She expected Peter to be waiting there at the bottom of the wide stairs, waiting to tell her he couldn’t marry her. But it was Archer Braddock who smiled up at her. Archer, who waited to escort her into the library. Thea took a deep breath, trying to think what to do. Ainsley had reached the bottom step and was even now making the turn toward the library. Music from a string quartet floated about like butterflies, drawing Thea down one step and then another.
This wasn’t the way she’d thought it would be.
She’d thought Peter would stop it.
Or her grandmother.
But she reached the landing and crossed it, took another step down toward the bottom.
Maybe Peter was waiting until she reached him. Maybe he would make an announcement then that this was all a mistake, a figment of Thea’s imagination. But the stairs beneath her slippers were solid, as was Archer’s hand reaching out to help her down the last few steps. And when she turned with him, she could see the people inside the library, standing, watching as she slowly approached the doorway, and they were real, too.
Peter was there, ahead. Standing straight and tall in front of the minister, watching her, his lips curving in a nervous smile, so handsome she couldn’t breathe. She’d always thought he had impeccable taste, but in his tuxedo, he looked splendid. Which was another reason this couldn’t be real. Peter Braddock should have a wife who was beautiful. Thea wasn’t, so this could not be real. He could not be marrying her. Not her.
But then the music stopped and Archer patted her hand. The next thing she knew, Peter had taken her hand in his and she was making the last decisive step, facing the minister, who opened his book and cleared his throat.
“Dearly beloved…”
The bouquet of fresh flowers shook in her fist and a petal broke free and fell, end over end, to the floor. She stared at it, a sliver of palest pink, lying there, out of place on the richly colored pile of the oriental rug. It didn’t belong in this warm inviting room any more than she did.
And if Peter wasn’t going to stop this, if he meant—unbelievably—to marry her, then it was up to her to save him from whatever madness had claimed him.
But how to do it without making a scene? A lady never caused a scene. Ever. So could she manage a laugh and say, “All right, no one here really believed we were going through with this, did they?” Did she run from the room like a coward? Break out in wild sobbing? Faint dead away?
That last, at least, seemed like a viable option. Her breath was coming still in short, shallow gasps and if she stood here much longer, she really might faint.
“Theadosia Elsinora Grace Berenson,” the minister intoned solemnly. “Will you take this man to be your lawfully married husband?”
Time was up. Thea looked up at Peter, gathered courage she didn’t know she had, and said what had to be said. “No. I’m sorry, Peter. But I can’t do this.”
And then she fainted.
Chapter Seven
“Thea? Wake up, Thea.” Peter’s voice pulled her out of a warm oblivion with soft insistence. “Come on, Thea, wake up.”
She blinked and opened her eyes to see him leaning over her, cupping her head in the palm of one hand, looking at her with a glint of near panic in his startlingly green eyes. “What happened?” she whispered.
“You said you couldn’t marry me and then you fainted.”
“Oh.” She closed her eyes for a moment, remembering, then blinked them open again. “Where are we?”
“In my bedroom.”
She was on the bed, she realized, with him sitting beside her—leaning, really—his hips wedged against hers, his arm supporting her shoulders, his hand under her head, tenderness in every nuance of his touch. “Did…did everyone leave?”
“Leave? No, they’re waiting downstairs. As soon as you feel up to it, we’ll go back down and continue with the wedding.”
The wedding. She bit her lip and reached up to push her glasses farther up her nose. But the glasses weren’t there. The only protection she had from the gentle concern in his eyes, and she’d lost them. “My…my glasses?”
“On the bedside table,” he said. “I took them off for you.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know whether to thank him or ask him to give them back.
“Are you all right? I can call a doctor if you don’t feel well.”
“No.” She shook her head…and felt the sensual response of his fingers moving against her hair. “I’m fine,” she said hoping he’d take his hand from beneath her head and, at the same time, hoping he would keep it there always. “Just…just nervous.”
