The Wedding Affair

by Leigh Michaels

  “Oh, it’s nothing. It was past time for the bridesmaids’ mothers to take a hand in looking after them—and so I told Iris.”

  “Still, I… You need not fear that I will take advantage, ma’am. I will strive to give satisfaction always as your companion.”

  “Must you be mealy-mouthed about it?” Lady Stone looked past Kate, her dark eyes beadier than usual. “Good morning, Carlisle. What brings you over to chat?”

  Kate spun around. Andrew was only feet away, but she not felt him approaching.

  “Miss Blakely.” His voice was low and hoarse. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “The meaning of what? You know I accepted a position with Lady Stone.”

  “That was before…” He shot a look at Lady Stone. “That was last night. If you don’t mind, ma’am, I would like a private word with Miss Blakely.”

  “Private? You could have fooled me,” Lady Stone said. “But I must go and see if Iris needs my advice about the wedding, so carry on.” She strolled off toward the morning room.

  Kate’s face was burning. “Andrew, what are you doing? Embarrassing me like that in front of my new employer—”

  “You’re acting as if nothing has changed!”

  “But nothing has. Last night was…” She looked around and lowered her voice. “It was wonderful. But I had no plans or expectations beyond that, and neither should you.”

  “Then you should have made your rules clear last night, Kate. Because you did not, I refuse to abide by them.” He caught her close, tipped her face up, and kissed her.

  One of the bridesmaids, coming around the last bend of the staircase, gave a little shriek.

  Kate tried to break free, but it was futile to push against Andrew’s strong arms. She took one look up into his determined face and said, “All right. We’ll go somewhere quiet to talk.”

  He marched her across to the chilly little reception room and closed the door. “It is obvious now that I should not have let you bamboozle me into making love to you without a clear understanding of your intentions. But it’s too late to go back, so I’m asking now what I should have asked before I took you upstairs.” He laid his hands on her shoulders. “What did last night mean to you, Kate?”

  She was afraid to look at him, much less to tell him that making love with him had been the supreme joy of her life, a high point she would never reach again. “An adventure. You said there were all kinds of adventures, and—”

  “Is that all?” He shook her just a little. “Is security so important to you that you’d rather rely on Lady Stone than take a chance with me?”

  “I wasn’t offered the choice of taking a chance with you!”

  “I asked you to come with me.”

  Kate was aghast. “You were serious? You wanted me to go trailing across the ocean with you, helping to arrange your travel?”

  “It sounded like fun. You and me, together… but when you said no, I began to think hard about my life, Kate, and about what I want. I want you, and I will do whatever it takes to have you.”

  She felt suddenly tired. “And what will that be, Andrew? I suppose you could still marry the richest heiress, as long as she didn’t mind you having a mistress as well as a wife, but—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. If security is so important to you, I will give up adventuring and buy some snug little corner of England to settle down in.”

  Kate blinked. “Buy?” Her voice wobbled. “With what?”

  Andrew took a deep breath. “Lord Winchester isn’t my employer or my patron. He’s my partner. When I travel to check his property—well, it’s my property too. And there’s a lot of it.”

  “You lied about being a tutor?”

  “I… let’s say I edited the truth. Simon warned me the bridesmaids were a rapacious lot, so it seemed sensible to keep the details under wraps.”

  “You could have told me.”

  “Then I wouldn’t have known if it was me you cared for, or the security that a whole lot of money represents.”

  Kate sighed. “And I suppose you never can know now.”

  He smiled. “But I do, Kate. You came to me last night thinking I was a penniless adventurer, relying on the good will of a patron for my next meal. You gave yourself to me thinking there was no future for us.”

  She nodded.

  “Marry me, Kate. Not to escape Lady Stone or the colonel or even the vicar, but because it will be an adventure, no matter where we live or what we do. Be my companion and my love and my wife?”

  She had worked so hard to be cheerful, to be grateful, to appreciate the memories she could treasure and not dwell on the things she could not have. But suddenly it was all too much, and Kate gave a little sob and flung herself against him. He held her while she cried and kissed her tears away and whispered nonsense until the storm had passed and she could laugh again.

  “I still don’t understand,” she said finally. “Money doesn’t come from nowhere, Andrew. You’re a younger son, so where did you get a stake to invest in things like pineapple plantations and—”

  “Sugar mills and a factory that builds equipment to card wool.” He rubbed his jaw. “There’s a substance that’s used in the cloth industry to fix dyes and keep the cloth from fading. But it’s terribly expensive to import from South America, so when I found a substitute on my first trip into the new Louisiana Territory, every cloth manufacturer in England happily paid for a steady supply. In turn, I invested in other things, and…” He shrugged. “It just grew.”

