Page 1 of A Bride By Morning
PROLOGUE
SURREY, 1863
Don’t cry. Don’t cry.Miss Lydia Cecil repeated the same thought for what seemed like days now.
Sometime that morning, she had gained a meager command over her sentiments. Her maid had dressed her in a festive frock that was the sunny shade of a ripe lemon. It did not serve Lydia’s mood, but black—the color that fit it best—might have been considered too dramatic. After all, it wasn’t as if someone had died.
Saying goodbye to someone she loved, however, seemed to Lydia like a thing to grieve.
Gabriel St. Clair waited in her aunt’s drawing room. He leaned against the window frame, tapping his gloves against his trousers. On a typical day, Lydia’s breath might have caught at the sight of him. He cut such an imposing figure: he was tall and broad even at nineteen, and his tailored suit complemented an athletic frame that benefitted from hours at his swimming club. Gabriel’s dark auburn hair gleamed in the morning sunlight that radiated through the windows, but his countenance held a severity and bleakness that indicated the weather ill-suited his emotions every bit as much as hers.
All at once, Lydia’s eyes stung again. But she blinked back her tears and joined him in the drawing room. “Gabriel,” she said.
He turned from the window. His verdant eyes swept her face, then snagged on that too-bright dress she wore. His smile was small, a reflex expression rather than genuine amusement. “Going out for a picnic to celebrate my departure?”
A shaky breath left Lydia as she shut the drawing room door. It would have been more appropriate to leave it ajar, but she desired these last few moments with him in private. “Don’t jest, please. Not when you’ve come to tell me goodbye.”
That little smile faded, replaced with a remorseful, beseeching look. “I’ll only be gone a few years. Then I’ll come back—”
“Unless you’re given a post in another country,” she said, drawing closer. “Isn’t that the nature of diplomatic service? You’re placed wherever you’re told to go?”
She stared out the window at the rolling hills of Surrey, where they had grown up as neighbors. Gabriel had been her only friend since Lydia had come to live with Lady Derby after the abrupt death of her parents ten years prior. Lydia adored her aunt and the other village matrons, but children her age were not exactly in abundance within the small parish. But Lady Derby had mentioned that the second son of her nearest neighbor, the Earl of Montgomery, was a mere two years Lydia’s senior—and so she and Gabriel became fast friends.
She had endured Gabriel’s absence while he was away at Eton. And then again when he’d left for Oxford. Their childhood camaraderie had been maintained entirely through letters until he returned, and they spent time together as if he had never left.
But now . . .
It’s only a few years. Only a few years.Why, then, did those words sound so absolute? In her friendless world,only a few yearsresembled an eternity.
“I suppose,” Gabriel admitted. “But I need time away from England if I wish for an ambassadorship. Better this than a grand tour, yes?”
“The grand tour has a finite end,” Lydia countered. Her gaze remained on the hills; if she looked at him now, she reallywouldstart crying.
“When credit has run out.” Gabriel tapped his gloves against his trousers again. “I’m trying not to be a son who shows up on his father’s doorstep every few months with his hand outstretched, Lydia.”
She understood that second sons did not have the same security and funds as an heir. While some benefited from generous fathers and older brothers, others sought work. Gabriel had always yearned to travel, to make his way in the world. She’d admired that about him, had sat by the little pond near Meadowcroft and made daisy crowns while Gabriel described places he longed to visit that matched the languages he had an aptitude for cultivating quickly. Lydia had tried to hide her blush of desire when he spoke to her in French and German, Italian and Russian, Spanish and Greek and Portuguese. So many words that she could not comprehend, but she’d focused on the smooth baritone of his voice and reveled in it like sunlight.
But now he was leaving again.
She swallowed back every protestation. How could she ruin this for him? How could she be selfish? In the end, she said, “Then promise you’ll write to me. You were a terrible correspondent at Oxford, and I wish to hear about Vienna or wherever else you go. Tell meeverything.”
Gabriel’s lip quirked up in that charming smile she’d adored since she was six years old. “I promise. And I’ll return for your first season.” Then he reached out and stroked her cheek, and Lydia went entirely still. He had touched her many times over the years, but never more than a platonic pat on the shoulder. However, something about how he stroked a thumb across her face was different. “Delay it for me, Lydia.”
Delay . . . ?
Her breath caught. They had never discussed their future, but Lydia supposed it was glaringly apparent that she had loved him for years. But did he mean . . . “Why?” she asked.
Lydia wanted to keep his answer in her memories when he went off to locations she had never visited. A motivation to wait. A reason to let her heart have hope.
“Because for weeks now I’ve imagined some pompous duke asking for your hand, and when I return, I’d like to court you properly before I marry you,” he said, his voice light. Then, before Lydia could answer, his attention flickered to the clock on the mantel, and he straightened. His hand fell away. “Time for me to go. Promise you’ll wait for me?”
“I’ll wait for you,” she told him. Her heart soared with hope. He wanted towedher. “I promise.”
Two years later, when Lydia ought to have made her debut in society, she kept her pledge. She stalled her first season by one year.
And then by two.
And then again by three.