His smile fell over her like sunlight, warming her through. “Me, too. But I think that’s pretty normal under the circumstances.”
He was surely the most handsome of bridegrooms ever, but she couldn’t let him do this. Not for her. “One of those circumstances being that you can’t want to marry me.”
“Thea,” he murmured, stopping her heartbeat with his tenderness. He lowered her head to the pillow and pulled his hand free, placed it flat on the bed beside her. “Look, I realize this is probably not the way you pictured your wedding day, but I do want to marry you. Your grandmother is suffocating you and you have to get out from under her thumb before your spirit gives up and dies and you’re trapped for the rest of your life. I can help you. I want to do this. Honestly, I do. It feels right to me and believe me, I’ve spent my entire life looking for something, anything, that feels this right. Please trust me when I tell you there’s nothing I want more than to marry you. Now. Today.”
Hardly the tender words of love and sweet pledges of forever a bride wanted to hear on her wedding day, but for someone like Thea, who’d never expected any man would want to marry her, much less someone as perfect as Peter Braddock, they were the most romantic words she’d ever heard. She loved the nobility of his gesture, the sincerity in his voice, the earnestness of his expression, the intensity of his belief—mistaken as it undoubtedly was—but most of all she loved him for thinking she was worth such a sacrifice.
“Peter,” she said. “Please don’t think I’m unappreciative, but I can’t let you do this.”
“Yes, you can, Thea. Take a deep breath and repeat what you said the first time I asked you to marry me. Yes. You said…yes.”
The difference then, of course, was that he’d said, do you want to marry me? And it would have been a lie to say no. The rest had happened so quickly after that—her grandmother banishing her from Grace Place, leaving with Peter, letting him take her to Mrs. Fairchild’s house, permitting Ainsley to persuade her to shop for a wedding dress, allowing time and then more time to go by without saying the “no” that needed to be said. “You can’t want this, Peter. It…it wouldn’t be a…a real marriage.”
“It will be whatever you want it to be, Thea. That’s the thing, see…it’s your chance to be whatever you want with no one to remind you of what they want. Or how you should act, or how you should feel, or what you should do, or not do, or think, or not think. You don’t have to commit your life to me. You don’t have to do one damn thing to please me or anyone else. You don’t have to be scared anymore. You can choose the life you want to have. Please, I want to give you this, Thea. It’s important to me to do that. I know this may be hard for you to understand right now, but this is my chance, too. I once was powerless to help someone I loved, but it’s within my power to help you. And I want to do that, Thea. Let me help you help yourself.”
No one had ever asked what she wanted. Or if she wanted a life different from the one she had. And it was tempting—so tempting—to accept his offer and not think about the fact that tomorrow or the next day or the day after that, he would wonder why he’d taken on her problems, why he’d saddled himself with her as his wife.
His wife.
Even the words held music…like the soaring notes of an aria that were at once both painful and satisfying. It would be so easy to say yes, to let him save her and reject the responsibility of saving herse
lf. “Peter, I can’t…” she began only to stop when something landed on the bed with a muffled, thump.
“I was afraid of that,” Peter said, smiling. “I was saving this for a surprise after the wedding, but looks like Ally has other ideas. As usual.” He scooped the calico up in his hand and set her down on Thea’s chest, where the kitten immediately moved up to press her moist pink nose against Thea’s chin. She licked Thea with a rough tongue and then purred like a buzz saw.
“Ally,” Thea said, stroking the soft, spotted fur, her gaze seeking Peter’s with teary pleasure. “You rescued Ally for me.”
He looked a trifle embarrassed. “I rescued the whole family of cats, but before you start thanking me profusely for risking life and limb to do it, I’ll admit I had inside help.”
“Monroe,” she said, comforted by the thought. “He and Sadie smuggled them out to you.”
“Something like that.” He stroked Ally, too, and she turned, equal-opportunity cat that she was, to curl herself around his hand and purr even louder. “The others are still a little cautious in their new surroundings, so I imagine they’re going to remain under the bed for a while.”