  “And you will really give all that up?”

  “For you, Kate? Yes. Where would you like to settle down?”

  “I have no idea. Perhaps we should look around for a while first. But before that…”

  “Yes, my love?”

  “Andrew, will you take me to Italy?”

  He drew her closer and said against her lips, “Only if it’s for a honeymoon, my Kate.”

  ***

  After Ivan Weiss was safely out of sight, Penelope and the earl walked farther into the garden, finding a little corner of a rose garden where they were disturbed only by the splashing of water drops in a stone basin. The earl sat on the edge of the fountain and drew Penelope down onto his knee. “Your father really doesn’t know you very well, does he?”

  Penelope admitted, “I’ve never said anything like that to him before.”

  “Even so, he doesn’t have the excuse I did for not understanding you. You were so meek and scared anytime I was within shouting distance that you barely spoke at all.” He kissed her slowly.

  Penelope’s head was spinning by the time he let her go.

  “Penny, after you made your incredible offer to sacrifice your jewels—”

  “Not such a sacrifice. Amethysts and garnets all mixed in together—what was my father thinking when he bought that necklace?”

  “Perhaps…” A frown flitted across the earl’s brow. “No, surely not. He can’t have predicted you would sell them. At any rate, your generosity made me realize I’ve been acting like a child where Stoneyford is concerned. I resented my father and grandfather for their mistakes, and I hated the position I’ve been put in. But I didn’t realize I was making no real sacrifice myself in an effort to fix things, any more than they had. I don’t need a stylish curricle or a stable full of high-steppers—”

  “Yes, you do, Charles. You have a position to maintain so someday I can take all your daughters to London and marry them off well. It will be difficult enough for them to be known as the offspring of the very common Penny Wise, without having whispers circulating about their father, the very odd Earl of Townsend.”

  He laughed. “You are anything but common, Penny. Sometimes… I must admit that sometimes you frightened me. You told me what you wanted in no uncertain terms, but at the same time you shivered whenever I approached you—as if you couldn’t bear to be near me. Then at the inn… you said just once you wanted to know what it meant to be a wife. I didn’t realize you were like a drug. I couldn
’t stay away, but every time I broke my promise…”

  “Please don’t stay away,” Penelope said shyly. “I like making love with you.”

  “You did well to rid yourself of Etta. However, I must in all honesty tell you she was right about one thing, Penny. You are a wanton.”

  Her cheeks burned.

  He laughed. “But only the most fortunate of husbands has a wanton for a wife, so I promise never to speak of it to anyone but you. Did you throw away that nightgown? Because if not, I wish for you to—what was Etta’s word?—cavort around in it for me sometimes.” He buried his face in her hair. “I think I love you, Penny.”

  Her throat closed up. She had made up her mind to be happy with whatever he was willing to give her. Being his wife, carrying his title, bearing his children—she had told herself that would be enough, and even in the wildest of her imaginings, she had never dared to dream of more. She had been determined to be a good wife, all the while loving him silently.

  “I admire you,” he said quietly. “You’re sweet and honorable and funny and lively and incredibly attractive…”

  “You must love me, to be so blind.” Suddenly shy, she whispered, “I didn’t mean to tell you—ever—that I love you, Charles. I thought you wouldn’t want to hear it, to be bothered with my feelings.”

  “Bother me anytime you wish. The morning the invitation came to Daphne’s wedding, and you came downstairs in your dressing gown to ask if we were going, you were so naturally beautiful with your hair down and your eyes still sleepy…”

  “The wedding,” Penelope said. “I knew we were forgetting something.”

  “No hurry. Daphne will be late for her own ceremony. Nevertheless, I suppose we should make some effort to get to the church.” He set her off his knee. “You told me once that you felt like a loaf of dark bread masquerading as cake.”

  She remembered saying it. He had asked, on their first evening at Halstead, why she was not wearing jewels, and she had said to do so felt like adding icing to a rough loaf, pretending to be something she was not. She nodded slowly.

  “Penny, you are cake for me. You are every treat I can think of wanting, and though I have dealt with you badly, in the future you will have no reason to regret our arrangement.”

  “Charles…” she whispered against his lips.

  “Hmm?”

  “Will you still love me if I have a boy after all? I can’t guarantee only girls, you know.”

  He kissed her for a while longer, and just as Penelope forgot the question, he said carelessly, “Whenever you like, my dear. I’m sure I’ll find some other way to annoy your father.”

