Dark Angel / Lord Carew's Bride (50 page)

He kissed her, very lightly, very briefly, on the lips. And while the congregation murmured with what sounded like a collective sigh, he smiled at her. His facial muscles obeyed his will this time. He smiled at his bride, his wife.

And she smiled back.

Sometimes happiness could be almost an agony, he had discovered on the day she had accepted his offer. But sometimes it could be such a welling of pure joy that it seemed impossible that one human frame could contain it without exploding into a million fragments.

There was the register to sign. And then the organ was pealing out a glorious anthem as he set his bride’s right arm on his left and took her back along the aisle she had descended such a short while ago with her uncle. She was smiling, he saw, looking across at her, and there was color in her cheeks again. He smiled about him at the gathered
ton
, only a few of whom he knew well, but most of whom he had met within the past month. There was Lady Brill, with red-rimmed eyes and watery
smile. And Gerson, grinning and winking. And Lionel, with an unfathomable expression.

They were outside on the pavement, the sounds of the organ suddenly faint behind them, a small crowd of the curious standing at a little distance from the waiting carriages. Soon the congregation would spill outside and there would be a damnable crush. He reached across with his stiff right hand and set it lightly on top of hers.

“Samantha Wade, Marchioness of Carew,” he said. He wanted to be the first—after the rector—to say it aloud. “You look more beautiful than there are words to describe you.”

“Oh, I do sound very grand.” She laughed breathlessly. “And you look splendidly handsome, Hartley.”

She was looking through the eyes of love, he thought fondly.

Their one moment of near privacy was at an end.

T
HE BALLROOM AT
C
AREW
House, Stanhope Gate, was large. Even so, it appeared crowded, with tables set up along its whole length and the cream of the
ton
seated for the wedding breakfast. Samantha, sitting beside her husband, still felt numb, as she had done since waking up from a fitful sleep. It was hard to grasp that it was over, that it was done. She was married. Hartley was her husband.

All yesterday she had been sick with indecision. Literally sick. She had vomited three separate times and had noticed her aunt’s look of startled speculation.
But the vomiting had been caused entirely by nerves and last-minute doubts. Was it right to marry just for convenience—for
safety?
What if, after all, life had love to offer her? It would be too late to discover that it did after tomorrow.

She had told Aunt Aggy only about the nerves. She had had to say
something
after her aunt had asked her straight out if it was possible she was increasing.

“Because if you had been,” Aunt Aggy had said with a sigh after she had been assured that it was no such thing—she had sounded almost disappointed, “I would not have to proceed to instruct you on what you must expect of your wedding night. I have no wish to add to your fears, dear, but it is as well to be prepared.”

She had proceeded with the lecture Jenny had warned about. Samantha had blushed at the graphic and quite dispassionate description of the physical process—some of it she had not known before. But part of her mind had been elsewhere, unwillingly turning over her doubts once more.

Lionel had danced with her twice in the past two weeks. Each time he had been pale and restrained and serious and, of course, impossibly handsome. He had made no further reference to her betrothal. In fact, he had spoken very little—with his voice. His blue eyes had spoken volumes. And somehow she had found it difficult during those sets—waltzes, of course—to stop herself from looking into his eyes.

He had behaved honorably for the past two weeks. As honorably as Francis and Jeremy and Sir Robin and all
the rest of her gentlemen friends. She would have preferred it if he had been more obviously snakelike.

She had begun to doubt again. To doubt her own judgment of him. Six years was a long time. He had spent those years traveling abroad. He had aged during those years from five-and-twenty to one-and-thirty. From young manhood to maturity.

What if he had been sincere all the time? He had told her that he had wanted her as his countess. She might have known with him again the heights of romantic love.

And perhaps the depths, too. Perhaps he was not sincere. And even if he had really wanted to marry her and had done so, would he have remained faithful to her for the rest of their lives? Would she have known again the misery that was the exact antithesis of the joy of love?

