Lady Midnight (55 page)

"Could you open the window before I suffocate?"

He chuckled, a low, rumbling, sweet sound. "Of course. The doctor said you should be kept warm, but I don't think one small breath of fresh air would hurt."

"You succeeded in following the doctor's orders most admirably." Kate relaxed back onto the bed, watching Michael as he crossed the room to throw open the window. She was so very tired, bone-deep weary, and she needed more water. But even more than that, she needed to know.... "Michael. Are you sure Christina was not—hurt?" I've never seen anyone behave like Julian before. He was like a madman."

Michael braced his arms against the window frame and glanced back at her, his blue eyes a dark gray. "She says she was not hurt. She said she stabbed Kirkwood in the shoulder and ran away. But there is something...."

"Something?" Kate said, alarmed.

He shook his head. "I cannot explain it. She has changed somehow, Kate. She seems—older."

"Perhaps after she rests and her arm heals, she will seem more herself? Or we can take her away somewhere for a change of scene. France? Vienna?"

"Kate, my dear, you shouldn't worry about these things until you are stronger." Michael came back to her bedside, reaching out to smooth the hopelessly rumpled bedclothes, taking her hand again.

Kate clutched at his hand. "Just one more thing—has Julian's body been found?"

Michael shook his head, his jaw taut. "There will be a more extensive search once the weather clears. Now, Kate, you must sleep. You have to get your strength back."

"Indeed. For the wedding."

He smiled gently. "For the wedding. If you are still sure you want to marry me, and my unruly family."

"Oh, yes," Kate answered softly. "I want it more than anything in all the world. I learned a great deal in the last few days, you see. Much is still confused and unclear, frightening, too. Yet there is one thing I know for certain now."

"Oh, yes, my love? What is that?"

"That love is the greatest gift, and only a fool squanders it for any reason. I'm not a fool, not anymore. I love you, Michael Lindley, and I want to be your wife."

"Oh, my bonny Kate." He gathered her softly in his arms, holding her as if she was the greatest treasure in the world. "How long I've waited for you to say that! I love you, too. You mean all of life to me. Promise you won't ever go away."

"No," she vowed. "I'll never go away. Not ever again. Truly, this Kate is curst no longer!"

Epilogue

It was a bright, beautiful day when the wedding of the decade (for Suddley village, anyway) was held in St. Anne's Church. The glorious old stained-glass windows shimmered in jewel tones of red, blue, emerald green, and gold, casting their wealth of color on the worn stone floors. The even more gloriously uncomfortable narrow wooden pews were decked in wreaths and swags of white lilies, white roses, and dark green ivy. Cushions of white silk were laid down especially for the posteriors of all the guests, which included local families such as the Rosses (Miss Emmeline's face was noted as being unusually red and puffy from all the tears she cried over this engagement), as well as London notables. The Hollingsworths attended, Elizabeth clad in a very stylish gown and spencer of raspberry-colored silk, as did the bridegroom's older brother, the Earl of Darcy, sans his enceinte wife but wearing a coat of grass green satin that excited much comment. The church was so very crowded that many congregants were forced to stand at the back.

Kate saw none of this—the people, the flowers, the low hum of excitement hanging palpably in the flower-scented air—as she stood outside the open church doors, waiting to make her grand entrance. Butterflies fluttered hither and yon in her stomach, and her breath felt short and gasping. She had never experienced such excitement before, such a glow of wild anticipation! It didn't seem real.

Michael was waiting for her at the altar. Waiting to become her husband.

She unpeeled one gloved hand from the ribbon-wrapped stems of her white rose bouquet and pressed it to her stomach.

"Be careful!" Amelia said sternly. "You'll crush your gown."

Kate smiled down at her tiny bridesmaid—soon to be her new daughter. Amelia looked exquisite this morning in her pink muslin dress, her golden curls brushed to a sheen to rival the sun and bound with pink ribbons. She held her basket of rose petals very carefully. "Of course,
cara mia.
I don't want to crush my gown before we even walk down the aisle."

Kate straightened the skirt of her wedding gown, a lovely creation of palest blue silk trimmed with pearl beading and white gauze roses, brought by Elizabeth Hollingsworth from the most sought-after of London modistes. It was all she could have dreamed of for such a perfect day, a princess's gown.

