Chapter 38

Eight Days Later

Andrew was beginning to think his groomsman and his betrothed had eloped together.

He glanced at his watch and then at the doors to the narthex and then at the vicar—the Reverend… Something ! Damn and blast, Andrew had forgotten the man's name already—but the clergyman merely smiled, seemingly unconcerned, his confident smile assuring Andrew that nothing was amiss.

He glanced at his watch and found only a few seconds had passed. He resisted the urge to hurl the useless thing across the nave and, instead, clasped his hands behind his back so he was not tempted to look at it again.

The moment he linked his fingers he felt the ring on his thumb and his mouth pulled into a smile, some of the tension draining from his body as he absently turned the metal circle round and round, lightly tracing the Norse symbols with the pads of his fingers.

His cousin had paid a visit to Andrew's chambers the evening before. "I have something for you," Sylvester had said, looking uncharacteristically uncomfortable while holding out his hand.

Andrew had given him a look of suspicion that had only been partly mocking. "It had better not be keys."

A few days before Sylvester had tried to make Andrew a wedding present of a house in London, his argument being that such a gift was really for him, rather than Andrew and Stacia.

Sylvester chuckled. "No, it is not a key. It is not a gift at all. It already belongs to you." He dropped something cool and metallic into his palm.

It was the ring his cousin had given him when Andrew had saved his life, a twin of the one Chatham had never taken off.

Andrew had felt an alarming moistness in his eyes when he'd slipped the heavy ring onto his thumb. "Thank you. I am glad to have it back."

"And I am glad to have my brother back," Chatham had replied.

"If you are trying to make me weep like a schoolgirl, you are not going to be successful," Andrew had warned, belying that promise when he'd needed to glare up at the ceiling for a full minute while his cousin had caught him in a rib-cracking embrace.

Andrew knew it wasn't the ring itself which settled his jittery nerves. It was the meaning behind it. And the man who'd given it to him.

And where the hell was that man now? Andrew glanced around the church yet again, jittery. He reached for his watch but stopped himself just in time.

He had no idea why he was so agitated. He had been fine that morning when he'd' woken up. Optimistic, even. Marriage had not been something he'd given serious thought to for as long as he could remember. The only reason he would have contemplated taking a wife was to manipulate Sylvester in his war of vengeance.

But now…

Now he was eager.

Indeed, waiting these past eight days had been agony. He constantly relived those nights in the priest hole and burned for her.

But he didn't just want to bed Stacia. He was impatient to take her home to Rosewood and start a life with her.

Home.

When was the last time he'd thought of Rosewood that way? Had he ever?

The nine days might have been a hellish wait, but there was no denying that his feelings for her had grown exponentially as they'd come to know each other better.

For the first time in his life, he hadn't wanted his solitary morning rides; he'd wanted Stacia with him. He'd wanted to tell her about Rosewood, about the stud farm—about everything—and he'd wanted to hear her opinions and ideas about everything.

It had struck Andrew—when he and Stacia had been discussing the possibility of resurrecting the long disused dairy at Rosewood—that a good marriage was also a partnership, two like-minded people pulling together in harness.

Who would have believed he would ever entertain such a domestic thought?

Was it possible that what he felt was not just sexual attraction and deep affection but…

Love ?

Andrew stared without seeing, his already disordered thoughts now in utter disarray.

Damnit! Love? Could that be it?

He looked up dazedly from his roiling thoughts to find the Duchess of Chatham regarding him with her usual unreadable gaze.

Andrew had been startled—but pleased—when Stacia had asked his cousin's wife to stand as her matron of honor. Her choice ought not have surprised him as the normally reserved duchess had exhibited an almost solicitous interest in Stacia ever since freeing her from the priest hole.

"Sylvester forgot the ring and had to go back for it," the duchess explained in a quiet voice. "I believe he is almost as nervous as you."

"Ah." What else could he say? He was nervous; nervous that Stacia would come to her senses and abandon him at the altar.

"I like Miss Martin," the duchess said.

Andrew couldn't help grinning. "So do I."

His humor did nothing to melt her icy fa?ade. Or perhaps that was the duchess? Ice, through and through. But Andrew didn't think so. Especially considering the way she sometimes stared at Sylvester when she thought nobody else was looking: as if she wanted to consume him.

"Chatham believes you will do right by her," she said.

Andrew bristled at her carefully worded comment, which implied that she did not think the same thing. "That is certainly my intention," he said stiffly.

