Page 66 of The Defiant One
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.
