‘I do not expect you to love your Daniel less because you love me as well, Marianne,’ Alaric managed to tell her huskily despite the frantic need she had sensed him barely holding under control for miles as he drove with almost too much care so he did not take unnecessary risks with her safety.
‘Thank you,’ she said sincerely and put her cold fingers against his even colder face and held them there to warm them both and because she did love him so much she wanted to touch him and warm him and show him how lovable he really was and how very, very strong and manly and kind and—
Just get on with it, Marianne; love the man before you both faint from frustration.
‘But love is generous, my darling, so there is enough of it in my heart for both of you and I shall never love you less because I love him as well.’
‘I am not sure I can give you gentle, though, and you deserve it,’ he told her unsteadily.
‘Do not put curbs on us, Alaric. However much you try to reason it into a corner and control it we want each other quite shamelessly.’
‘That does not mean we cannot have tenderness as well as passion,’ he said stubbornly and covered her hands where they still cupped his face and stared down into her eyes with his loving, lingering touch against her skin. ‘Love,’ he said with wonder still in his eyes.
‘Yes.’
‘I want you so much my eyes are crossing,’ he told her and she stood on tiptoes for a closer look and nodded sagely at him to say so they were and the closer she looked the more hers were as well.
‘Time to stop talking, then,’ she said practically and raised her mouth for his kiss and to get him to give her the use of her hands back, so she could touch and hold and encourage him as he did the same for her. It was the lovely loving connection of it all that made her gasp and her body sing as they fell on one another with a hunger that had been too long building to be slow or carefully seductive now. Fire and fierce passion and that streak of tenderness under it all that he had promised them seemed to draw something wondrous out of them as they fell on each other and reached higher and faster than it felt they had ever been before. She fell back to earth with a sob for the loss of that ecstatic, languorous place they had just claimed as their own for the first time. It was the lovely, fiery, intimate connection of it all that thrummed through them like a force of nature as they lay together in the bed they had finally found the strength to climb into and count their racing heartbeats back to earth as breath came softer and kisses even more honeyed.
* * *
‘Oh, goodness!’ Viola gasped as she caught the wedding bouquet Marianne cunningly aimed at her almost by accident. Viola stared down at the posy of white camellias and dried lavender flowers and dark green and fragrant myrtle leaves. ‘Typical of you two,’ she said as she sniffed the herbs and stroked the velvety petals and refused to blush at the speculation in their mother’s eyes.
‘What? A mix of homespun and exotic?’ Marianne said as she met Alaric’s eyes and forgot what they were talking about at the leap of masculine interest in there for that intriguing idea. Pirate Alaric, she mouthed with an encouraging smile.
‘No, an ideal combination for a Christmas wedding,’ and Viola’s voice reminded Marianne this was a doubly serious occasion with a roll of her eyes at their ridiculous preoccupation with one another.
‘Or any other time of year,’ Alaric told his bride of a few minutes and kissed her as if he could not help himself now they had got started on loving one another for life.
‘Stop it, you two, and kindly get inside that fine carriage and let yourselves be driven up to the house so the rest of us can get warm again,’ Darius told them gruffly from his place just behind the bride and groom with Fliss at his side trying not to laugh at him for playing gruff lord of the manor.
‘Take no notice of him,’ Fliss advised the newly married couple. ‘Having a viscount in the family seems to have gone to his head.’
‘Hmm, he is not the only one, then,’ Viola murmured as the sound of Mrs Yelverton condescending to Miss Donne even more than usual reached them even at the church door.
What might have spoiled a lesser day passed Marianne by on this very special one and she thought Miss Donne could cope with far sterner foes than the proud mother of the bride. With Alaric’s strong hand in hers and his almost boyish delight in their simple country wedding, even her mother’s love of a title seemed amusing rather than embarrassing, today anyway. So she ran out to the waiting carriage at Alaric’s side and was glad when it was on its way because once they were out of it and inside it could go back for her father so that he could be got out of the cold as soon as possible and hopefully breathe more easily in the seat by the fire Fliss had saved for him.
‘I love you, Husband,’ Marianne said with an infatuated sigh. She had to love him even more for taking such care to get her father here by even shorter stages than last time so he would not get quite so cold and might not wheeze so badly in the damp December air.
‘And I love you, Lady Stratford.’
‘Let’s not talk about her today, I am too happy to worry about high and mighty peeresses like her right now.’
‘You are one all the same and I still love you.’
‘Best not adore me too much, Alaric, I might become an idol and develop feet of clay.’
‘Remind me to make a list of all your faults and read them out to you once a month then—that ought to keep you humble.’
‘If you like the feel of sleeping in an empty bed each night of it, then you go right ahead and do so, my lord.’
‘That I do not. It was far too empty while you were making up your mind whether to love me or not for me to risk that much loneliness ever again.’
