The Arrogant Duke Proposed A Loveless Marriage — He Had No Idea I Would Melt His Frozen Heart

Part 1

I was twenty-five years old, which high society had long ago decided was entirely too old for a woman to matter.

I had made my peace with being a spinster years before the whispers even started.

My father, Craig, was a gentle, anxious man who inherited more debts than money.

Since I was seventeen, the burden of running our crumbling country manor had fallen on my shoulders.

The exact price of coal and precisely how many days a roast could be made to last were figures permanently etched in my mind.

Though not entirely plain, my wardrobe consisted solely of refitted gowns that were three seasons out of date.

My worst habit was looking at people and seeing exactly what they were, rather than what they pretended to be.

That quality had cost me the few suitors I ever had.

Men rarely enjoy being truly seen.

My father had spent three days in a state of absolute panic over a dinner party.

A man of immense consequence was coming to our modest home.

His name was Brian, the Duke of Penrith.

My father was convinced that this wealthy aristocrat might invest in a scheme that would save our family from ruin.

I had heard a dozen of these certainties over the years.

I met this one with a calm silence that my father mistook for encouragement.

I made sure the dining parlor had a good fire and disguised our cheap cuts of meat as best I could.

When I finally came downstairs, the introductions were already over.

My father nervously gestured to my seat.

The guest across the table barely inclined his head, his strange amber eyes entirely devoid of interest.

Brian was perhaps thirty-four, dressed with the quiet plainness of a man so certain of his power that he didn’t need to advertise it.

From the very first course, his effortless cruelty became apparent.

He wasn’t loud or openly abusive.

He simply answered my father’s eager questions with a weary, faint courtesy that made every hopeful sentence sound utterly foolish.

He let silences stretch exactly one beat too long.

He looked at our decent wine and careful fire with the incurious eye of a man cataloging how little we were worth.

My father shrank under that gaze.

He laughed too quickly and reached desperately for an approval that was never going to come.

I watched this for an hour, and something deep inside me began to burn.

He had taken my father’s measure, found him useless, and decided this dinner was a tax to be paid as cheaply as possible.

He didn’t care that my father had spent days preparing, or that hope was a very expensive commodity in our house.

He was eating my father’s food and repaying him with disdain.

I couldn’t endure it a moment longer.

Brian set down his glass and sighed, wondering aloud how anyone survived the country without dying of boredom.

“Perhaps,” I said, my voice cutting through the clatter of silverware, “by learning not to be dull company at the dinner.”

The entire table went perfectly still.

My father made a small, horrified sound.

Brian turned his head, his amber eyes opening fully for the first time all evening.

I knew I was ruining us, but I couldn’t stop.

“You have sat at my father’s table for two hours.” My voice dropped to a dangerous, icy murmur.

“You have eaten his food and given him nothing but the trouble of watching you be bored.”

“You find us tedious, and perhaps we are.”

“But boredom is not a misfortune that happens to you.”

“It is a discourtesy you are doing to us.”

“I only thought you might like to know the difference, since no one has ever dared to tell you.”

The silence that followed was suffocating.

My father turned the color of the tablecloth.

I braced myself for the devastating reply of a powerful man who knew a hundred ways to destroy a woman.

But it never came.

Instead, the corner of his hard mouth moved in the faintest ghost of a smile.

“No,” he said quietly.

“No one ever has.”

He immediately changed the subject, drawing my father out on a topic he actually understood, and spent the rest of the evening being present and engaged.

I sat there with my heart pounding, certain I had done something irreparable.

When the carriage finally left, my father came to find me.

He wasn’t angry, which terrified me even more.

He told me that as Brian was leaving, he had asked for my name again.

Brian had told my father that I was the only person who had spoken the truth to him in a year, and that he should value me.

I didn’t know what to make of it.

Winter came and went, and I did my best to forget the strange, cold Duke.

But my Aunt Heather relentlessly dragged me to London for the spring season.

I loathed the marriage market, fully expecting to stand at the edge of ballrooms and be ignored.

Three weeks into the season, we attended a massive gala.

I felt the room shift before I even saw him.

Brian walked in, colder and more imposing than I remembered.

My heart dropped when his amber eyes locked onto me across the crowded floor.

He crossed the entire length of the ballroom, ignoring the most beautiful women in London.

He stopped right in front of my shabby gown and bowed deeply.

The entire room held its breath.

He asked me to dance, claiming I was the only person in the room he actually wanted to speak with.

We danced, and he didn’t offer a single drop of fake flattery.

He called on me twice that week, sending the rumor mill into a frenzy.

Then, while walking in my aunt’s garden, he delivered a proposal that shattered every expectation I ever had.

He didn’t offer me love or romance.

He offered me a business arrangement.

He told me he was hunted by ambitious women, and he was exhausted to the bone.

He wanted a wife to end the hunt, and he knew I wanted to escape the humiliation of the marriage market.

He promised me respect, honesty, and peace.

He confessed his heart was frozen solid after the sudden death of his brother, and he had no love left to give.

But he wanted a woman who would tell him the truth.

I looked at this powerful, grieving man, and I agreed to his terms.

I thought our marriage would be a quiet, safe arrangement.

I had no idea that moving into his grand estate would put a massive target on my back.

I didn’t realize that by taking his ring, I had just declared war on a woman who had spent years plotting to be his Duchess.

And I had no clue that the most ruthless woman in high society had already set a trap to humiliate me in front of hundreds of people.