It only made his bride smile wider.
And somehow, being goaded during his wedding vows eased his suffering. Glaring back at her, biting off the ends of his statements, tilting his head just so when she repeated his title back to him during hers, all of it, somehow, quieted the wasps.
Perhaps they simply didn’t dare sting opposite the queen wasp.
The thought made him smile to himself as he turned to retrieve the rings.
He’d had them made to match, poured in fine bands of braided gold and silver and studded with tiny amethysts. Hers had a single sapphire at its center, cut into a narrow oval, rich and sparkling.
He heard her breath catch when she saw it, saw the way she marveled when it slid onto her finger.
They admired the pair together as the final declaration was read, and their ringed hands entwined over the altar.
When the permission was given, when Ambrose Aster was told he may kiss his bride, he turned to find her grinning at him, and did not get the chance.
Instead, she gripped his face, pushed herself onto her toes, and claimed the kiss for herself.
If this shocked the assembled congregants, Ambrose would never know.
All he would remember was the warmth of her soft purple lips on his and the sound of approving applause.
CHAPTER 14
Vix spent quite a lot of the wedding breakfast staring down at the ring on her finger.
She supposed part of her had expected a simple gold band. Yes, she had expected that. Ambrose might have a flair for the dramatic in his own wardrobe, but she had always assumed that was more of a passive consequence of affording fine tailors than any particular affection toward style.
She had been wrong. Twice now, she thought, remembering that tidy, elegantly appointed bedchamber.
The bedchamber.
She’d be back there tonight, wouldn’t she?
“She had stolen it. She’d stolen the entire cake,” Teddy was saying to a rapt audience, making her blink up at him in slow and horrified realization. “The baker himself emerged from the back rooms to pursue her right down the middle of the Covent Garden market and our mother was none the wiser, selling a posey to the vicar a few feet away.”
“The vicar being my father,” Matthew put in helpfully. “He was the first one to catch on.”
“Oh, not this,” Vix said, wrinkling up her nose. “I didn’tstealit.”
“You took it all the way out of the shop and into the square,” Teddy said, turning his head to her with his eyes sparkling. “What were you going to do? Take it for a stroll and return it after it had seen the sights of the city?”
“Ugh,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest, that ring glittering against her bicep.
Ambrose looked delighted, leaning forward with his chin in his hand. “How big of a cake are we talking about here?” he asked.
“It was half as tall as she was,” Teddy answered, a bald-faced lie.
“It wasn’t,” she muttered, but it was drowned out by the laughter of the assembled mutineers, listening to this tale at her wedding breakfast and enjoying it more than the real and verified cake on their own little plates.
“My father tripped over himself rushing to help, already pulling coins out of his pocket to placate the baker,” Matthew put in. “He always had more coin than sense.”
“But Vix turned to the baker,” Teddy said, starting to chuckle and wicking a little tear from the corner of his eye, “lowered her head, and dragged her tongue across the entire top of the confection, standing with the thing held to her chest right in the middle of the road.”
“God help me,” she muttered, dropping her forehead into her hand.
“What kind of cake?” Dinah Lazarus demanded, clicking her wineglass on the tabletop. “Something worth licking, I hope?”
“Almond, I think?” Teddy lied, tilting his head to the side like he was not sure.
