“Stop this ceremony at once! I exercise my right to protest! I have good reason that this man and woman should not,cannotbe married!” shouted Maximilien Voss.
Marcus’ face grew dark, his eyes focusing past Selina. She whirled and saw her father striding down the aisle. The murmur became an explosion of protest and questions. All at once, people were talking to each other or remonstrating with the interloper. Some younger men got up and tried to manhandle him from the church. Selina heard the brisk footsteps of her future husband and turned in time to see murder on Marcus’ face. She turned back to her father who was swatting at the people who were trying to make him leave, brandishing his cane. He glared at her, face purple.
“This man is not Arthur Roy, Duke of Valebridge. Arthur Roy is dead! He is an impostor!” Voss screeched triumphantly.
Beveridge seized his master and tried to stop him from reaching Voss. The old man slid several paces along the polished stone floor as Marcus simply kept walking as though there was no obstruction in his way. Selina calmly strode past Beveridge, and when she reached her father, she balled her hand into a fist, swung, and hit him squarely on the nose.
CHAPTER27
“How dare he! How dare any of them! Damnation and hellfire!” Marcus raged.
He paced the floor of his study before a roaring fire. Selina barely felt the warmth more than a few feet from the ancient hearth. It was as though the shadowy dark room leached it from the air itself. She sat still in her wedding dress, though the sky outside had darkened. Marcus’ overcoat lay in a heap where he had thrown it, his waistcoat atop it. Both had been angry when Maximilien Voss had made his entrance. Both had calmed to a calm icy anger, but Marcus’ ire was being stoked again.
Selina knew that he was dwelling on her father’s defiance once he was shielded from harm by the servants he had brought with him, and his continuous insistence that Marcus was an impostor did little to allay her betrothed’s fury.
Then the priest’s refusal to continue the ceremony until the accusation had been investigated only stoked that ire further. Had it come from a man or woman of no status, Selina was sure it would have been dismissed without another thought. In that situation, she and Marcus would be married by now. But, it had not been made by a commoner. It had been made by a gentleman. A man supposedly of honor and breeding. The priest was horrified at the thought that he must defy a Duke but equally horrified at the idea of ordering an Earl out of his church.
The idea that the Duke may not be a Duke. Selina’s father had presented the priest with quite a quandary, forcing him to choose between two gentlemen. He had refused to make such a choice and had instead declared that he would not conduct the ceremony until the accusation was proved false.
Marcus and Selina had returned to Valebridge. Selina’s father had left, though Selina did not know for where. But he had been muttering imprecations as he went, clutching a bloody nose and glaring at the two of them.
How could he have possibly known?
That was the question that Marcus could not dislodge and the question that kept fanning the flames of his anger. Now those flames were bursting into explosive heat once more.
“I’m sorry,” Selina said miserably.
Marcus rounded on her. “Do not say that. I will not hear it. You have nothing to apologize for. You are not responsible for your father, nor any member of your family. I am not angry at you,” Marcus said.
As it had earlier, Selina’s sorrow seemed to have a calming effect on Marcus. Now, once again, it doused the embers of his anger, bringing chagrin to the forefront. He strode to her, dropping to his knees and taking her hand, pressing it to his lips.
“I have a license for us to marry. I will find another priest, and this time, your father will have no opportunity to sabotage us,” he said earnestly.
Selina shook her head sadly. “Do you think the priest at Folkington will not talk to others? To his bishop and others in the diocese? By tomorrow, I doubt there will be a priest in the Church of England, Scotland, Wales, or Rome that will be willing to marry us.”
“His reach is not so great as that,” Marcus said wryly.
Selina smiled and saw a rueful grin on Marcus’ face. Her exaggeration had been calculated to bring that humor out of him. She ran a hand down the side of his face, gazing into his eyes.
“I know that you only suggested our marriage as a transaction to avoid scandal, but I did want it very badly,” she whispered.
“As did I. I feel somewhat of a fool for saying that to a woman I have known for a few weeks. But I cannot deny the desire of my heart. It was supposed to be a marriage of convenience, but…”
“But it feels like it would have been a marriage in the truest sense of the word,” Selina finished.
“Indeed. And now that it has been wrongly denied to us…I want it even more. No man has the right to tell me who I may take as wife. None!”
Selina leaned from her seat and kissed him on the lips, seeing the sparks of anger flying from him once more. He calmed as her lips pressed into his, his hands cupping her face. A single, lingering kiss became a plethora of soft, loving caresses of their lips. Feather-light touches and longer, moist kisses brought gasps of desire from Selina. Marcus’ hands went to her neck, tracing the line of her wedding dress, wandering down over the material as though he could feel the flesh beneath. Under his touch, the dress seemed flimsy to Selina, hardly a barrier at all between him and her nakedness.
“Nevertheless,” Selina whispered after the last of the kisses, “we cannot legally be married until this is resolved. And it cannot be resolved because you are not Arthur Roy.”
Marcus looked frustrated, pressing his forehead against hers as his arms went around her back.
“I will consult with Elliot Russell. There must be a legal means open to us.”
“A legal means that means you prove that you are the man you have been impersonating?” Selina said with skepticism.
Marcus let his head fall into her lap with a despairing sigh and she ran her fingers through his hair.
