A Kiss Before the Wedding - A Pembroke Palace Short Story (3 page)

She must accept that her friendship with
William—as she once knew it—was over. She must steel herself
against what was, and what might have been, for she was about to
become a duchess, and everything was going to change.

Four

William galloped fast and hard to
reach the maze before dusk. He dismounted under an oak tree in a
sheltering copse where he could tether his horse out of view of the
palace windows.

The heat was stifling, but he barely noticed as
he strode along the square-clipped cedars on the outside wall of
the maze. When he found the entrance, he quickly slipped inside
while struggling to comprehend the complexities of his emotions,
and his presence there—a continent away from the world he had come
to know so well in the past year. How impulsive he’d been to rush
away from all that he found fascinating—science and the study of
medicine—to pursue his dream of love. He had been so passionate to
stop this wedding. It was as if he would explode like a keg of
gunpowder if he did not see Adelaide again and claim her for his
own.

Would she come to him tonight? Was this his
destiny, and hers? Or had he been a bloody fool to think she might
love him that way? Enough to throw aside a wealthy duke and
disappoint her father and sisters? Perhaps even be disowned?

Would she take on all that, to marry a mere
medical man?

A blackbird fluttered out of the cedars overhead
as he continued along the tall green hedges, careful not to venture
too deeply into the maze, lest he become lost in the dark and fail
to return to meet Adelaide when she arrived.

If
she arrived...

Turning back, he strode to the entrance to sit
down and wait.

He would wait all night if he had to, for he
could not lose her.

When William checked his
pocketwatch for the hundredth time, his heart was in shreds.

It was past midnight and Adelaide had not
come.

With excruciating regret, he rose to his feet,
looked up at the stars, and wondered what the bloody hell he was
doing here in this dark maze, when clearly Adelaide had made up her
mind and he had misunderstood the letter she wrote.

He turned to leave, determined to forget her,
determined to bury the past and the foolish hopes he had clung to,
but stopped abruptly when his weary eyes locked upon the most
exquisite vision...

There, in the moonlit entrance to the maze,
stood Adelaide, her golden hair falling loose and windblown about
her shoulders, her chest heaving as if she had run a great
distance. He imagined her fleeing from the palace—running
recklessly across the wide, rolling green lawns beneath the starlit
sky—to reach him.

His darling Adelaide. She was so beautiful, so
grown-up since he had last seen her. A woman now. A woman who was
soon to become another man’s wife.

Anger and hostility coursed through him—along
with a barbaric desire to hoist her over his shoulder, toss her
onto the back of his horse, and gallop away with her to parts
unknown.

Slowly, carefully, he approached. As he drew
closer, however, the scorn he saw in her eyes left him pained and
disoriented.

“What are you doing here, William?” she asked
with a frown. “Why are you doing this?”

Why? God
... Why indeed?

“I had to see you,” he explained, but it was a
pathetic response, for it did not touch the convoluted condition of
his reasoning, his heightened desires, or his selfishness at this
moment, because he wanted her at any price. He had claimed in his
letter that he would place her happiness above all, but that was a
lie. Seeing her now, after so much time apart, he felt a deep
arousal in his body and feared that if he did not win her hand, it
would be the death of him.

“You had no right to say what you did in your
letter,” she said as she pulled her shawl tighter around her
shoulders. “It’s been almost two years since you left Yorkshire,
and you haven’t written to me in months. Whatever we were to each
other then—and I am not even sure
what
we were—it is no
longer the case.” Her eyes flashed with emotion and her bosom rose
and fell as her breathing quickened. She glanced back at the
palace, almost desperately. “I shouldn’t have come here. Margarite
warned me. I don’t know why I did.”

She turned to leave, but he dashed forward to
block her way. “You came because you care for me.”

Her gaze lifted to meet his. “Yes, but as a
friend. Nothing more.”

He shook his head. “I don’t believe you. We’ve
always been more than friends, Adelaide. You know it as well as
I.”

Her eyes raked over his shoulders and chest. He
had loosened his neck cloth in the heat, and his shirt was open
slightly. She wet her lips. For the first time, a clear, sensuous
heat passed between them.

“Then why did you leave without some sort of
understanding between us?” she challenged.

“You were too young,” he explained.

“I was not so very young. I was old enough to
dream of you. To want you. And why did you not come back
sooner?”

He let go of her arm and stepped back. “I didn’t
intend to stay away so long, but I always thought...”

“You thought what?”

A shadow of despair darkened her eyes, and he
was glad. He
wanted
her to feel pain, so that she would not
marry the duke.

“I thought that when I came home,” he honestly
explained, “you would be there waiting for me.”

“How arrogant of you.” She adjusted her shawl
around her shoulders and steeled her posture. “There was no promise
between us, William. You did not propose before you left. If you
had, I would have waited because God knows I loved you. But you did
not. What was I to think? When you stopped writing months ago, I
assumed...” Her chest heaved with a deep intake of breath. “If you
must know, I expected you to come home with a bride on your arm—if
you ever came home at all—so I forced myself to forget you. And now
I have moved on.”

“No,” he replied with a frown. “You’re lying.
Otherwise you would not have written me that letter, and you
certainly would not be here now, alone with me at midnight.”

She bristled at that. “I am here to say good-bye
to you because I consider you a friend,” she explained, “and I felt
you deserve to know the truth.”

