The wedding tomorrow was a second chance. For a different life. With passion. With laughter and challenge.
With Anna.
Circumstances with the Home Office meant he’d never fully be able to reveal himself. But Anna had always claimed a large piece of his soul.
Don’t rush.
Patience wasn’t part of his nature. But he’d try.
Because Annabeth Greene was worth the wait.
Chapter Fourteen
Jackson informed thestaff that he would escort his bride-to-be to the wedding and that those who were not in charge of seeing to the carriage and trunks for their immediate departure after the ceremony should head to the church to see to the needs of the guests.
A groom was not to act the chaperone to his own wedding, but nothing of this engagement was ordinary. Including the bride.
Jackson stood at the bottom of the staircase and glanced at the clock. An hour until the ceremony. A morning wedding had always seemed hasty. Jackson knew different now. Time to get the thing over and done with so they may be on their way back to London. But as Jackson watched the long hand of the clock count down—fifty minutes to ten, forty, twenty-five—he began to pace.
The chapel was no more than a fifteen-minute walk along a nicely wooded path.
Fifteen minutes to ten came and passed.
She wasn’t coming.
She must have run.
Body strung tight enough to snap, Jackson took the stairs two at a time, making it to the last stair before the top when movement above him had him stopping. Raising his head.
And gaping.
Anna stood a foot away, her hair in intricate braids and wound around her head like a living crown. And her dress... there were no insects to be found. A clean, white cotton dress with an ice-blue ribbon woven in and out of hidden seams to give the impression of a basket weave. Simple, but not boring. The simplicity only emphasized the rich, fiery tones in her hair, the gem-like color of her eyes, and the faint pink blush across her cheeks.
“Beautiful,” he breathed.
Her lips curved into a small smile. “Thank you.”
That smile was sunshine.
He cleared his throat and wrangled in his reaction. “I thought you’d decided you had a more pressing engagement this morning.”
He’d never been more relieved to be wrong.
“Yes, well.” She shifted her weight and bit her lip. “I was waiting for my maid to return to help finish dressing me, but after she’d left to find more pins to fix my hair, she never returned.”
Because he’d ordered all staff to leave.
Jackson winced. “That was my fault. I—” His mind caught up to her words. “You aren’t fully dressed?”
Her cheeks flushed a brighter red. “I did my best, but I can’t reach the last of the buttons in back.”
Her dress is unbuttoned.
Jackson swallowed hard. “I can”—another clearing of his throat—“can assist you, if you’d like?”
Anna bit her lip again and glanced around the deserted floor below. “Since there doesn’t seem to be another living soul around...” She turned to give him access to the buttons.
Jackson had to grip the staircase railing to hold himself upright.
