by Candace Camp
“I appreciate that you wanted to tell me before you went. You are, as always, considerate. But I am a grown woman. I knew what lay before us when this started.”
“Did you? Then you’re a damned sight more knowledgeable than I.” Fitz scowled. “What the hell are you talking about, Eve?”
“Your return to London. The—the end of our affair. You are ready to go back, move on.”
“What? How did you hit on that idea? I know Oliver never told you that. Or is this your way of thwarting my proposal?”
Eve felt the blood leave her head, dropping to her extremities. She swayed. “Pro-proposal?”
He reached out quickly and put his arm around her, easing her onto the bench. “Yes, my proposal. That’s why I’m going to London—to obtain a special license from the archbishop’s office. I don’t intend to wait three weeks for the banns to be read. I want to marry you as soon as I possibly can.” He paused, then added a trifle hesitantly, “I mean, if you will agree to marry me.”
Eve put a trembling hand to her mouth. “Oh. Oh my. That is why you’re going to London?”
“Yes. But I learned from Royce’s mistake not to go haring off on my own without asking the lady in question first. That is what I wanted to talk to you about.” He sighed. “And now here I’ve mucked it all up and haven’t even asked you.”
“No. No, it was I who sent us off down this path,” Eve assured him. She tried a smile. “It is not too late, you know, to ask.”
Fitz grinned and went down on one knee before her. “Eve Hawthorne, will you do me the very great honor of marrying me?”
Eve hardly knew whether to laugh or cry or throw her arms around his neck and shriek “Yes!” Instinctively she firmly tamped down all such possibilities and asked, “Are you doing this because of what happened last night? Are you sacrificing yourself to protect my reputation? I don’t want or need that. And I refuse to be a millstone about your neck. I—”
He held up a hand, covering her mouth. “My darling Eve, may I remind you that I am one of those fellows who is concerned only with my own pleasure and who goes through life doing exactly as I please? I am not asking you to marry me because I am worried about your reputation or Neville’s insinuations or anything other than the fact that I am desperately in love with you and I do not wish to live another minute without you as my wife!” He removed his hand from her mouth. “Now, what is your answer?”
“Oh, Fitz!” Eve could barely speak for the tears suddenly clogging her throat. “You love me? Truly?”
“Yes! Yes, I love you. Truly, forever, and every other way there is.”
“Then yes! Yes, I’ll marry you!” She flung herself up and into his arms, wrapping her arms around his neck.
He kissed her soundly, then set her down, and an instant later pulled her back for another kiss. After a very long time he finally stepped back from Eve and looked down into her face.
“You have not said it to me, though, Eve. Do you love me—or are you just marrying me for my dashing good looks and enormous fortune?”
Eve let out a little gurgling laugh. “Those things have some consideration, of course. But oh, Fitz, I do love you so.” She put her hands in his, lifting their joined hands to her heart and gazing up into his eyes. Her eyes were soft and lambent, filled with a glow and promise that were unmistakable.
“I love you,” she told him. “Truly, forever, and every other way there is.”
“Then kiss me again,” he told her, and pulled her back into his arms.
Epilogue
It was a quiet wedding, held in the small church in the village, with only Lady Vivian, Neville, and the members of Fitz’s family in attendance. After all, as Eve had pointed out when Vivian and Lily had tried to lure her into a grander ceremony, she was a widow, and they were being married by special license.
“You can expend all your efforts on Lily’s wedding,” she had told them. The earl, though he had granted his permission, had insisted that Lily wait until after her birthday to wed.
“That’s true,” Lily had agreed, her eyes shining. “But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t also have a lovely wedding for you.”
But as they waited in the small anteroom in the church, neither Vivian nor Lily could find any fault with the arrangements.
“It’s perfect,” Lily told Eve, eyes shining. “The candles, the ivy, even the ribbons on the pews—it’s all absolutely perfect. And just right for you. You look beautiful.”