She was doing the right thing. The sort of affection she and Hartley felt for each other—she did not believe she was using too strong a word—would remain constant. He would always be kind and gentle with her. They would always be friends. She need never fear that he would be unfaithful. And she—she would devote herself to him once they were married. She would hope that there would be a child soon—surely he meant for it to be a normal marriage. She would be safe.

But the doubts had started again and had continued all day and on through the night—a constant cycle of fear and panic and reassurance and good sense.

And now it was all over. Now she could let the doubts rest. It was too late now to doubt. They were married.
The wedding ceremony had affected her far more deeply than she had expected. It had seemed up until she had seen him this morning, looking smart and even handsome in a new blue coat with gray breeches and very white linen, that it was a practical and sensible alliance they were contracting. But in the event it had turned out to be—a marriage. He was not just a friend she had decided to live with for the rest of her life. He was her husband.

She shivered with the finality of it.

He touched her hand with light fingertips and leaned toward her. “You have eaten very little,” he said.

She smiled at him. “Would it not amaze everyone if the bride ate heartily?” she asked.

She loved the way his eyes smiled. She could almost fall in love with that smile, she thought, startled.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow you will be able to eat again.”

She felt herself blushing. And yet she did not dread the coming night, despite Aunt Aggy’s warnings and her new realization that there was more than the mere penetration of her body to be expected. But she did not dread it. She was only a little embarrassed at the thought of doing it with a friend rather than with a lover.

They had been greeted by a dizzying number of people outside the church, almost all of whom had kissed her cheeks and squeezed her hand and pumped Hartley’s hand—he had offered his left, she noticed—and kissed him, too, if they happened to be female. But even so, she had not seen everyone. And even now, she had
been sitting and eating—or not eating—in such a daze that she had not looked at each separate guest. There were a few—friends of Hartley’s—that she did not even know or knew only very vaguely by sight.

He had presented her to Lord Gerson, one of his particular friends, a couple of weeks ago at an afternoon fête. She smiled at the man now and he winked at her. He seemed to find the marriage of his friend a huge joke. In fact, he had remarked to her at that fête that he had never seen Hartley in town during the Season before and had known that there must be a woman behind his appearance this time.

“And, by Jove, everything is as clear as daylight to me now that I have clapped eyes on you, Miss Newman,” he had said. “Carew is a lucky dog.”

There was Lord Hawthorne toward the back of the ballroom, not far from Francis. Francis was looking quite eye-catching in a lemon-yellow coat with pale turquoise waistcoat. It looked as if he were flirting with the ladies on either side of him. He was certainly doing a great deal of smiling and laughing.

Had he been serious? Probably not. He seemed to have recovered very nicely. She hoped he had not been serious. She was fond of him.

And there was—oh, dear God. Dear God! Had he been there all the time? He was seated in the middle of the ballroom, looking so startlingly conspicuous that she could not believe he had not suddenly appeared there from nowhere. Had he been at the church? What was he doing here? He had certainly not been on her
guest list. And not on Hartley’s, either, though he had told her that he had issued some verbal invitations and not bothered to add them to his written list. But Hartley could not have invited
him
.

Her eyes met his and he looked steadily and gravely at her before she snatched her eyes away. She had not noticed how hot the room had become, how heavy the air was with a hundred different perfumes. She breathed slowly through her mouth, determined not to pant.

There were speeches and toasts and applause and laughter. Hartley got up to speak and she smiled and touched his arm, aware that he was saying something complimentary about her and something about his own good fortune.

He was very sweet. Did he not realize that she was the fortunate one? She felt a sudden wave of gladness—that it was all over and doubts were at rest, that she was safe at last. With a man she trusted and liked.

Those who had not greeted them personally outside the church did so after the breakfast. Guests milled about the ballroom while servants discreetly tried to clear the tables. Guests wandered into the hall and the drawing room and out onto the terrace and into the garden. Samantha was separated from her husband, who was dragged off to the drawing room by someone she scarcely knew to meet an elderly dowager who had known his grandfather. Samantha was led into the garden by several of her lady friends, two of whom linked arms with her.

