My Father Sold Me to a Cold-Hearted Duke—But Ripping My Wedding Dress Changed Everything

Part 1

My Father Sold Me to a Cold-Hearted Duke—But Ripping My Wedding Dress Changed Everything

He didn’t even look at me when he signed away my life.

“It is just a contract,” the Duke muttered, wiping a spot of excess ink from his thumb.

I sat perfectly still in the leather wingback chair, my hands folded over my lap.

My right shoe pinched at the toe, the leather old and the sole wearing thin.

I focused on that small pain to ignore the smell of stale rain and my father’s nervous sweat.

My father’s hand shook violently as he reached for the pen.

He dropped it twice before he managed to scratch his name across the bottom of the page.

Dan Croft, a signature worth forty thousand pounds in cleared gambling debts.

Across the wide expanse of the mahogany desk sat Craig Pendleton, the Duke of Ashbourne.

He sat with the rigid posture of a man bracing for an impact.

His shoulders were broad beneath a charcoal-colored coat, his cravat tied with suffocating precision.

There was no poetry in his face, just harsh angles, a straight nose, and eyes the color of old shillings.

“Is the bank draft prepared?”

Craig asked.

His voice was a low, gravelly baritone that sounded like stones grinding together in a riverbed.

The magistrate slid a slim slip of paper across the desk.

My father snatched it, folding it quickly and shoving it into his breast pocket as if the room might catch fire.

He let out a wet, rattling sigh of relief that made my stomach turn.

“I leave her in your capable hands,” my father said.

I stared at the ink drying on the contract.

Marriage was a sterile word for what had just occurred.

This was a transaction, an acquisition.

The fitting room the next morning was suffocating.

It smelled intensely of lavender water, hot irons, and the anxious sweat of the seamstresses swarming my feet.

Mrs.

Clark yanked the corset laces tight with fingers like iron calipers.

A sharp ache bloomed in my lower back, radiating up my spine.

“A seventeen-inch waist,” she declared, tying off the laces with a vicious tug.

I stared at my reflection in the tall pier glass.

The dress was oyster-white silk, heavy as water, and stiff with seed pearls.

It didn’t look like clothing, but rather a fortress constructed of whalebone and thread.

Aunt Brenda sat in the corner, a woman entirely composed of sharp angles and black bombazine.

“The neckline is too low,” Aunt Brenda observed, her voice cutting through the humid air.

“She has collarbones like a starved bird, and Craig dislikes displays of poverty.”

Craig stepped into the doorway, smelling faintly of leather and cold rain.

He held a flat velvet box containing the Ashbourne sapphires.

The necklace was a monstrous thing, thick silver vines choking massive blue stones.

He instructed me to turn around, his voice clipped and bored.

I felt the shocking chill of the metal against my collarbone, followed by the agonizingly gentle brush of his warm fingers against my neck.

I flinched from the sharp contrast to the man who had bought me like a prized mare.

He pulled his hands back instantly and stepped away.

“It is acceptable,” he said to my reflection, his tone returning to that of a bored magistrate.

The eve of the wedding arrived with a violent thunderstorm.

We sat at opposite ends of a massive mahogany table.

The silence was a heavy, textured thing broken only by the scrape of his knife cutting into roasted mutton.

“The ceremony will last precisely forty-five minutes,” Craig stated, not looking up from his leather-bound notebook.

“Following that, there is a luncheon for one hundred guests.”

“You are expected to smile, nod, and feign a mild exhaustion by two o’clock so we may retire.”

I slowly put my fork down.

“Feign exhaustion?”

“It provides an acceptable excuse to end the reception early,” he said.

“I have a meeting with the harbor masters at four o’clock.”

He was marrying me tomorrow and had scheduled a business meeting for the afternoon.

A sudden bubble of hysterical laughter rose in my chest.

I clamped my mouth shut, but a small incredulous sound escaped.

He set his knife down and narrowed his eyes.

“Efficiency is the bedrock of a stable life,” he said, leaning forward.

“Chaos, emotion, unpredictable behavior—these are the things that ruin estates.”

“I require order.”

The grand ballroom the next day was a blinding sea of crystal and predatory eyes.

I stood beside Craig in the receiving line for two hours.

My face ached from holding a serene, vacant smile.

The seamstresses had reinforced the bodice so heavily to support the sapphires that the silk felt like a wall of iron compressing my lungs.

My breaths were coming shorter, shallower.

A cold sweat broke out across my nape.

Craig checked his pocket watch, giving a microscopic nod toward the grandfather clock.

It was a quarter to two.

I swayed just slightly, allowing my hand to flutter up to my temple.

Craig wrapped his hand around my elbow, his grip tight and impersonal.

“My wife is unwell,” he announced.

He steered me toward the grand staircase.

“You performed adequately,” he murmured as we ascended away from the prying eyes.

The heavy mahogany doors of my chamber closed behind me with a sickening thud.

I was completely alone in the massive room.

I reached up, my fingers trembling, and tried to unclasp the heavy sapphire necklace.

My fingers were numb from the tight sleeves cutting off my circulation.

I couldn’t grip the complicated sliding lock.

Panic sparked in my chest.

I reached around to my back, trying to find the first hook of the corset laces.

The stiff silk of the bodice pinned my shoulders, preventing me from bending my arms backward.

I strained against the fabric, a quiet whimper escaping my throat as the whalebone dug brutally into my bruised ribs.

I spun away from the mirror, knocking a silver hairbrush off the vanity.

My breathing was frantic now, shallow gasps that provided no oxygen.

The corset was a vice squeezing my lungs, my stomach, my heart.

I clawed at the lace at my throat, tearing it away, but it didn’t relieve the pressure.

The collar of sapphires felt like it was choking me.

I staggered backward, sinking to the floor as the heavy silk pooled around me.

A primal, violent surge of adrenaline flooded my veins.

It was a deep, blinding rage at my father, at this house, at the damn silk cutting into my flesh.

I grabbed the heavy silk at my chest, ready to tear myself free, just as the heavy mahogany door clicked open.