They Mocked Her When Her Groom Arrived In A Farmer's Cart — He Was The Duke In Disguise
Chapter 22
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"I let them believe what they wished to believe," he said, turning back to face her at last, his eyes dark with something that looked almost like grief. "I never lied about who I was in my heart, Matilda. I lied only about the title attached to it.""That is not a small lie," she said, her voice trembling now with an anger that surprised even herself. "You let me believe I had married poverty. You let me pity you, defend you, love you, all while knowing the truth the entire time!""I saw you first outside Belgrave House," Callum said quietly, closing the distance between them by a single step, though he did not reach for her. "Nearly a year before our wedding was ever arranged. You were kneeling in the mud beside a sick child, feeding him broth with your own hands, while your family dined on silver plates not a mile away, and never once asked where you had gone. I watched you walk three miles home in the rain rather than trouble a servant for the carriage. I fell in love with you then, Matilda, long before I ever knew our families' solicitors were arranging a marriage between us."Matilda's anger faltered just slightly beneath the weight of that confession, though it did not disappear entirely."Then why let me marry a lie?" she whispered. "Why not simply tell me?""Because I needed to know," Callum said, his voice rough now, "whether you could love the man before you ever learned to love the Duke. I have spent my whole life doubting every woman who smiled at me. I could not risk doubting you, too. Not when I already knew you were different from all the rest.""You should have trusted me with the truth," Matilda said, tears finally slipping free despite her best efforts to hold them back. "Not tested me like some experiment to satisfy your own fears."She turned from him and left the room before he could answer, her heart a tangled ruin of love and betrayal that refused to separate into anything she could name clearly.She walked the cold corridor to her own chamber with her arms wrapped tightly around herself, replaying every tender moment of the past weeks against the sharp new knowledge of his deception, unable to decide which memory to trust: the coat offered in the rain, or the silence that had let her believe a lie for so many weeks afterward.The Dowager Duchess found her an hour later, sitting alone in the small garden despite the evening's chill, her mother-in-law's carefully maintained disguise as Mrs. Ashby, the housekeeper, now entirely, uselessly abandoned."May I sit?" the older woman asked, and settled beside Matilda without waiting for an answer, her posture straightening into the naturally regal bearing she had spent weeks carefully hiding."You knew," Matilda said. "All this time you knew, and you let me call you housekeeper."