Excerpt of Duchess of His Heart by Collette Cameron

“James,” she murmured again, her voice a mere thread of sound—a soft, spine-tingling entreaty in the now eerily silent orchard. Then she opened her mouth, gulped in a deep breath, and thrust her chin upward as if bracing herself. 

Against what, for God’s sake?

He swept the area with a swift, apprehensive glance, before settling his attention uneasily upon her once more. Something akin to terror knotted in his throat at the defeat and devastation he detected in her startlingly blue eyes. It stripped the air from his lungs and squeezed his heart in a ruthless, unyielding vise. 

“I…” she drew in a ragged breath. “I am to be married,” she finally said in a rush, dropping her focus to her hands, repeatedly wadding her black skirts. 

What? Married? No. No. You’re mine. Mine! My dearest, most precious love. 

“Pardon?” he whispered stupidly, his lips stiff and voice gravelly with disbelief and pain. “Married?” He shook his head. He couldn’t have heard her correctly. But he had. Her tense posture and waxen pallor revealed the truth. 

“To who?” Or was it whom? What the hell did it matter? His thoughts raced, pell-mell, around his befuddled mind, all ability to reason calmly having flown. You cannot marry another. You cannot! You said you’d be my wife.

“To the Duke of Heartwaite,” she replied, her voice flat and devoid of emotion.

A bloody duke? He fisted his hands until the nails cut deeply into his palms. 

How could he, a poor vicar’s son with scarcely two coins to rub together and in training to become a solicitor, compete with a sodding duke? Moisture blurring his vision, he choked out a single, strangled syllable, “When?” 

“Next week.” Her throat working and her hand trembling, she touched a bent knuckle to the corner of one eye. “I’m so sorry, James.”

“Why?” He tenderly grasped her slender arms, peering into her anguished eyes awash with tears. “Why, Regine? I love you. You love me, too.” Didn’t she? Yes, else why would she be this miserable? “Please, I beg you, don’t do this to us.”

Eyes wide and tortured, she silently gazed at him, and the truth slammed into James with the force of an over-loaded grain wagon. A duke could offer her everything he couldn’t: position, power, prestige, and wealth. 

Evidently, love was a trifling insignificance compared to those necessities.