His warm brown eyes searched hers briefly. Before she knew what he was about, he leaned and placed a chaste kiss on her cheek.
“There are papers to sign, and then you can collapse,” he said, his familiar mocking voice, a soft whisper. She relaxed on a sigh.This isJamie. We will do fine.
She didn’t collapse,thank God. The little wren looked ready to bolt when the priest asked for her vows. She had more backbone than that, though.
“Easy, little one, give Aunt Nora some air,” Jamie said.
Isabella danced up and down, clamoring for hugs and kisses, while the priest demanded impatiently that they sign the register.
He led Nora under the arched doorway to the sacristy. When she bent over the register, Jamie watched Mother Margarita take Isabella’s hand and speak to her sternly.The little imp looks ready to explode, he thought.
“There!” Nora said. “Done.”
“Can we have cake now,” Isabella asked. Jamie watched her glance at the reverend mother and add a belated, “Please.”
Nora bent down and took Isabella from the nun.
Jamie watched the little one dance up and down in excitement. He chuckled, turned to the ledger, and signed his name in a rapid scrawl. He rose to smile at Nora and Isabella.
“Do you plan to tell her?” Mother Margarita asked.
“Tell her what?” he asked without taking his eyes from Nora who tickled Isabella and talked nonsense to the child.
“This,” Mother Margarita said. She pointed to the ledger.
He smiled down at Nora’s neat signature, “Eleanora Mary Haley,” and then bit back a curse. His signature underneath, scrawled, but clear, read, “James Phineas Heyworth.”
Damn and double damn.His mind had been on Isabella’s nonsense. His mind had been on Nora. He forgot.
“Are you going to tell her?” Mother Margarita repeated.
“Yes, of course,” he said.Eventually.
“When?”
“Are we ready to go?” Nora asked, smiling at him.
Her question saved him from answering the nosy nun. He shut the ledger, stepped in front of it, and took both her hands in a firm grip.
“It’s done. This is what we agreedto, isn’t it?” he said.
Nora nodded. “Yes. It just feels so odd.”
“We’ll grow accustomed,” he said. He held both her hands a few moments more and then released one.
Nora reached out to Mother Margarita. “Thank you so much for assisting us,” she said, “and for arranging to have Isabella’s things sent to Casa Beaumont.”
The little nun shot Jamie a stern look while she murmured polite congratulations to Nora. He tried to avoid eye contact.
“Come, little wife. Let’s get out of this cave and into the sunshine to find cake and show Isabella how happy we are.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Nora dreamed of her wedding night when she was a naïve girl, as all women do. Her dreams did not include a five-year-old child and a husband who chose not to bed her. If she felt disappointment, she had known worse before. Her first husband spent their wedding night drinking with his cronies. He vomited on her bedroom floor and fell asleep.
While watching Jamie pretend to drink tea with Isabella’s family of dolls, Nora shivered under the burden of memory. Jamie, she realized, had been sober for weeks. She couldn’t even recall the moment when she had stopped watching for signs of drunkenness. He drank a little wine over dinner but never to excess. He gave every appearance of enjoying her company. Jamie was not Edmund.
“No more biscuits for you, Uncle Jamie. You will grow stout,” Isabella pronounced.
