Page 5 of The Earl and the Wedding Crasher
I am careful, she had told Alexandra, darling Alexandra. I won't ruin you.
How much was that worth now?
The chapel was mostly empty at last, her family sitting around her in protective if shocked silence at Cedric Pembroke finally strode towards them. His face was dark with anger and his eyes flashing so fiercely that Louisa was not sure she could stand up to face him.
"Miss Balfour," he said in a voice colder than ice. "As far as my memory recalls I have met you for this first time this morning. What possessed you to tell an entire congregation of thetonthat we have an understanding?"
Louisa swallowed hard and slowly stood up, barely managing to meet his gaze with her own. Her face was hot with shame and embarrassment. "I wanted to tell you earlier, my lord. LadyBettie is pregnant. I believe she has not disclosed this to you and I felt that I was honor-bound to stop the wedding."
A small gasp rippled through those waiting with her. Her brothers-in-law had stood, and with them Evelina, an expression of such concern and disappointment on her face that Louisa felt certain her heart would break and Margaret, who looked confused and scared. Alexandra was still sitting and Penelope looked as though she wanted to shout and cry at once.
"Why did you not speak to me of this earlier?" Lord St Vincent demanded, his tone rough with fury. "Why do this in the most dramatic and harmful way possible?"
"I attempted to!" Louisa said, cut by the implication that she had not done everything that she could have. "You were not listening to me, you would not hear me!"
"Perhaps that is so, but how long have you had this news about my life and my fiancée? Did you not think you might write me a letter?"
"Perhaps, my lord, you are more used to being in this situation than I am," Louisa said, her hands clenching at her sides. Was it not enough that she had ruined herself to save him? Must he pick at her like this? "I did not want the information, and I did nothing to avail myself of it. I overheard quite by accident some friends of your fiancée speaking of the matter barely a few days ago and I have been unable to think of a way of fixing the matter since."
He loomed over her, eyes glinting and it felt a little as though she were struggling to breathe when she looked at him. "I do believe that any solution would have been better than the one that you have chosen." He did not shout at her, but his tone was worse than a shout, it was dark with rage as he spun to glare at his friends. "And you, did you know this would happen? Did you know she was planning to interrupt my wedding and not tell me of it?"
"St Vincent," Gabriel said seriously. "'I can assure you that this was as much a surprise to us as it was to you." He stepped up to Lord St Vincent quickly, Theodore beside him, his face clouded with concern.
"As do I. We would not betray you in such a manner."
Louisa found herself with a sister on either side of her lacing their arms through her own. She could feel Alexandra trembling on one side, and Evelina's steady calm on her other. Her own heart was racing, and she felt certain that she might faint any moment.
She had never fainted before, but everything was swimming, and her vision grew a little dark before Evelina noticed with a cry and pulled her towards a chair.
"Fan her face," she said firmly to Alexandra. "Penelope, go get a little sweet wine, this minute please. Margaret, raise her feet, yes, that's it. Good."
Louisa let it happen to her, listening as Theodore and Gabriel appealed to the Earl on her behalf as though she were a foolish child who needed saving. And wasn't she? She had done this to herself because she couldn't think of a way to tell a strange man that she needed to tell him something private.
"She has been ruined now for certain," Theodore was saying. "And it was to save you from raising another man's child as your heir, St Vincent."
"Please help her," Margaret said, her musical voice soft and desperate. "She will never recover from such a scandal. She is known as a shy girl in society, the rumors will be all the more vicious for it because she has no particular friends to speak out on her behalf."
Louisa raised her eyes, a little startled and a little hurt at this assessment, this reduction of her life into bare fact and saw Theodore with a hand on the Earl's shoulder. The two men exchanged a long look and the Earl sighed heavily before turning back to her with a dark look on his face as though he could barely stand to look at her.
"Very well. I will go to the Bishop and arrange a dispensation. We will not need to wait three weeks for the banns to be read and that should ensure that there is little enough time for the usual nastiness to spread before the wedding. I am certain I can arrange to have much of the decorations reused and use the same priest so Miss Balfour," he turned and looked at Louisa at last. "Procure a suitable dress as swiftly as you can. We will return here in three days' time and be wed."
That intense focus of his gaze was once again reading every paragraph of her soul. Louisa felt herself shiver a little. She had always assumed that she would die an old maid, and yet might it not be even more dangerous to be married to this strange, handsome, intense man that she knew so little of?
CHAPTER THREE
"Speak after me," the priest said, his kindly face wreathed in concern. "I, Louisa, take thee Cedric Pembroke as my lawful wedded husband."
The lace around her throat was itchy and the lacings of her dress were too tight in a way that she was not used to. The fabric was heavy and moved with a soft, thick rustling that was too loud over her strained nerves. Louisa had no idea how this had happened or how she was repeating after the kind priest every word he said until he gave her hand into Cedric's own, but she managed somehow.
Ever since the failed wedding three days before she had felt sick to her stomach.
I took someone's lover from themshe would find herself thinking over and over.And now I am forcing him to marry me instead. Oh what a fool you are, Louisa Balfour. What a fool!
Her elder sisters sorted out the dress, but in such a short timescale they could not get one tailored to her. They were lucky enough to find a very good dressmakers where a bride had called off the wedding before the big day and there was a very fine gown that could be adjusted to fit Louisa well enough that she would be presentable.
It was not a dress that she would have picked out for herself, a little old fashioned and too showy, a pale pink that did nothing for her coloring with flowers embroidered along the train in large bouquets that Louisa found far too sweet and fussy.
It was heavy and did not quite fit right. She wanted to tear it off and put on one of her light gowns and not be in this chapel wedding a stranger who must certainly hated her!
