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James seemed determined to leave no room for misunderstanding. "You will be my duchess," he said evenly, folding his arms. "You will have everything you require. You will help me raise the baby, and you will maintain the secret that the child is ours. That will be the nature of our relationship."

His words were practical, almost painfully so, as though he were outlining the terms of a business arrangement rather than speaking to the woman who would become his wife by morning. Olivia listened quietly, feeling each sentence settle upon her like another layer of weight.

She lowered her gaze to the ground. This was it. The moment when she finally understood that she was truly giving up the possibility of having a child of her own. She had always wanted one. It was not some passing fancy she had entertained because society expected women to become mothers. She had imagined holding a baby that belonged to her, feeling the first flutter of life beneath her heart, carrying a child and knowing that she and the man she loved had created something together.

She had not spoken of it often because her mother had taught her that dreams were dangerous when one did not possess the power to make them come true. Yet she had carried that dream quietly inside herself all the same.

Now I am being asked to surrender it before I have the chance to reach for it.

The cruelty of it was almost unbearable because she had agreed to marry James willingly. She had chosen this path because it would save her from Lord Boulton, protect Louiza, and give the abandoned baby a family. She had believed those things were worth the sacrifice. But she had not understood until this moment how much she would be sacrificing herself.

She swallowed hard and lifted her eyes to James.

"It does not seem as though I have much say in the matter," she said quietly.

"No," James replied coldly.

The single word struck harder than she expected. Olivia narrowed her eyes at him. There was no apology in his expression, no hint that he understood what he had just taken from her. He simply stood there, calm and immovable, as though the matter had been decided, and her feelings were an inconvenient detail. She wanted to challenge him. She wanted to tell him that she was not a piece of furniture he could place in his household, nor merely a convenient woman who would smile beside him while raising another man's abandoned child. Yet something in his expression warned her that an argument would accomplish nothing.

So, Olivia did something she had rarely done in her life. She stopped fighting. Her shoulders straightened, and the warmth disappeared from her voice.

"Very well," she said formally, clasping her hands before her. "Then we shall proceed with the formalities of the wedding tomorrow, and afterwards return to our respective duties, as you are requesting."

The words felt strangely foreign in her mouth. She had spent days teasing him, challenging him, and laughing with him, but now she deliberately placed a wall between them.

James gave a brief nod. "Good."

The coldness of his reply made her want to throw a horseshoe at him. Instead, she managed a polite smile that contained absolutely no warmth.

"Goodnight, Your Grace."

She turned before he could say anything else and walked toward the inn, her steps measured, and her chin held high. James was an infuriating man.

Worse, he is an infuriating man who has managed to make me care what he thinks of me.

She hated that almost as much as she hated the hollow ache in her chest.

At the door, Olivia paused for the briefest moment and glanced back. James remained by the horses, tall and solitary beneath the night sky, apparently lost in his own thoughts. She almost wondered whether she had misunderstood him, whether there was some hidden reason for his certainty, but pride prevented her from asking.

She went inside and climbed the stairs to her room, closing the door quietly behind her.

Louiza would surely ask what had happened, and Olivia did not yet know how she would explain it.

For tonight, she only knew that the man she was marrying had just made it very clear that he did not intend to become her husband in any sense that mattered to her, and tomorrow she would become … the Duchess of Glenmore.

Chapter Twelve

The wedding was, Olivia thought, a perfect reflection of the arrangement itself, hurried, practical, slightly absurd, and altogether lacking the sort of romance she had once imagined for herself.

There were only four people gathered. Louiza stood beside her, bright-eyed and solemn despite the ridiculous circumstances, while Hubert stood near James with the grave expression of a man attempting to lend dignity to proceedings that involved an anvil and a hammer. And James himself stood opposite Olivia, tall and composed.

Olivia tried very hard not to feel disappointed. She had no right to regret anything about this wedding, she reminded herself, because the alternative had been far worse. If James had not appeared when he did, she would have been standing here with Lord Boulton, preparing to bind herself to a man who made her skin crawl merely by looking at her.

Worse still, Louiza would have remained behind at Charnley Manor, trapped in the role of maid while Lady Charnley congratulated herself on having arranged everything neatly. Olivia had escaped one dreadful future and secured another that was, at the very least, tolerable. She would become a duchess, Louiza would be free, and she would have the sweet little boy they had found abandoned and frightened, a child who needed someone to love him.

Surely that ought to be enough.

She glanced at James and found him watching her intently, his blue eyes fixed upon her face with an expression she could not quite decipher. Her stomach gave an irritating little flutter, and she immediately blamed the cold morning air. This was not the moment to think about his eyes, his broad shoulders, or the way his voice could become teasing whenever he wished to unsettle her. She had already learned the previous night that he intended their marriage to remain nothing more than an arrangement.