Alex looked to her then, and saw the blade in her hand. A smile flitted across his face. “Do you mean to skewer me, angel?”
“No,” she answered. “It is for him.”
She nodded to the driver, who still did not waver. Alex took him in, along with his gun, and just as quickly dismissed him. “Put your knife away, angel. I can’t have you stabbing men over me.”
“Indeed not, Miss Middlebrook. There is no need for anyone to be stabbed.” Lord Farleigh turned to Alex. “You say you wish to marry Miss Middlebrook?”
“I do.”
“And you have her mother’s consent?”
Catherine was beginning to respect Lord Farleigh more as each moment passed, but Alex’s face darkened. “I do. Which is more than I can say for you.”
“Mr. Waters, you are in the right. True love is a rare and precious thing. It is time I retire from the field, and leave you to your fiancée.” Arthur Farleigh bowed to her as if they stood in her mother’s drawing room and not in the dust of the roadside. “Miss Middlebrook, may I be the first to wish you happy.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
She reached into her reticule, slipped in her borrowed knife, and drew out his mother’s ring. The pearls and silver gleamed in the sunlight. Lord Farleigh stepped forward, bowed from the neck, and accepted his ring back.
“I thank you,” he said, his hand closing around the ring convulsively, as if he was secretly glad to have it back. Catherine did not know him well, but there seemed to be a newfound joy in his face, as if he had just been released from prison. She wondered if she should feel insulted, but he smiled at her and she knew that she had found a friend. She would pay him back for the mortgage money somehow. Alex and his family would help her. Then she would set herself to finding the right girl for him—one who could make him forget his lost love as she had not. Perhaps Mary Elizabeth had some ideas of a girl who might suit.
Lord Farleigh seemed to remember Alex at last, for he nodded to him as well. “I bid you both good day.”
He climbed back into his carriage as if no one had drawn a knife on him in his life. His driver, satisfied at last that all was well, put his gun down and called to the horses. Catherine was covered in road dust as the carriage pulled away, heading still toward Oxford town. No doubt Lord Farleigh would take his ease at the Maiden and the Unicorn, and soundly curse her name.
“I must write him a note of apology,” she said. “And his mother, too.”
“And what of me, Catherine? By God, I told you last night you are mine, and no other’s. That did not mean until the sun rose. That meant until the sun sets on my life.”
She stepped toward him, and pressed her hand against his heart. He did not stay still under her palm, but picked her up, much as he had Lord Farleigh. He swung her into his arms as if they were a sling, one behind her knees, another at her back, and hoisted her high onto his horse.
He did not speak again, but climbed up behind her, and turned his horse’s head not toward London, but up the North Road, following in Lord Farleigh’s carriage’s dusty wake.
Thirty-nine
Alex could not remember a time when he had been more incensed. When he caught their carriage and forced it off the road, he had thought that he was angry with the Englishman. But now he saw that he was furious with her.
Not an auspicious beginning to a wedding day.
He rode into Oxford with his angel on the front of his horse. Her borrowed bag was long gone, headed who knew where by now. All she had were the clothes she stood up in, which was all he had as well, so they were even.
The pearl she had worn at Lady Jersey’s ball still gleamed at her throat. It was all she had taken from her burning house in London, save for the nightgown she had worn when she clung to him in her yard, the gown that had been ruined by smoke. He took pleasure in the notion that all she had, all she wore from that day on, would come from him.
Perhaps they might find a dressmaker tomorrow, and have something fitted for her. As it was, he had no intention of closing his eyes again until she was his wife in the eyes of the law as well as in the eyes of God. The license burned a hole in his pocket. Like a madman, he kept checking to make certain that it was there, that he had not lost it along the road.
But he needed to have a chat with his little wife first.
He wound through the narrow streets of Oxford until he came to the wide gates of the university. No one stopped him, so he did not have to show the letter his uncle had given him. The chapel was exactly where his uncle had said it would be. Just because his mother’s brother was a bishop of the English church, that did not mean he did not know where his rivals were to be found.
Hidden deep within the beautiful stone confines of Magdalen College, Alex found the jewel he searched for. The tiny chapel shone brilliant in the sunlight of the evening, the stained-glass windows catching the rays of the slanting sun. Alex stopped the duchess’s gelding in front of the church, and the horse stood as steady as a post. It was a good steed, one he was tempted to buy from Her Grace, for it had served him well this day, on the most important errand of his life.
The object of his quest leaned silent against his heart. She did not try to bolt or flee again, though he was wary of her now. He needed to know what had possessed her to go back on her word to him, to let him have her as only a husband might, only later to leap from a three-story window to escape him.
His heart had never hurt so much in his life, and all from a blow from one girl. It was humbling. But she was his girl, whether she knew it or not. He supposed that was why she had the power to wound him so deeply, as no one else on earth could.
He climbed down and patted the horse’s flank. He loosened the girth that bound the saddle so that his mount might breathe a bit easier, for they would be there for at least an hour or more. Only then did he reach up for Catherine, who sat straight in the saddle, waiting patiently for him to tell her what came next.
