“Head up, my little hawfinch.” He nudged her chin with his finger. “You’ll have me all to yourself soon enough.”
Little hawfinch.
He’d taken to calling her that since the Royal Gala. She vastly preferred it to Rebecca, Renee, and all the other litany of names he used to tease her with. Especially when he had shared the special meaning it held for him.
“I love you,” she said.
“How strange. I snuck up here, risking life and limb, to tell you exactly the same thing.” He kissed her again. Lifted her hand and brought it to his lips. “I love you, Rosemary. I wanted to say that before–is Sir Reginald in your basket?”
Biting the inside of her cheek, she quickly tucked her arm behind her. “What basket?”
“The one you put behind your back with a squirrel in it.”
“Oh,thatbasket.”
“Yes. That basket.” The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Just make sure he doesn’t bite anyone.”
“Sir Reginald would never,” she said, aghast that Sterling would suggest otherwise.
“He bitme.”
“As I said before, that was a misunderstanding. Now go,” she ordered, pointing at the door. “Before Evie really does find you in here and puts both of us in the stocks.”
“Misunderstanding my arse,” Sterling grumbled with a glare at the basket. “He knows what he did.”
But with a final kiss, he did leave and, soon after, Rebecca came rushing in to tell Rosemary that the carriage was ready.
The wedding ceremonywas a blurred stream of colors and music and emotions. Sitting in the front pew, Evie and Claire wept openly, while Joanna and Brynne watched on with pride. From the other side of the aisle, even Lady Ellinwood could be seen dashing away a tear, although when questioned later she blamed the dust.
Rosemary couldn’t recall the vows she had spoken by the time she left the church in a shower of rice and well wishes, but she knew that she would never forget the way Sterling had gazed at her as they stood facing each other.
It was the same way the songbirds looked at the sunrise after a night spent in the dark. Or a horse looked at its warm stall after a day of hard work. Or parched, thirsty flowers looked up at the rain as the first drops fell.
It was comfort. It was home. It was love.
Sterling boosted her into the decorated carriage that would take them back to Hawkridge Manor and didn’t miss an opportunity to squeeze her bottom. Falling into the seat on a helpless laugh, she was already kissing him before the door had closed. A kiss that rapidly turned into something decidedly more heated which made them late for their own receiving breakfast…much to her chagrin and her husband’s wicked amusement.
They dined outside beneath the pavilions where Evie had truly outdone herself. White linens blew lightly in the breeze, sunny bouquets of sunflowers adorned every table, and a quartet of violinists played on a raised stage littered with fallen leaves.
When breakfast was over, everyone retired to their rooms to rest and change for the evening ball. After ensuring that her grandmother was comfortably resting, Rosemary sought her own chamber where she fell upon the mattress with a sigh and a happy smile. Sir Reginald jumped up on the windowsill beside the bed, the remnants of a hazelnut clutched possessively in his tiny paws, and kept watch while she read the most recent edition ofGardner’s Chronicle.
“Listen to this,” she said excitedly as she sat up on her elbow. “It says that Darwin is proposing a fourth theory of evolution. Something he is calling natural selection. After concluding his study of iguanas during his most recent journey to the Galápagos Islands, he found that–”
She was interrupted by a knock at the door.
Assuming it was Sterling returned from the celebratory cigar he’d taken with Weston, Kincaid, and Lachlan, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and bounced to her feet just as the door opened.
“I was wondering when…you’re not Sterling.” Ice seeped into her veins when a stranger entered her room. A stranger that she vaguely recognized from the church. Or maybe the Royal Gala? Whoever they were, wherever she’d first seen them, they did not look well. In the dappled afternoon sunlight their eyes held a metallic, shiny sort of glint. Their face was beaded with sweat. Their breathing was short and uneven.
“No, I’m not,” the stranger said in a deceptively calm, pleasant tone. “But you are going to come with me nevertheless. You’re not going to scream. You’re not going to make any noise at all. We’re going to have some time alone, you and I. Just the two of us. Nod if you understand.”
Rosemary looked at the pistol aimed straight at her heart.
And then she nodded.
Chapter Twenty-One
Still grinning fromthe good-natured ribbing he’d received from his friends, Sterling bounded up the main staircase two steps at a time. He wanted to see Rosemary before the ball. No, he corrected himself silently, he wanted to see hiswife.