She did. Eve’s slender figure was encased in a gown of cerulean blue with long sleeves, puffed and slashed at the shoulders, then fitted the rest of the way to her wrists. An overpetticoat of blond lace was pulled back on the sides to expose the blue satin beneath. In the back a short train fell from the shoulders to trail about a foot behind her. A cunning little hat of the same blue was pinned to her carefully arranged blond curls, with a short veil of net that covered without concealing the upper half of her face.
Eve had expected to wear one of her better gowns for her wedding. She had no idea how Fitz and Vivian had managed it, but when Fitz returned from London in just five days, special license in hand, he had also brought with him a package from Madame Arceneaux containing the gown and matching hat.
“You are beautiful,” Vivian agreed, stepping forward to kiss her friend on the cheek. “You are even lovelier than the first time you married.” She clapped her hand to her mouth. “Oh! Is it bad luck to mention that?”
“I don’t know.” Eve chuckled. “But I am sure that nothing is going to bring bad luck to me this day.”
The door to the anteroom opened, and Camellia rushed in. Her gray eyes sparkled, and her cheeks were flushed with pink, and except for the fact that she was even thinner than usual, no one would have known that she had ever been sick.
“Everyone’s ready,” Cam told them. “You should see the chapel, Eve. It’s lovely.”
They were to be married in the small room that lay to the right of the main sanctuary, separated from the rest of the church by arched pillars. Used primarily for baptisms, it seated only a few rows of people and seemed the perfect cozy spot for an intimate ceremony. They had decorated it with a wealth of white candles, garlands of ivy, and ribbons of blue to match Eve’s dress.
“Are they ready?” Eve asked, and Camellia nodded.
“Everyone’s here. Fitz is waiting at the altar, and oh, he looks so handsome!” Camellia rushed over to hug her too. “I can’t believe you’re leaving us already.”
“I’ll be there in London when you start your Season, never fear. I won’t leave you on your own.”
“I wish we were all going to London right now,” Lily added disconsolately.
“I like it here,” Camellia said. “I could stay at Willowmere always, I think.”
“With Lady Symington here?” Lily asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“No,” Camellia retorted. “Not with Lady Symington. But they’re leaving in a week. The doctor says Monsieur Leveque will be ready to travel by then.”
“Thank goodness. Cousin Oliver is a miracle worker. I can’t believe he got Lady S to agree to the wedding.”
“Stewkesbury has a way about him,” Vivian said, chuckling. “I think he used the carrot-and-stick approach, pointing out how Priscilla would be a spinster if she didn’t marry Leveque, then telling her that he’d looked into Monsieur Leveque’s background and found his family was aristocratic before the Revolution, so she’s really marrying the grandson of a count.”
“Except he refuses to use any title. That doesn’t sit well with Priscilla’s mother, I can tell you.”
“I don’t understand why Cousin Oliver looked into his background to begin with,” Camellia said. “What did it matter who he was? He just crashed in our meadow.”
“That was when everybody thought you were sweet on him,” her sister Lily told her, grinning.
“What? Me?” Camellia looked stunned. “Why?”
“You seemed awfully interested in him,” Lily retorted.
“We thought perhaps you liked him,” Eve put in.
“Well, I did like him. I do. I like Priscilla too. They’ve told me they’ll take me up in the balloon once they get it repaired.” She paused, then said to Eve, “But I wasn’t interested in him that way. I told you, I don’t think I’m the sort to fall in love.”
“Hear, hear.” Vivian clapped her hands. “We shall remain determined spinsters, you and I. We shall form a club. None of these romantic women allowed.”
“Ha. As if you weren’t romantic,” Eve told her. “That’s exactly why you haven’t married—because you’re so romantic. I shall see both of you married, I’m sure. You just haven’t found the right men yet.”
