Beau scowled. “Your lad is two years older than you are.”
“But still a wide-eyed boy when it comes to the ladies, or we all wouldn’t be joining in this odd little dance.”
Beau scowled even more fiercely. “We are not all joining in anything. Only me.”
“And her.”
Beau was about to turn for a retort when Drake took him by the arm and led him in to stand before the altar. Beau didn’t see anything at the back of the church, but the organist hit a resounding chord, and everyone in the chapel quieted.
Beau took up his position before the step, Drake to his side. The bishop, solemn-faced and awash in dignity, handed off his staff to the chaplain, who stood to the side like a server and took up his place of prominence. In the front row the Princess of Wales was beaming as if it were her own wedding. Beau took notice and then forgot she was even there. Because the back door was no longer empty.
The Duchess of Dorchester’s Uncle Philbert was a man with bristling gray hair, the most wonderful laugh lines, and very possibly a salamander in his morning suit pocket. Looking nervous enough for his own wedding, he yanked at his coat and stuck out his elbow. Which was when Beau simply lost his breath.
She should not have been breathtaking. She was a tiny thing, her shape sleek rather than voluptuous, which he’d always thought he preferred. Her dress was simple, a soft white silk lined at bodice and hem with spring green ribbons. Rather than a circle of flowers or lace veil, she wore a simple bonnet lined in matching green fabric, within which her hair seemed to glow. It was the morning sun, he realized, finding her through the back windows. Nothing special.
Yet he couldn’t take his eyes off her. And not because she had those huge blue eyes or that kissable mouth he could still somehow taste from the other night. Not her heart-shaped face or her uptilted little nose that should have made her look like a child playing dress-up.
Her expression. He supposed he’d expected her to look frightened, sad, anxious. Her expressive little face betrayed none of these. What her face showed—what her posture and lifted chin and preternaturally calm eyes showed— was the mien of a warrior. Pip was not meeting her doom. She was commanding her fate. She was demanding his respect and offering her partnership, no matter what he expected. Or wanted.
He fought the unholy urge to grin. His body fought the unholier urge to just grab her, run out the door and find somewhere to stake his claim.
“I always thought Boadicea was taller,” he heard beside him.
He did smile, then, and thought her posture eased a fraction. “No,” he told Drake, who looked more than a bit smitten himself. “I think she is just this size.”
And then he stepped up to meet her.
5
“Dearly beloved…”
What was a bishop doing at her wedding? Pip wondered. What was Marcus Drake doing here? And why in heaven’s name had the duchess insisted on stuffing the altar with those dreadful lilies? Pip hadn’t been able to tolerate the smell of those things since the day of Theo’s memorial. It was an omen, she decided, her commitment faltering a bit. A warning that she should raise her hand right now and put Beau out of his misery before she had to suffer it the rest of her life.
“...and therefore, is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly to satisfy men's carnal lusts and appetites…”
Pip swallowed. Did they have to mention carnal lusts? Standing this close to Beau, her hand in his, she could smell the citrus of his soap, the starch on his crisp linen shirt. She recognized the essence that was Beau. She had first discovered it her fourteenth summer, when she realized that the attraction that drew her to her best friend’s brother had metamorphosed into something more powerful, more primal. Something that drew her like magnets to iron and set her body to humming in a way that disturbed her.
It still disturbed her, even more knowing what it meant, and that he resented the same attraction to her.
“...Secondly, it was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication…”
There he went again, she thought, wondering why she had never noticed how many times the marriage rite talked about lust. She didn’t want to know about lust right now. She was having trouble enough attending to dignity and control.
She wanted to think more about the Duchess’s words than the bishop’s. Was there a way to make her marriage succeed? Could she win Beau over? Could she ever get him to forgive her for encouraging Theo to follow the only dream he’d ever had?
“...Therefore, if any man can show any just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter forever hold his peace.”
Pip swore that every person in the chapel held their breath, even the bishop. Beau, blast him, turned just enough so she could see him raise an eyebrow. It wasn’t funny. But if she wasn’t careful, she’d burst out laughing.
She also swore the pause lasted quite a bit longer than any other service she had attended.
She was just about to remind the bishop that they still had half a ceremony to get through when he nodded, bent back to his book as if he didn’t know the blasted ceremony by heart—and if he didn’t, how did he ever make Bishop?—and moved on to the various promises.
Would they notice if she didn’t promise to obey? There was only so much a girl should be forced to surrender; her money; her autonomy, her children, her dreams...well, all right, it was onlyherdreams. Other women weren’t being forced into wedlock. Her mother was living her dream of traveling the world, helping her father in his diplomatic missions. Her older sister Georgina had her country squire husband and rosy-cheeked babes she’d dreamed of since she’d considered Pip her own baby doll. Several of her friends.
But none of them had been forced into marriage by a royal princess.
“...Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”
