“Usually,” said Mr. Reed, smiling down at her and patting her gloved hand, “but it was closed for a bit last year after that ceiling leak, so Tod lent me out to the Fox for a while. Now I visit from time to time.”
“Tod? Your brother?” Ambrose asked, enjoying this encounter less by the word. “I thought you called him Teddy.”
“I do,” she said with a shrug. “The boys call him Tod. Hannah calls him Thaddeus. I can’t account for it.”
“Vix!” came a voice from the church doors, drawing their attention around as the vicar emerged, much younger and bouncier than Ambrose had anticipated, running a hand over a mop of messy brown curls. “And Reed! To what do I owe the pleasure?”
He felt a little flutter of trepidation, glancing back around at the grinning enforcer warily.
Why was this vicar so fresh-faced and familiar with these two? What the devil was actually going on here?
“Are you a churchgoing man, Mr. Reed?” Ambrose asked, scratching at his chin and trying not to shift his weight around too much.
He got only a smug twinkle out of the corner of the other man’s eye in answer.
The vicar arrived, throwing his arms around Vix in a tight embrace, dropping a wet kiss on her cheek, and then gripping Mr. Reed’s forearm like an old comrade-in-arms before he even deigned to look over and notice Ambrose standing on his parish lawn, awaiting acknowledgement.
“Ah, hullo,” the vicar said, flashing a lopsided smile. “I don’t believe we’ve met?”
“Matthew, this is Ambrose Aster,” Vix said, stepping away from Mr. Reed to take Ambrose’s arm instead—a moment that immediately made Ambrose glance in triumph at the freckle-faced menace. “My fiancé.”
“Fiancé! Oh, it finally happened,” the vicar exclaimed, his easy smile spreading into a wide, slightly menacing grin. “Let me have a look here.”
“Look away,” Ambrose said with a raise of his brows. “Shall I remove my hat for it?”
It made Mr. Reed snicker, which was not at all the intended effect.
“Ambrose, this is Matthew Everly, our vicar and a childhood friend. I have known both of these men since I was a little girl, if that was not evident,” she said, giving his bicep a little squeeze. “Do be kind.”
He was uncertain if that last command was directed at him or the other two.
“Come in, we’ll get your intent registered for the banns,” Matthew Everly said without missing a beat. “Mr. Aster, I assume you have sent notice to your own parish?”
Vix glanced at him, sidelong and expectant.
“Certainly,” he said thinly. “I’ve sent urgent post to Kent.”
Hewould, of course. When he got home.
“You’re still registered in Kent?” Vix asked, with a purse of her lips. “We ought to change that, once the wedding’s over. Unless you want to return there?”
“My dear, I most assuredly do not want to return there,” he said to her as they moved to go inside the little church. “And you seem to me a woman who thrives best in the center of things, anyhow.”
“Is that a fact?” she replied, a wryness in her tone that might have been taken a great number of ways.
“I’m sure you’re both fully aware, but the banns will need to be read for three consecutive Sundays in both parishes,” Matthew was saying as they wove their way through the sanctuary and beyond a little hallway that led to the rear rooms, where his vicarage office was. “That will, of course, depend on how quickly your post arrives in Kent, Mr. Aster. Here in London, we will start straightaway if that is amenable to the two of you.”
Reed trailed along after them, not commenting, but listening very insolently to the entire affair. Ambrose did his level best not to spin around and glare at him or otherwise demand he wait in the nave.
“It will depend upon the other event,” Vix said, looking up at Ambrose. “Did you bring the missive you mentioned, regardingyour knighting? I should like the wedding to take place after it, for the sake of my sanity in planning both events.”
“Your sanity?” Reed commented, choosing to pipe up just as Ambrose had begun to feel comfort in his silence, “or your eventual title, Lady Aster?”
“Hush, you,” she said in a bored little voice.
Ambrose fished around in his jacket for the monogrammed envelope as they were led into the office, and in his distraction almost immediately stumbled directly over one of the many chairs in varying materials stacked in a tight arc between the entry and the desk.
He paused, bending his stubbed toe underfoot as he took in the chaos of seating sprawled out in front of him.