Vivian sighed and shook her head. “There is no one more interested in everyone marrying than a woman in love. But I fear with me, my dear, your efforts will be fruitless. Camellia is only beginning, but I have been on the marriage market for years now. If there was a man for me out there, I would have found him.”
“Perhaps you have and just don’t know it,” Eve retorted.
Her friend rolled her eyes and motioned her toward the door. “Enough of this nonsense. It’s time for you to get married to the man you love.”
Eve smiled, her stomach suddenly fluttering with nerves. She walked out of the room with her friends and around to the side entrance that led into the small chapel. The other three women slipped into the chapel and took their seats. Then Eve stepped in by herself.
It was a beautiful scene that lay before her—the quaint stone chapel, lit by a multitude of flickering white candles, her dearest friends waiting to witness the most important day of her life. And there, at the end of the short aisle, next to the priest, stood Fitz.
He was impossibly handsome in his formal black coat and breeches, ruffles cascading down the front of his shirt. A ruby stickpin gleamed in the folds of his neckcloth, matching the rubies at his cuffs. But she knew that he would have been equally handsome to her if he had been clad in boots and buckskins.
Fitz smiled at her, and her heart leaped in response. She walked down the short aisle, her eyes fixed on his. The nerves in her stomach disappeared as she joined him and slipped her hand into his.
The priest began to speak. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God . . .”
At her first wedding, Eve remembered, she had been so nervous that afterward she could remember nothing that was said. This time was entirely different. She soaked up every word, engraved each vow on her heart as she said it. This was her life. Her love. And after this day nothing would ever be the same again.
When it came time for Fitz’s vows he turned to Eve, their hands linked, and gazed down into her face, his eyes glowing with love. “I, Fitzhugh Alan Edward Talbot, take thee, Eve Childe Hawthorne, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.”
Eve made her own promise clearly, firmly, her heart pounding madly in her chest. Then, faster than seemed possible, the vicar was pronouncing them man and wife.
Fitz turned up her fragile little veil and bent to kiss her. His mouth was warm and soft on hers, and a tremor of joy shook her.
“I love you, Mrs. Talbot,” he whispered. “And I intend to spend the rest of my life making you happy.”
Eve let out a breathy little laugh of sheer joy. “I’ll hold you to that.”
Eve put her hand in his, and he raised it to his mouth, kissing her hand lightly. They turned and began to walk down the aisle into their new life.
Turn the page for a sneak peek at the final book in the sparkling Willowmere series
AN AFFAIR WITHOUT END
by
New York Times bestselling author
Candace Camp
Coming soon from Pocket Star Books
London was cold, damp, and dirty.
And Lady Vivian Carlyle was delighted to be there.
As she swept into Lady Wilbourne’s ballroom, she was relieved to see Lady Charlotte Ludley at the edge of the dance floor. Charlotte had been her friend since they were still in short skirts and had come out the year after Vivian had made her debut. But while Vivian had remained determinedly single all the years since, Charlotte had married Lord Ludley in her second Season and was now the proud mother of a lively brood of boys.
“Charlotte, how wonderful to see you. You are not usually here this early.”
“Vivian! I am so happy to see you!” Charlotte squeezed Vivian’s hands.
“I could not bear to stay away any longer,” Vivian confessed. “’Tis almost five months since I was last in London. I think it’s the first Little Season I’ve missed since I came out.”
“I could scarcely believe you stayed at Halstead House with your uncle for so long—especially since there was an outbreak of measles.”
“It was ghastly. I had to tend to Sabrina, and you can imagine how much I enjoyed that.” Vivian rolled her eyes. Sabrina was the young woman her uncle had married after his first wife died. She was only a few years older than Vivian herself, and their relationship was rocky, at best. “But I could not leave them in the lurch that way. And I did at least have the satisfaction of seeing Sabrina come all over in spots.”
“That would have been worth any price. And there was more excitement at Willowmere, I understand. I don’t know why I am never there when these things happen.”
