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“Shush,” Grace scolded. “I’m reading.”

Well, first she was skimming through the shockingly high amount of precious column space that was dedicated to herfather’s various achievements. And then, at the very bottom of the article, it read,Lady Grace will be married to Caleb Gulliver, the Duke of Montgomery, at St. James’ Church, Saturday, by special license.

Grace’s jaw dropped.

“The Duke of—I’m being married off to that Scottish fellow?”

Evan looked murderous. “He didn’t even tell you?”

Grace couldn’t say she was entirely thrilled about that bit, either, but her father’s conduct was, at present, so far down her list of concerns that she scarcely even registered it.

“He told me I’d be getting married—and soon, this week—but not to whom. I can’t believe it’s that new duke that had everyone all in knots at the Tuwey ball.” She glanced down at the paper again, as if she expected, on second glance, to actually readLady Grace will be married to some milquetoast English Lord, not the broad, brawny Scot she described, to his face, as “quite tall.”

“Why would he do that?” Evan growled, sounding as though he already had an answer, and that answer wasbecause he’s an arsehole of the highest order. Grace’s brother and father had never quite seen eye to eye.

“He said he didn’t know who it was going to be,” Grace said, still distracted.

Evan choked on the mouthful of tea he’d just taken. Frances whacked him on the back in a manner that did not necessarily seem productive.

Grace ignored them both, her mind whirling through the details of her very brief encounter with the duke—the duke who would, in four days’ time, be her husband. Their conversation had been short, but now she felt certain that, somehow, she’d managed to say or do something ridiculous and had conveniently blocked it from her mind.

She decided she wasmostlyconfident that she’d only said the one idiotic thing. Small blessings.

“You seem rather…sanguine about all this,” Frances said carefully, peering at Grace like she expected this odd behavior to be accompanied by a physical sign of illness.

“Well, I’m abitsurprised that it’s—him.” Grace waved at the paper.

It was now Frances’ turn to look surprised. “Oh, do you know him? Is he nice?”

“Not really,” Grace confessed. “We spoke the other night for—oh, less than a minute.”

“He’s a surly bastard is what he is,” Evan said, having finally recovered from his choking fit. “And I shan’t let Father get away with this. I’m going to fix this, Grace.”

“Oh, don’t bother,” Grace sighed. She slumped back in her chair with a sigh as her brother and friend looked at her like she’d sprouted a second head. “It won’t do any good,” she added, tone more pragmatic. “He’ll just dig his heels in—especiallynow that it’s been made public,” she added. “That’s probably why he did it this way in the first place.”

Evan nodded, though he didn’t look happy about it. “So we couldn’t argue without him being able to say, ‘Well, everyone’s expecting it now, so we can’t go back on our word’.”

“Precisely,” Grace said.

Frances looked torn between being horrified and impressed.

“I—who would eventhinklike that?” she asked.

Grace shrugged. “You don’t become a leader in Parliament by not being strategic. The man knows how to get what he wants.”

“I don’t like this,” Evan said firmly, as if his dislike had any chance of altering the course of events laid out before them.

Grace pinned her brother with a dry look. “How utterly shocking,” she deadpanned.

Frances looked anxious. “What are you going to do about it?”

Grace felt a sense of…well, she supposed she wouldn’t quite describe it as fatalism. Yes, she felt curiously resigned to this marriage, particularly now that she saw it discussed in black and white in front of her. And she knew, deep down, that the old Grace would have fought harder.

But the new Grace, the current Grace, the one who had spentyearsbattling every moment of every day… This version of her wastired. She was tired of the whispers, tired of putting on a good face, tired of wondering where she would go next. This, at least, was a direction. She didn’t know if it was agooddirection, but at least it wassomething.

And the Duke of Montgomery had been surly and taciturn, quite frankly veering into rude, but at least he wasn’tancient. She hadn’t noticed any horrifying odors about his person—which was impressive, honestly, in the crushing heat of a ballroom. He did not have, as far as she knew, a long string of previous wives who had all died under mysterious circumstances.

He could still turn out to be a horror, it was true—but what man couldn’t? But at least she didn’t alreadyknowthat he was a horror. That wasn’t nothing.