“Thank you, Peter.” She blinked back tears, not wanting him to see how much this meant to her.
“My pleasure,” he said…and she could see that it was true. It pleased him to have done this for her and she knew in that moment, she would love him forever.
“Peter,” she started only to be interrupted again by a ruckus on the other side of the door.
“Do not patronize me, sir. I will see my granddaughter whether you announce me or not!”
The door opened and Abbott, looking flushed and furious, said crisply. “I’m sorry, Mr. Peter, but Mrs. Carey wishes to see—”
“Thea!” Davinia pushed past the butler and stepped into the room. “What has happened to you?”
Guilt flooded Thea with immediate and familiar intensity as she struggled to sit up. Peter rose from the bed as the door opened and he reached down now to help her gain her feet. “Mrs. Carey,” he said. “I’m glad you could make it to the wedding. Thea had a little fainting spell, but she seems to be fine, now.”
“Are you married?” Davinia asked sharply, her clear gaze steady on Thea. “Or did you come to your senses before it was too late?”
“No.” Thea pushed the word past the knot in her throat.
“Well, which is it?” Davinia snapped. “Did you marry him or not?”
“Not yet.” Peter braced Thea with an arm about her waist and a steady grip on her clasped and trembling hands. “We were about to go downstairs when you…knocked.”
Davinia said nothing, but her gaze narrowed as Ally stretched herself and jumped off the bed to twine luxuriously around Peter’s pant leg. “What is that cat doing here? I told Monroe to dispose of it and the others.”
“Yes, well, Monroe and I had a better idea.” Peter squeezed Thea’s hand, either as comfort or warning, she couldn’t tell which. Her grandmother had been going to get rid of her cats. Thea could hardly believe Davinia would be so cruel.
“Thea and I are pleased you accepted the invitation to be at our wedding,” Peter continued. “If you’ll kindly go with Abbott, he will show you the way to the library, where in just a few minutes, Thea and I will say our vows. We’ve saved you a seat beside Grandfather…and I’m sure you know how distressing it is for him when any guest at Braddock Hall is late.”
Davinia ignored him. “Thea, if you come home to Grace Place with me now, you may bring those…animals with you. Come along, now. Monroe is waiting for us in the car.”
Thea stared at her grandmother, knowing the choices before her were both wrong. How could she go back? How could she stay?
“What do you want, Thea?” Peter asked softly.
She turned her head to look at him and in doing so, caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. But that couldn’t be her. She closed her eyes and opened them again, but the image didn’t change. It stayed the same, reflecting a woman in a dress of pearly pink silk that draped her body as if she’d been born to wear it. A dress that gave shape to the slight curves she’d always thought of as boyish and revealed the slope of a neck not nearly as long as she’d always imagined it to be and more graceful in appearance than she would have thought possible. And her hair wasn’t falling down, wasn’t even very disheveled from her recent lie-down on the bed. Her eyes looked big and brown, framed as they were by mascaraed lashes instead of the old black glasses. Thea inhaled…and was fascinated by the way her breasts lifted beneath the folds of silk that dipped from her shoulders to show just a hint of cleavage. Cleavage. She had cleavage.
“Thea,” Davinia said. “I’m waiting for you. Come along, now, and put all this nonsense aside.”
“No,” Thea said, knowing in an instant what she wanted…and what she wanted was to be the woman she saw in the mirror. Not beautiful, or even pretty, but almost…confident. A woman with possibilities. “I’m not going with you, Grandmother. I’m going to…” She stopped, turning to Peter, wanting him to understand. But his eyes suddenly lit with relief and…gratitude. She knew then she was going to marry him, after all.
Not because she needed him to save her, but because he needed to save her in order to save himself.
“I’m going to marry Peter,” she said, and was surprised at the ring of confidence in her voice. “I hope you’ll stay for the wedding, Grandmother, but whether you do or not will make no difference. Isn’t that…that right, Peter?”
