He is right. This is utter madness. I am ruined.
She took a deep breath as the world around her seemed to tilt violently. She clenched her hands into fists, forcing herself to remain upright.
“Your Grace?” Gemma heard her grandmother's voice. “What is going on here?”
Gemma rushed toward the Dowager Marchioness. Surely, she would talk her friend the Dowager Duchess out of this outlandish suggestion. “Help me, Grandmother,” she murmured. “Her Grace, she…” She closed her eyes again, overcome with another sweep of dizziness.
This cannot be happening.
Gemma was dimly aware that the entire crowd had gathered behind the church. Her sisters. Her father. Countless onlookers.
“Your Grace? Whatisthis?” The familiar voice made every muscle in Gemma's body tighten. Miss Henford and her family.
Gemma prayed rather desperately for the earth to open up and swallow her whole.
The Duke cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders. His eyes moved over the onlookers, alighting on Miss Henford for a moment, before turning back to his grandmother. “Your Grace. Miss Henford. I apologize. It seems there has been something of a misunderstanding. Lady Gemma merely?—”
“I know what I saw.” The Dowager Duchess glared at the Duke with fierce blue eyes. “I witnessed you and Lady Gemma in an extremely compromising position.” Gasps and murmurs rippled through the crowd. The Dowager Duchess took a step toward her grandson, clearly enjoying the attention. “And as you are well aware, you now have to do something to repair her reputation.”
“What?!” demanded Miss Henford. She made a move to charge toward Gemma, but her father held her back.
“These are all lies,” Gemma cried, suddenly finding her voice. “I tripped and fell, and…” She faded out, feeling herself cower under the scrutiny of the crowd. Suddenly, she recalled the Duke's words about his grandmother:“My grandmother does not wish me to marry Miss Henford… I fear she may have been trying to deceive me…”
Did the Dowager Duchess truly wish for her grandson to avoid marrying Miss Henford so much that she would stoop to something like this?
The entire rest of mylifeis at stake!
And there was no way in hell she planned to spend it as the Duke of Larsen's wife!
Tears of desperation began to well in her eyes, and she turned back to the Dowager Marchioness. “Please, Grandmother,” she begged. “Do something. I swear it, I did nothing wrong. I cannot… marry him.” Despite her best intentions to hold them back, her tears spilled suddenly, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand.
A faint look of sympathy passed across her grandmother's eyes, but it was replaced quickly by a far more rigid expression. “I am sorry, my dear,” said the Dowager Marchioness. “There is nothing I can do. If you and the Duke did as Her Grace claims you did, then you have no choice but to become his wife. And I am certain Her Grace has no reason to lie.”
Her Grace haseveryreason to lie!Gemma wanted to cry. She thought back to that fleeting moment when the Duke had pulled her into his arms to stop her from falling. That fleeting moment when he had held her body so firmly against his own. Thatfleeting moment when his hands had worked their way across the swell of her breasts.
That fleeting moment is about to change the course of my entire future.
The chaos of voices around her suddenly felt distorted as the weight of the situation swung at her.
I am to marry Duke of Larsen?
The arrogant, over-confident, sharp-tongued Duke of Larsen. About to become her husband. The very thought of it made her tears fall harder.
“Please, Grandmother,” she sobbed. “I cannot marry him.”
But her grandmother's characteristic kindness had given way to a long-buried sense of propriety. “You ought to have thought of that before you allowed him to tarnish you.”
Gemma's eyes widened. Surely, her own grandmother did not truly believe that Gemma and the Duke had been…together?
“I would rather be a tarnished woman than take him as my husband,” she managed, voice low enough for only her grandmother to hear.
The look in the Dowager Marchioness's eyes hardened. “And what of your sisters? Do you plan to ruin their lives too?”
Gemma's stomach churned. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force away reality.
And before she could make sense of it, a figure was in front of her, fierce blue eyes glaring into hers.
“This is not over,” Miss Henford hissed. “Do you understand?” Her voice was low enough for only Gemma to hear. “My family has the power to destroy everyone you care about. I shall see to it that you regret this for the rest of your life.”
