Page 24 of A Virgin for the Ton’s Wolf (Ton’s Wolves #4)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“ P reposterous! Absolutely unacceptable!”
Scarlett cringed as the Dowager Duchess railed at her son right there in the garden. Her cheeks felt like fire in her embarrassment at being caught, but even that would have been so much better than her mother’s silence.
Mama, I am so sorry.
She wanted to run to her mother. To beg her forgiveness for having hurt her. Again.
But Hudson held her close, keeping her by his side as he looked at everything and everyone impassively.
How could he be so nonchalant about it? They had been spotted. Seen. There was no way they could possibly explain everything away.
And it’s not like Her Grace would be willing to accept any explanation at this point.
“You must marry him.” Her mother’s voice cut through the Dowager Duchess’s one-sided argument with her son. “You have no other choice.”
Scarlett felt ill. “Mama, no. I?—”
Her mama simply held up a hand as if she was tired of hearing her explanations.
From behind her, Scarlett could feel Hudson stiffening. Hopefully, he would not lash out at her mother for demanding that he take responsibility for her ruination.
“Mama, nobody has to know…” she pleaded.
Her mother looked at her sharply. “But Scarlett, I know.”
Those two words cut her. I know .
Her mother’s cold gaze flicked to Hudson. “And for that matter, so does he .”
Even if they tried to bury it—and Scarlett was certain the Wolf could make anything disappear if he had the mind to—they would always know the truth. If she tried to return to the ballroom now, they would be nothing more than liars. Charlatans.
They would take one look at her, and then they, too, would know.
“Lady Southford is right.” The Dowager Duchess pressed her lips together in a grim line. “You must marry, and quickly, before scandal breaks out.”
“A hasty marriage would only make it more obvious,” Hudson pointed out coldly. “Nothing screams ‘illicit relationship’ better than obtaining a special license for expedience.”
“Then what do you suggest?” The Dowager Duchess nailed him with a glare as cold as his own. “Do you honestly think that Lady Scarlett can walk back to the ballroom right now in the state she is in?”
Scarlett wrapped her arms around her middle and closed her eyes as humiliation washed over her.
Wrong. All of this is so wrong.
“You know I cannot marry.”
Her eyes flew open. Pain tore through her chest as if she had just been slashed open with a knife.
Of course, he did not want to marry her. No man would appreciate being trapped in matrimony. It was the sort of scheme only desperate debutantes and their overly ambitious mamas resorted to.
“Then you should have thought of that before you laid your hands on her!” the Dowager Duchess snapped.
Hudson pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. If their situation had not been so dire, Scarlett might have found the scene laughable.
Instead, she straightened up and lifted her chin. “His Grace is right—we cannot marry.”
All three gazes swiveled towards her. Hudson was looking at her with a dark frown that made her want to cry.
Did he honestly think she wanted to marry a man who was so vehemently against the idea?
“My dear Lady Scarlett,” the Dowager Duchess reasoned with her gently. “If my son refuses to see reason?—”
Scarlett shook her head and smiled despite the gaping hole she could feel in her chest.
“I will not marry a man who does not love me,” she declared firmly. “A man who does not even like me.”
“I should say he likes you well enough,” she heard the Dowager Duchess mumble.
Scarlett fisted her hands in her skirts. She would not cry. Not now. Not before him and everyone else.
“That is all I have to say,” she told them. “There will be no special license or anything of the sort. There will be no wedding .”
A strangled gasp tore from her mama’s throat, but Scarlett did not stay long enough to deal with the aftermath. She hiked up her skirts and raced away from the gazebo and all discussions of marriage.
Hudson did not want her. Not enough to marry her, at least. Not even after everything they had been to each other.
Tears pricked her eyes, her breath coming out in struggling gasps. She had let him touch her so intimately. Had let him see her true nature, and it still was not enough. She would never be enough for a rapacious Wolf like him.
And she was nothing more than the fool who thought she could change his mind.
He had done it—he had caused her so much pain that she would much rather face ruination and the scorn of Society rather than be forced to marry him.
She had her pride. He knew that she would never show vulnerability before anyone, but in that brief moment, he had seen the naked pain that slashed through her. To know that he had been the cause of that would eat at him for the rest of his miserable existence.
“I shall go speak to her,” he heard Lady Southford say. “I shall make her see reason?—”
“You will do no such thing.”
The two older women looked at him in stunned silence.
He clenched his hands into fists. “Lady Scarlett will never concede to this union if she thinks that I do not want it.”
“Which you do not,” his mother pointed out bluntly.
She was wrong on that account—he would love for nothing more than to be able to fully claim Scarlett. To make her his in every way that mattered.
What he did not want was to taint her radiance with the filth that covered him. The damned blood that still coated his hands no matter how many times he had tried to scrub it off.
If he married her, he would only end up destroying her. His darkness would swallow her light.
“Stay here,” he told his mother and the Dowager Countess. “And for the love of all that is holy, do not do anything that we will all regret in the future.”
He turned on his heel when his mother called out, “Why? Where are you going?”
He glanced over his shoulder at her. “I am going after my bride.”
“Stop!” His voice boomed across the open space, tearing through the stillness of the moonlit garden.
Her hands tightened in her skirts, and she pushed through the lack of air burning her lungs.
