“Did you know,” Kit asked, “that these guardians have been writing letters in your name? Declining the chance to take Lauren in as a child when her mother apparently disappeared during a long journey overseas, for example—even though her father had been a Viscount Whitleaf, presumably your uncle? Replying to her own overture of friendship when she was eighteen—eight years ago—with the information that you did not encourage indigent relatives or hangers-on?”

Viscount Whitleaf flushed and winced. “If ever I used to ask to see my correspondence or their replies,” he said, “they would call me a precocious cub or something equally endearing and look at me as if I were a particularly nasty insect that had crawled out from beneath the nearest piece of furniture. But that sounds just like them—what you just described, I mean. My mother told me last week that my aunt, Miss Edgeworth’s mother, was not highly regarded. She flirted with everything in breeches—according to my mother. And then she went off and married Wyatt before my uncle was cold in his grave. There was even a suspicion—er, perhaps I ought not to mention this. It’s doubtless nonsense, dreamed up by old tabbies who had nothing better to do with their time. It was even said, anyway, that her daughter—that is this Miss Edgeworth—was his. The new husband’s, I mean, and not my uncle’s.”

Kit, inclined to fury, decided on amusement instead. “But you still thought it might be jolly to meet her?” he asked.

“Oh, I did.” The young man smiled. “The family black sheep are invariably more interesting than the white sheep. They tend to be dead bores. Or worse.”

“Stay here,” Kit said. “Make yourself comfortable. Lauren is probably dancing with someone. I’ll fetch her down as soon as she is free. I can assure you beyond any reasonable doubt that my bride is indeed a legitimate member of the Edgeworth family.”

“Oh, I daresay,” the viscount said good-naturedly. “But I really wouldn’t care a fig if she wasn’t, you know.”

“She has your color eyes,” Kit said, smiling. “I should have realized who you were as soon as I walked through the door. But the light was behind you then.”

“Ah, the Edgeworth eyes,” the young man said. “They always look better on the women than the men.”

Kit chuckled to himself as he made his way back upstairs, greeting guests as he went, acknowledging their congratulations and good wishes. The stripling was surely going to discover within the next three or four years that women would fall all over themselves for just a single glance from Viscount Whitleaf’s violet eyes.

Chapter 24

Lauren’s dressing room suddenly seemed rather crowded even though she had dismissed her tearful maid five minutes before. The silly girl had sniffed and wept all through the hour of dressing her mistress and styling her hair. She had never been happier in her life, she had declared while hiccuping woefully, and though she did not entirely fancy not seeing her mum, who lived in Lower Newbury, so often, she would be thrilled to move to Alvesley and call Lord Ravensberg master. He was the handsomest, kindest gent she had ever clapped eyes upon.

Lauren had made allowances for the fact that it was a day when emotions could be expected to run high.

It was her wedding day.

Aunt Clara was the first to come to her dressing room. Lauren had not breakfasted with all the guests in the dining room. A tray had been brought up to the bedchamber, laden with appetizing foods, all her favorites. She had not been able to swallow one bite.

Aunt Clara enfolded her in a light hug, so as not to squash either of their wedding finery.

“Lauren,” she said. It was all she could say for a while, even though she smiled.

Oh, yes, it was a day for emotions. Lauren knew that her aunt was delighted for her. She had been dreadfully upset at the broken engagement, convinced as she had been at Alvesley that her niece had found happiness at last. She had actually wept—Neville and Lily had had to console her—when Lauren and Kit had walked into the drawing room at the abbey late on that wet afternoon a month ago. They had not needed to say a word. Everyone had known instantly that they were reconciled. It had been almost embarrassing. It must have been glaringly obvious why they had been so long down on the beach.

Gwen was next to come.

“Oh,” she said, stopping in the doorway, “how absolutely beautiful you are, Lauren. No one else I know—except perhaps Elizabeth—can get away with simplicity and make it look like elegance personified. Some of us are dumpy.”

Lauren laughed with true amusement. Gwen was small and curvy, but dumpy was the last word anyone would use to describe her.

And then Viscount Whitleaf—Cousin Peter—scratched on the door and peered inside, all eager flushes, when Gwen opened it.

“Oh, I say!” he said. “You do look splendid, Cousin. I am just off to the church. I thought I would poke my head in and say good morning and good wishes and all that, me being the only relative present on your papa’s side. I hope this is not an impertinence. The ball last night was rather jolly, was it not?”

Lauren hurried across the room and took both his hands in hers.

“The ball was very jolly,” she said, “in large measure because you came and I met you at last. You have made my happiness complete.”

“Oh, I say!” he exclaimed, looking pleased. “But I must be off.” He spotted Gwen beside the door and made her a bow. “May I thank you again, ma’am, for your extreme kindness in giving up your room for me last night?”

There had not been another available either at the abbey or at the dower house or at the inn. Gwen had slept on a truckle bed in Aunt Clara’s dressing room.

And then, less than two minutes after he had left, Neville and Lily appeared.

“We simply had to run up and see Lauren on our way to church,” Lily said by way of apology. “Oh, Lauren, how absolutely gorgeous you look. I am so happy for you. So happy.” She hugged Lauren, regardless of the danger to their finery—and of the growingly visible bulk of her condition.

Lauren hugged her back. “I love you, Lily,” she whispered.

“Well, I would think so too,” Lily said, quite unabashed. “If it were not for me, this would not be your wedding day, would it?”

