by Mary Balogh
But it was an ignominious fear. She trusted him better than to believe he would abandon her now. She pushed the terror aside even before they stepped inside the church doors and she realized that the church was full to capacity and that no one looked worried or unduly agitated. What seemed like scores of heads turned in her direction, and at the end of the nave the clergyman gave a signal with one hand and two gentlemen stood. They both turned to see her.
One of them was Constantine. The other was the Earl of Sheringford.
Her bridegroom.
Margaret swallowed and fixed her eyes on him as Stephen bent to straighten the hem of her dress at the back and then gave her his arm.
She saw no one else. All the trappings of the wedding were quite unimportant despite Kate’s protestations about the importance of memories. It did not matter if there were a dozen people here or two hundred. She was getting married and her bridegroom was here, at the front of the church, turned toward her and watching her as she approached.
And he was the bridegroom she wanted, she realized with great clarity. She felt an upsurge of happiness and smiled at him.
He smiled back, and for the first time it struck her that he was really quite handsome after all—tall and dark and lean with intense eyes and features that were rugged rather than classically sculpted.
He did not smile often, did he? The expression imparted kindness to his face. He must be a kind man. A poor abused lady had confided in him when she had confided in no one else. It was to him she had run when she was in real trouble. He loved his young son first of anyone else in his life because the child needed him and the affection and security he had to offer.
It was a strange moment for such a revelation.
She was marrying a kind man, Margaret realized.
And it was enough. She moved toward him with hope.
A short while later Stephen placed her hand in Lord Sheringford’s, and together they turned to face the clergyman.
The church was hushed.
Half the ton was in the pews behind them, Margaret realized. More important, so were their families. But it did not really matter. She was where she chose to be, and she was with the bridegroom she wished to marry. He might be a near stranger, she might have known him for only two weeks, but it did not matter.
Somehow this felt right.
Please, please let it be right.
“Dearly beloved,” the clergyman began.
It was all so terribly public. Although they stood with their backs to the congregation through most of the nuptial service, Duncan could feel them there—avidly curious about this strange wedding of their most notorious member to one of the most respectable.
They would all wait as avidly afterward for something to go wrong.
Margaret Huxtable believed this was fate, and he had had the strange thought himself that perhaps the whole course of his life had been directed to that moment when they had collided in a ballroom doorway.
But he did not know her.
He had no idea how he would make her happy.
He was marrying her for Toby’s sake. He would not be doing this if it were not for the child, would he? He would be out somewhere far from London, searching for employment. He would not have set foot in London to beg for Woodbine to be restored to him if he had had only himself to consider.
“I pronounce that they be man and wife together, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen,” the clergyman was saying, and it was all over.
Somehow he had missed his own nuptial service. But it did not matter. He was a married man anyway. He was married to Margaret Huxtable—Margaret Pennethorne, Countess of Sheringford.
Ah, Tobe.
And a few minutes later, having signed the register, they were walking back up the nave of the church together, acknowledging the smiles—and tears—of their relatives and the more curious stares of other guests. The only persons Duncan really saw were his mother, her eyes shining with tears, and his grandfather in the second pew, frowning ferociously at him, but in just the way he had always used to frown as he searched his pockets for a shilling.
And then they were stepping out into sunshine and a cheering crowd and church bells just beginning a joyful peal.
As if a wedding had taken place. As indeed one had.
His own.
He looked down at his bride on his arm. It seemed that every time he saw her she looked more beautiful than the time before, but on this occasion she definitely did.
“Well, Maggie,” he said.
“Well, Lord Sheringford.”
“We are going to have to correct that,” he said. “You cannot be forever Lord Sheringfording me now that we are married.”
“Duncan,” she said.
“Come,” he said, and led her toward an open barouche his grandfather had sent for the occasion.
It was only as they approached it that he saw it had been decorated with gaily colored ribbons and bows—and with a couple of old boots to drag behind. And there were the perpetrators, mingling, grinning, with the crowd and clutching handfuls of flower petals, which they hurled with great glee as the bride and groom passed.
A horde of his cousins—partners in crime and other mayhem from his childhood and youth.
He was really back in the fold, then, was he?
Strangely and ignominiously, his throat ached is if he were about to weep.
His bride was laughing as he handed her into the barouche and she settled among the garish ribbons and turned her face to him as he settled beside her. Her hat and dress were dotted with petals. He reached for the pouch of coins tucked into the side of his seat and tossed them by handfuls into the crowd.
The carriage rocked on its springs and drew away from the curb—with a great clattering from the boots—as the congregation was spilling into the outdoors.
Maggie tucked a hand into his without any apparent self-consciousness.
“Duncan,” she said. “Oh, Duncan, was it not all wonderful?”
He squeezed her hand.
If it had been wonderful for her, then wonderful it was. He owed her that. He owed her a great deal.