No . I will not allow myself to be humiliated once more.
“Little cat, I told you to stop!”
Strong yet inexplicably gentle fingers wrapped around her upper arm. She let out a slight gasp of surprise, as the sudden halt to her momentum had her stumbling. If he had not caught her, she would have had to bear the disgrace of eating grass as well as being so openly rejected.
“Little cat?—”
“Let go of me!” she snarled at him. “You have already made it clear enough that you do not want me, Your Grace. Well, I am not in the habit of forcing myself on people who disdain me!”
His arms wrapped around her. Warm. Solid. Strangely comforting.
No! I cannot allow him to have any more access to me!
She flailed in his grasp, but he held fast. She pounded at him, but her tiny fists barely earned her a grunt of discomfort.
Anguish tore through her once more. Perhaps this was all she ever was to him—an inconvenience. Oh, she might have provided a good enough diversion, but now she was probably more trouble than she was worth.
“I do not disdain you,” he told her softly, his voice oddly soothing.
“You refused to marry me!” she seethed. “And I refuse to marry a man who does not even remotely like me.”
He grabbed her wrists and held her still. “But you will marry me, little cat.”
“You must be insane,” she spat out. “One minute you are refusing to marry me, and now this . You change your mind as often as you change lovers, Your Grace.”
The small smile that curved the corner of his lips only made her angrier. How could he laugh at her right now?
“Well then, you would be pleased to know that ever since you walked into my home, I have not had sexual congress with any other woman,” he told her proudly.
“Well, there are still other men ,” she grumbled.
He regarded her with a raised eyebrow. “I seem to have underestimated your unbridled imagination, my dear, but I am sorry to disappoint you on that account as well.”
Trying to fight against him was just about as effective as railing against a brick wall.
“So your solution for all this is marriage?” she demanded.
“What I am proposing is what the French would call a mariage blanc .”
Scarlett stilled. “What?”
“You heard me. I said?—”
“I know what mariage blanc means, Your Grace. I am not an idiot.”
“I never said you were. I would not have even considered marrying you if you were.”
She glared up at him. How could he make jokes right now?
“You will have everything you will ever need,” he reassured her gently. “Everything that my wealth and title can offer. As my Duchess, you will gain entry into the highest echelons of Society. You will have more pin money than you can ever spend, and all my estates and servants will be at your disposal.”
“Except you.”
He nodded. “Naturally.” His hand rubbed soothing circles on her back, as if he was reassuring a frightened colt who might bolt at any given moment. “As my Duchess, you can do whatever you want, and no one will ever say anything against you.”
She looked up at him. “I can do whatever I want?”
“Whatever pleases you, little cat.”
She spread her hands on his chest. “And what if I want you ?”
He released a shuddering breath. “I thought you said that you knew what a mariage blanc is,” he pointed out. “That means I will not be touching you.”
So, she was supposed to live out the rest of her life never knowing his touch again? After he had shown her such pleasure, he truly meant to deprive her. Did he expect her to live out the rest of her existence in misery?
“And if that is the case…” she trailed off, lowering her gaze. “Does that mean that I can have other men touch me?”
He stiffened, his arms holding her tighter as a low growl rumbled in his chest. Scarlett could not help but smile at that. So, he still found the thought of her with other men abhorrent?
“I believe that it is only normal for married couples to… pursue their interests separately,” she continued. “And since you have assured me of your unavailability in this matter, am I to assume that I am free to seek the company of others?”
“Careful, little cat,” he growled at her in warning. “You do not want to push me too far.”
Oh yes, how could she forget? He might not want to consummate their marriage, but he did not want her welcoming other men in her bed either—not that she would even consider it. The thought of another man’s hands on her body where Hudson’s had been earlier made her shudder in disgust.
“Do you remember the rumors?” he asked her softly.
She looked up at him in confusion. “What rumors?”
“The ones you heard the kitchen staff talking about.” He smirked, but it did not possess the wicked edge it usually did. “When you were eavesdropping.”
Scarlett narrowed her eyes at him. “Eavesdropping is beneath me, Your Grace. They were simply talking too loudly while I was at the door.”
He raised an eyebrow at her in response.
“All right.” She rolled her eyes. “Let us pretend that I was eavesdropping and I did hear the rumors about you.”
“They are true,” he admitted. “I did take a life, and not in the war, as you might have believed.”
Scarlett looked at him in shock. Hudson was many things, but a cold-blooded killer was most definitely not one of them.
“I did it to protect someone else,” he told her on a shuddering breath. “Even then, that kind of darkness follows you everywhere. It is like a damned weight I cannot shake off.”
“Hudson…” She reached for his face, but he had stepped away.
Out of her reach, once more.
“I cannot taint anyone who is bound to me,” he murmured. “And if you stay with me, little cat, the darkness will consume you, too. I cannot allow that.”
It was preposterous, what he was saying. Guilt was not infectious in the same way a cold might be, but Hudson seemed to have convinced himself of it.
She would have told him all of that, but he had already turned around and left her.
Stupid man. Did he really think he could scare me with that?
If he wanted to ensure that she kept to his ridiculous proposal of a marriage blanc , he did not have to make up some dark backstory of a tortured hero—she already believed that he was.
And he was going to be hers . Her very own tortured hero.