by Mary Balogh
Word must have got about that he was in one of his prickly moods. Which was strange, really. No one had yet given him a chance to be prickly.
He had no doubt whatsoever, even though he had said not a word to anyone except Quincy, who could usually be relied upon to keep his lips firmly buttoned, that every single servant in his household, down to the lowliest boot boy, knew that this was his wedding day.
He had been a betrothed man—a secretly betrothed man—for almost a week, and he had set eyes upon his intended precisely once in all that time. They had met to chat for all of two minutes—perhaps all of two minutes—in the middle of the drawing room at Mrs. Trevor’s soiree.
“St. George’s, Hanover Square, at eleven o’clock on the morning of your come-out ball,” he had murmured. “Bring your maid.”
“But I will be so busy on that day,” she had protested.
“Yes, indeed, Jane,” he had said. “Getting married, among other things.”
She had sighed.
“Well,” she had said, “Aunt Harriet is to know absolutely nothing about it until the next day. Her evening and everything she is doing to make a success of the ball would be ruined.”
“I am not to spend my wedding night in bed with my bride, then, Jane?” he had asked, his eyes narrowing.
She had drawn breath to answer, but their two minutes or however the devil long it had been were up. Someone else had chosen to join them and had proceeded to chatter on about a kitten that had been stuck up a tree and the two men who had gone up to rescue it and the third man who had gone up to rescue the second, who was afraid of heights, and …
Jocelyn had stopped listening before the tree snapped off at the roots under the weight of a dozen rescuers and rescued—at least, that was where he had assumed the story was headed. He had wandered away. If he discovered that curiosity was robbing him of sleep, he could always find out from Jane some other time if the kitten had survived the ordeal.
And so here he was on his wedding day, feeling irritable and nervous and guilty and terrified and frustrated—it would be just like Jane to refuse to slip out of Lady Webb’s house after the ball was over to spend what remained of their wedding night with him.
Whoever had heard of a bride and groom spending their wedding night apart?
He would be a laughingstock for the rest of his life.
Who the devil cared?
He ought not to have insisted upon this compromise. This was the worst possible day for them to get married. Jane would be wanting to concentrate upon her infernal come-out, and he had insisted upon distracting her. He had done it quite deliberately because, as always, he had had to have the last word, and having the last word was devilishly difficult when one was dealing with Jane Ingleby.
He ought not to have done it. He was supposed to love her.
Angeline would have a thousand fits of the vapors when she knew they had sneaked off to marry without any pomp and circumstance whatsoever. She would doubtless have wanted to organize a wedding and a wedding breakfast to outdo all others that had gone before them, including her own.
To the devil with Angeline.
He ought to have insisted upon marrying Jane yesterday or the day before or the day before that. Even now the ceiling might fall on his head or someone might come crashing into his curricle before he reached Hanover Square. Even now he might die before he could make an honest woman of her and secure a legitimate future for his son—or daughter.
“You have the ring?” Jocelyn asked.
“I do, Your Grace.” Quincy patted his heart and Jocelyn assumed the ring was in an inner pocket there.
“There is no future in standing there, then,” Jocelyn said, frowning again, “looking as though you have hopes of sending down roots.”
His secretary refused to be goaded, as he always did, damn him. Jocelyn turned and strode from the room and across the hall to the front door, which his butler was holding open for him. And devil take it, Jocelyn thought, he had forgotten to order his curricle brought around. It was there anyway before the steps, though, gleaming with cleanliness and polish. His head groom stood at the horses’ heads—and they too gleamed with fresh grooming.
Good Lord, he was fortunate his grooms had not woven white ribbons in the horses’ manes. Jocelyn felt a thoroughly uncomfortable and wholly unfamiliar rush of embarrassment. He would not have been surprised to look about to discover every window on Grosvenor Square lined with persons ready to wave him on his way to his wedding. He did not look to see. He climbed up to the seat of the curricle instead and took the ribbons from his groom’s hand. Michael Quincy scrambled up beside him.
Perhaps Jane would have liked a proper wedding, he thought as they left the square behind them. They had to get married in haste, of course, but had all this secrecy and almost total privacy been necessary? Perhaps she would have liked to have some guests at the church and at a breakfast afterward. Perhaps she would have liked some fancy bride clothes.
Perhaps he had deprived her of what every bride dreamed of.
He had not asked her, had he?
Damnation!
He was not accustomed to introspection, to questioning his own decisions, to having to consider someone else’s wishes and feelings in every choice he made.
“It is a pity,” he said aloud, “someone could not invent a way of marrying without having to have a wedding.”
His secretary did not attempt an answer.
“Have you ever thought about marrying, Michael?” Jocelyn asked.
“I have, Your Grace,” his secretary said, “and will be doing it in one year’s time.”
Quincy was betrothed and Jocelyn had not even known it.
“I suppose,” he said, “you are going to be expecting to take a week off when you do.”
“Two weeks would be better, Your Grace,” Quincy said.
