I came out of the bathroom and into Battle’s and my bedroom at Primrose Lodge, the country seat of Rally’s viscounty up in Somerset.
I did it touching my hat and saying, “Okay, I rock this thing.”
Then I stopped dead.
Holy shit.
Battle was wearing gray trousers, a cream waistcoat, a white shirt, and a black morning coat with a peach tie.
Fucking hell.
“I knew this was a mistake,” he groused.
My attention shifted from the vision of him being a full-on, super-hot duke in that getup to his face to see him scowling at my outfit.
Since I was finding my online shopping trawls tedious due to me being in the middle of writing my book, Tempie had taken me in hand.
So, to Rally and Courtney’s wedding ceremony, I was wearing a lilac suit with a complicated lapel that showed off a lot of my chest, the straight skirt molded to my ass and hips, and a matching hat that sat at an angle and went up high on one side to showcase some intricate net swirls.
Bummed at his reaction, I looked down at myself. “Is this not okay?”
“I knew I should have let you go to the ceremony with the girls,” he stated.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because, seeing you looking like a sex-kitten duchess, I no longer want to go at all.”
If I could glow, I would have burned a hole in the side of the lodge.
“Well, you’re not so bad yourself, my Lord Duke.”
He reached a hand to me. “Let’s get going,” he said tersely, then he told me something I already knew, “They’re taking some of the groomsmen pictures before the wedding.”
I was very aware going with him to watch him and a bunch of other dudes have their pictures taken would probably bore me silly.
But last night, in a little Talyn Family huddle at a small (if you called fifty people small) pre-wedding dinner party, Tempie had dropped the bomb that Courtney had dropped on her.
This being that she’d made the unhinged decision not to revoke Chelsea’s invitation after her behavior at The Downs.
“So Battle can rub Vivi in her face! She’ll just die. Isn’t it smashing?!” Tempie had taken on Courtney’s excitement in a droll way when she related this to us.
Normally, I’m all for vengeance.
But after what Chelsea said about Prue and Chassie, with them right there listening, Battle was concerned he might not be able to handle being anywhere near her without causing a scene, something he didn’t want to do at one of his best mates’ weddings.
He also didn’t want her to say anything else to them or to me.
And this was why I was sticking close.
I went to him and took his hand.
“You are the very model of the modern duke,” I said. “You’ll keep your cool, I know you will. And as Tempie said, with Chelsea’s personality, she’s eventually going to whittle down her choices to some loser who she can walk all over who will make her extremely unhappy. We’ve already won, baby. She can’t do anything to us.”
“That doesn’t mean, if she does, it won’t piss me right off.”
Well then.
What did you say to that?
