This Duke of Mine by Delilah Marvelle

Author:Delilah Marvelle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Delilah Marvelle Productions, LLC

Chapter Seven

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

8:42 p.m.

A Parian marble sculpture, which was prominently displayed in the domed viewing gallery below had caused a few whispers, despite it having been chiseled fourteen years ago. It depicted the late Princess Charlotte kneeling unclad with hair unraveled over breasts before an aristocratic husband who had pierced her womb with a broadsword whilst gazing into her horror-widened eyes.

The blade had been emblazoned with the word TENET.

Which meant ‘a principle or belief’.

Despite its very honest commentary of a woman’s duty to bear children that had ultimately cost Princess Charlotte her own life sixteen years earlier, based off the harried whispers, few found merit in it. After all…chiseling the deceased princess in the nude whilst she was getting stabbed in the womb by her still living husband was out of the question.

Now compressed against the iron railing of a gilded balcony that overlooked an overcrowded domed space of too many elbowing through each other to observe frame to frame art on display, Magdalene felt as insignificant as any ant.

She half-waved an ivory-pleated fan before her overheated face.

Still waiting for Quincy to notify Anthony of her arrival, she tried to find him in the massive crowds on the domed gallery level below. Flicking her fan shut, she tapped it against the iron railing and peered downward still trying to locate Thornton.

Her throat worked, still trying to—

She almost fell against the railing. It was him.

Garbed in a very expensive looking all-black evening attire that was artistically accentuated with a Trone d’Amour red cravat, he appeared engaged. Well-muscled and towering above the squat men around him, he addressed a sizable group of people who inspected a slab of granite set on a pedestal in the roped section of the gallery below.

His propensity for sculpting awed her.

For the ethereal sculpture known as Tenet was…his.

Countless women pressed in closer to Thornton, holding out handbills in between flushed glances as he angled them toward himself in between conversation and signed each handbill with a graphite pencil, his sun-bronzed rugged features genuinely engaged. Leaning down and in toward a very young, exotic-looking Italian woman speaking to him, Thornton squinted and replied to her, his words muted by the distance and loudness of the crowds. His hand touched her back, tracing it.

Magdalene swallowed against the tightness of her throat, unable to breathe.

If she had Reeve, why did it matter? If she had Reeve, why did it hurt?

Quincy finally approached the duke and said something.

In between their conversation, Thornton swung toward her direction. His gaze veered upward and toward her. He paused.

Her pulse roared and her breasts tingled against her chemise beneath her evening gown.

She set her chin and snapped her gaze away. Annoyed with herself for being so physically affected, she perused the domed gallery, her trembling hands rounding the railing.

Someone at the other end of the railing made her pause.

A burly gent in a grey-checkered suit with a black band fastened on his bicep, adjusted his wool cap, shifting sunlit hair beneath. He observed the massive crowds below the domed gallery, weighing a porcelain doll.

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