Oh yeah. It was set up for this for ages, but the other Duke is clearly the better catch. He's respectful to other people's well-being and happiness, even at the cost of being hard-hearted in the present. Plus, her not looking for love is the perfect excuse.
As a bonus, this'll really feed into the abusive asshole's inferiority complex.
I think it's interesting that the "unmarried people are considered incomplete" concept introduced at the beginning here makes things a lot rougher for our gay villains.
I'm not clear whether the intention is to frame them as somewhat sympathetic folks who are the unfortunate product of very human failings, but so far it's doing a very good job of that for me. They're absolutely toxic and one wouldn't want to be anywhere near them, but it's hard for me to get very mad at them for being horrible people, either.
Finally a "historical" story with a gown that's tasteful, usually those are awful doll-like sugary overloading ribbons and pinky monstrosities or too revealing for the setting, like pageants gowns. This is very elegant and fashionable.