She couldn’t trust this feeling. If she remembered correctly, it was composed of rare and elusive elements: security…safety…hope.
A dangerous element, that last one. It might lead her to think everything might come out all right in the end.
She shooed the feeling away. She couldn’t trust it.
It lurked in a corner of her soul, patiently waiting for her to allow her guard to slip, which she quite simply couldn’t do.
It would be the height of foolishness.
Chapter Fourteen
As discreetly ashe could manage, Jamie wiped damp palms on his trousers, pretending to attend the conversation being held up mostly by Nick and the Bishop of London. He’d never spent such a nerve-riddled three days as the ones since he’d last seen Hortense.
The very thought of her had his eye flicking down the center aisle of the family chapel. Light streaming through a small rose window that was over five hundred years old illuminated the gray-veined white marble floor in a heavenly glow. But it remained empty of her. He couldn’t quell the doubt she wouldn’t put in an appearance.
“Jamie,” cut into his preoccupation.
He glanced over to find Nick regarding him as if expecting an answer. “Can you repeat the question?”
“Have you the bridal ring?”
Jamie patted his waistcoat pocket. It was there. He grunted in the affirmative.
Nick’s brow furrowed. “One of Mother’s?”
“Of course not,” Jamie retorted with too much force.
The Bishop’s eyebrows lifted in a straight uninterrupted line, a bushy caterpillar on his forehead. The thing was, since Hortense had tiptoed into his life with all the quiet of a hurricane, his emotions were all too big, as if they’d somehow grown in size and were spilling out of him at every opportunity.
He dug the ring from his pocket and held it up for Nick, who studied the piece of jewelry for a good, long thirty seconds. For whatever blasted reason, Jamie’s breath suspended in his chest and the rate of his heart kicked up a notch.
“That is quite a stone, brother.”
“Is it too much?” It very possibly was.
“I doubt she’ll be able to lift her hand.”
Jamie grunted and again glanced toward the center aisle. Still, no Hortense.
The jeweler at Rundell’s had explained that he knew any number of ladies who would gladly give up a firstborn son for a sapphire of that size and clarity.
“Doesn’t it need some diamonds around it, or something more?” Jamie had asked. The simple gold band had looked rather plain to his eye.
The jeweler had pinned him with a long look. “When one has a large, perfect stone such as this, one lets it sing its aria alone.”
And, now, looking at the ring, Jamie was glad he’d listened to the man. Hortense wouldn’t want an ostentatious ring. Or, at least, not one more ostentatious.
Nick clapped him on the back. “She will be the envy of every lady of theton.”
With her jaded eye, Hortense would view the gift in exactly the same light, except from a different angle. It would be part of their ruse to sell their story of impetuous love. Notoriety was bound to follow.
Yet Jamie viewed it in neither light. Simply, he’d seen the ring and known in an instant that she had to have it. That was all.
“Well, everything seems to be in order. We simply need the bride.”
Jamie caught a tone in his brother’s voice. Nick had his doubts.
Three nights ago, after he’d left Hortense at her lodgings, he’d gone straightaway to see Nick.
