They Mocked Her When Her Groom Arrived In A Farmer's Cart — He Was The Duke In Disguise
Chapter 21
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His Grace, Duke Callum Robinson of Thornwick Hall.Matilda stood very still, the envelope trembling slightly in her hand as the full shape of every small mystery of the past weeks—the bowing servants, the deferential magistrate, the Earl's stricken face, the fine silverware and finer violin—arranged themselves at last into a single overwhelming truth.She was not married to a farmer. She was married to a duke.The carriage ride home passed in silence, heavier than any storm. Matilda sat with the envelope still clutched in her gloved hand, staring out at the passing dark, while Callum watched her with the careful stillness of a man waiting for a blow he knew he had earned.Inside the cottage, she finally turned to face him, her voice quiet but unwavering."Tell me the truth. All of it. I will not ask a second time."Callum did not look away. "My name is Callum Robinson," he said. "It is my given name, though I have not used my title in nearly two years. I am the Duke of Thornwick. I have been since my father's death, six years ago."The words settled over the small room like snow, silent and complete."Two years?" Matilda repeated. "You have been hiding as a steward for two years? Why?"He crossed to the window, his back to her, his shoulders carrying a tension she had never once seen in him before."Because every woman who ever looked at me in London society saw a title before she saw a man," he said. "I was courted by debutantes who recited my income before they had learned my Christian name. I watched friendships form and dissolve depending on which way my fortune tilted. I grew tired of never knowing whether anyone loved Callum, or only ever loved the Duke.There was a woman, three years ago," Callum went on quietly, before she could speak again, "who I believed loved me entirely. I proposed marriage. She accepted before I had even finished the sentence, and that same evening, I overheard her telling her sister that she had secured the finest fortune in three counties. Not the finest husband—the finest fortune. I broke the engagement within the week, and I did not trust a single smile turned toward me in a London ballroom for a long while afterward."Matilda said nothing, though something in her chest ached quietly at the image of him, younger, still capable of being wounded so plainly by a woman who had never deserved his trust at all."So you disguised yourself. You let an entire wedding party laugh at you. You let my family believe they were binding me to a servant."