He was not deceived. He had thought she had given herself over to him the night before, and he had been wrong. This day, he would be certain of her mind, and bind her to him with the blessing of a true priest before the sun set on them again.
He spotted a tiny wren of a man wearing the black robes of a Dominican friar. He did not approach, but stood waiting for them on the chapel steps, for all the world as if he had been expecting them.
“I received word from the Bishop of London this morning that you might find your way here,” the priest said.
Alex drew Catherine down from the horse’s back. He removed the bridle and left his mount free to crop the grass by the church door. He kept his arm around her waist, in case she might find her angel wings and take flight.
“And how did my uncle summon you, Father?”
The priest smiled, his eyes warm with love and faith together, as well as a dose of humor, a combination of traits that all true priests seemed to possess. “By carrier pigeon.”
Alex laughed at that, and held his girl closer still.
“You have come here to be wed, in the eyes of the Church as well as in the eyes of the law?”
“We have, Father. But I must speak with my wife first.”
The priest nodded as if this sort of chat before a wedding was a common occurrence. Perhaps a man and a girl often rode up out of nowhere to this obscure chapel everyone save a handful of Catholics had forgotten even existed.
“You may speak in the vestry,” the priest said. “I will prepare the Host and wine. Come into the chapel when you are ready. Christ and I will be waiting.”
Catherine smiled at that, and Alex had never seen such a beautiful woman in all his life. Her hair was mussed, falling from the braided bun on the top of her head in strands of gold, her borrowed pink gown crumpled beyond repair, and her mossy-green eyes showed the promise of all the springs in his life to come.
He leaned down
and kissed her as soon as the priest turned his back. She did not resist him, but leaned close, as if he were a wall and she, a bird taking shelter in a storm. His lips were firm on hers, and hers were soft, yielding, so that he forgot to be angry and simply drank in the sweet taste of her. In spite of her time in the Englishman’s carriage, she still smelled like jasmine.
“I am sorry, Alex. I hope you can forgive me. I was wrong to leave you, and more wrong still to leave you as I did. I have made a complete muddle of this day. If I had it to do over, I would change it all.”
“I would change nothing,” he answered. “For now you are here, and with me.”
“I will be with you every day for the rest of my life,” she said.
“I love you, Catherine Middlebrook. I will love you every day for the rest of my life. I will give up the sea, and all the work I once thought I might do on it, so that I can be with you.”
She trembled in his arms, as if shivering in a cold wind. Alex drew her close, and kissed her.
“I love you too, Alex.”
He thought to stand there in silence, holding the woman he would soon make his wife. But there was one more question he had to ask. “Early this morning—why did you leave me in bed alone?”
Catherine sighed heavily, and he kept his eyes on hers so that she would not falter and try to hide anything from him again. “We owe Lord Farleigh money.”
“What?”
“My mother took out a mortgage against my family’s property in Devon. The note came due, and we could not pay. Lord Farleigh paid it for us.”
“And he expected you to marry him to answer the debt.”
His estimation of the Englishman had risen slightly that day, but now it plummeted again. He felt his rage rising, and he gritted his teeth against its onslaught.
“No,” Catherine said. “He did not. It was my decision. I thought I knew what my father would have me do, if he were here. But then I realized that my father would wish me to be happy.”
That last statement was a hodgepodge of explosives, so Alex did not touch it. He kissed her forehead at the mention of her father, then asked, “How much does your family owe, Catherine?”
She blinked at him, as if he had asked her to calculate in her head the worth of the moon. “I don’t know.”
Alex breathed deep once, and then released it again. He tightened his grip on his girl, and she wriggled closer to him still. She laid her head on his chest, as if she were listening for the beat of his heart. That she had been willing to sell her life and her future for an undisclosed sum did not concern him. That she had not even bothered to ask the amount did. She might have ruined her life and his for a paltry fifty pounds.
“Who may I ask, Catherine, to discover this sum?”
“My father’s lawyer, Mr. Philips. He is in the City.”
Alex filed that information away, and then let it go. He had more pressing matters before him. However much it was, Ian would help him pay it, over time if necessary. The Englishman would see reason. He seemed, indeed, like an eminently reasonable man.
“Catherine, hear me, for I will only say this once.”
She looked up at him, her green eyes rimmed with flecks of gold. He did not allow himself to be distracted, but talked on.
“I will find out what this debt is, and I will pay it. Will that suffice to make your time with Lord Loverboy lie behind us?”
“Lord Loverboy?” Her lips quirked in a smile. He wanted very much to lean down and bite her pillow of a bottom lip, but he did not.
“Catherine.”
She must have heard the warning in his voice that he was in deadly earnest. She sobered, and turned to press her body full against him. The feel of her breasts and the cradle of her thighs against his almost shook him free of his reason, but he held on by a fingernail and listened to her speak.
“Lord Farleigh is behind us, and forever, whether the debt is paid or not.”
