My Fiance Humiliated Me At Our Betrothal — So I Married His Worst Enemy

Part 1

Wax dripped onto the grand piano like hardened fat while I watched my fiance of exactly three hours slide his hand down the spine of a woman who was decidedly not me.

Another woman in my position might have collapsed in hysterics upon witnessing the betrayal.

I simply felt the wire of my corset bite into my bruised ribs and wondered if the carriages were still waiting outside.

I tasted metal in my mouth, the lingering flavor of the cheap champagne Brian Evans had served to celebrate our union.

My soon-to-be husband clearly skimped on the refreshments despite flaunting his immense fortune to the entire room.

Two hundred eager aristocrats packed the sweltering hall, their heavy silk garments masking the stench of ambition.

Across the room, Brian laughed with a wet, heavy sound that carried over the scraping of a cello.

Heather Collins pressed herself against his side, murmuring secrets into his flushed face.

His hand gripped the green taffeta of her gown with the careless entitlement of a man inspecting a horse he had already purchased.

I didn’t feel a shred of heartbreak, because to have your heart broken, you had to actually use it.

What I felt was a slow, sickening crawl of humiliation rising up the back of my neck.

We had announced our engagement before supper.

The ink on the marriage settlements signing over my ancestral farmlands to cover Brian’s staggering gambling debts was barely dry.

And yet, before the clock had even struck eleven, he was openly fondling another woman in front of our peers.

Aunt Brenda materialized beside me smelling of gin, her sharp avian eyes fixed entirely on Brian.

She hissed at me to look away, warning me that if I cried, they would pity me.

I kept my face entirely blank, a monumental physical effort that sent pain shooting through my floating ribs.

Brian caught my eye across the room, raising his glass a fraction of an inch with a smug, heavy-lidded smirk.

The look was a silent challenge reminding me that he owned me, my lands, and my father’s signature.

My hand trembled, sending a drop of freezing champagne over the rim of my crystal glass.

I had agreed to this bargain because my father was a man who cried into his porridge when creditors came knocking.

I had sold myself with my eyes wide open, but a violent, irrational wave of revulsion suddenly crashed over me.

I told Aunt Brenda I needed air, shoving my half-empty glass onto a passing tray.

I turned my back on the ballroom, walking with a stiff, measured stride away from the gossiping dowagers.

The hallway outside was jarringly cold, smelling of beeswax and centuries of undisturbed dust.

I slipped inside the dark, private library, leaning my entire weight against the heavy oak door until it shut with a solid click.

A cynical voice from the shadows told me to muffle my weeping because the acoustics were terribly unforgiving.

My eyes snapped open to find Tyler Reed, Lord of Ashbourne, slouched in a wingback chair by the unlit hearth.

He was Brian’s closest neighbor, his bitterest rival, and a ruined, dangerous man holding onto the ragged edges of his aristocracy.

He wasn’t dressed for a ball, wearing a dark, severe riding coat and muddy boots.

I felt a flare of pure, white-hot anger and told him to climb back out the window if he had only come to insult me.

He stood up, tall and lean, moving with a quiet, deliberate grace that made me instinctively step back.

He guessed Brian had already put his hands on the widow, his mocking edge shifting to a calculating curiosity.

I snapped that I had no choice but to survive this evening because my family would be thrown into the street otherwise.

Tyler stared down at me, slowly rolling the details of my father’s debts around in his mouth.

He stepped closer, revealing that he had spent three years buying up Brian’s secondary debts, including the lien against this very estate.

He told me that if I walked out of the room as Brian’s fiancee, I belonged to him.

But if I walked out as Tyler’s wife, Brian’s claims became legally subordinate to Tyler’s.

He tossed a special marriage license from the archbishop onto the desk, offering to completely bankrupt our mutual enemy tonight.

He swore on his honor to assume my father’s debts and nullify them, leaving our estate entirely untouched.

I looked at the freezing draft ruffling his cravat, realizing he was offering me a cliff to jump off.

It would ruin my name in polite society, but it would free me from a lifetime of suffocating humiliation.

I told him there was a chapel two miles down the south road, and the vicar owed my family a favor.

Tyler didn’t hesitate, pulling out a small folding knife and telling me to turn around.

He grabbed the restrictive silver silk of my overskirt, pulled it taut, and sliced the blade right through the fabric.

The weight of the gown vanished, leaving me in my white muslin underdress and tightly laced corset.

He offered me his warm wool riding coat, entirely enveloping me in the scent of rain and tobacco.

I twisted the insulting emerald ring over my knuckle until it scraped the skin, pulling it entirely free.

I placed his heavy emerald ring precisely in the center of his mahogany desk, and I climbed out the window into the storm with a man who had every intention of destroying him.