"She wants Freckles," he explained, helping himself to a cup of tea.
"Who the hell is Freckles?" asked Charles and Gareth in unison.
"Her best friend," said Andrew, with protective evasiveness.
Gareth raised a brow. "Odd name, that. Freckles. Hmmm."
"Is it his given one or a nickname?" asked Charles.
"Why assume Freckles is a he?" mused Gareth. "Sounds more like a woman's name than a bloke's."
Lucien, reposing in a chair near the fire, crossed one ankle over the other and casually reached for the morning paper. "Freckles is the lady's dog."
"Her
dog
?" exclaimed Charles and Gareth in unison.
"You two ought to go onstage singing harmony," snapped Andrew, sensitive to any possible or perceived criticism of Celsie and ready to defend her if the situation called for it. Scowling, he looked down as he lifted his teacup, thus missing the surprised — and amused — look his brothers exchanged.
"Sorry," said Gareth, hiding a grin beneath the pretense of rubbing his chin. "No offense, man."
"Yes, no offense," Charles added, with a warm smile meant to defuse the bristling defensiveness he perceived in his youngest brother. "Where does she live, Andrew? If it would make either of you any less morose, I'd be happy to go fetch the dog and bring it back here to London."
Andrew gave a sulky shrug. "No need. Besides, we're not getting married here in London, but at Blackheath."
"I see," said Charles, glancing at Lucien as the duke calmly opened his paper. "And where will you live?"
Andrew, too, glanced at Lucien's severe profile. "As far away from certain interfering
monsters
as possible."
"The lady owns substantial property in Berkshire," drawled the duke from his chair. "I'm sure she can support Andrew in as much style as he desires."
"Sod off," Andrew snapped.
Charles, ever the gentleman, pretended to ignore the flare-up of animosity between the two. "Berkshire, eh?" He sipped his tea and set the cup down in its saucer. "Nice that you'll be so close. I say, Andrew, I can't wait to meet her. Nerissa said she's gorgeous."
"She is." Andrew turned away to hide the sudden flush of pride that touched his cheeks. Then, realizing that Charles was only trying to ease the tension in the room, he allowed a pained but fleeting grin. "Hell, I probably would have got her into trouble even without benefit of the aphrodisiac."
"She must be more than just gorgeous," Gareth remarked, from his own chair. "You've had stunning women throwing themselves at you for years, but I've never seen you pay any notice to any of them. Now
I'm
curious to meet her, as well!"
Andrew was starting to find this conversation stifling — especially knowing that Lucien was probably sitting there gloating over his more-than-significant part in things. He reached inside the pocket of his frock coat, withdrew his notebook, and suddenly wanting to retreat from his family, his predicament, and any gentle teasing his brothers might feel compelled to hand out, moved to the far side of the room. There he perched on the edge of a chair and began sketching, blocking out the light conversation between Charles and Gareth, and the sound of Lucien every so often turning a page of his paper.
Maybe if he lost himself in an idea, he could temporarily forget the catastrophe his life had become, the calamity his future promised, the casualty that had been his freedom. He focused on the blank page before him, put pencil to paper, and proceeded to lose himself in his latest project.
A project that, when finished, would be his wedding present to Celsie.
Ah, relief. Ah, blessed forgetfulness of immediate problems as the pencil flew as fast as his mind allowed it. The execution of the idea came naturally to him, as easily as molding a loaf of bread might have come to a baker, and as he sketched, and made calculations, and allowed for various gear measurements, tension, and resistance to heat, his mood eased and he began to relax a bit, lulled by the familiar comfort of putting his mind to work. And yet his mind kept returning to Celsie herself. To how she had held his hand last night, her defenses down, just being a friend. To how she had hugged him after all escape routes had been blocked, sympathetic to his despair when she must have been feeling just as devastated, herself. Something caught in his throat. She was really quite remarkable. And brave, too.
And as Charles had guessed, gorgeous.
Again, that flush of pride. God help him, he was actually looking forward to introducing her to the rest of the family. To showing her off a little. He wondered how she would get on with Juliet and Amy, and hoped she wouldn't feel like an outsider because she was English aristocracy and they were from the American colonies.
