The Day of the Duchess (Scandal & Scoundrel, #3)

by Sarah MacLean

“We do not have to marry.” She’d said it a dozen times in the hours following their discovery. Another dozen the day after. Of course they had to marry. “I made a mistake,” she added, softly. “I should never have agreed—” “Stop.” He didn’t wish to hear it, the confirmation that she’d trapped him. He did not wish to relive the moment of realization. She did not stop. “And if I told you it wasn’t a trap? Not at the start? Not in any of the days leading up to the end? Because it wasn’t a trap, Malcolm.” Christ, he wanted to believe her. “It was all real. I was me and you were you and everyone said it couldn’t be—” “Stop.” He could barely contain his rage. “Still, you weave your pretty tale. I don’t care.” He took a breath, forcing himself calm. “You landed your duke, as my mother landed my father before me. I thought you were in it for me, and you were in it for a title and I should have seen it coming and that is that.” Silence fell, thick and unpleasant as she considered her next words and he willed them to be anything but another lie. He did not think he could stomach another lie. Not from this woman who had seemed so much the truth for so long. Finally, she spoke, something like panic in her words. “I’ve thought about this; if I leave—if I disappear, I give my sisters a chance at futures unencumbered by my scandal.” “You can’t cleanse the scandal from them,” he said. “They own it as they own your name. They are—forever—Dangerous Daughters. Just as I am always Hoodwinked H...