  ***

  Moonlight drenched the nursery. Charlotte was curled around a doll Olivia had never seen before, and a new pale pink dress hung on the wardrobe door. Nurse had retired to her room, and the nursery maid was asleep on a pallet in the corner. Simon and Olivia tiptoed across the room and stood holding hands, looking down at the sleeping child.

  “She’ll be just as beautiful as you are.” The low warm rumble of Simon’s voice sent quivers through Olivia. He drew her down onto the narrow bed next to Charlotte’s cot and sat beside her. Olivia basked in the warmth of his arms, the comfort of his presence. When she yawned, he tucked a blanket around her.

  When Olivia opened her eyes, she already knew she was being watched. Her daughter stood beside her, still clutching the doll and staring. Olivia stretched and bumped into something large, warm, and solid. Simon’s arm tightened, keeping her from sliding out of the too-small bed. “Running away, my duchess?” he murmured against her ear.

  “Mama, did you bring me a sweet from the ball?”

  “I forgot, darling. But I brought something better.” A new papa… if I can figure out how to explain it.

  “That’s all right. The duchess will bring me a sweet.”

  “My mother?” Simon sat up and cast a quick look at the window. “She might be along at any moment, so we’d best make this quick.” He shifted to sit on the edge of the bed, planted his elbows on his knees, and leaned forward until his eyes were level with the child’s. “Charlotte, how would you like to live here at Halstead with Nurse and Mama and me, and your very own pony and a puppy and—”

  “That’s plenty of promises to go on with,” Olivia said.

  Charlotte considered. “Forever and ever? Just like the fairy tale?”

  Olivia’s heart gave a funny little bump.

  “Just like the fairy tale,” Simon said gently. “And they all lived happily ever after.”

  ***

  Lady Daphne’s wedding in the village church was exactly the spectacle everyone had anticipated—elaborate, long, and tedious. For nearly an hour the vicar expounded on the parallels between marriage and the church, and he only wrapped up the sermon and got on with the ceremony after one of the bridesmaids fainted and had to be revived with a sprinkle of water from one of Kate’s altar bouquets.

  But the second wedding of the day—held immediately after the new marchioness left the church on her husband’s arm—was brief, quiet, and moving, with only a dozen people present. Olivia and Simon had eyes only for each other; the archbishop presided with a smile; Charlotte, wearing her pink dress, clutched the hand of her new grandmama; and the few witnesses who meant the most to the bride and groom looked on. The Earl of Townsend held his Penny’s hand quite openly, while Andrew stroked Kate’s wrist using her prayer book as cover.

  The moment Simon kissed his bride, Lady Stone muttered to the gentleman beside her, “That’s another ten guineas you owe me, Colonel. But I’ll give you a chance to win it back, if you’d care to lay a wager on whether Daphne has a tantrum because Simon has stolen her wedding day.”

  After the new Duchess of Somervale was officially introduced to all the guests, the first toast was history, and Daphne had indeed thrown a tantrum, Iris Somervale lifted a sleepy Charlotte into her lap and said, “Now I’m officially in the shade—the dowager Duchess of Somervale. I suppose I may as well get used to it.”

  “I understand one does become accustomed—and after all, Iris, it’s little enough to give up.” Lady Stone lifted her wineglass in an informal toast. “You’re merely sacrificing one title in exchange for a slightly different one. Look at what you’ve gained in return—a daughter and a granddaughter, and I’ll wager quite soon there will be an heir to the dukedom.”

  “Not too soon, I hope.” The duchess sipped her wine and looked down at the child in her lap.

  Charlotte blinked. “Is that grape juice, Grandmama? I like grape juice.” The duchess looked bemused, but before she could answer, the child’s eyes drifted closed.

  Lady Stone sighed. “Yes, you have all the benefits. I, on the other hand, have had to sacrifice a perfectly good employee in the cause of love. Last time I hired a companion, she stayed with me for six entire weeks before she left my employ to get married. This one lasted barely twelve hours.”

  “Perhaps,” Colonel Sir Tristan Huffington said, “that’s because you’re looking for the wrong sort of companion, Lucinda.”

  Lady Stone eyed him coolly. “You must give me the benefit of your wisdom, Colonel. What sort of person should I be seeking to bear me company in my declining years?”

  “Me,” the colonel said simply.

  The dowager duchess’s mouth dropped open.

  Lady Stone gave a raspy laugh. “Tristan, I thought you’d never ask. Or is it just that you don’t want to have to honor all those bets you’ve lost to me?” She laid her hand on his arm. “Come and walk with me in the garden, and we’ll talk it over.”

 

 

 
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