Awakening Love: Reborn to Be His Duchess novel · Chapter 9 of 32

Chapter 9: Alaric's Sealed Letter

Alaric's POV

I did not sleep that night either.

I stood at my window until the sky went grey over the burned stable, with my bandaged hand held against my chest.

My mouth still tasted of her.

I had told myself, for a year, that I would never ask her for anything.

Then she had said come here, and I had gone to her at once.

I should have been happy.

I was afraid.

Her father had said something to me once, in his library at Trevanion, with the door shut and a glass of bad port between us.

It was the winter before the ball.

I had come to buy a horse and left with a promise.

"Your Grace," the earl had said. "I am going to ask you for something you have no reason to give."

"Ask."

"My daughter is nineteen and in love with a boy named Rook. I think he is the worst thing that has ever happened to her. She will not hear a word of it from me."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Marry her," said the earl. "If she will have you. Not for her sake. For mine. I have found something I do not like, and I will not live long enough to prove it."

Then he gave me the letter.

It was sealed with his own ring, thick with wax.

"Do not hand it to her. She will not read a word you give her. Put it where she will find it herself, when she has started to doubt what she has been told."

I had not asked what was in it.

I had carried it against my ribs every day since, and every day I had wanted to open it.

I had learned to want things I could not have.

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