After a long, uncomfortable moment, she said, "I agree with him."

Andrew's eyebrows leapt at this unprecedented sign of approval.

Before he could come up with something to say—and probably irritate her again—the doors opened and Sylvester and Stacia entered the nave, arm in arm.

He gawked like a star struck youth.

She was…radiant.

Her gown of emerald-green velvet made her look like a burst of spring on a frigid winter's day. She held a bouquet of white hydrangeas with a few sprigs of prickly holly and bright red berries in the middle.

He lifted his gaze higher, until their eyes met.

Her loving smile touched off an explosion inside him to rival a pyrotechnic display at Vauxhall Gardens.

Andrew was far too addled to identify all the emotions that filled him to near bursting, but the cumulative effect was a feeling of…rightness.

Was that normal? Was rightness a proper feeling to have for one's prospective bride?

It feels right because it is love, you dolt.

Andrew blinked and looked up from the revelatory thought—doubtless grinning like an idiot—and saw mild puzzlement in Stacia's eyes.

He knew he should at least acknowledge his cousin, but he could not look away from her, more engrossed than he'd ever been in his life.

The vicar's words all ran together. Andrew was impressed that he was able to speak his responses when it was time for him to do so.

"—you may kiss your bride."

Those words shook him from his fugue.

Stacia gazed up at him with love. Not adoration for the handsome face and body the rest of the world saw, but love for Andrew , the flawed, damaged man inside who had made one disastrous decision after another.

Until her.

Her lips twitched and he realized he was staring. Andrew collected a few of his remaining wits and gently claimed her upturned mouth with a chaste kiss while promising, with his eyes, much, much, much more later.

The Bellamy siblings and their spouses made enough racket for three times their number when Andrew and his new wife walked down the aisle. The short journey to the dining room was a raucous, laughter-filled pilgrimage.

Lord and Lady Needham had orchestrated a magnificent wedding breakfast. True to form the seating defied convention and Andrew found himself between Mrs. Nora Walker and Kathryn.

"Congratulations, my lord," Mrs. Walker said, her beautiful face shining with a sort of serenity that seemed strange to him, given that she was at the family home of her former lover's wife.

"Thank you, ma'am," he said.

"They are a lovely family." Her gaze flickered over the Bellamy sisters and lingered on Lady Crewe. "I did not want to come here for Christmas."

Andrew leaned closer to whisper, "Me neither."

They both laughed.

"Why did you?" he asked now that she had raised the subject.

"Because Aurelia convinced me. She pointed out that Guustin would not come here without me, and that Crewe would miss his son at Christmas." She shrugged. "It seemed selfish to say no ."

"Are you glad you came?"

"Very. I did not have a large family, so this has been lovely."

Chatham, who was on her other side, asked her something and she excused herself.

Andrew took a deep breath and turned to Kathryn.

She was waiting for him. Andrew had not spent any time alone with her since before the priest hole incident. She looked tired and there were dark smudges beneath her brilliant eyes.

The smile she gave him was tentative—un-Kathryn-like, in other words—and Andrew sighed. "I might as well say it, as I've been thinking it for days. Thank you."

Her eyes bulged.

Andrew chuckled at her reaction. "What?" he taunted. "You do not think me a big enough man to admit when somebody else is right and I am wrong?"

"Not when that somebody is a girl," she shot back, showing some spirit.

"A woman," he corrected. "You are no girl, Kathryn. You are…formidable."

She looked cheered by that description. "I did not choose Stacia capriciously, you know. Mrs. Leary mentioned more than once how she'd felt dreadful stealing your attention when so many other women would have genuinely liked it. She mentioned Stacia specifically."

Andrew hated hearing that. He hated yet more confirmation that he'd forgotten her. Over and over again.

"You know that you forget things, Andrew."

Andrew waited for the surge of rage he'd felt when she had poked at him in the past. But it didn't come.

"I know," he finally said.

"Are you afraid?"

He looked up from his mostly untouched soup. "What do you think?"

She nodded, sympathy in her eyes.

"What happened to you at your aunt's house?" he asked.

Her eyes, so open a moment earlier, shuttered. "I don't know what you mean."

Yes, she did. But it was Andrew's wedding day and the last thing he wanted to do was rub salt in her wound—and there was a wound, of that he was sure.

And so he said, "What do you think the chances are that Chatham can make your sister ride the entire way to London in the coach?"

Kathryn snorted. "I'll not take that wager, thank you."

Andrew laughed.