There she received the homage of her court—she
could almost hear Gabriel’s voice describing the scene thus and smiled, though she suddenly missed him and Jenny dreadfully.

Francis told her that they were all going to go into deep mourning the next day and into a permanent decline after that. But she tapped him sharply on the arm and reminded him that his behavior at table earlier had hardly been that of a man planning to pine away from unrequited love.

He grinned at her and squeezed both her hands and kissed both her cheeks. Sir Robin followed suit and then Jeremy Nicholson and several others.

She must go and find Hartley, she thought. It felt wrong to be without him.

“Oh, dear,” she said suddenly, as her eyes blurred and tears spilled over onto her cheeks. Talking thus with all her old friends and suitors, she had realized anew that her life had changed irrevocably today, that she was a bride and a wife. And that the thought was a pleasing one. “Oh, dear, how foolish I am.”

“You see, Samantha?” Sir Robin said. “You are grieving along with us. But for which one of us in particular? That is the intriguing question.” He smiled kindly at her while Francis handed her a large linen handkerchief.

She dabbed at her eyes with it and then clutched it in her hand. Francis had turned away, his attention called by one of the ladies who had sat beside him at breakfast.

“Something old and something new,” a quiet voice said into her ear, and she spun around, effectively cutting herself off from the small group that still lingered about
her. “The pearls are the ones you had as a girl. Your mother’s, at a guess. The dress is new and very lovely.”

“Thank you,” she said, smiling uncertainly at Lionel. She did not like to ask him what he did there. She feared he must have brazened his way in without an invitation. But why?

“Something borrowed,” he said, one long, well-manicured finger flicking at the handkerchief she held clutched in one hand. “But nothing blue, Samantha?”

“I did not think of it,” she said, gazing into his blue eyes. They looked sad.

“I did,” he said. “I brought you a wedding gift. A family heirloom. It has always been very precious to me. I wanted to give it to you on the occasion of your wedding.” The shadow of a frown crossed his brow for one moment, but he smiled as he reached into a pocket and brought out a small box. He did not hand it to her but opened it and showed her the contents. His eyes looked into her face the whole while.

She breathed in deeply. The sapphire stone of the brooch was surrounded by diamonds in a pleasingly old-fashioned setting.

“Something blue,” he said.

“Oh, my lord,” she said, in deep distress. It was such a beautiful, personal gift. “I could not.”

“No,” he said softly, “you could not refuse a wedding gift, could you? As a token of my—esteem, Samantha?”

“No.” She still shook her head. “It is too—personal, my lord. I do thank you. Truly I do. But I could not accept it.”

“Whatever would Hartley say if you refused it?” he asked.

“H—Hartley?” She looked at him, frowning.

He laughed suddenly. “My cousin,” he said. “My cousin Hartley. We practically grew up together. Has he not told you? And I have not, either, until now, have I? There are some things one assumes another must know; but there is no reason you should have. I am sorry. My mother and his father were sister and brother. I spent a large part of my youth in Yorkshire, at Highmoor.”

She could remember that one year, when Jenny was to have made her come-out and her engagement to Lionel was to become official, it had all been postponed because Lionel was in Yorkshire attending his uncle, who was gravely ill. And she remembered that it was some ghastly personal feud between Lionel and Gabriel that had thrown Jenny into the midst of such a dreadful scandal and had forced her to marry Gabriel. But she had never known or asked for all the details. Lionel was Hartley’s
cousin?

“The idea has taken you by surprise,” he said. He was unpinning the brooch from its small velvet cushion inside the box. “But you see, you and I are cousins by marriage. And this is
a family
heirloom. You will not refuse it now, will you? And you really must have something blue.”

“Yes,” she said uncertainly. “Thank you, my lord.”

She watched rather unhappily as he took the brooch from the box and reached across to pin it himself on her dress, just above her left breast. The pin was stiff. His
fingers lingered for what seemed an eternity and burned her flesh through the thin muslin of her dress. One of his hands brushed downward over her breast, touching the sensitive nipple, when he was finished and was examining the effect of his handiwork.