Beau wasn’t exactly sure he would call St. Petersburg the ‘wilds’, but otherwise perfectly true.
It was chilly in the chapel with its seven-hundred-year-old stone floor laid down when the Hall had been an Abbey back in Henry II’s day. That probably didn’t fully account for the cold clamminess in Beau’s palms. Neither did it diminish the heavy scent of the lilies that had been brought in from the duke’s succession houses to bracket the altar. Beau loathed that smell. There had been lilies at Theo’s memorial, cloying reminders of mortality. If he didn’t think he would distress the duchess, he’d toss every one through the newly cleaned windows.
“I’ll tell you something I have never admitted to another soul,” Dr. Borden whispered, stroking the Book of Common Prayer he held at the ready.
Beau looked over to see a look of real discomfort on the gentle face. He was about to beg the man not to tell him, not to make this moment worse, when the chaplain smiled. “I loathe the smell of those lilies. Very unecclesiastical of me, I’m sure. But they remind me…”
“Of funerals.”
The chaplain shook his head. “No. No, indeed. But when I was a lad they were a favorite of a certain rather overstrict...bishop?”
The sudden shock on the man’s face caused Beau to turn.
There really was a bishop walking up the side aisle. Mitered, crosiered and robed to the gleaming teeth, he looked to be a man on a mission. And following in his wake, strolling as if he were late to the opera, Marcus Drake himself.
“What is he doing here?” Beau and Dr. Borden asked in awed tandem.
“Hopefully relieving me of my duty,” Beau responded, his eye on the smiling head of the Rakes, who looked as if he had dressed that morning specifically to attend a wedding a hundred-twenty miles from his home.
The vicar started. “You cannot back out now!”
Beau could smile. “No, no. Not that duty. Something else I had queued up right after.”
Every person in the chapel craned to see the short procession. Beau couldn’t blame them. Then there was a glad cry, and the bishop stopped in his tracks and gave a courtly bow.
The Princess of Wales was on her feet chattering at him as if they had met at a tea.
“Ah,” Dr. Borden said.
Beau turned back to see the chaplain nodding.
“Bishop Fisher is the Preceptor of the Princess Royal. She must have called on him to officiate.”
He looked inordinately relieved, but Beau didn’t have time to ask why. At that moment Drake stepped into the vestry, his every move unhurried. “I hear you are in need of a best man,” he said with a slow smile.
Beau shook his hand. “I don’t understand.”
“Cousin John was having dinner with me at White’s when word reached him that the princess was desirous that he marry her dear friends Miss Phillipa Knight and Beaufort, Viscount Drummond. Since I knew that most of your friends were at that moment in London, I decided that I would accompany the bishop on his mission of mercy. After all, old son, I’ve had a bet on this match since the bride was fifteen.”
Beau glared at his erstwhile superior. “Not funny.”
“She is well?”
“Didn’t you see her?”
“Not a hair. Can’t wait to hear the tale.”
“It’s quite a story,” Beau said, half an eye on the chaplain who had moved to the door to let the bishop in.
“I imagine it is.”
Which was as far as they got, since at that moment, Bishop Fisher strode through the door with a patient smile and a hand out for his ring to be kissed by the chaplain.
“You are satisfied with the particulars, Peter?” he asked his compatriot.
“I am, my lord,” the older man said.
The bishop nodded, evidently satisfied as well. Nobody asked ifhewas satisfied, Beau thought blackly. As if he’d heard him, Drake clapped him on the back. “Time to face your future, my lad.”
