Married to a Fool
A porcelain teacup clattered against a matching saucer, sloshing pale amber liquid across the polished mahogany table.
Valerie Vance tilted her head, her vacant eyes blinking behind thick lashes. A thin trail of drool escaped the left corner of her mouth, dripping steadily toward her chin. Two jagged, pale scars crisscrossed her right cheek, slicing through what would have been an angelic, delicate face.
She pushed the cup forward with unsteady hands. "H-Have some t-tea."
Declan Thorne did not reach for the cup. Instead, his dark eyes dropped to the open medical evaluation resting against his knee. The diagnostic summary glared back at him in bold print: *IQ: 50. Severe cognitive impairment resulting from cranial trauma.*
Declan tossed the file onto the coffee table with a dry snap. "My grandfather expects me to marry a simpleton just to settle a personal debt?"
His skin crawled as he watched the tea seep into the wood grain. Even with her striking bone structure, the sight of her dribbling mouth and hollow stare stirred an instant wave of disgust in his stomach.
Arthur Briggs, the family butler, stepped forward and clasped his hands behind his back. "Old Mr. Thorne was unyielding on this matter, sir. He insists that Ms. Vance saved his life in the mountains."
Declan knew the incident well. Four weeks ago, Archibald Thorne had vanished during an ancestral pilgrimage into the crags of Mount Morrison. The family security detail had scoured the treacherous ravines for four grueling days without finding a single trace. Just when exposure and freezing rains should have ended the patriarch's life, this frail-looking girl had hauled the eighty-year-old man out of the wilderness on her back, keeping him alive until medical teams arrived.
The debt was real, but this arrangement was absurd.
Declan rose from the sofa, towering over the room in his tailored charcoal three-piece suit. "So he repays her by offering his eldest grandson as a prize? Call the driver and get her out of my house."
Arthur did not move toward the door. Instead, the older man reached inside his coat pocket, retrieved a crimson booklet, and placed it on the table between the damp teacup and the medical file. "I am afraid that is impossible, Mr. Declan. The registration is already completed. You and Ms. Vance are legally husband and wife."
The living room fell into a suffocating silence.
Declan stared down at the gold foil emblem stamped onto the red leather cover. His jaw hardened until a muscle jumped along his jawline. Archibald had anticipated every objection, pulling strings with city officials to finalize the union before Declan could intervene. At thirty-two, Declan's bachelorhood had sparked endless speculation in high society, but using a mentally broken stranger to squash the rumors crossed every boundary.
He snatched the booklet from the table, his knuckles turning white around the spine as his temper flared toward the boiling point.
"If you don't like the tea, do you want candy?" Valerie scrambled up from the sofa.
Her wide, naive eyes fixed on Declan. She reached into her pocket and produced a half-unwrapped, sticky red lollipop, shoving the tacky confection straight toward his chest. A crimson smear of artificial strawberry syrup glistened on the candy's surface, inches from his lapel. For a man who washed his hands raw after every business meeting, the proximity of that dirty confection was pure torment.
Declan took a sharp step back, his germaphobia flaring into panic. "Arthur, take her away! Keep that filthy thing off me!"
Before the butler could take a single step forward, Valerie lunged across the rug with shocking speed.
She let the candy drop to the floor, threw both arms around Declan’s waist, and slammed her face directly against his immaculate lapel.
"Hubby! Why are you so mean to me? I only wanted to give you my sweet treat!" Her shrill wail bounced off the ceiling moldings.
Tears and snot smeared in broad, glistening streaks across the fine wool of his jacket.
Declan froze in sheer horror. The warm dampness seeped through the fine fabric of his shirt, making his stomach turn with sickening nausea. He gripped her thin wrists to wrench her off, but her fingers were locked behind his waist like forged steel.
He pulled with all the force in his frame, yet her arms did not yield a fraction of an inch. A sharp cramp seized his forearms from the strain. The woman barely weighed a hundred pounds, yet she anchored him in place with the terrifying strength of an iron vise.
"Hubby, please do not kick me out! I will be good! I promise I will listen to everything you say!" Valerie buried her tear-stained nose deeper into his chest, howling with exaggerated grief while her grip tightened like a python around his ribs.
Declan struggled to draw a full breath under the crushing hold, his mind spinning in bewildered rage. Trapped and helpless, he locked eyes with Arthur, his chest heaving as he strained against the impossible grip of the woman wailing into his ribs.