“Hmm,” Jocelyn said. “Do I pay you to get married and take honeymoons, Michael? We had better make it three weeks, and that is my final word on the topic.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” his secretary said.
And here was St. George’s, Hanover Square, large and imposing and quite deserted. It should be bright and festive and buzzing with activity in preparation for Jane’s wedding.
Jocelyn sighed.
He wondered if their wedding was going to be yet another of the great regrets of his life.
And then he saw two female figures approaching on foot—Jane and a maid walking a couple of paces behind her.
She was wearing a pale blue walking dress with a slightly darker blue spencer and a straw bonnet trimmed with cornflowers over her sleek golden hair. She looked pretty and wholesome.
His heart performed a somersault, which was not an entirely comfortable feeling, since his heart was not accustomed to involving itself in emotional gyrations.
Jane!
His bride.
And then it struck him, as though for the first time, that this was his wedding day.
He tossed the ribbons to Michael Quincy without even looking at him and jumped down to the roadway.
Jane had thought she was done with lying. But she had told another lie this morning. She had told Aunt Harriet that she needed some new silk stockings since the ones she had intended to wear to the ball tonight looked as if they were about to spring a hole apiece at any moment.
And so she had been able to slip out of the house with only Mavis, her new maid, for company.
This was ridiculous, she thought as they walked in the direction of Hanover Square. This was her wedding day, and yet she was cramming the wedding in between a thousand and one other little jobs that needed to be done before her come-out ball started this evening.
She should never have agreed to this ridiculous suggestion of Jocelyn’s. No, it had not been a suggestion. It had been an ultimatum, and it was not in her nature to take ultimatums from anyone, least of all the Duke of Tresham.
But, oh, she could not stop a ball of excitement from rolling about
her insides. They were going to marry, and her child would be safe. And the child was going to have two parents, both of whom would love him or her more than life. She did not doubt that Jocelyn meant exactly what he had said when he declared he would never stop any son of his from pursuing an interest in the arts if he chose—even if he would not commit himself similarly for his daughters. He would not be his father and his grandfather all over again. He would love his children for who they were, and he would nurture all that was unique in them.
She would have married him anywhere any time just for that—just for the sake of their children. For children have a right to protection and security and love from the man and woman who created them. But of course she was marrying Jocelyn for himself too, because she loved him more than she had known it was possible to love—despite the example of her parents. And he loved her. She no longer doubted it for a single moment.
Now I can think only of the impossibility of living my life without you in the center of it every moment of every day, he had said to her.
She did not really care that today was the most inconvenient of all days for such a momentous occasion. And she did not care that there would be no guests beyond the two essential witnesses—Mavis and Mr. Quincy. Whom would she invite to a larger wedding, anyway, apart from Aunt Harriet? She did not care that she had had no chance to buy a more festive wedding outfit—and that she would not have been able to don it at home anyway without finding herself with awkward questions to answer.
None of it mattered.
For today she was marrying Jocelyn and her child would be under his lifelong protection.
The church of St. George’s was deserted apart from one curricle standing outside its doors—Jocelyn’s, the one Lord Ferdinand had raced to Brighton not so long ago.
He had seen her, and he was jumping down from the high seat and turning to meet her, all black and long-legged and sinister-looking, his dark eyes blazing into hers. His hand reached out to take hers.
“I suppose,” he said, “it is eternal bad luck to meet my bride outside the church, is it, Jane? I shall be subjected to the scoldings of a shrew for the rest of my life?”
“You had better hope, if that is the case,” she said as she set her hand in his, “that there is no hereafter. But much as I enjoy scolding you when you deserve it, which is often, I do believe that old superstition is so much nonsense. We will make our own luck, Jocelyn, beginning now.”
And she smiled at him.
He frowned back for a moment and then smiled.
She forgot that it was a cloudy day. The sun was shining on their lives.
The church was contrastingly cold and dark. Quiet. Peaceful. Holy. Candles burned on the altar, and the clergyman was making his way along the nave to greet them.
Five minutes later they were at the front of the church, Jane’s hand clasped in Jocelyn’s, Mavis and Mr. Quincy standing behind them, the clergyman in all the splendor of his ecclesiastical robes in front of them.
“Dearly beloved,” he began in the sonorous tones of one addressing a congregation of hundreds.
It did not matter that there were only two apart from the bride and groom.
Nothing mattered except the words of the marriage service, the exchange of vows in her voice—surprisingly steady—and in Jocelyn’s—amazingly unsteady. And the cold smoothness of the ring sliding onto her finger and Jocelyn’s eyes burning deep into hers as they were informed that they were man and wife and no man must put them asunder until death did them part.
Someone sniveled—Jane thought it must be Mavis.
Someone cleared his throat—Mr. Quincy.
And Jocelyn smiled again.
Jane bit her upper lip and blinked her eyes furiously.
Ten minutes after they had entered the church they were back in the porch, the register signed and witnessed. At one lift of a ducal eyebrow Mavis and Mr. Quincy disappeared into the outdoors. After one dismissive handshake the clergyman strode back down the nave and disappeared from view.
