But his wife was Izzy.
His love.
He exhaled slowly. “If you are certain, old chap?”
His friend sent him a reassuring grin. “Focus on your wife and making her happy. Let me handle the rest.”
CHAPTER17
Izzy had risen on the morning of her wedding day just as she had for many of the days that had preceded it: with dread.
It had manifested in a tightness in her chest, a knot in her stomach.
It had stalked her with the precision of a beast hunting down its unsuspecting prey.
As she dressed in all the carefully embroidered undergarments which had been selected for this day. As she donned the gown she had commissioned in London rather than Paris because of the haste of her impending nuptials. As Murdoch worked her hair into a series of braids and then coiled them together atop her head, adorning the coiffure with flowers. And it had continued as the lace veil was pinned in place. As she slid her bracelets on her wrists and fastened a necklace at her throat. As she threaded the hooks of her earrings through her lobes.
And afterward, as Izzy had stood before the looking glass in her guest chamber, taking in the sight of herself not just as Izzy but as a bride. As a woman who would shortly become the new Countess of Anglesey.
It had remained as she had walked down the narrow aisle in the Barlowe Park chapel toward the man who was going to be her husband in a matter of minutes.
And it had lingered when she recited her vows while holding his deep-blue gaze.
The ceremony itself, like the wedding breakfast which followed, had passed in a blurred haze for Izzy. There had been a series of toasts. Congratulations in all manners and from every guest. There had been food she had not cared to consume arriving before her on dainty plates. Wine. The latter, she had sipped with care, knowing she did not wish to over-imbibe on an empty stomach.
All the while, Anglesey had remained a calm presence at her side.
More than once, she had found herself watching him, admiring the strong slash of his jaw, those sinfully sculpted lips. Taking note of his long fingers, the masculine protrusion of his Adam’s apple, the breadth of his shoulders. He had been dressed perfectly this morning, as usual, and he was easily the most handsome man in the room. In any room. Every woman she knew who was unattached would have been proud to call him her husband, to claim him as hers.
How odd it had been to face a day she had dreamed of for so long, with a different man at her side than the one she had so oft envisioned. For years, she had believed she would marry Arthur, and they would live happily ever after. But that had been a lie, and he had proven false.
Now, as the carriage rocked over the approach to Barlowe Park, taking them in the opposite direction, she could not help but to recall the manner in which her new husband’s fingers had found hers in a gentle clasp beneath the table, chasing some of the dread. His touch had been warm and reassuring, a reminder of the connection they had shared before it had been so swiftly severed.
Yes, it still seemed impossible, even with the dangerously masculine presence at her side, his trouser-clad thigh touching her skirts, the scent of him infiltrating the conveyance. Musk and citrus and sin.
Married.
She wasmarried.
And not just married, but the wife of the large, intriguing rakehell at her side.
The Countess of Anglesey.
Impossible, and yet undeniably true.
“You are quiet,” he observed, the rumble of his rich voice cutting through the silence that had descended between them from the moment he had first joined her.
She did not want to look at him now, to meet his gaze and be forced to acknowledge his proximity or the temptation his nearness brought with it. Instead, she kept her face diverted to the window, where the scenery passed by in a blur of greens, browns, and blues.
“I am weary,” she answered truthfully.
“This morning felt like a bloody lifetime.”
His blunt declaration took her by surprise, had her turning toward him.
A mistake, for that too-blue gaze burned into hers, and she was left with nowhere to hide, no means of feigning distraction.
She swallowed. “More like two lifetimes.”
