Page 53 of The Duke’s Defiant Love

Only Amelia was beginning to realize that it was not ending at all.

It was beginning.

She tightened her fingers around her father's arm.

The realization made her stomach twist.

She was not merely walking down an aisle. She was walking toward a man she had once thought she would never marryand a life she had never imagined for herself, a future decided so quickly she had scarcely had time to understand that it was hers.

And yet, beneath the fear, there was something else. Something she had been trying very hard not to name.

Sebastian.

She looked toward the altar. He was waiting there in dark blue, tall and composed, his shoulders straight and his expression carefully arranged into the calm dignity expected of a duke. Anyone looking at him would have seen a man entirely certain of himself.

Amelia knew better.

She had learned his silences.

She had learned the small tightening of his jaw when he was troubled, the way his fingers became still when he was holding back words, the look in his eyes when something mattered more to him than he wished anyone to know.

She saw all of it now.

He was nervous.

The knowledge should have comforted her.

Instead, it made her heart beat faster.

"You need not do this if you have changed your mind," her father murmured, low enough for only her to hear, his arm steady beneath her hand. "It is not too late, even now."

Amelia swallowed. For one treacherous second, she allowed herself to imagine turning around. She could walk back through those doors.

She could go home. She could remove the gown, send away the guests, let London talk until it found something else to occupy itself with.

The thought brought relief. And then, unexpectedly, grief. Because she did not want to leave him. That was the truth she had been avoiding.

Not because she was frightened of scandal. Not because circumstances had forced her into this.

She wanted Sebastian.

Perhaps not in the simple, uncomplicated way she ought to want her future husband. Perhaps wanting him was precisely what frightened her most.

"It is rather too late, Papa." She kept her eyes forward, on the altar, on the tall, composed figure waiting there his eyes serious and considerably darker than usual. "But thank you for offering."

Sebastian watched her the entire length of the aisle. He did not look away. And as Amelia drew closer, the carefully composed expression on his face began to fracture, not enough for anyone else to notice, perhaps, but enough for her.

There was tension in his jaw and uncertainty in his eyes. And when their gazes met, Amelia felt the strange sensation of being seen.

She reached him. For a moment neither spoke. Then Sebastian's eyes moved over her face, lingering just long enough to make her suddenly conscious of her own breathing.

"You look well," he said quietly, when she reached him, the vicar already opening his prayer book, the whole congregation settling into the hush of a room about to witness something it had been anticipating for days.

Amelia almost smiled. Of all the things he might have said.

"You sound surprised."

"I am not surprised. Merely grateful I managed the words before the ceremony required something more formal of me."