“It was indeed,” he said as the cousins and other members of the crowd whistled and cheered and there was no abatement in the noise the boots were making—someone must have hammered nails all over them. “I suppose we had better give them all back there something to really talk about. Something juicy for tomorrow’s gossip column.”
And he leaned toward her and kissed her on the lips—a lingering kiss that she made no attempt either to avoid or to end. Her lips clung to his and pressed warmly back against them.
The whistles behind them grew more piercing.
17
THE whole of her wedding day was wonderful, Margaret found as the hours rushed by. Finding it so took her somewhat by surprise. She had looked forward to it with determined optimism, it was true, once her decision to marry the Earl of Sheringford had been made, but—wonderful?
The nuptials themselves had been perfect, surely every woman’s dream wedding. She had concentrated upon every moment of the service, every word that had been spoken, every vow they had made. She had concentrated upon the warm strength of her bridegroom’s hand as it had held hers, upon the contrasting coldness of the ring as he slid it onto her finger, upon the faint musky smell of his cologne. She had even become fully aware, after the first minute or two, of the congregation behind them, an integral part of this solemn occasion. Her family was there and his. Half the ton was there.
And when they had been leaving the church, although they had not moved along the nave at a crawl, she had seen everyone—Stephen beaming at her, Elliott smiling, Nessie dabbing at her eyes with his handkerchief, Katherine smiling through eyes bright with tears, Jasper winking, Lady Carling clasping her hands to her bosom and sinking her teeth into her lower lip, the Marquess of Claverbrook with eyes that did not quite match the ferocity of the rest of his expression … Oh, and everyone
else. She saw them all individually, it seemed, and almost everyone was smiling back at her. People were not spiteful at heart, she thought. Everyone was prepared to give her new husband a second chance.
And there had been the crowd outside the church, the colorful shower of flower petals, the elegant barouche and its garish decorations, the church bells, the clatter of the nail-studded boots on the road behind the carriage all the way back to Merton House. The public kiss. And the arrival of the guests, whom they had received at the ballroom doors, and the seemingly endless handshakes and kisses on the cheek and smiling good wishes. And the ballroom set up for two hundred guests and so bedecked with flowers that the familiar room somehow looked quite unfamiliar—but gloriously so. And the six-course meal and the toasts and the cake-cutting and the mingling with guests after it was all over. No one was in any hurry to leave.
The first to do so was the Marquess of Claverbrook, who had come without his cane and walked with proud, very upright bearing, though it was obvious to Margaret that he was tired. She took his arm as she and her new husband accompanied him to the door.
“Grandfather,” she said, “you must come and see us at Woodbine Park. Oh, please promise you will.”
She remembered the child suddenly, but she would not recall her invitation even if she could. There was no reason why everyone should not know about him. They knew about the adultery, after all, and seemed to be in the process of forgiving it. The child was in no way guilty for any of that. And if she was willing to have him in her home and be a mother to him, why should anyone else be offended?
“Hmmph,” he said by way of answer. It seemed to be his favorite word. But he did not say no. And he had more to say.
“Sheringford,” he said while a footman waited to open the door for him, “I fully expected that you would find a bride before it was too late, and I was quite prepared to give my blessing to almost anyone provided she was at least respectable, but I did not expect you to find such a sensible bride. Make sure you cherish her.”
Lord Sheringford—Duncan—inclined his head. “I intend to do so, sir,” he said.
“And remember,” the marquess said, “that you have also promised to have a son in your nursery by your thirty-first birthday.”
Margaret looked at her husband with raised eyebrows.
“I shall do all in my power to keep that promise, sir,” her husband said.
He already did have a son there, of course, but that was not what the old gentleman had meant. Margaret smiled and kissed his cheek and the footman opened the door.
“We will come to see you before we leave London tomorrow, Grandfather,” she said, “to wish you a happy birthday.”
“Hmmph,” he said. “Today’s toast was not enough?”
“It was not,” Duncan said. “We will be there, sir.”
And then they returned to the ballroom and the rest of their guests and moved from one group to another, talking until Margaret was feeling almost hoarse but marvelously happy, even when she finally drew a deep breath and approached Crispin. It was not an easy thing to do. She supposed there would always be a corner of her heart that held some residual tenderness for him. He had been her first love—and her first lover. But if she had half expected to feel some panic at the knowledge that she had now set a permanent barrier between herself and him, she was pleased to find that it did not happen.
Crispin was weak, and he was undependable, and though she no longer hated him for those qualities, she certainly did not want them in the man she married.
Duncan, she believed, was both strong and dependable. And he never made excuses. Quite the contrary.
Crispin bowed over her hand, smiled ruefully as he wished her well, and soon made the excuse that someone was beckoning him from across the room.
Gradually the guests took their leave until by the middle of the evening only her own family was left and her mother-in-law and Sir Graham. They were all in the drawing room, eating cakes and drinking tea.
And gaps began to stretch into the conversation.