They were alone together.
“Devil take it, Jane,” Jocelyn said, “how can I let you go back alone to Lady Webb’s? How am I to pretend this evening that I am a mere guest among guests? I’ll come with you now, shall I, and bedamned to—”
“No!” She held up one hand and was aware of the glitter of her new ring. “No, Jocelyn. Tomorrow we will tell those who need to know.”
“You have just promised to obey me,” he grumbled.
“And you made a promise last week,” she said.
“I never keep my promises,” he said.
“Yes, you do.”
He looked mulish.
She smiled at him.
“Jocelyn,” she said, “this has been the happiest day of my life. And oh, how inadequate words are. I am so happy I am positively overflowing with it. Are you happy too? I know you are, but tell me.”
He expelled a long breath.
“You would try the patience of a saint, Jane,” he said. “But you are quite right. I am feeling decidedly happy. I did not do wrong, then, in not giving you time to arrange some sort of grand society wedding? You will not forever regret it and blame me?”
“I cannot imagine a more wonderful wedding,” she said. “Everything I most want in life was here. You were here.”
“You may regret those words,” he said. “I will hold them over your head every time we quarrel for the next fifty years.”
“And I will remind you each time that despite your bad temper you really are decidedly happy with me,” she said.
He grabbed her suddenly and crushed her to him. She wrapped her arms about his neck and crushed him right back.
“My duchess,” he said against her ear, his voice unsteady again. “Ah, Jane, my wife. And my child.”
“Yes.”
And then she had to leave. There was so much to do before this evening, and the first thing was to go and buy a new pair of silk stockings.
She looked down at her ring and drew it reluctantly off her finger to hand to him. He took it, closed his hand about it, and then dropped it into a pocket.
“Only until tomorrow, Jane,” he said, “and then back on your finger it goes, to remain there.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” she said, smiling at him.
“A nice, demure answer,” he said. “I shall dream about you tonight, Jane, as I lie in my lonely bed. If I sleep at all, that is.”
She laughed and stepped alone out of the church.
Tomorrow could not come fast enough.
THEY APPROACHED ACTON PARK on a brilliantly sunny, warm day in early summer. They sat in the carriage hand in hand, a companionable silence having fallen between them. Jocelyn imagined approaching the house along the straight, formal poplar drive, imagined taking Jane into the great hall, where the servants would doubtless be drawn up in formal lines for their inspection, imagined being swallowed up by all the necessary pomp of their homecoming.
It was something he did not shy away from. He was glad to be coming home at long last, glad that he had finally admitted to himself that it was home, that a part of himself was missing as long as he stayed away. And he longed to see Jane as mistress of it all.
But a part of him yearned to recapture the old boyhood feelings before he entered the house. The park, the trees, the hills …
He squeezed Jane’s hand and looked down into her face. She smiled back at him in the new soft, tender way, which he suspected had something to do with impending motherhood.
“Are you up to a longish walk?” he asked.
She laughed. “Did I grow up in the country?” she asked. “Did I have a father who believed it was too much bother to call out the carriage for any distance less than five miles?”
He leaned forward and rapped on the front panel. This was just the right place.
Two minutes later he and Jane, still hand in hand, watched the carriage with its ducal crest and its liveried footmen and outriders disappear along the road in the dire
ction of the village and the driveway and the house.
Jocelyn laughed. “Everyone will bow it through the village, and it will cause palpitations as it comes into sight from the house,” he said. “Meanwhile, Jane …”
He struck off the road onto a narrow lane, which skirted the wall of the park on their left, until they came to the stile he remembered. He helped Jane over it. Yes, the path was still here, though it looked as if it was not much used these days. It would take them up over the wooded hills and down again to meet the lower corner of the great lawn in front of the house if they did not turn off it.
“How beautiful!” she said after they had walked for a few minutes, surrounded by ancient trees and the coolness of their shade, by rustling leaves and birdsong and the faint sound of rushing water. The river was still invisible, but it would come into sight soon. “Is this where you learned there is too much soul in nature to be captured with a brush, Jocelyn?”
He could smell earth and leaves—the good country smells he had forgotten.
“Yes,” he said, “though I did try words. Poetry. Atrocious stuff, which I destroyed when I left home. I dabbled in poetry. Can you imagine?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “I know perfectly well what you mean when you speak of dabbling. I will have to persuade you to dabble again.”
“Ah,” he said, and stopped suddenly, gripping her hand more tightly.
The wooded path bent to the right and the trees thinned out on the downward slope ahead. The river had come into sight below. And the pool at the foot of a short waterfall. And not far from it, the thatched cottage, which was still standing, though the thatch looked faded.
Jane touched her free hand to his sleeve, but she did not say anything. She did not need to. He knew she recognized these places from his account of them.
He did not realize he had been holding his breath until he released it quite audibly.
“Strange,” he said quietly, speaking to himself but to her too, since she was part of himself. “It is merely a pool. And merely a cottage. And still picturesque.”