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He threw another punch, harder than strictly necessary, and Owen wisely stepped out of range this time.

“She argues with me over matters that are entirely my own concern. She bites me when I attempt to make a reasonable point. And I—” He stopped himself, clenching his jaw for a moment, before finishing, low and reluctant. “I kissed her, when I had no intention of doing anything of the sort, and I have thought of very little else since. I swear, she is some sort of harbinger of ill will.”

“Ah.” Owen's grin widened, entirely too pleased with himself. “The great and terrible Duke of Wolvesley, undone by a woman who bites.”

“I did not ask for your commentary.”

“No, but you shall have it regardless, as your closest friend and the only man brave enough to tell you the truth to your face. I believe she is doing you a great deal of good, in fact. You have been unbearably precise your entire life, Hudson. A little chaos might suit you.”

“Chaos is precisely what I do not need at present.” Hudson pulled off his gloves, dropping onto the bench along the wall, some of the fight visibly draining out of him as he did. “She is hardly helping me keep my mind off Cornelius, if that is your meaning. If anything, she is a further distraction from a matter that requires my full attention.”

Owen's expression sobered slightly at that, some of the teasing falling away. “Speaking of your brother — how does he fare?”

“I do not know, and that is precisely the trouble.” Hudson scrubbed a hand over his face, the exhaustion of the past several days catching up with him all at once. “He has not been home in three days. No word, no note, nothing. I can only assume he has quarreled with Miss Gale and is presently drowning his sorrows somewhere I have not yet thought to look.”

“You've had men watching for him?”

“Of course I have.” Hudson's tone was clipped, the worry beneath it plain despite his effort to conceal it. “I intend to keep watching until he sees sense or comes home of his own accord, whichever occurs first.”

Owen sat beside him, offering a friendly clap on the shoulder to the man who spent the last twenty minutes attempting to bury him with his rage.

“For what it's worth, I am glad you've someone to distract you from all of it, even if she does bite. And belated congratulations, I suppose, on the wedding.”

Hudson answered this with a smack to Owen's shoulder considerably harder than the moment strictly called for, though Owen only laughed, entirely unbothered, and the two of them sat in easy silence for a while longer before parting ways.

The carriage ride home did nothing to settle Hudson's thoughts. If anything, the quiet of it only made room for them to grow louder as his mind spun with all the things he had hoped to forget. Anna's voice, sharp and unflinching, refusing to yield an inch of ground to him even as he'd loomed over her; the particular, startling sting of her teeth against his thumb, the way she had gone soft and pliant against him for one brief, unguarded moment before he had come to his senses and fled the premises like a coward rather than the man he was.

He was the Duke of Wolvesley. He did not flee anything.

And yet.

By the time he arrived home, he had made no further progress in understanding what, precisely, that woman had done to him, only that whatever it was showed no signs of loosening its grip.

At last, the wedding morning arrived, and Anna could not stop pacing.

She had tried sitting. She had tried standing at the window, watching the street below for some sign of the carriage that would take her to the church. She had tried, briefly and without success, to eat something, and had given it up entirely when her stomach had rebelled at the very notion of food.

The week had passed in a blur she could scarcely account for now that it had reached its end — fittings, and correspondence, and Phoebe's steady, competent presence at every turn, and beneath it all, the persistent, unwelcome awareness that in a matter of hours she would belong, in the eyes of the law and the church and the whole of the ton, to a man she had known for scarcely a fortnight. She had told herself, over and over, that this was simply the sensible course, that she felt nothing beyond the ordinary nerves any bride might feel on her wedding day. She was not certain that she believed it anymore.

Pacing, it seemed, was the only thing that offered any relief at all — though relief was perhaps too strong a word for the restless, itching energy that had taken hold of her since she woke that morning and would not release her, no matter how many times she crossed the length of her room.

“You will wear out the carpet with your marching about,” Rowland spoke from the doorway, and Anna startled, spinning to find him watching her with an expression that was equal parts amusement and something softer, that made her throat tighten unexpectedly.

“I cannot help it,” she admitted. “I feel as though I might come apart if I stand still.”

“Come here, then.” He held out his arm, and she crossed to him gratefully, tucking her hand into the crook of his elbow. “I only wish to say — if that man ever gives you cause for it, you need only send word, and I will be there within the hour to beat him thoroughly. I have been practicing my aim.”

Anna laughed, the sound startled out of her, some of the tightness in her chest easing at once. “You have never held a pistol properly in your life, Rowland.”

“I would learn, for you. Swiftly, and with great enthusiasm.”

“That is somehow less reassuring than you intend it to be.” But she squeezed his arm all the same, grateful beyond words for him, for a brother who would threaten a duke over breakfast and mean every word of it.

“Shall we go?” Rowland tilted his head in the direction of the front door.

Anna took in a deep breath, her shoulders losing some tension.

“I suppose we shall.”