‘I had no choice but loving you when it came down to it. I could not forget you from the moment I first set eyes on you.’
‘Ah, yes, pirates—I wonder if my valet has remembered to pack my cutlass.’
‘The poor man would give in his notice if you asked him for one of those and you are more likely to need a hammer and chisel where we are going.’
‘It will not be a very romantic place to spend our honeymoon,’ Alaric said almost as if he regretted the leisurely journey to somewhere more exotic they could have had when they were about to move into the hastily refurbished Agent’s House at Prospect Manor instead.
‘I think it will be the perfect place for one,’ Marianne said with the busyness and bustle they would stir up there making it seem the ideal way to spend the first days of their marriage. ‘Far better than us flitting about from mansion to mansion as you introduce me to your friends and neighbours. I doubt they will want to know me and I am not looking forward to meeting them.’
‘Stop it, love, you are as good as any of them and better than a good many.’
Seeing it really did disturb him to hear her worry what his friends would think of her, she tried to push her anxiety aside. No, it would not do. ‘We cannot keep our worries quiet from one another, Alaric. We must learn to share them so they do not push us apart.’
‘Very well, then, as soon as I manage to convince you I have the finest and most desirable viscountess in the land we shall take a tour of my lordly obligations and show everyone why I insisted on marrying you despite your dogged opposition to the idea. It will not help Juno realise there are good people at every level of our society if you refuse to believe it yourself.’
‘I did not think of that,’ Marianne said with a frown. ‘I suppose I must learn to act the great lady after all, then.’
‘No need to act, you are one already. I know our tenants and neighbours will breathe a sigh of relief and welcome you with open arms after so many decades of regal indifference to their needs and hopes from my mother.’
‘She has a lot to answer for,’ Marianne said sternly as the carriage reached the front door of Owlet Manor only moments after it set out from the churc
h.
‘Never mind her now, this is the best day of my life so far and I am not going to spoil it by picking over old griefs and sorrows. Yours are different.’
‘You mean Daniel?’
‘Of course.’
‘If there was a way of doing it, he would dance at our wedding today, Alaric. He truly loved me and would have hated to see me so haunted and miserable and grief-stricken as I was for so long after I got back to England and until the day I met you, if I am being strictly truthful. You are the very man he would have picked out for me because you are the best man I have ever met apart from him. I will never forget him, but that does not mean I cannot love you every bit as much as I loved him.’
Marianne felt as if this conversation was even more important than the vows they had made one another in front of God and their nearest and dearest, if that was possible. ‘I love you so much, Alaric. I thought it was impossible for a woman to be lucky enough to love with all her heart twice in one lifetime, but you have proved to me how wrong I was.’
‘You have all of my heart, Marianne. I never thought I could love like this at all, so just look what you have taught me,’ Alaric said and they kissed under the ball of mistletoe and bright ribbons the servants must have placed there once the wedding party set out for the tiny church. Breathless and excited and looking forward to loving this man in every sense of the word once again and as soon as they could get some privacy and a bed to celebrate it in, Marianne felt the earth spin under her feet and the stars shift in their spheres. Alaric kissed her with such passion she wondered if it was possible to be driven out of your senses by love and desire and they could have been anywhere, at any time of year, for all she could feel of the lazy December wind and an overcast sky that said there might be snow in it somewhere or more probably rain what with this being England and the weather likely to change from hour to hour.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Darius interrupted them who knew how many minutes later as the next carriage rumbled up to the door and swept around the newly laid carriage sweep with a flourish. ‘At least get inside out of the cold so we can get on with the Christmas feast you have promised us, Stratford. My sister will take to her bed with the influenza instead of the reason you want her there if you do not stop kissing one another soon and get inside.’
‘Very well, Papa,’ Marianne said mockingly and was astonished to see her brother blush for the first time since they were children. ‘You are not, are you?’ she asked him and when he only stood there on his own carriage sweep looking like a boy caught out in mischief she looked to Fliss for an answer instead.
‘I told him it was to be our secret until after today, but sometimes he is such a boy I cannot rely on him to keep a still tongue in his head,’ her sister-in-law scolded her large and mature husband and Marianne could see him turning to mush in front of her eyes. He was going to be such a wonderful father and if this happened to be a little girl she could just imagine him being wound around her little finger the second she was born.
‘But that is such wonderful news you should not have kept it quiet for our sake.’
‘No, this is your day. We had ours...um...’ Fliss stopped as if remembering a bit too much of that night when she and Darius first made love up in the hills the day Juno went missing and shortly before Lord Stratford knocked at Miss Donne’s door and demanded to see Fliss. ‘In August,’ Fliss finished bravely, although it remained to be seen if their babe might give away exactly when that day was or if he or she arrived a tactful nine months after Fliss and Darius’s wedding.