“Yes,” he said, smiling down at her with a touch of surprise and—was it possible—admiration in his eyes. “That’s right.” He squeezed her hand. “Abbott,” he said without taking his gaze from her face. “Would you let Grandfather know Thea and I will be down in a minute?”
“Yes, sir,” Abbott said, professional and properly polite as he addressed Davinia. “Mrs. Carey, will you come with me, please?”
Davinia narrowed her gaze on Peter. “You’re not good enough for her,” she said accusingly. “She deserves more than this…this insult of a marriage.”
“She deserves to choose and you just heard her say she chooses me.”
With a low humph! Davinia turned and walked out, her back ramrod straight, defiant even in defeat and self-destructively proud.
Thea’s knees quivered from the strain of the last few minutes, but she commanded them to bear up without complaint…and surprisingly, the quivering stopped. She raised her chin, afraid Peter would question her decision or compliment her courage or ask her something she could not answer.
“Your glasses,” was all he said, though, indicating she should get them from the bedside table.
“I don’t need them, anymore,” she said.
Which was, in fact, the truth.
“YOU MAY KISS your bride,” the minister concluded.
During the past surreal week, Peter had thought more about this moment than almost any other. What he would do. If he should kiss her. How he should kiss her. A chaste touch to the lips? A more fraternal peck on the cheek? Would one or the other embarrass her? Or give her the wrong idea? He’d pretty much decided a friendly, noncommital hug would be best. But now the moment was here and he knew it had to be a kiss. A real one. In front of all these witnesses, she deserved at least that consideration.
So he put his hands on her shoulders, drew her toward him, and bent to kiss the lips that parted in startled surprise and then…amazingly, softened to sweet acceptance beneath his. Peter had kissed a lot of women, more really than his fair share. But not one of them, ever, had kissed him back with such complete trust, such simple faith. No other woman had curved her body, all willowy and slender and supple, against his, with her only desire being to rely upon his strength and integrity. Thea’s kiss awakened a whole world of protective feelings in him and elicited from his body a response he hadn’t expected. He wanted the kiss to go on, wanted to explore this new and satisfying sensation, but people were watching and Thea had to be as aware as h
e was of her grandmother’s disapproving glare. Drawing back, he kept his hands supportively on her shoulders and offered her a slightly bemused smile, which she returned with a tremulous and uncertain sigh.
“Hello, Mrs. Braddock,” he said, and immediately regretted it when the color washed out of her cheeks and her tentative smile faded like yesterday’s sunshine. “It’s okay, Thea,” he whispered. “Everything will be okay.” Then he kissed her again…a chaste, reassuring brush of his lips against hers, which only brought another fleeting wish that there was time for more.
But Calvin, having sat as still as possible for as long as possible, yelled out, “Quit kissin’, Uncle Peter, and let’s eat cake!”
Which made everyone laugh…except Davinia.
And her granddaughter.
“AH, ILSA, YOU HAVE made me a very happy man.” Archer smiled as she settled into the wingback chair next to him and nearest the fire.
“And don’t think I’m not well aware of the reason, either.” Ilsa leaned across the padded chair arm to whisper conspiratorially. “You saw Davinia Carey eyeing this seat, the same as I did, and you are exceedingly glad that I got here first.”
He acknowledged her point with a wry lift of his brows. “I do thank you for that, as well. I’ve had all of Davinia’s dour company I can stomach for one week, although just between us, I think she’s behaved better this afternoon than anyone expected.”
“How can you say so, Archer? She’s hardly said a word that could be considered cordial and she’s kept poor Thea on pins and needles just by being here. I don’t know why she came in the first place and I certainly don’t understand why she’s stayed so long.”
Archer considered Davinia as she sat stiffly and alone across the room, and he found it in his heart to feel sorry for her. “I imagine she hates to go home to an empty house.”
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