Willowmere was the country estate of the Talbot family, to which Charlotte belonged. It was only a few miles from Vivian’s uncle’s house, and it was on Vivian’s frequent summer visits to her aunt and uncle that she and Charlotte had become friends. Willowmere was now the residence of Charlotte’s cousin Oliver, the ninth Earl of Stewkesbury—and of his set of American cousins, the Bascombe sisters.
She laughed now, recalling the events of the preceding autumn. “Things do tend to happen wherever the Bascombe girls go. If it isn’t kidnappers popping up, it’s French balloonists falling from the sky. Indeed, I found Marchester sadly lacking in excitement after being around your cousins for a few months.”
“Tell me, which did you miss more—Camellia’s and Lily’s escapades or your exchanges with Stewkesbury?” Charlotte’s eyes twinkled.
“Stewkesbury!” Vivian grimaced. “As if I would miss his sniping.”
The last thing she intended to admit to her friend was that more than once while she was at her father’s house, she had found herself thinking of some particularly clever remark she could make to the earl, only to remember, with a distinct sense of disappointment, that Stewkesbury was not around.
“And here I thought it was usually you sniping at him.”
Vivian let out an inelegant snort. “I would not have to snipe at him if the man didn’t insist on being so stiff-necked and self-righteous.”
Charlotte shook her head, making a sound that was half laugh, half sigh. “And Oliver is never so stiff-necked as when you are about.”
“Then you see what I mean.” Vivian shrugged. “The two of us simply cannot get along.”
“Yes, but what is odd, I think, is how much the two of you seem to enjoy not getting along.”
Vivian glanced at her friend, startled, and found Charlotte watching her with a knowing expression. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
“Mm. Yet, if I remember correctly, you admitted only a few months ago that you once had a tendre for Oliver.”
Color bloomed along Vivian’s cheekbones. “When I was fourteen! Good heavens, I hope you don’t think I am still carrying some sort of . . . of schoolgirl infatuation with the man.”
“No. I am sure not. If you were interested in a man, I feel sure you would act upon it.”
Vivian tilted her head to the side thoughtfully. “I suppose I would . . . if there were such a man.”
“And if you were aware
how you felt.”
“I beg your pardon?” Vivian’s eyes widened with surprise. “Are you saying . . . do you think . . . ?”
Charlotte simply waited, her eyebrows faintly raised in interest as she watched her usually articulate friend fumble for words.
“I am not interested in Oliver,” Vivian said at last. “And, believe me, I know my own feelings.”
“Of course.”
“I will admit,” Vivian went on candidly, “that Stewkesbury is a handsome man. That much is obvious.”
“Of course,” her friend agreed soberly.
“There is nothing to mislike in his face or form.”
“No, indeed.”
“He is intelligent, if often provokingly narrow in his thinking. He rides well. He dances well.”
“It goes without saying.” Charlotte’s eyes danced, though she kept her lips pressed firmly together.
“I am sure that he is as eagerly pursued by marriage-minded young ladies as is my brother.”
“Mm.”
“But I am not marriage-minded. And I am not foolish enough to think that there is any possibility of romance between Stewkesbury and me.”
“Still, I cannot help but notice that you seem . . . happy . . . when you and Cousin Oliver are engaged in one of your clashes.”
Vivian’s lips curved up faintly. “Sometimes it is rather fun.”
“Even though you dislike him.”
“I don’t dislike him,” Vivian protested quickly.
“No?” Charlotte cut her eyes toward her slyly.
“Of course not. Why, there is no one I would trust more if I needed help.” She paused, then added judiciously, “Though he would, of course, make a perfect nuisance of himself afterward telling me how foolish I had been.”
Her friend chuckled. “Indeed he would.”
“But the two of us? We are as unlikely as oil and water.”
From behind her came a deep male voice. “Lady Vivian. Cousin Charlotte.”
Vivian’s stomach dropped, and her face went suddenly hot, her hands cold. “Stewkesbury!”