They Mocked Her When Her Groom Arrived In A Farmer's Cart — He Was The Duke In Disguise
Chapter 4
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Matilda understood at once. Belgrave House owed money it could not pay. Callum Robinson's settlement, whatever it was, would cover the shortfall that Victor Holloway's marriage to Violet could not. She was not being given a husband; she was being sold to save a house that had never loved her."A marriage fit for a servant," Lady Vivian said with a small, satisfied smile, as though she had waited years to say something so cutting and had finally found her moment. "Well, at least one daughter in this house shall know her place."Violet did not even bother to hide her laughter.Matilda said nothing. She had learned long ago that her family's cruelty required no audience to sharpen itself, and silence was the only armor she had ever been permitted to wear.That night, alone in her room, she did not weep. She sat by the window with her mother's old shawl across her knees and thought with a strange and quiet steadiness that perhaps a humble husband in a distant countryside might offer her something Belgrave House never had: peace, even if it came wrapped in poverty.She did not yet know how wrong—and how right—that thought would prove to be.The wedding morning arrived with a sky the color of new cream: soft and pale and utterly indifferent to the storm it was about to witness.Belgrave House had transformed itself for the occasion: marble steps had been polished until they gleamed like glass; crystal chandeliers, brought down from storage and cleaned by exhausted housemaids working through the night, threw fractured light across the entrance hall; white roses, ordered at considerable expense from a London hothouse, twined along the balustrades and filled the entrance hall with a sweetness that could not quite mask the underlying scent of a house too long neglected for want of coin.Hundreds of guests arrived in gleaming landaus and coaches stamped with family crests—the cream of London society come to witness the Kensington daughters married in a single glittering day. Footmen in fresh livery lined the drive, and somewhere near the kitchens, a small orchestra tuned its instruments for the wedding breakfast that would follow, the thin, bright notes of a violin drifting out through an open window and catching for a moment on the cold morning air.Violet's gown alone had cost more than most of Ashford Green earned in a year. She stood glowing at the top of the staircase, golden curls crowned with orange blossom, awaiting the arrival of Viscount Victor Holloway's gleaming carriage drawn by four matched grays with silver harnesses that caught the morning sun like struck flint.