“Well,” Jasper said at last, getting to his feet. “I do not know about anyone else, but I have had a busy day and am ready to return home and tumble into bed. Katherine?”
“Oh, absolutely,” she said. “I can scarcely keep my eyes open.”
“Graham, my love,” Lady Carling said, “tomorrow is the day you suggested taking me to buy that pearl-inlaid locket we were admiring last week. You will be cross if I am not ready to go before noon, but you know how impossible that will be if I am not in bed before midnight. Shall we go?”
“I am, as always, at your command, Ethel,” he said.
Elliott got to his feet without a word, but he was smiling at Margaret.
“It is time for us to go home too,” Vanessa said. “Are you coming with us, Stephen?”
“An earlyish night may be a good idea for me too,” he said. “Nessie has warned me that I may be woken in the morning by a couple of children jumping on my bed.”
“Having an uncle in the house overnight,” Elliott said, “especially here in London, is an irresistible novelty to them, Stephen. You can always jam a chair beneath the doorknob of your room, of course. I would advise it, in fact. Our two are not late risers.”
Another fifteen minutes passed before everyone had left. There were handshakes and hugs and kisses and tears and a lengthy speech from Lady Carling, which began with an assurance that she would not say much.
It seemed strange to Margaret to wave Stephen on his way from his own house and to find herself alone with the Earl of Sheringford.
A stranger.
Her husband.
Duncan.
“Let’s return to the drawing room,” he said, offering his arm.
It was a relief. Foolishly, she was not ready yet to go to bed. It seemed that they had had scarcely a moment to exchange a word with each other. And indeed there had been no private moments except in the barouche, which had turned heads all the way home on account of the ribbons and boots.
He crossed to the liquor cabinet when they were back in the drawing room, poured two glasses of wine, and carried them to the love seat.
“Come and sit down,” he said, and she realized that she had been standing just inside the door—as if she were suddenly a stranger in her own home.
He sat beside her on the love seat and handed her one of the glasses.
“Did the day continue wonderful?” he asked her.
She searched his face, but it gave nothing away. There was no smile in his eyes, which looked very black in the candlelight. Perhaps a day that had brought her surprising happiness had been nothing to him but a means of keeping his home so that his son could grow up there.
He was indeed still a stranger.
“Did it for you?” she asked, rather than answer his question and be left feeling foolish if he said nothing in return to match it. She would take her cue from him.
“All of it was … wonderful,” he said, raising his glass. “Down to the last drop.”
She noticed the pause, as if he had found it difficult to say the one word. Had he said it only to reassure her? Would he have volunteered the information if she had not asked?
But such anxieties were pointless now. They had married each other for reasons of their own, none of them to do with any tender feelings for each other. And the deed was done. They were married.
Until death did them part.
He sipped his wine, and she did likewise.
“But you did not answer my question,” he said.
“I suppose,” she said, “I have been like every other woman on her wedding day. There is something very special about being a bride, about attracting attention for all the right reasons—for a change. I shamelessly enjoyed every moment of it. I wanted the whole world to look at me and rejoice with me.”
Oh, dear. She wished she could eliminate that final sentence. But it had been spoken, and to emphasize the fact, there was a short silence following it.
She looked rather jerkily down into her glass and took another sip.
“I am not in love with you, of course,” she said firmly. “But I am glad I married you. For some time I have wanted to be a married lady, to have a home of my own, perhaps to have—”
She took a sip of wine that actually turned into a gulp.
“I believe I was twenty,” he said, “when I promised my grandfather that I would be married by the time I was thirty and would have a son in the nursery by the time I was thirty-one. I was still young enough then that it seemed safe to promise something for ten years in the future. It was an eternity away. What twenty-year-old can imagine that he will ever be thirty? Or forty? Or eighty? However it was, I have been a little late on the first promise, but there is still time to keep the second. Not that I can guarantee a son, of course. Or any child at all for that matter. But I can try.”
Margaret took another gulp from her glass.
“Wine,” he said, “makes some people sleepy. I hope that is not true of you, Maggie.”
He reached out and took the glass from her hand as she turned her head to look at him. Had he actually just made a joke?
And sleepy? She had never felt farther from sleep in her life.
“Or of you,” she said.
He half smiled as he set down both their glasses beside him, and it struck her as it had once before that a smile transformed him. Had he smiled a great deal in the past—before? Lady Carling’s description of him as a carefree, somewhat wild young man suggested that he had. Would he smile more in the future?
“I am going to see to it,” she said, “that you learn to smile again.”
His smile first froze and then faded.
“Are you?” he said. “Have I forgotten how?”
“I think you have,” she said, “except on the rare occasion when one takes you by surprise. You are very handsome when you smile.”
“And ugly when I do not,” he said. “You have your own interests at heart, then, do you, Maggie? You would prefer to look at a handsome husband than an ugly one?”
“I would prefer to look at a happy husband than a brooding one,” she said.