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The rest of his sentence was cut off when he was suddenly yanked away from her.

Rubbing her wrist, Scarlett looked up to find Hudson looking absolutely murderous. In his hand, he held Lord Colton’s wrist.

“I believe thatmy wifejust told you to keep your hands away from her!” he snarled.

Hudson had never felt such rage in his entire life.

He had been walking in the Park with Colin to meet with their Duchesses. He had been intending to surprise Scarlett. Maybe apologize to her.

Instead, he came upon an altercation between his wife, her brother, and her brother’s best friend. When the man grabbed her wrist, Colin had to hold him back from killing the man on the spot.

For a man with barely the strength to truss a chicken, the Marquess only looked afraid for a brief moment, before he smiled slightly.

“Once she knows the truth about you, Your Grace, she will hate you, too, and then she will leave you.”

“Whether she leaves or not is my business and hers,” Hudson snarled. “And if you are so confident in your knowledge of what I am capable of, then maybe you should be more careful of how you speak to me and my wife.”

Lord Colton, the slimy bastard, narrowed his eyes at him. “Is that a threat, Your Grace?”

Hudson bared his teeth in a feral smile, finding great pleasure in the fear he saw in the Marquess’s cold gaze. “Only if you plan on doing something foolish.”

“Scarlett!” he heard his brother-in-law call out, his eyes wide in horror.

“Scarlett is right here, and she is done with this conversation,” Scarlett snapped irritably. She turned towards Hudson, her gaze soft. Gently, she tapped his arm to get his attention. “Let us go home, husband.”

That tender look, along with her soothing touch, was enough to make him relinquish his hold on the scoundrel who dared to lay his hands on her.

“Yes, my dear. We should go back home.”

Just one look and he would follow her to the ends of the world if she so commanded him.

If there was anyone that his simpleton of a brother-in-law and his best friend should fear, it should be Scarlett.

Hudson might be the feared Wolf, but she was the one who held his leash.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

They called him a murderer, accused him of killing his own blood. They said he was violent, that he would harm her, too, if she gave him the chance.

But Scarlett had alreadyknown.Not all of it, perhaps, but she was neither blind nor stupid.

The kitchen staff had whispered about it the first time she wandered into their domain, looking for a glass of warm milk. Hudson had told her some of it. So, when Alexander came out with the accusation, she had not entirely been caught off-guard.

The silence stretched endlessly between them, and all she could hear for a while was the sound of the carriage wheels grinding along the path back to Wolverton Estate.

She would have no more of it.

“So…” She leveled him with her most serious glare. “Are you going to tell me all about it?”

Hudson shrugged his shoulders. His expression was seemingly nonchalant, but the wariness in his gaze betrayed him.

“What more is there to say?” he muttered. “I killed a man.”

She wanted to pound him over the head. Was he still trying to be obtuse with her? He should have known by now that her stubbornness far exceeded his.

“And?” she prodded. “Killed a man, who? Killed a man, why?”

He shot her a look that told her he wanted to close this discussionforever.