Trust Lily to bring all that out into the open.

And then it was Neville’s turn. Like Aunt Clara, he said nothing—not even her name. But he wrapped his arms tightly about her and hugged her close. She twined her arms about him and closed her eyes.

Neville. Her dearly beloved Neville. The dearest, dearest brother a woman ever had. She knew—though they had not spoken of it—just how much today meant to him. It was the day when he would finally see her happiness complete, the day he could finally let go of his terrible guilt.

“Be happy,” he said, releasing her at last and smiling at her. “Promise me?”

“I promise.” She smiled back. “I love him, you see.”

“If we do not leave immediately, Neville,” Aunt Clara said, “the bride is going to race us to the church. What a disgrace that would be.”

They all laughed, and Aunt Clara bent one last, lingering look on Lauren as she left with Neville and Lily.

Lauren was left alone with Gwen. She turned and looked at her, her smile fading.

“Perhaps,” she said, “I should have suggested Alvesley for the wedding after all.”

Gwen understood. How could she not? They had been sisters and dearest friends for all of twenty-three years.

“No,” she said. “Your dignity and your courage have not failed you for more than a year and a half, Lauren. They will not fail you now.”

Lauren’s maid tapped on the door then and poked her head around it. She was still looking tearful. Baron Galton awaited Miss Edgeworth and Lady Muir in the hall below, she announced.

It was all so very reminiscent. . . .

It had been spring the last time—March. It was late October this time. The weather was just as lovely, cool but sunny. The trees surrounding the dower house and lining the short stretch of driveway before the carriage reached the park gates and drove out to the village and the church beyond were decked out in all the glorious colors of autumn. The driveway was carpeted with leaves already fallen.

The village green was dotted with villagers. A denser crowd of them clustered about the churchyard gates. The roadway surrounding the green was lined with empty carriages of all kinds. Their coachmen stood idly about, gawking at all the excitement, their colorful liveries distinguishing them from the villagers.

Ah, yes, eerily reminiscent.

Standing inside the church porch a few minutes later while Gwen stooped to straighten her hem and arrange her train, Lauren could sense crowds of people filling the church just beyond the line of her vision. The vicar would be waiting at the altar rail. So would Kit and Sydnam. She could visualize all the people outside, waiting for the ringing of the church bells to herald the completion of the marriage ceremony, waiting to catch a glimpse of bride and groom as they came out of church, newly married.

And she could almost feel a small, shabbily clad woman dashing up the churchyard path and into the porch and brushing past Lauren to hurry on into the church to bring the world crashing to an end.

Her grandfather was waiting patiently, smiling benevolently at her.

She thought she would surely faint. Worse, she felt horribly bilious. Panic clawed at the edges of her control. Then Gwen looked up at her—and stood up to take her hand and squeeze it tightly in both her own.

“Lauren,” she said softly, “it is all over now. The past is gone. The future awaits you. This is today—your wedding day. Your real wedding day.”

The great pipe organ began playing. Lauren’s grandfather offered his arm. And they stepped inside the church, into the long nave.

For a few moments she could see everything, as if it were all etching itself onto her memory for all time. Faces turned back to watch her approach, most of them familiar, almost all of them smiling. She even noticed individuals—Joseph, daring to wink at her, Claude and Daphne Willard, Aunt Sadie and Uncle Webster, the Duke of Bewcastle and Lord Rannulf Bedwyn, Elizabeth and the Duke of Portfrey, Cousin Peter, Kit’s grandmother, nodding and beaming, Lily and Neville, Aunt Clara, the Earl and Countess of Redfield.

But only for a few moments. Then her eyes focused on the end of the nave, where a man stood watching her come. He was not as tall as either the vicar on one side of him or Sydnam on the other. But he was handsome beyond belief and dressed with consummate elegance in a black, form-fitting tailed coat with ivory satin knee breeches and embroidered waistcoat and sparkling white linen and stockings. Lace frothed at his throat and wrists.

Kit!

He looked formal and solemn. But no! As she drew closer, Lauren could see that his eyes smiled. Not with his customary merriment and roguery, but with something that took her breath away even though she had known beyond any doubt for a whole month that he loved her. He had written daily from Alvesley—sometimes twice daily, once three times—to tell her so, often in outrageously florid language that he knew would have her laughing.

His eyes drew her to him. They warmed her from head to toe, they devoured her, they made her beautiful and desirable and very much wanted. His eyes adored her.

She wondered suddenly if she was smiling and discovered that she was.

She was also as terrified as she had been all through a sleepless night, all through the dressing for her wedding, all through coming to church and standing in the porch. Terrified that even now, even now when Grandpapa was answering the vicar’s question and giving her hand into Kit’s, something would happen. The wedding service— her wedding—had begun, she realized, but she could not concentrate on it. She thought it altogether possible that she might be going to faint.


He had never seen her more beautiful. Her dress of shimmering white satin was unadorned except at the hem and around the bottom of the train, at the edge of the short sleeves and about the scooped neckline, where it was delicately scalloped and decorated with silver embroidery and hundreds—perhaps thousands—of tiny pearls. Her bonnet, slippers, and long gloves were all white, the former adorned with the finest lace veil, which fell over her face. The only touches of color were the violet ribbon beneath her bosom, its ends trailing to her hem, and the small posy of violets and dark green leaves she carried in one hand.