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“Oh, Scarlett! I did not know the Duke cared that much for you!”

“I—what?” She blinked in surprise.

Had her mama gone mad? Had she hit her head on the way to her bedchamber, perhaps?

Instead, her mother only nodded as enthusiastically as a hen pecking at grain. “Indeed. He told me this morning that all the Dukes of Wolverton were wed in the chapel on the grounds of the estate and that he would bedamnedif you were to be paraded about London for your nuptials!”

Oh. That sounded… rather considerate of him.

“So that was what the special license was for,” Scarlett murmured, more to herself.

“Hardly, my dear. He means to be wed within the month as well. In two weeks, I believe.”

“Two weeks?” Scarlett threw the covers off her body. “There is barely any time!”

Her mother merely patted her leg reassuringly. “It just means that he cannot wait to be wed to you, my dear.”

Scarlett wanted to laugh at the absurdity of those words. Just last night, he had been so opposed to the marriage when his mother demanded it. He had relented, but only ifsheagreed to a farce of a union. Amariage blanc.

She clenched her hands into fists. No amount of fancy French could make the situation the slightest bit appealing.

“Not to worry, though. Her Grace has assured me that the entire estate is entirely at our disposal for the wedding.”

The Dowager Duchess was also awake? Was she the only one to sleep through the entire debacle? Did dowagers never sleep?

“It is rather fortunate that I have already prepared your wedding trousseau.” Her mama let out an uncharacteristically girlish giggle. “We cannot send you off to your new husband looking like a heathen, can we?”

Scarlett doubted Hudson would even take notice of the state of her clothing on their honeymoon. However, she was not one to refuse new clothes.

It took a polite knock on the door to interrupt her mama’s excited chatter. Her maid peeked in with a clean towel draped over her arm and some water for Scarlett’s morning ablutions.

“Ella! It is good that you have arrived!” her mama announced with a bright smile. “Come quickly and help the young lady. We must have her looking as radiant as possible!”

No amount of primping was going to erase the sullenness in Scarlett’s countenance, but she did not have the heart to tell her mama that. Not when the woman looked the most excited she had been since… well, perhaps her marriage—and Scarlett already knew howthatunion turned out. Her parents’ marriage was the sort of cautionary tale she told herself to remind herself of the dangers of choosing the wrong husband.

“I still do not want to marry the Duke,” she grumbled.

Her mother turned towards her with narrowed eyes. “You said you would not marry a man who did not want you,” she pointed out. “And for a man who you claim to be the opposite, he seems awfully eager to marry you. If all else fails, there is still the Marquess of Colton, who, most assuredly,wantsto marry you.”

Scarlett balked at that. Could there be no better choices in the ton? But then again, after she had disappeared with Hudson for a significant amount of time last night, she doubted anyone was willing to riskhisdispleasure by trying to win her hand in marriage.

“Come now, Scarlett,” her mother sighed. “If you really did not want to marry the man, then you should not have gone out with him to the gardens.”

She did have a point.

“You are right, Mama,” Scarlett relented. “I should not have done that.”

And now I shall be paying for that blunder for the rest of my life.

Hudson pounded the dirt road as he hurried back to Wolverton Estate, the precious document tucked safely into his jacket pocket.

The Archbishop had been quite alarmed to find him pounding at his door that morning, demanding an audience. And then the old man had only been too happy to sign off on the license he wanted.

“Your Grace wishes to take a wife? Oh, praise be the heavens!”

Hudson regretted that he could not hit the man.

It was times like these that he wanted nothing more than to lock himself in his tower and pound away at wood or stone. Sculpting gave him the excuse he needed to hit something with his mallet, to release the violence that coiled within him, and still call it art.