“Kitty, I’m nervous,”said Mara, fidgeting in place as she stood in front of a double set of towering wooden doors. In a moment—in mere seconds—those doors would open, the music would start, and she would march forward to her new husband. Her new life. Her new beginning. She was a caterpillar completing its final transformation into a butterfly, its wings struggling to squeeze through the tiny opening at the top of the chrysalis.
But what if shewantedto be a caterpillar?
“Nervous?” Kitty, beautiful as always in a pink gown and matching crown of flowers, rolled her eyes. “What’s there to be nervous about? You’re about to be a duchess.”
“There are two hundred people in there.” Reaching under the voluminous folds of her dress, an ivory concoction of layered muslin and scalloped lace, Mara scratched her ankle, then her calf, then her knee. She was soitchy.
“All waiting to see you. And me.” Kitty flashed a brilliant smile that faded as she begrudgingly added, “But mostly you.”
“I told Ambrose I wanted a small affair,” she muttered, dropping her skirt. “He said his mother wouldn’t hear of it. I’m scared of her. The duchess. She’s so... cold.”
“Thedowagerduchess, you mean,” Kitty corrected as she knelt behind Mara and fussed with her very long, very impractical train. “And it’s better that she’s too cold than too warm. William’s mother is constantly asking me to tea, and to go shopping, and to attend charity functions with her. The woman isexhausting.”
Two weeks ago, Kitty had begun courting William Colborne, Earl of Radcliffe. As the grandson of a duke, he was second in line for the title that Kitty truly coveted. But, as she’d told Mara, he was a most excellent kisser.
“I’d like it if Ambrose’s mother wanted to go shopping.” Mara clasped her hands together and resisted the urge to peel off her gloves and scratch between her fingers. “Instead she just... frowns at me.”
Kitty straightened. “Didn’t you say that she spends most of her time at an estate in the country?”
“Yes, she’s only in London for the wedding.”
“Well, there you have it. Problem solved.”
But as the doors abruptly swung inward and the organist began to play, Mara had the distinctly uneasy feeling that her problems were just beginning.
*
“That went morequickly than I had anticipated.” Breathless and beaming, Mara held onto the windowsill as the duke’s barouche carriage—the same one that had ferried them around Hyde Park—rolled away from the church to a flurry of well wishes and rice. They were bound for Grosvenor Square, where the festivities would continue with a seven-course dinner and dancing. But for the next twenty minutes (or however long it took the driver to navigate the crowded city streets), the newly wed couple had each other to themselves.
“How long did you think it would take?” Ambrose asked, shooting her a wry glance under the brim of his wool-felt top hat before removing the accessory and placing it on the seat.
“Hours. Days. Weeks.” The corners of Mara’s smile drooped slightly when she noted the strategic placement of Ambrose’s hat. It rose between them like a small black hill... or a wall. “But it’s over. It’s done. We’remarried.”
“So we are,” he agreed, and was that a flash of displeasure in his gaze?
No,she told herself.
Surely not.
Ambrose had wanted to marry her. He’d proposed, hadn’t he? Not at the gardens, but two days later, while they were on a carriage ride similar to this one. He’d had the driver stop, and he’d helped her out, and then in front of a fountain with purple lilacs all around, he’d gone down on bended knee and asked her to be his wife. She’d accepted—of course she’d accepted—and immediately found herself consumed with wedding preparations. Or rather, Kitty and the Duchess of Southwick (Dowager Duchess, she amended silently) had been consumed, and she’d toddled along for the ride, a bit like a child being coaxed to bed with the promise of a new story.
Occasionally, she’d wondered where Ambrose was.
More specifically, why hewasn’twith her.
But weddings were women’s business, so she hadn’t worried overmuch. They’d have all the time in the world to spend together after they were married. Except now she had a ring on her finger—gold, with a diamond-shaped sapphire—and Ambrose’s hat was closer to her than he was.
“Are you looking forward to the ball?” she asked, and her smile disappeared altogether when he gave a curt shake of his head.
“No, not really. I’ve always found them to be tedious.”
But we met at a ball,she wanted to say. Except she didn’t, because it wasn’tthisAmbrose that she’d met at the Glendale Ball. This was a cool, distant, slightly sardonic Ambrose who had revealed himself to her in fits and starts, but never all at once. Never like this.
Where was the man who had kissed her in the rain?
Where was the man who had shown her how to skip a rock?
Where was the man who had turned her veins to fire in the gardens?
