“Painful. I require more laudanum.”
She sighed. “Monty, I want you to promise me something.”
“First Rayne, now you,” he grumbled. “Cannot a man swill laudanum and lie about in his sickbed like a proper invalid?”
“Monty.”
“Cat.”
Her brother was the only person who called her Cat. The only person she would allow to call her by the diminutive. He had teased her with it in their youth, but as they had matured, the name had rather stuck. They stared at each other now. Suddenly, the enormity of what was about to happen—the tremendous change her life was going to undertake—hit her.
Tears pricked her eyes. Tears of worry, sentimental tears, tears for the Monty and Cat they had once been, for the people they had become, for the uncertain futures awaiting them both.
“I want you to be happy, Monty,” she said softly. “That is all.”
“I want the same for you.” His smile was slow and lopsided. “I am sorry I banished you to Scotland, sorry I did not do something more about that blighter Shrewsbury.”
She shook her head. “I did not want you to. The fault was mine for being so reckless.”
“I suppose recklessness is in our blood,” Monty said.
“Yes, I suppose it is.” She paused. “You will be comfortable, being moved to the drawing room for the ceremony? I do not want you to suffer on my account.”
“I will be fine, Cat.” His eyes closed for a beat, as if he found them too heavy to keep open. “As fine as I can be.”
It was her fervent wish that one day, her brother would not simply be fine.
That he would bewell.
But for now, she would settle for him being present at her wedding. For the half-smile he flashed her as his eyes opened once more. For the color that had come to life in his previously pallid complexion.
“You need not worry on my account,” he said then. “I promise I will not take a piss on the drawing room carpet.”
She sighed. “Oh, Monty. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Cat.”
Chapter Ten
For the secondtime in his five-and-thirty years, Alessandro had a wife.
She was seated across from him in his carriage, en route to Riverford House, looking as if she were about to be shepherded to the gallows before a jeering throng. Or perhaps led to the guillotine. Her gloved hands bit into her pelisse, her fists clenched. Her neat, even teeth had caught the fullness of her lower lip, and though her face was averted to the window, her countenance was undeniably grim.
Quite a drastic contrast to his first marriage. He and Maria had been drunk, in love, and smiling foolishly at each other. And then they had been drunk, in love, and in each other’s arms soon thereafter.
But Catriona and Maria were two different people. The past could not be resurrected. Nor could the joy he had lost. The present was…London, a city he abhorred. A cold rain had begun to fall as they exited Montrose’s townhome, the weather as forbidding as the mood.
The ceremony had not taken long. The duke had been aided to the drawing room by a team of footmen. To his credit, he had neither fallen asleep and begun to snore nor committed some other sin of similar proportion to the violation of his bedchamber carpet. Catriona’s friend, Miss Lethbridge, sister to the unfortunate Lord Torrington, had been present as well, her expression stricken. Lady Catriona’s mother had not seemed any more hopeful.
Suddenly, the quiet of the carriage ride, interrupted only by the normal street sounds of fellow carriages plodding by and the rustling of tack, seemed untenable.
“You are fretting,querida,” he said simply, breaking the silence. “What is the reason for your unhappiness?”
Her attention jerked toward him, her gaze clinging to his. “I am not fretting, my lord.”
She could not fool him. “Honesty, if you please.”
Catriona sighed. “Do not all new brides experience some trepidation on the day they wed?”
