They Mocked Her When Her Groom Arrived In A Farmer's Cart — He Was The Duke In Disguise
Chapter 3
Theme:
Font Size:
24px
"You'll ruin your hands, my lady," old Mrs. Fenwick told her once, watching Matilda kneel in the mud beside a sick child's cot. "A lady's hands aren't meant for nursing.""Then I suppose I am not much of a lady," Matilda answered, and meant it as neither complaint nor pride—simply as fact. She had long since stopped waiting for Belgrave House to notice her goodness; she had found somewhere else to spend it.There had been a time, years earlier, when she still hoped otherwise. She remembered, with the particular clarity of old wounds, the winter she had fallen ill with a fever that kept her abed for nearly a fortnight, and how Lady Vivian had visited her sickroom only once, briefly, to remark that Violet's new ball gown had arrived from London and that the household could not spare a maid to sit with an invalid when there was fitting to be done. Matilda had been 11 years old. She had learned that winter precisely how much space she occupied in her stepmother's heart, and had stopped expecting more of it ever since.Lord Benedict, for his part, was not a cruel man by nature, only a distracted and diminished one, worn thin by ledgers that refused to balance and investments that had swallowed the family's fortune whole. He looked at Matilda sometimes across the dinner table with an expression that might once have been fondness, before some fresh worry over the estate's debts pulled his attention away again, as it always did.It was a Tuesday in early autumn when Lord Benedict summoned his family to the drawing room and delivered the news that would end one life and quietly begin another."There is to be a double wedding," he announced, standing before the cold hearth with the stiffness of a man reciting figures rather than fate. "Violet will marry Viscount Victor Holloway before the year is out."Violet's shriek of delight rattled the china on the mantel. Victor Holloway was heir to one of England's great banking fortunes, a man whose name appeared in every society paper twice a week, whose smile had broken more hearts across three counties than anyone could count."And Matilda," Lord Benedict continued, not quite meeting his elder daughter's eyes, "will marry a man named Callum Robinson, a steward and tenant farmer from a property near Thornwick in the north."Silence fell over the room like a dropped tray."A farmer?" Lady Vivian repeated, letting the word curdle on her tongue. "You mean to marry your own daughter to a farmer?""He comes with a sizable settlement," Lord Benedict said quickly—too quickly, the way men speak when they are ashamed of the truth, but desperate for the money attached to it. "The arrangement was made through his estate solicitor. It will ease certain obligations."