They Mocked Her When Her Groom Arrived In A Farmer's Cart — He Was The Duke In Disguise
Chapter 7
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The crowd's laughter faltered just slightly as she stepped down from the marble steps and climbed without hesitation into the muddy farmer's cart. Her ivory gown settled against the worn wooden seat, and she did not look back at Belgrave House—at her father's lowered eyes, at Vivian's triumphant smile, at Violet's golden curls shining in the morning sun.The gates of Belgrave House swung closed behind them.Somewhere behind, laughter still rippled through the crowd like wind through wheat, already reshaping itself into the kind of story that would be repeated at every dinner table in London before the week was through.Behind them, at the top of the marble steps, Lady Vivian watched the cart rattle away with a satisfied smile still curling her lips, already composing in her mind the amusing account she would give at supper that evening of her stepdaughter's ridiculous farmer husband. Lady Violet, resplendent in her wedding silks, laughed once more for good measure, tucking her arm through Victor's as his own gleaming carriage finally arrived, its silver harnesses catching the sun in a way the muddy workhorses never could.Neither of them spared a second thought for the quiet dignity they had just watched ride away through the gates, nor for how differently they would remember that morning before the year was through.Inside the cart, hidden from every eye that had come to mock them, Callum Robinson allowed himself, for the briefest of moments, a small and secret smile.No one at Belgrave House knew it yet. No one in all of London knew it yet. England's richest duke had just taken his duchess home.The cart rattled north along roads that grew narrower and greener with every mile, leaving behind the marble and crystal of Belgrave House for hedgerows heavy with late blackberries and fields turning gold at the edges.Matilda sat beside her husband in silence for the first hour, watching the countryside unfold, feeling the strange lightness of a woman who had just left behind the only life she had ever known and felt, against all sense, relieved rather than afraid.Callum drove with the easy competence of a man who had spent years handling horses, though something in the way he held the reins—loose, assured, without the tension of a man proving himself—made her wonder again at the contradiction she had glimpsed on the steps of Belgrave House."You did not have to take my hand," he said at last, breaking the silence without looking at her. "Your family would not have stopped you from refusing.""They arranged the marriage," Matilda said. "Refusing was never truly offered to me.""That is not what I asked." He turned briefly, and she found his eyes waiting for hers, steady and unhurried. "I asked why you took it, not why you could not refuse it."