She Slapped England’s Most Feared Duke… Then He Refused to Let Her Go
Chapter 17
The wedding breakfast at Harrington House lasted until the candles needed replacing and the orchestra had to be reminded, twice, that waltzes were permitted.
It had begun as a formality: tables of fine china, toasts to the happy couple, the sort of polished event at which the aristocracy excelled. But something had broken loose in the crowd — the same something that breaks loose whenever a room decides, collectively, that it has been holding its breath for years and may now exhale.
There was dancing. There was laughing in corners. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was seen, on the terrace, eating a bun with an expression of religious joy. The most severe dowager in Mayfair had wept openly when Isabelle danced the first dance with William — the Duke learning, to his visible alarm, that his new sister-in-law counted the rhythm and could not be corrected.
“The quadrille is mathematics,” Isabelle told him, over the violins. “I am simply the pattern.”
“I am going to tell the Royal Society,” William said, “that my family has been annexed by a mathematician, and they will either bow to you or resign.”
Dominic collected her for the second dance — and the third — and the fourth, to the delight of the gossips, until Aunt Margaret tapped his shoulder with her fan and said, “Viscount. The bride requires wine and a chair. The conquest can resume in ten minutes.”
“I am not conquering,” Dominic said, injured. “I am celebrating.”
“You are monopolizing. There is a difference. Sit.”
He sat. Isabelle sat. And for ten blessed minutes, the married couple sat side by side at the top table, watching London dance beneath the chandeliers — the same chandeliers, she realized with a jolt, that had hung over the ballroom the night she had struck him.
“This room,” she said, “was where I met my doom.”
“Your doom,” Dominic agreed, “has never been more grateful.”
He lifted her hand and pressed it to his lips — once, slowly, deliberately — and a wave of sighs swept the dance floor.
“Careful,” she murmured. “They are watching.”
“Let them watch. They had their scandal; they may keep their crumbs. You are mine now.”
“And you are mine.” She said it simply, and saw him swallow. “I mean it, Dominic. Not the Duke’s household’s. Not the Crown’s. Not the world’s. Mine.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, very low, “I have never been anyone’s before. I was not sure I knew how.”
“I will teach you.” She smiled. “I am a very good teacher.”
“Charlotte says you are.”
“Charlotte is a genius and I have said so for years.”
The waltz ended. The orchestra began another. And then — a small commotion at the door; a courier in riding boots, mud to the knee, threading through the press with a leather case, seeking the best man. Dominic rose and returned with the case, unsealed it, and drew out a fat, beautiful volume bound in deep green leather with gold tooling at the spine.
“From William,” he said. “And the Royal Society.”
Isabelle opened the front cover, and her breath stopped.
Thomas Fairmont — On the Approximation of Sequences in the Absence of Regular Data, with a Preface by the President, and a Dedication to the Reader of Patterns.
She turned to the dedication page.
To I.F., who read what the world had written and refused to believe it. This work is reprinted at the request of his daughter. The error was ours. The truth was his.
Isabelle closed the book slowly. When she looked up, her eyes were wet, and she did not try to stop it.
“William.” She crossed the room to where the Duke stood, and — to the horror and rapture of every guest — embraced her brother-in-law fully, musically, in the middle of his own ballroom. “You will make me cry at my own wedding.”
“Unacceptable,” William said, patting her shoulder with a dignity that did not quite manage to conceal his pleasure. “The cook spent a week on the cake. Weep only once it is served.”
“Is this how the Duke of Harrington courts his family?” Isabelle asked, laughing through tears.
“This is how the Duke of Harrington treasures his family,” William said, and returned to his wine, and was seen, a moment later, blowing his nose into his handkerchief with military precision.