He calculated a measurement and jotted it down. Hell, maybe it was a good thing he was marrying a woman who, unlike most of her gender, was obsessed with dogs instead of babies. He didn't think he'd be very good around a baby. All that spit-up and screaming and vile-smelling diapers and mess and stuff.
He shuddered.
"Cold feet, Andrew?" asked Charles, who had risen, crossed the room, and was now standing at a nearby window, idly watching the rain pound the cobbles and swell the gutters outside.
"Not yet."
His brother put his hands on his hips, rucking up his coattails, and kept his gaze on the view outside the window. He was a thoughtful man, kind and considerate of others, and his own sobriquet, The Beloved One, was most appropriate. Without turning from the window, he lowered his voice for Andrew's ears alone.
"Have you told her yet, Andrew?"
Andrew's pencil came to a sudden halt. Charles's quiet inquiry flung a dose of reality over him, waking him from his temporary dream world as if someone had just roused him with a bucket of ice water. "No," he murmured uneasily, casting an eye at Lucien in the chair across the room. "I, uh, don't seem to have found the right opportunity."
Charles said nothing, merely standing there with his hands beneath his coattails, his pale blue eyes gazing out the window and candlelight gilding his hair. The house servants had spread a layer of straw atop the cobbles of the street just outside so that the clatter of passing carriages wouldn't reach the duke's ears, and Charles was idly watching a chattering flock of sparrows who were picking amongst it for food in the fast-fading light.
"I've often wondered why you were so affected and I was not," he murmured at length. "After all, we both breathed the stuff."
"Yes, well, I breathed it longer."
Charles was still gazing out the window, pretending nonchalance when Andrew knew him well enough to know he was troubled. "Have you had any more episodes lately?"
"A few."
"I suppose those damned doctors haven't been able to help any . . ."
"Of course not. I refuse to see any more of them."
"Have the episodes got any worse?"
"Define 'worse.'"
"More frequent? More intense? Different from what they always were?"
Andrew went back to sketching. "No. Same as they've always been, though I never see the same things twice. I'm keeping a notebook. Maybe someday when I'm a drooling, chained idiot in Bedlam, someone will benefit from them."
Charles flinched as though he'd been struck.
"Sorry," Andrew said, wishing he hadn't made such a flippant remark, for now he'd upset his brother, and Charles was only showing the compassion that came as naturally to him as crazy ideas for even crazier inventions came to Andrew. He got up and tucked the notebook back into his coat pocket. "I say, I think I hear the ladies coming," he said, giving Charles a good-natured clap across the shoulder and turning toward the door. "Ah look, here they are now."
Lucien and Gareth rose from their chairs, and all four de Montforte men bowed as Celsie, accompanied by Nerissa, Juliet and Amy, entered the room, her head high as she tried to hide her sudden nervousness. Her stomach was in knots. She was trembling like a whippet.
Oh, what are his brothers all thinking? That I'm ugly? Flat-chested? Oh please, God, don't let me be an embarrassment to Andrew, don't let them pity him his stark and ugly bride, please don't let this be a repeat of the past, of all the times I've been teased and ridiculed for being such a skinny, stork-legged crow . . .
But nobody was thinking anything of the sort. Though all four women were lovely, Andrew had eyes only for Celsie.
His
Celsie. For a moment, his heart forgot how to beat. For a moment, his lungs forgot to take in air.
He could only stare. Her thick, tawny tresses had been left unpowdered and were piled high on her head, a few loose curls escaping to frame her face. A simple choker of pale pink pearls encircled her neck. Her gown was a glowing green silk the color of spring leaves, the skirts embroidered in vibrant salmon and gold threads, the stomacher the color of ripe peaches. The fitted silk clung to her tiny waist, her slender arms, showing her figure off to perfection and complimenting the clear, bisquelike tone of her skin. Despite the nervousness in her eyes, she looked as regal as any princess. And then those eyes sought out his own, and leaving Charles at the window, Andrew hurried forward to take her hand, bowing over it and kissing it lightly between the knuckles.
"You are a vision," he said hoarsely, and then, unable to keep the pride from his voice, unable to keep from touching her, he slid a possessive arm around her waist and turned her so that they both faced his brothers. "Charles, Gareth, I would like to present Lady Celsiana Blake — my betrothed."