He kissed her then, plundering her mouth as a pirate might a horde of gold. She opened to him and met him in the dance, her own passion as heated and ungoverned as his. It was he who remembered himself, where they were, and why. He drew back from her only to find his new horse staring at them both, as at a play.
“What is his name?” Catherine asked.
“Jerrod.”
“It does not suit him. I wonder if he might answer to Zeus?”
The horse heard his new name, and seemed to nod in acceptance before he leaned down and cropped the grass at his feet.
“Zeus it is then,” Alex said.
He drew back from her and pulled a ring out of his pocket. It was a peridot in a bed of gold, and it shone in the sunlight like the moss green of her eyes. “It is not the biggest ring they had, nor the finest, but it suits you well.”
“It is beautiful,” his angel breathed, reaching out to take it from him.
He closed his hand over it, hiding it once more in his fist. “No indeed, Miss Middlebrook. I have seen what you do with gentlemen’s betrothal gifts. We will take it to the priest inside and make it your wedding ring.”
“But we must post the banns,” she said. “How can we marry today?”
“As I told you last night, when perhaps you were not attending…” She blushed and he kissed her before he went on. “I have a special license, which will please His Majesty’s government. I have procured a priest, which pleases God. Now all I need is your consent. Catherine, will you step inside and marry me?”
Her green eyes shone with tears that she did not shed. She faced him alone, with none of her kin beside her. In her eyes burned the message that she would love him for the rest of her life, and beyond, if the priests were right.
“Yes.”
Forty
Catherine had often thought of her wedding day as a child. She had dressed her hair in summer flowers and had mocked walking down an aisle, imagining her father at her side. In the last few years, she had thought of what kind of dress she would make for the day, what color it would be, what kind of cloth, wondering always if it would be silk or damask or muslin. She had thought to have Margaret attend her, and her mother looking on from the front pew of the village chapel.
On her true wedding day, she wore a borrowed gown of light wool that was rumpled from being stowed in a satchel, donned in the half dark of early morning, and creased beyond repair from having been slept in while she had ridden in a jouncing coach. Her mother and sister were both a half day’s travel away, and instead of tucked away in the village church of her childhood, with the people she had known all of her life looking on, she stood at an altar in Oxford with a priest she had met just that hour standing before her.
But none of that mattered. For this day, Alex Waters stood beside her.
Every thought she had ever had, every fantasy she had ever cherished of her wedding, faded as the phantoms of dreams at morning. All that mattered was that the only man she had ever loved, the only man she would ever love, stood beside her. His hand cradled hers as if he would cherish it, and all the rest of her, for the rest of his time on earth.
The fading light of day slanted through the chapel’s stained-glass windows. An older lady had come to replace the altar flowers, and she watched as Alex and Catherine faced each other before the priest.
Catherine was glad the stranger was there, so that there was a second witness to her happiness. She felt for an otherworldly moment as if she had entered a dream, but then Alex smiled at her, and she knew that smile was real.
The words of the priest were short, his blessing sweet. He wrapped their hands in a stole, and admonished them to remember their vows, and that they would last into the hereafter. Alex put the ring he had shown her on her finger, and it fit. It did not slip or slide across her knuckle; it did not feel like a shackle on her hand. If anything, her hand felt lighter with the symbol of his love upon it.
&
nbsp; The green of the stone shone like grass and growing things. It seemed to her that their love would not stay as it was in that moment, but would keep growing, like the great oak with its unfurled leaves that stood on the village green back home.
When their vows were made, and the stole removed from their hands, the old lady and the priest left them alone at the altar. Catherine knew that they must leave. They must go back into the world and return to London, where her mother and sister, where his brother and sister were waiting. But as she stood looking into the dark eyes of the man she loved, she could not think of anyone or of anything else.
“We should go home,” she said, knowing her duty, and all the music that had to be faced.
“To the Highlands?” Alex asked, a teasing smile playing at the corners of his mouth, lighting his eyes with the fire of mischief.
“Later this summer,” she answered. “I meant, home to my mother.”
“Your mother knows where you are,” Alex answered her. “She knows you are in my care. She probably even knows that we have married.”
“Is she clairvoyant, then?”
Catherine wished her words back, for she did not want to start the first five minutes of her marriage with annoyance. But Alex did not take offense. He slipped his arm around her waist, for all the world as if he truly thought she might escape him again.
“She sent me to fetch you back,” Alex said. “But I think she will understand if we do not go today.”
“Where will we go?” Catherine asked, worried.
Alex kissed her deeply, and her mood suddenly improved. “Come with me a little ways, and I will show you.”
* * *
They went first to an office tucked away among the curved streets of Oxford, where they were married under the law by a curate of the Church of England. This ceremony was short, and had only two witnesses. Catherine understood the necessity of it, and she took pleasure in making her vows twice, though she was married already.
After that strange interlude, Catherine rode on the front of his saddle as they wended their way along the outskirts of town, along the river. She thought for a moment that Alex was lost, but then Zeus stopped in front of a small whitewashed cottage with a trellis of roses climbing up the side. The roses were pink and white, and some of their blooms were just beginning to open.
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