They Mocked Her When Her Groom Arrived In A Farmer's Cart — He Was The Duke In Disguise
Chapter 8
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She considered the question longer than she meant to. "Because you did not look ashamed," she said finally. "Everyone else in that yard wished to see you crawl. You simply stood there. I thought a man who could bear that much cruelty without flinching might be worth sitting beside."Something shifted in his expression, something she could not quite name, gone as quickly as it appeared."That is either the wisest reason I have ever heard for marrying a stranger," he said, "or the most dangerous.""Perhaps it is both," Matilda answered. And for the first time that long, humiliating day, she felt something close to a smile find its way onto her own face.The rain found them an hour before dusk. It came suddenly, the way autumn storms often did in that part of the country, turning the dry road to slick mud within minutes. The cart lurched, one wheel sinking into a rut deep enough to hold it fast, and no amount of coaxing from Callum or straining from the workhorses could free it."We'll wait it out," he said, raising his voice over the drumming rain. "There's no shifting her until the ground dries a little."Matilda had already begun to shiver, her ivory wedding gown soaked through at the shoulders, offering no more protection against the storm than a piece of paper might.Callum did not hesitate. He shrugged off his worn brown coat and settled it around her shoulders before she could refuse it, his hands lingering only a moment at her collar as he drew it closer against the wind."You'll take a chill yourself," she said, though she made no move to give the coat back."I've weathered worse than an autumn rain," he said, and something in his voice—low, unhurried, close enough that she felt it more than heard it—made her very aware of how little space remained between them beneath the cart's narrow canopy.They sat pressed together against the cold, his shoulder warm against hers, rain drumming a steady rhythm above their heads. Neither spoke for a long while. It was not an uncomfortable silence; it felt strangely like the opposite, as though speaking might break something delicate that had begun to form in the space between their bodies.Matilda's hand rested on the seat between them. She felt, rather than saw, Callum's fingers shift closer until the backs of their hands brushed—the barest whisper of contact—and neither of them moved away. She glanced up and found him already watching her, rain caught in his dark hair, his gaze holding hers with an intensity that sent a slow warmth curling through her chest despite the cold soaking through her gown.There was hunger in that look: quiet, restrained, the kind a man keeps carefully leashed, rather than the kind that frightens. And beneath it, something gentler still—something that looked almost like wonder.