‘I am so pleased for you both,’ Marianne said and truly meant it. She felt Alaric’s anxiety for her hearing such news when they were never likely to have their own child as he wrapped a strong arm round her waist and pulled her closer. ‘I have all I want right here,’ she told him softly and forgot family and guests all over again. ‘And there are those runaways and urchins to look forward to taking in if you truly do not mind your title going to waste one day.’
‘Good riddance to it,’ he said and kissed her again because it was a shame to waste a good kissing bough.
‘You will wear it out,’ Darius said with a push to get them inside and out of the cold at long last, then he made thorough use of it himself before pulling a blushing, laughing, flustered Fliss inside after him so they could make way for more soberly happy wedding guests who eyed the kissing bough with either suspicion or nostalgia, then sped inside unkissed rather than risk getting cold.
‘Your brother is a rogue,’ Alaric told Marianne between welcoming their guests and at least Mrs Yelverton was too much in awe of him to try and push her way in front of him as she had with Fliss and Darius at their wedding.
‘I know, but Juno would never have come to Broadley if she was not looking for Fliss and I would never have discovered you unkempt and arrogant on the doorstep this summer. So we owe one another to Fliss, if not my brother.’
‘Then he can say what he likes since I never want to imagine my life without you in it ever again,’ he murmured between handshakes and smiles for these people they loved enough to invite to their very select wedding.
‘Neither do I,’ Marianne agreed and once again Lord and Lady Stratford proved what an unconventional pair they were by kissing one another in full view of their guests as if they could not help themselves and they really could not so they kept on doing it until the bride’s brother ordered them into the dining room and made them sit on opposite sides of the groaning table in order to make them at least pay lip service to the proprieties.
‘What a scandalous couple we are, love,’ Alaric told her across all the pies and roast this and that and enough left over to feed everyone for miles around, just as he intended when he sent for it all.
‘I love you,’ she replied, ‘so much that it probably is scandalous, but I don’t care.’
‘Nor me,’ he said and after that the wedding breakfast of my Lord and Lady Stratford had to manage without them, so it was just as well most of their guests were more amused than offended by the scant attention they paid to their own nuptial feast.
* * *
‘Wedding breakfast in bed, now there’s a novelty,’ Alaric told his wife some time later when he brought in the tray Fliss had ordered left outside their room until they were hungry, if still not feeling very sociable.
‘I love experiencing new things since I met you,’ Marianne told him with a siren smile and they made a very stimulating meal of it, eventually.
* * *
If you enjoyed this story, be sure to read the first book in The Yelverton Marriages miniseries
Marrying for Love or Money?
and look out for the next one in the series,
coming soon!
And whilst you’re waiting for the next book,
why not check out these other great reads by
Elizabeth Beacon
A Rake to the Rescue
The Duchess’s Secret
Keep reading for an excerpt from A Royal Kiss & Tell by Julia London.
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A Royal Kiss & Tell
by Julia London
Chapter One
Helenamar, Alucia
1846
It is an absolute truth that men and women alike desire the earnest vow of someone to love and cherish them all their days, and that nothing elicits joy in the breast of all mankind quite like a wedding.
Recently, the most joyous occasion was the wedding of the universally admired Lady Eliza Tricklebank and His Royal Highness Sebastian Charles Iver Chartier, the Crown Prince of Alucia.
The bride entered Saint Paul’s Cathedral in the Alucian capital city of Helenamar
at half past twelve. She wore a gown of white silk and chiffon. It was fashioned in the Alucian style, cut close to the body and featuring a customary train thirty feet in length. The train was hand stitched in silver and gold thread with the symbols of Alucia and England, including the famous Alucian racehorses, the mountain buttercup and the Chartier coat of arms. England was duly represented in the Tudor rose, the lion and the English royal banner. The Alucian national motto, Libertatem et Honorem, was embroidered in tiny scalloped letters around the hems of the sleeves.
The bride wore a veil anchored with a diamond tiara with a center stone weighing ten carats, lent to her by Her Majesty Queen Daria. Around her neck she wore a pearl necklace comprising twenty-three pearls, one for each of the provinces in Alucia, a gift from His Majesty King Karl. On her breast Lady Tricklebank wore a sapphire-and-gold brooch, a wedding gift from her fiancé, Prince Sebastian.
The prince was dressed in a black frock of superfine wool, worn to midcalf, a white waistcoat embroidered in miniature with the same symbols of Alucia and England as the bride’s train, and a silk cravat trimmed in silver and gold thread. He wore the crown bestowed on him at his investiture as crown prince.
After the ceremony, the newlyweds rode in open carriage to Constantine Palace through a throng of well-wishers that lined the avenue for three miles.
The king granted the prince and his new bride the titles of Duke and Duchess of Tannymeade. They will reside in the port city at Tannymeade Palace.
Unsuitable Bride for a Viscount Page 21