Dumped At Wedding, I Turned To The Duke

On her wedding day, Joylan watches her fiancé Gavin abandon the altar the moment his former lover Isoline threatens suicide. Her father calls her a disgrace. Her mother shames her before the gathered nobles. Humiliated, Joylan walks away from the wreckage and finds Adrian, the Lame Duke, whose bride has just fled. She proposes on the spot. He accepts. What begins as a transaction shifts when Joylan visits Gavin to sever ties for good. Gavin grabs her, mocks Adrian, and threatens her family with collapsed trade routes. Adrian appears in his wheelchair, pulls Joylan aside, and warns Gavin that his family's caravans will vanish if he touches her again. Joylan tells him he is a thousand times the man Gavin will ever be.

The fragile peace splinters when Joylan's sister Alice steals her choir compositions. The Carter family pressures the bishop to dismiss Joylan's claim. Adrian arrives with dated drafts, practice notes, and a quiet threat to involve a church judge whose debts he once covered. Alice admits fault. The Carters retaliate by locking Joylan in a damp cellar. Adrian's black-armored guards break her out, and he severs all trade with the Carters. In the aftermath, Joylan massages his legs daily. One night he stands. His injury healed a year ago — he stays in the wheelchair because someone wants him dead. An elderly nun named Sister Bertha insists on seeing Joylan. She hands her an object and tells her to find Sir Roland and Lady Liana, her mother. Later, Joylan examines the parchment, its unfamiliar sigil, and the two names. Bertha reveals that Baron Carter smothered the wounded Sir Roland with a pillow, forged guardianship documents, and seized the estate, raising Joylan only to collect her parents' annuity. A maple-leaf birthmark on Joylan's left shoulder, matching a miniature painted by Sir Roland on his deathbed, confirms the truth. Adrian and Joylan set a trap, spreading word that Bertha has awakened and remembers everything. Lady Carter sneaks into the monastery at night to silence Bertha. Joylan catches her in the act. Lady Carter blurts out that her husband smothered Sir Roland with the pillow while she kept watch. The church court verifies the forged signatures. The annuity records and property transfers expose decades of theft. Baron Carter runs. Lady Carter is abandoned. Bertha gives Joylan her father's harp and tells her what kind of man he was — gentle, stubborn, willing to break with his own family and give up his inheritance to marry her mother. Joylan asks if her life would have been different had she known sooner. Now Adrian's grandfather sets his sights on Joylan and her unborn child. Adrian stops hiding. The wheelchair is gone. This time, he is standing.