I Publicly Rejected A Duke — Then Faked An Engagement To Save My Family

Part 1

Dropping to one knee before two hundred staring guests, the Duke offered a diamond that caught the light of a thousand dying beeswax candles.

The resulting silence in the ballroom wasn’t empty, but heavy and suffocating, like wet wool shoved down my throat.

Instead, looking at his perfectly manicured hands and smelling the stale lavender water that masked his sweat, I felt the bile rise.

The heat in the ballroom was a physical weight.

The midsummer heat mixed with the body warmth of hundreds of guests to create a suffocating climate.

My corset, tightly laced by my mother’s unforgiving hands three hours prior, felt less like a garment and more like an instrument of torture.

My name was Megan Linfield, and I was standing at the epicenter of a social earthquake.

Brian Hastings, the Duke of Clarendon, was walking toward me.

The crowd separated to let him through, eager to witness the spectacle.

He was conventionally handsome, I supposed, tall with hair the color of wet sand and eyes that were perfectly symmetrical but held all the warmth of a cracked porcelain plate.

As he approached, I didn’t feel a flutter in my chest.

I felt a cold, hard knot of nausea settling in my stomach.

My mother, Brenda, standing half a step behind my right shoulder, pinched the soft flesh of my arm.

It was a vicious, silent command to smile, stand up straight, and secure the inheritance.

Brian stopped in front of me.

When he stood before me, the flawless facade started to crack.

I noticed a faint sheen of grease on his forehead.

He didn’t look like a man in love, he looked like a man executing a tedious financial transaction.

He cleared his throat, the sound like a gunshot in the sudden, terrifying quiet of the room.

The orchestra had fallen completely silent.

He asked if I would do him the honor of becoming his wife.

I opened my mouth to say yes.

It was the answer my entire life had been orchestrated toward, but my body refused.

My throat closed up.

My hands began to shake with a fine uncontrollable tremor.

I looked into his eyes and saw nothing but entitled expectation.

He wasn’t looking at me, he was waiting for his script to end.

The silence stretched, becoming brittle.

My mother hissed a venomous thread of sound meant only for my ears.

Panic, hot and sharp, spiked in my blood.

I couldn’t exist in this room for one more second.

If I said yes, the cage door would lock forever.

I took a step backward, my heel catching on the hem of my heavy silk gown, and I stumbled just slightly.

My voice cracked.

It sounded small and pathetic as I forced the word past the barrier of my teeth.

I said no.

Brian blinked, the mechanical rhythm of his expression halting.

I said it again, louder this time, not brave, just desperate.

I turned, shoving past my paralyzed mother, and practically ran toward the double doors.

I bumped into a lord, spilling his champagne down the front of his waistcoat, and I didn’t apologize.

I heard the explosion of whispers behind me, a cacophony of shock and outrage.

But I was already out the door, tearing into the cool damp night air of London alone.

The carriage ride home was the longest journey of my life.

My mother sat opposite me, not speaking, not screaming, not even looking at me.

The silence was absolute, heavy, and toxic.

The next morning, the reality of my actions settled into the house like a thick, choking fog.

The exile was immediate and absolute.

I was ruined, and my family was teetering on the edge of financial collapse.

Six months later, November arrived with a relentless, biting sleet.

On a bleak Tuesday afternoon, I found myself walking down a narrow, soot-stained street in the city to visit my father’s solicitor.

I pushed open the door to the waiting room, a tiny, dim space heated only by a small coal fire.

There was only one other person in the room.

It was Brian.

The six months had changed him, too.

The perfect mechanical sheen was gone, replaced by dark, bruised-looking circles under his eyes.

We spoke, stripping away the gilded facades we had worn our entire lives.

His uncle had died, leaving the estate bankrupt from disastrous speculations.

He hadn’t been looking for a wife; he had been looking for an immediate injection of capital.

My father’s wealth, ironically, was also a facade built on debt.

We were two drowning people.

He offered me a ride home in his hired carriage.

In the dark interior, he proposed a mutual bluff.

If the bank believed I was about to marry a duke, they would extend our mortgage indefinitely.

If his creditors believed he was marrying an heiress, they would give him the time he needed to liquidate quietly.

It was fraud, it was survival.

We would announce the engagement, wait six months, and then break it off.

I took his freezing hand in the dark carriage, sealing the bargain.

The next afternoon, the velvet box was delivered.

I opened it alone in the library, picking up the massive square-cut diamond.

The heavy diamond slid onto my finger, sealing our lie, but as we stepped out to face the wolves of high society, I realized I had just traded one cage for a much more dangerous one.