Page 25 of A Virgin for the Ton’s Wolf (Ton’s Wolves #4)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
S carlett woke up to find her mama sitting by the side of her bed, the soft sunlight limning her features. It had been so long since she last woke up to find her mother occupying that same spot. When she was a child… maybe seven or eight.
“Mama,” she croaked, her mouth feeling dry as dust. “What are you doing here?”
Her mother frowned slightly, her auburn eyebrows scrunched together. “Your dog has been eyeing me suspiciously for a while now.”
Scarlett smiled slightly and scooped Snowdrop up into her lap. The puppy offered no further protest and settled right in, succumbing to her gentle ministrations, although it still did regard her mother with wary eyes.
“Snowdrop is still not used to seeing other people,” she explained. “And I dared not let him out so much with all the guests about.”
That, and she did not think Hudson would take too kindly to a lively ball of white fur tumbling around the corridors.
“I would feel much more at ease if he did not stare at me so.” Her mama shuddered. “It makes me feel like I have just committed an awful blunder of some sort…”
“Oh.” Scarlett allowed Snowdrop to settle into a much more comfortable position on her lap.
Growing up, she had borne witness to the various tactics her father had employed to ‘subdue’ her mama. She would not be so surprised if a pointed glare in absolute silence was one of them.
“The Duke and Dowager Duchess have decided to make the announcement after dinner.” Her mother picked at the fine embroidery on the bed hangings. “And I have sent word to your brother. He means to arrive after lunch, or so he told me.”
“Alex is always so busy.” Scarlett shrugged slightly.
“But you are his only sister,” her mama huffed. “Naturally, he should be present for the announcement of your engagement. A meeting with your betrothed is also necessary to smooth out other details for your marriage.”
Betrothed .
The word danced on her tongue like a foreign cuisine—strange but not entirely unpleasant.
“Have you been up this whole time?” Scarlett asked instead.
Balls usually finished at breakfast, and with her mama and the Dowager Duchess running the entire affair, she must not have gotten enough sleep.
Her mama gave her a sharp look. “Well, I cannot be expected to lie about the whole day like an invalid when my only daughter is about to be married to a duke.”
Scarlett winced. So, she was the invalid here.
“Heavens, I could not afford that, Scarlett. And even then, I would be very ashamed to do so, what with His Grace already up and riding to the Archbishop for a special license.”
Her heart sank into her stomach at her mother’s words. Last night, he had not been in favor of obtaining a special license, and now he could hardly sleep to go get it.
“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 be damned if 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 if she agreed to a farce of a union. A mariage 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 how that union 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, wants to 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 risk his displeasure 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.
He handed the reins of his horse to the groom back in Wolverton Estate and strode back up to his rooms without even greeting his guests or his mother.
After he had deposited the special license in his drawer, he stripped off his jacket and unknotted his cravat. Any other time, he might have summoned his valet to help him dispense with the unnecessary clothing, but he was in a dangerous enough mood. He pushed the sleeves up his forearms to wash off the dust and dirt from his impromptu journey when he heard it. A hesitant footstep, someone trying to approach unobserved.
Narrowing his eyes, he whirled quickly. His time on the battlefield had honed his reflexes to a deadly edge, and with his nerves and control frayed beyond recognition, he was a simmering pot waiting for the perfect opportunity to explode. In two rapid movements, he had managed to drop the enemy to the floor, immobilizing them.
Except this was no enemy, no foreign soldier wrestling with him in the mud and gore, but a vision draped in sage green fabric and smelling of flowers instead of gunpowder and death.
“You! What are you doing here?” he demanded, helping her up.
“Well, it is lovely to see you, too,” Scarlett grumbled. “You could have given me a warning before attacking me.”
He raised an eyebrow at that. Was she talking about manners when she was the one who was most inappropriately in his bedchamber?
“I… was not expecting to see you here,” he said instead.
She shrugged and casually sat down on his sofa. “I suppose I came here uninvited.”
It was a miracle the Dowager Countess still let her out of her sight after what happened at the ball last night. Hudson still did not trust himself to get within a mile of her, and right now, she was in his room. Sitting on his goddamned sofa.
The same sofa where he’d been wanting to do such… indecent things to her.
“And to what do I owe the purpose of this visit?” he asked hoarsely.
The sooner she stated her business, the sooner she could leave. Hudson was already struggling to concentrate when his head was swimming in her fragrance and his hands were itching to reach for those decadent curves he knew lay beneath the swathes of fabric she was wearing.
She tilted her head at him like a curious, little sparrow. “So, you have it then?”
“I have what?”
Bloody hell, but his mind was not functioning quite as well as he’d hoped this morning. Then again, it never did whenever he was in her vicinity.
“The special license,” she spoke softly, slowly, as if to a child. “Mama told me that you went to get one this morning.”
Yes. Yes, he did just that.
Her eyes narrowed. “I thought you said a hasty marriage would only trumpet our guilt for all the world to see.”
No, not that. Not her guilt. It was always his burden to bear. Never hers.
“All the Dukes of Wolverton were wed in the chapel in this estate,” he told her. “I daresay the Archbishop had been waiting for this exact moment—when another Duke of Wolverton would come banging on his door for a license.”
She let out a snort that sounded very much like stifled laughter. Damn it, but that made everything seem infinitely better than when he’d woken up that morning to a raging headache and an even worse temper.
“Banging? Really?” She pursed her lips. “Are all the Dukes of Wolverton so cantankerous?”
“Not all of them.” Some of them were even worse.
“I see.”
No, she did not see, and it was best that it stayed that way.
“You must be tired after your journey,” she said, rising from the sofa in one smooth motion. “I should leave you to rest.”
Now, he was confused.
“That’s it?”
“What do you mean, that’s it?”
“That’s it? That’s all you came here for?”
Hudson immediately regretted his question, for her voice dropped to that low, seductive purr that had him hard in the space of a breath. “Should I be here for anything else?”
Yes, he had wanted to say. Right there is my sofa. To your right is my bed. You can take your pick.
“No,” he said. A little too abruptly, it would seem, for the teasing light in her eyes flickered and was replaced by that shuttered look that made him want to hurl himself out of the window.
“Then… I suppose I shall see you around. Your Grace.”
She even dropped into a curtsy before she left. Like one of those damned debutantes.
Hudson smiled harshly as the door clicked shut behind her. Raked his hand through his hair. Ran it over his face.
And he wondered for the thirtieth time that morning if his London townhouse was far enough to be freed of the torment of wanting her.