attach to any of us."Callum studied her for a long moment, and something in his stillness made Vivian's confident smile falter just slightly, though she could not have said why."I have no interest in your money, my lady," he said, his voice quiet but utterly immovable. "And I have every intention of remaining exactly where I am."She rose without another word, gathering her skirts with the brittle dignity of a woman unaccustomed to leaving a room without securing exactly what she came for, and made her way to the door without a backward glance.Vivian left without her satisfaction, and Callum said nothing of the visit to Matilda that evening. But she noticed, in the days that followed, a new weariness in Vivian's eyes whenever the family crossed paths—the particular unease of a woman who has offered a bribe and found, for the first time in her calculating life, someone she could not buy.The letter arrived on a Tuesday, carried by a rider in fine livery Matilda had never seen in that quiet corner of the countryside. She was in the garden when Mrs. Ashby brought it out, sealed with wax pressed by some crest Matilda could not make out from where she stood.Callum took it with the same easy calm he took everything, though Matilda noticed this time the faintest hesitation in his fingers before he broke the seal."What is it?" she asked.He folded the letter and slipped it into his coat before she could see the contents. "An invitation," he said, nothing more.But his jaw had tightened in a way she had learned over these past weeks to recognize as the shape of a man guarding something he was not yet ready to share."To what occasion?""The winter charity ball," Callum said after a pause that lasted a moment too long, "hosted by the Crown's own charitable society. I believe your family will be in attendance."Matilda felt a small, cold weight settle in her stomach at the thought of facing Violet's cruelty again, dressed in whatever modest gown she could manage against London's finest silks. But beneath that dread ran something else entirely: a small, persistent curiosity about why an invitation to a single charity ball should make her husband's hands, steady in every other circumstance, tighten so carefully around the edges of a folded letter.In the days leading up to the ball, the ordinary rhythm of the cottage continued around that small unspoken tension, and Matilda found herself clinging to it rather more than she might have admitted aloud.