‘You should have heard him on the morning of our wedding,’ Edward told her. ‘He was a nightmare.’
‘You are older than me,’ Christopher pointed out, using one of his favourite refrains for teasing Edward. ‘You should show better decorum than I display.’
‘I am only two years your senior.’
Christopher grinned. ‘And yet that gets you every time.’
‘I hope Sophia knows what she is getting herself into,’ muttered Edward.
‘She does.’ Christopher was about to ask Edward what the time was, but decided against it. Twenty minutes was surely nearly up. Sophia and he had been waiting an eternity for this moment and he was fairly sure she was as impatient as he was to get started. Their attempt to get the wedding brought forward by a day had been thwarted at every turn. They had spent yesterday sharing smiles but not much else as their ridiculously large families had taken up all of their time with wedding preparations. All of which were completely unnecessary in his opinion. All this wedding needed for it to be the best day of his life was his bride.
‘Still another nineteen minutes to go,’ said Edward, finally picking up on what was bothering Christopher the most. ‘You do know staring at the door will not make it open any faster.’
‘I do not care to listen to you.’
‘Goodness,’ said Edward, the glee in his voice evident now that he realised he finally had the upper hand. ‘Would you look at that? It is eighteen and a half minutes now. Time really has almost come to a complete stop.’
Committing fratricide on his wedding day would throw a dampener on things and would slow things down considerably, so he wouldn’t do it, however tempted.
‘Eighteen minutes,’ said Freddie, because once one brother had sensed weakness the others would pounce. ‘Quite a long time really.’
‘Plenty of time for her to change her mind.’
‘She will not,’ said Christopher. He was confident about that. Even if they had not had that time together in her bedroom, even if he had not made things right between them, she would have come. She was brave like that. She would face any challenge head on and he was a damned lucky fool to have a woman like her by his side for the rest of his life. To think, if he had not gone to the conservatory that day, hemight have missed out on the best thing to ever happen to him. He shuddered just thinking about what a disaster that would have been.
‘Seventeen and a half minutes.’ Christ. Even Tobias was joining in on the teasing; although Christopher had no intention of looking at any of them. If he ignored them, perhaps they would stop talking.
Despite the fact that they were idiotic, he was glad that his brothers were going to be here to witness his wedding, to stand by his side as he promised to devote his life to Sophia. Sebastian would always have a place in his heart, but the three men, whom he knew would be grinning at him if he could just take his eyes off the door to check, were becoming his greatest friends and his biggest allies. He was lucky to have them too. Not that he would say that. Not when they were busy working out how many seconds he had to live through before Sophia arrived, because that was a bigger number than the minutes and over a thousand seconds did seem like a torturously long time.
Finally, finally, the doors opened and there she was. Her smile cracked a part of his heart and he knew that he would always belong to her. She began to walk towards him and his own smile hurt his cheeks.Thiswas what it was like to be happy.
Epilogue
His wife’s fingers trailed down the length of his spine as he lay half collapsed on top of her, his face buried into the pillow next to her head. All around them, the house was still, this quiet time just for them.
‘Are you asleep?’ she whispered.
‘No,’ he managed, his body heavy with contentment. ‘Am I crushing you?’
‘A little but I like it. Please do not move.’
He would in a minute, but he was more than happy to stay exactly where he was for now. Sophia’s curves were soft beneath him, and when he recovered his energy, he planned to spend yet more time exploring them with every bit of his body.
‘I enjoyed today,’ she said, her fingers making a loop of his shoulder blade. ‘Your family are lovely.’
‘Mm.’
‘I think Kate and Emily will become good friends.’ He shifted his head so he could look at her while she spoke. They had not pulled the heavy curtains all the way across and he could see her face in the moonlight coming through the window. She was staring at the ceiling, a soft smile at the corner of her lips. ‘I do not think I shall be lonely.’
He pushed himself up onto his elbow. ‘Of course you will not be. You will be with me.’
‘Yes, but when you are away on your travels, I shall need people to talk to and I think I shall enjoy their company.’
Christopher moved so that his face was directly above hers, holding himself off her with his forearms resting against the mattress. His hair flopped into his eyes. He pushed it back only for it to fall straight down again.
Sophia giggled, using the tips of her fingers to sweep it off his forehead and hold it in place.
‘If you think, for a moment, Lady Sophia, that I am going anywhere without you, you are very much mistaken.’
