“I have obtained a special license, Jacqueline. I have just come from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s. Luckily, I was able to roust him from his port, given the circumstances. And I’ve secured a vicar.”
“This is why you’re going to marry me?” she ground out, turning on James. “All those protests you made about us not suiting. All those comments about love. But he confronts you and you change your mind? You will endure marriage to me because he orders it?”
“You were about to be ruined,” her brother cut in. “And he was an accomplice in it. He’s seen sense. And thank God he still has a shred of honor.”
“I was trying to help,” she countered, and now? With a marriage to James? Society would no doubt say she had. It mattered not how hypocritical they all were. She did not have the power to get away with breaking rules, even in private. “I took my future into my hands, which now the two of you are doing.”
“The future is yours to choose,” James countered firmly. “We are not forcing you—”
“Isn’t that exactly what you are doing?” She shook her head and held James’s gaze. “I thought you were different.”
Alexander said softly but firmly, “We are saving you.”
Waves of shame crashed over her as all her own ridiculous defenses washed away. Her brother was right. It was she who had gone to his rooms alone. It was she who had convinced him to meet her again in private. And that kiss… That embrace…
She had chosen all of that.
Now, he would pay the price for her boldness.
“Please don’t, Blackbrook,” James said through gritted teeth. “She is not alone in this.”
“I’m glad you can admit you’re a blackguard,” her brother snapped.
James gripped her hand and said firmly, “I am the only answer, Jack.”
“Jack,” her brother echoed, rolling his eyes with fury. “My God, you two are intimates, in truth.”
They were. And there was no denying it. All society was likely about to know now.
She met James’s gaze, her throat tight. “A duke, money, freedom,” she began. “How right you are. What more could I want? My heart has nothing to do with it as you so often point out. I don’t even know if my happiness will have anything to do with it now.”
“I promise to make you happy,” James insisted, but the dark shadows in his eyes belied his vow.
“Do not make promises you cannot keep, Your Grace.” She blew out a breath and dropped his hand, then climbed down out of the coach.
Without looking back at her brother or soon-to-be husband, she climbed the church’s granite steps, crossed over the threshold, and strode down the beautifully designed nave.
Alone.
As she likely would be for the rest of her life, despite the vows about to occur. For she knew James could not love her.
She did not know if he could ever love anyone.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jack had never imagined a marriage for herself, but if she had imagined a wedding, it certainly would not have gone like the one that had just taken place.
Surely the groom would not run after her down the nave.
Surely the vicar would not have bumbled his way through the service, having been awoken in the middle of the night.
Surely her brother would not be standing by, looking as if he was going to murder someone if the wedding did not take place.
And surely she would not have married a man who was doing so out of sheer desperation, because that was the only word she could think of in this particular circumstance.
The Duke of Stone had grown desperate and unable to provide the match that he had promised. And he was desperate not to disappoint her or ruin her or…disappoint her brother.
It was an interesting realization that her husband cared so much about other people’s happiness that he apparently did not give a whit for his own.