The Duke’s Belated Regret

Ophelia, eldest daughter of an earl, was bartered into marriage with Duke Alaric, bearing the scorn of a social climber. No one knew that she had once thrown herself beneath a horse’s hooves to save the boy who would become her husband—and that her stepsister Lavinia had stolen that very act of heroism as her own. For five years of marriage, Alaric lavished all his tenderness on Lavinia, leaving Ophelia with nothing but cold hearths, empty tables, and the slow rot of neglect. On the eve of the London season, Lavinia forged a letter of elopement, branding Ophelia an adulteress before the entire aristocracy. In a rage, Alaric stripped her of all privileges, cut off her heat and food, and locked her away. In that freezing chamber, her unborn child slipped from her, silently, alone. On a night of blizzard, she dragged her broken body out of the manor she had never truly belonged to, and walked into the black, icy lake. Alaric dismissed it as another bid for attention—until the constabulary dredged up her shawl from the depths. Truth crashed over him like a tidal wave. Piece by piece, he unmasked Lavinia’s lies, only to realize that the woman who had saved his life twenty years ago was the very wife he had destroyed. But she was gone. Meanwhile, Ophelia’s childhood friend, Major Rowan, returned from the front lines and, in the midst of the royal ball, produced Lavinia’s forged letters before the entire nobility, shredding her façade of innocence. Alaric personally stripped Lavinia of her title and cast her into the foulest poorhouse in the East End. Yet nothing could bring Ophelia back. Crushed by remorse, he descended into delusion. He sealed the manor, forced servants to wait upon empty air, bought out all the white roses in London, and cradled a doll as if it were their child. When the illusion shattered, he awoke in an asylum—clear–eyed, sober, and dressed in his finest tailcoat. Then he walked, step by step, into that same bitter lake, to join her where she had fallen—a reunion paid for too late.