Gareth was grinning widely, and even Charles wore a relieved smile as they came forward to take Celsie's hand and make the appropriate — and well-deserved — exclamations over her beauty. And as Andrew, standing beside her with his chest pushing so hard against his waistcoat that he thought the buttons were going to pop right off, watched her respond with modesty, grace and dignity to the shower of compliments, he knew that everything was going to be all right.
He found himself grinning.
Freckles, beware. I'm going to make this woman happier than you could ever dream of doing!
Chapter 20
The wedding was held a fortnight later.
It was a private ceremony, with the vicar of Ravenscombe performing the honors in the ancient Norman church that had served the earls, and later the dukes, of Blackheath for the last five-hundred years. If the cleric thought it a strange thing that the Defiant One was finally getting married, he kept it to himself. If he thought it a strange thing that none of the bride's family had come to see her pledge herself to him, he made no comment. But when the bride, heartbreakingly lovely in a gown of pale green tissue shot through with silver, walked up the aisle clutching the leash of an old, slow-moving dog instead of the arm of a male relative, well, even the Reverend Williams, who had seen a bit in his day, raised a brow.
One sharp, speaking look from the commanding black eyes of His Grace the duke of Blackheath, however, brought that eyebrow straight back down to its proper place. The Reverend Williams cleared his throat and guided the bride, whose knuckles, he noted, were clenched white around the dog's leash, to the left of the groom, and proceeded to set about his business. But when he got to the part where he asked who was to give her away, he found himself at something of a loss, for there seemed to be no one with her at all, save for that sad-looking old dog with the big, pendant ears and soulful eyes gazing out of its gone-to-grey face.
"Freckles," she announced, in a voice that challenged him, that challenged anyone, to mock her wishes. She swallowed hard and reached down to stroke the dog's brown and white neck in a rapid, nervous way. "Freckles is giving me away. But not really, because he's still going to sleep on the bed with us."
"I, er . . . see," said the vicar, looking quite helpless.
The bride, still standing all alone, flushed and turned a tremulous, slightly embarrassed smile on her bridegroom, who didn't seem surprised, or uncomfortable, by her proclamation at all.
"Is that not right, Andrew? That Freckles will sleep on the bed with us?"
His reply was equally earnest. "Yes, Celsie. Freckles will sleep on the bed with us."
Williams drew out his handkerchief and mopped his brow. He was going to need a drink after this one. Maybe even two. He shot a confused look at the duke, but His Grace was his usual enigmatic self. Lord Gareth was grinning, and Lord Charles was trying, and failing, to maintain a suitably militaristic expression in keeping with his splendid scarlet uniform.
As for Lord Andrew, he had a look in his eye that promised dire harm if Williams or anyone else so much as questioned his lady's wishes. Very well, then, thought Williams. If she wanted the dog to give her away, and if Lord Andrew condoned its sleeping on the bed, that was their life. He was only here to marry them, God help him.
I will never understand the aristocracy, not if I live to be a hundred.
"Witnesses, then?" he asked, with a dubious look at the old dog.
If it's Freckles, I'm having
three
drinks. And then I'm retiring and moving back to Cornwall.
Lord Andrew glanced at his brother Charles. "Major de Montforte will witness our vows," he said tightly.
"Er . . . you do not wish His Grace to witness them, my lord?"
"I damned well don't," snapped Lord Andrew, glowering.
Williams flinched. He glanced nervously at the duke, but His Grace was gazing at the altar, his expression inscrutable, his entire manner unaffected.
The bride added, "My brother Gerald will also witness them."
Her ladyship had a brother? Why isn't he, and not the dog, giving her away?
"And where is this brother?" asked Williams, gazing rather helplessly about him.
Lord Andrew, looking more dashing than the vicar had ever seen him in an exquisitely cut suit of striped olive silk, russet smallclothes, and snowy white lace at throat and wrists, impatiently jerked his head towards the back of the church. There, in the cool, gloomy shadows, a young man sat, his expression cold, his eyes smoldering with anger.
Hmm, well yes,
thought Williams.
I don't blame you, young fellow, for being in such an ill temper. It's not every day that a dog takes your rightful place at your sister's side . . .