“And what is the truth exactly?” he asked,
taking hold of her arm again. “In your letter you said you were
unsure, and I know you too well to believe that anything has
changed. I see it in your eyes, Adelaide. You have doubts. Admit
it.”

She tried again to leave but he would not
release her.

“I am not admitting anything to you,” she
said.

“Not to
me
,” he replied. “To yourself. Do
you love him?”

Adelaide stared at him irately, then wheeled
around and ventured deeper into the maze, as if she could escape
him—and the question. But there was no hope of that. He would not
give up. He would
never
give up.

“Do you love him?” he repeated, more forcefully
as she veered left into another cedar-lined corridor, her skirts
whipping about her legs as she strode fast beneath the silvery
moon.

Suddenly she stopped, stood still for a moment,
and finally turned around. “Step aside, William,” she said. “We are
going to get lost in here, and I must go back.”

“Answer me first,” he said. “If you tell me you
truly love Pembroke with all your heart, I swear I will leave you
now and never mention any of this again. I will return to Italy,
knowing that you are happy.”

She was breathing heavily now. Her brow was
furrowed. “He is very devoted to me,” she explained. “He has been a
gentleman in every way, and he is a duke. The Duke of Pembroke!
Have you any idea what this means to my family?”

William hesitated, then spoke in a quiet, calmer
voice. “Still, you have not answered the question... And yet you
have.”

The crickets chirped noisily in the grass
outside the maze, and a gentle breeze whispered over the evergreen
hedges.

“I respect him,” Adelaide said at last. “He is
intelligent, witty, and very attentive. Might I also add that he is
handsome? I will not deny that I was infatuated when he first asked
me to dance and when he invited me to go walking in the park. I had
butterflies in my belly when his coach arrived to escort us to the
theater. It was all very exciting, William. Very flattering.”

Upon listening to this, William wanted to retch
up the contents of his stomach.

Then he wanted to march through the palace
gates, storm into the house, and choke the Duke of Pembroke until
he turned blue.

Adelaide continued. “When he proposed, I
felt...”

“Yes?”

“Triumphant. I still feel that way.”
William fought to control the feral jealousy that was burning a
hole in his gut. He balled his hands into fists, stared long and
hard into Adelaide’s eyes, and fought to see into her soul as he
always could—for she had never held anything back from him.

Tonight, however, her eyes were cool and steely.
Guarded. It was as if she had slammed a door in his face.

Clearly she was angry with him for leaving, and
had made every effort to banish him from her heart. She was
struggling to do so now.

Adelaide raised her chin as if to communicate,
in no uncertain terms, that she would not be deterred.

Perhaps he was wrong to have come here. Perhaps
she
had
changed from the free-spirited young girl he once
knew. Or perhaps she had hidden that person away, buried her
forever in the depths of her duty and ambition.

William’s eyebrows pulled together with dismay.
Grief poured through him. Had he truly lost her? Was this the
end?

“Then you are sure?” he asked, taking a step
back, fighting to understand.

“Yes, I think so,” she firmly replied.

Something sparked and flared in his heart. “You
think
so,” he said. “That is not convincing enough,
Adelaide. Not for me.”

She inclined her head at him, in that way she
always did, to warn him against pushing her too hard.

“Do not dissect my every word, William. You must
simply accept that I have made my decision, and I do not wish to
alter it.”

For a long excruciating moment they stared at
each other in the moonlight, while the night breeze continued to
blow through the hedges. William felt as if the walls of cedar were
closing in on him. He wanted to grab hold of Adelaide, shake her,
then pull her into his arms and hold her—so tight that she could
not escape him, not until she realized she was making a dreadful
mistake. That she was
his.
That she could not marry another,
not even a duke.

“Please, William... you must say good-bye to me
now,” she whispered. “Let us part as friends.” She held out her
hand.

No. This was wrong. He would not shake her hand.
He would not say good-bye. His mind wandered to other times. Good
times they’d shared.

“Before we bid each other farewell,” he said,
“and before you become a duchess, permit me to make a request.”

“Yes?”

“Meet me again tomorrow, as we used to do in
Yorkshire. Remember?”

Her eyes clouded over with apprehension. “We are
not children anymore, William. I cannot go running with you across
the moors, or fishing at dawn, or swimming in the rain. I am about
to become a married woman.”

“But you are not married yet.” He spoke lightly,
his tone persuasively friendly and open. “Come and meet me. We will
talk and laugh. I want to know everything I have missed since I
left Yorkshire. Is Mrs. Jenkins’ goat still roaming in Mrs. Smith’s
vegetable garden?”

Adelaide hesitated, then her shoulders relaxed
slightly. “Yes, but it’s much worse now, for Mrs. Jenkins has three
new goats who like to follow their leader.”

William smiled, for there it was—a hint of the
girl he once knew. She had not disappeared after all, at least not
yet.

“Will you see me tomorrow?” he pressed. “I saw a
charming lake house on my way here, and there is a walking path
around the lake. Could you sneak away for a short while?”

She thought about it, and glanced over her
shoulder. “I do not like that word...
sneak
.”

“Call it whatever you wish. I will be at the
lake house all day,” he said, “and I will wait for you there.”
As long as I have to
.

And somehow I will change your mind.

Then suddenly, unexpectedly, her expression
softened and to his utter shock and delight, she stepped into his
arms and hugged him.

He was so taken aback, all the air rushed from
his lungs, and it took a moment for him to gather his wits about
him.

When at last he could breathe again, he cupped
the back of her head with his hand and buried his face against her
neck.