Somehow, he’d anticipated her choice of attire and had dressed in an embroidered green waistcoat with tidytrousers and a white cravat. He held himself upright, his shoulders back, and his gaze burned into her as she crossed the room to join him.
“You look beautiful,” he said as the innkeeper and his two companions—witnesses to the marriage, she presumed—entered the room. “I knew you’d wear green. It’s your favorite.”
She laughed. “Am I that predictable?”
“Only to someone who knows you.” His dark eyes glinted, heavy with the promise that they would soon know each other even better.
While they had pleasured each other during their travels, they had never performed the full marital act. Nicholas had said he wanted to wait until they were well-rested, with a comfortable bed, before fully experiencing each other. It was sweet of him to think of her comfort, so Sophie hadn’t minded the delay.
“Is everyone ready to begin?” the innkeeper asked, crossing to the marriage papers with a quill in one hand and a small inkpot in the other.
“I am,” Nicholas said, without the tiniest hint of doubt showing in his expression.
Sophie smiled, the last of her nerves falling away. She hadn’t really thought that he would come this far and refuse to marry her, but considering how adamantly opposed to marriage he’d originally been, she hadn’t been able to release a niggling concern.
“All right.” The innkeeper motioned to them. “Please stand opposite each other. You may join hands, if you’d like.”
Nicholas held his hands out, palms up, so Sophie placed hers on them, the warmth soaking into her and filling her with a sense of safety she hadn’t experienced since her parents had delivered their ultimatum.
The innkeeper explained what would happen and walked them through the preliminaries, then had them repeat thetraditional vows before asking them to exchange rings, if they had them.
Sophie opened her mouth to explain that they didn’t, but she promptly shut it when Nicholas released her hands, reached into his pocket, and withdrew a simple silver band.
“It isn’t anything fancy,” he said, a hint of pink on his cheeks. “We’ll arrange something permanent later, but I wanted us to have a symbol of our commitment today, so I visited the smith last night, and he made this.”
The back of Sophie’s throat tightened, and heat seared her eyes. “Thank you,” she choked out. “I love it.”
She wouldn’t care if they never replaced it with something “fancy” as Nicholas had suggested. This ring was the ideal symbol of how unexpected this entire adventure had been, and he’d had it made with her in mind, so how could she consider it anything other than perfect?
His gaze softened, and he slid the ring onto her finger. “With this ring, I thee wed.”
“Actually, you don’t—”
Sophie shot the innkeeper a look.
“I pronounce you Mr. and Mrs. Blackwell,” he declared. “Please sign over here.”
With that anticlimactic ending, Sophie and Nicholas signed their lives over to each other and were guided to the table in the corner.
They lingered over a delicious breakfast, chatting about their travel so far and the return leg of the journey that was yet to come.
Through the window, the sky was blue, and the town of Gretna stretched around them, a mix of small, charming buildings and large, blocky ones. Sophie declared that they would need to explore later and was pleased when Nicholas didn’t protest.
After the wedding breakfast, they returned to the bedchamber Sophie was staying in. Nicholas’s bag had beenshifted in from the smaller room that the innkeeper had allocated to him last night, and the bed was neatly turned down.
Nicholas closed the door behind them, and the click seemed unnaturally loud. She was suddenly all too aware that they were now alone in a private space and there was no longer anything preventing them from doing “the deed.”
She’d taken to calling it that internally because she wasn’t sure exactly what the proper terminology was. No doubt Nicholas would rectify that soon. He did love to make her blush.
“Would you like to go for that walk through town now?” he asked, coming up behind her, his chest a solid wall of muscle at her back. He radiated heat, and she relaxed against him, tilting her chin so she could see his face as his arms looped around her waist.
“No,” she whispered, brushing a kiss over his jaw. “I want you to make good on your promise.”
His arms tightened around her, and his lips skimmed over her temple and down the side of her face. She angled her head further to give him access to her neck and shivered as his facial hair rasped against the tender skin in delicious contrast to his soft lips.
“Well, I can’t disappoint my new wife,” he murmured, tickling her pulse point. “May I undress you?”
In answer, she pulled away and presented her back to him. His clever fingers made short work of the buttons down her spine, and she peeled off her gloves as he eased the dress down, the silk pooling on the ground around her feet.