She heard a swell of organ music from inside the church, signaling her cue to enter. "Marching slowly, with great dignity," as the curate had instructed when she first arrived. It would be all she could do to keep from dashing down the aisle into Michael's arms!

Kate turned to smooth back her lace veil, held to her hair by a wreath of roses and ivy. As she swept away the hazy cobwebs of lace, she thought she glimpsed a movement in the churchyard, behind one of the ancient stone sarcophagi. A flash of black and white in the sunshine.

But no. There was nothing there. Only the shadows of the gravestones.

Kate shivered, and sent forth another prayer of thanksgiving for this day. For her own life, and the lives of all her family. They had been preserved in that dreadful storm, and gathered now at this church for a wedding rather than a funeral. A wedding she had been waiting for all her life.

"It's time, Mama!" Amelia exclaimed. "We have to go in now."

"So we do." With one last glance back to the churchyard, Kate faced forward to the long aisle. To the man who waited for her there.

Amelia took the curate's instructions very much to heart, and moved into the church with a grace and dignity beyond her six years. She carefully scattered her petals to the left and the right. Kate smiled at her proudly—Amelia had called her
Mama.
No mother could ever have been prouder of her child than Kate was of Amelia at that moment.

And of Christina. The girl stood at the edge of the family pew, peering eagerly down the aisle. She, too, looked older than her years today, in another London creation of butter yellow muslin with a matching silk pelisse trimmed in antique lace. A yellow silk sling held her splinted arm in place, and her shorn curls were covered with a white-and-yellow bonnet. Her smile was full of happiness as she watched her niece, yet there was still something sad at the edges of it. Something serious in her eyes that even a wedding, and the solicitous presence of young Mr. Price at her side, could not quite ease.

As Kate followed in Amelia's flower-strewn wake, she grinned at Christina and gave her a little wave. She nodded to the Hollingsworths, and to Michael's still vaguely disapproving but undeniably elegant mother. She tried to move slowly, prettily, in time to the stately Handel march issuing from the organ, but when she saw Michael all the curate's careful admonitions flew away.

Never had she imagined anyone could be so unearthly handsome. He stood before the old altar, sunlight falling from the windows to gild his hair and skin in a wash of purest gold. He, too, wore London finery, a Weston-cut coat of Prussian blue and a waistcoat of ivory brocade. But he could have been clad in mud-splashed buckskin for all she cared. All that mattered—all that ever mattered—was that they had somehow found a way to come together on this perfect day. All the past, all the drama, all her fears, they were gone like the mists of a dream.
This
was real life. This was what was important, today and all the days to come.

Michael smiled at her, his white pirate's grin, and he completely defied convention by leaving his place at the altar, striding down the aisle to meet her halfway. He clasped her hand in his, and together they took the final steps into their greatest adventure.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today, in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony...."

The End

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Lady Midnight
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A LOVING SPIRIT

Lessons in Temptation

Book One

~

England, 1811

"Why is it always so
cold
in England?" Cassandra Richards murmured, burrowing deeper into her fur-lined cloak as she watched the Cornwall landscape roll by outside the carriage window.

"I think my toes are frozen." said her friend Antoinette Duvall. "They will never be warm again." Her usually merry coffee-colored face was glum, at odds with her bright red-and-black printed turban.

The two of them sighed, and leaned against each other disconsolately.

Cassie's aunt, Charis, Lady Willowby, called Chat by all her many friends, looked across the carriage at them and shook her head. "You girls! It is only October. There is barely a nip in the air. What are you going to do when it is December and snow is thick on the ground?"

"Snow!" Cassie cried. She had lived for the last fourteen years in hot, sunny Jamaica; she had not seen snow since she was five. All she remembered was that it was very cold and very wet.

And that her father used to make little balls of it, and throw them at her laughing mother.

That memory of her parents, who were now gone and left behind in the small cemetery of their plantation near Negril, gave her a sharp pang. How she missed them! How she missed their life together, a life of sunshine and warm sea.

Even four months in England had not erased her homesickness.

But at least Antoinette had agreed to come with her, she thought, reaching out with the toe of her half boot to nudge the flannel-wrapped brick closer to her friend's feet. Home never seemed quite so far away when she could hear the lilting, musical cadence of Antoinette's voice. And Aunt Chat really
was
trying to make her feel welcome. She had given parties at her house in Bath to introduce Cassie to all her friends, and now she had organized this trip to Cornwall to visit yet another of her friends, the Dowager Lady Royce.