“Move,” he said quietly.
Emerton moved.
“—ungrateful, foolish girl! After everything we’ve sacrificed?—”
Cressida heard her mother’s voice before she’d even removed her pelisse, the shrill accusations echoing through Bardwell House with enough force to make the servants scatter.
“Mama, please—” Mary’s young voice, trying to intervene.
“Go to your room, Mary!”
“But Cressida didn’t?—”
“Now!”
Cressida stepped into the drawing room to find her parents in full fury, their faces mottled with rage and shame. Peter stood near the fireplace, his expression troubled.
“This has gone too far,” her brother ventured. “Surely we can discuss this rationally.”
“Rationally?” Their father rounded on him. “Your sister has destroyed this family’s reputation, and you want rationality?”
“I haven’t destroyed anything!” Cressida’s control finally snapped. “Miss Oakley did this. She must have overheard my conversation with Grandmama. She wanted Emerton for herself, so she?—”
“You still speak of that Oakley girl?” Her mother’s laugh bordered on hysterical. “Always someone else’s fault, never yours! You ran away, you compromised yourself, you?—!”
The front door crashed open.
Everyone froze as Theodore strode into the drawing room with the focused intensity of an approaching storm. His dark eyes swept over the scene, landing on Cressida with an emotion she couldn’t read, before fixing on her parents with something akin to disgust.
“Your Grace,” Lord Bardwell began, his tone shifting to obsequious panic.
Theodore did not give anyone time to process his presence before he announced, “We will be married in two days.”
Stunned silence ensued.
Cressida’s mouth opened, closed, opened again. “I beg your pardon?”
Theodore didn’t look at her. His attention remained fixed on her parents with unnerving intensity. “I assume that’s acceptable?”
“Acceptable?” Lord Bardwell had gone from crimson to ashen. “Your Grace, of course, but surely the arrangements… the settlement… the dowry. I mean?—”
“I don’t want your money.” Theodore’s voice cut like a blade. “I’ll handle all arrangements. The ceremony will be private, at Ashmere. Two days.”
“But Your Grace…” Lady Bardwell struggled to her feet, torn between relief and the desire to negotiate better terms.
“Two days,” Theodore repeated. He finally glanced at Cressida, something complicated flickering behind his eyes. “Unless you have objections, Lady Cressida?”
Cressida opened her mouth, a thousand protests rising to her lips, but none of them bloomed on her tongue. Tongue-tied. She was positively tongue-tied.
He was gone before she could regain her senses enough to voice a single one.
Her mother collapsed onto the sofa with theatrical precision, one hand pressed to her forehead. “Thank God. Oh, thank God. A duchess. My daughter, a duchess.”
But Cressida couldn’t move, couldn’t think beyond the impossible reality that had just reshaped her entire future in the span of thirty seconds.
She was going to marry the Duke of Ashmere.
Intwodays.
