Autumn Glory and Other Stories (22 page)

So Impy tore up Lady Marian’s shapeless black gowns.

*

The wedding was held within the week. Somehow the general had produced a special license, an army chaplain, and a bouquet of flowers.

Marian clutched his arm in one hand and the bouquet in the other as he escorted her to the convent’s tiny stone-walled chapel where the sisters of Saint Esperanza were joyfully gathered. If the nuns were happier that their two troublesome guests were leaving than that the wedding was taking place, their smiles did not reveal such sentiments.

Marian was wearing one of her own gowns, a lemony yellow silk with a white lace overskirt. It showed more of her bare flesh than she had seen since leaving England. She would have used lace from the ruffle at the hem to fill in the narrow bodice, considering she was going to a holy ritual, not a rout or reception, but Sister Marta took it to fashion a matching mantilla for her hair. Marian’s long blond locks were loose beneath the head covering, trailing down her back in soft golden waves, like a bride from antiquity proclaiming her maidenly state. Marian would not have chosen such a hairstyle for her wedding day—she would not have chosen the gown, the guests, or the groom, either—but she had not been able to find her hairpins or ribbons, and hated to ask the sisters for anything so frivolous. They had been so kind to her, even producing a tiny pot of rouge from one of the village girls so she did not look as white as the chapel’s plaster statues. Besides, the general was already waiting impatiently, a war to get back to, so Marian did the best she could with two ivory combs to keep the curls off her face.

Now if only she could keep from trembling. The general must have sensed her unease, for he patted her hand in comfort. “There now, my dear, do not fret. You have made the right decision.”

They both knew she had had no choice, that all the decisions had been made for her. Marian could not keep on wishing it were otherwise, for that would be a waste of her time. Besides, if her wishes had come true, she would have been wedding a lying, cheating, conniving womanizer like Captain Sondebeck. What she had to wish for now was that the womanizing Lord Hardesty was not as unscrupulous.

At least he was not cozying up to her for her money, which her father had claimed was the officer’s motive. Nor was he pressing her for intimacies she was not ready to share with a stranger, which she suspected might have been Sondebeck’s purpose in pursuing her. No, Hardesty was wedding her because he had no choice, either. Why, she half suspected he did even like her. The other half suspected he would forget about her existence as soon as he returned to his own elite, immoral social circles. This was to be a marriage of convenience—his convenience. For Marian it was a chance to go home, but she did not think being the center of more gossip was convenient at all. She had suffered enough humiliation over a supposed betrothed. She could not imagine the mortification of reading of one’s own husband’s affairs in the newspapers every morning. Worse, she would be expected to ignore such fraying of the marriage bonds and lead a complacent, uncomplaining life. She could not do it. She would complain and kick and scream and shout and make Hardesty’s life a misery, the same inconvenient misery that hers would be.

Marian pulled the general to a halt. She could not go through with this travesty, this sacrifice of two lives to satisfy someone’s notion of propriety or dynasty building. Surely there had to be another way to get both of them back to England without being bound to each other for all eternity.

The general had handled hundreds of raw recruits on the eve of battle. He was not going to let one miss’s megrims stymie his best maneuvers. “Wedding jitters, my dear. All brides suffer them, I am told. It will all be over in a trice, and then you need never do it again, eh? You’ll have a handsome, wealthy husband of your own, and infants someday. What more could a girl ask?” He dragged her slowly, inexorably forward into the fray.

Hoping for a last-minute reprieve, Marian asked if it were legal, this English wedding in a Spanish chapel.

“All right and tight, I swear,” he said, patting his pocket where the special license reposed. “Once you make your vows and sign your name, you are wed for all time. I suppose there are annulments and other havey-cavey legal goings-on that could dissolve the contract, but you’d have to prove Hardesty was insane or impotent, you know. Not likely, with half the females in London claiming otherwise, eh?”

Marian stumbled.

“Pardon, shouldn’t have spoken of his prowess, what? Just an old army man, don’t you know. Anyway, no one will be able to question the validity of the ceremony or the legitimacy of your sons. Important for the heir to a dukedom, don’t you know. Else every fifth cousin would be crawling out of the woodwork to claim the title, should the marquess happen to die early. No, you and your future children are protected. Why, I even had my own man of business draw up settlement papers for you in case the young hothead you are wedding does something else rash. You’ll be a wealthy widow, although I pray not soon, eh? So you’ll never have to be selling off your mama’s jewels or living in a convent again. That ought to please you, what?”

Nothing short of the earth opening up to swallow her was going to please Marian. “I…I…”

“No, my dear, you don’t have to thank me. Just be happy. You will be, I know it. It’s a fine man you are getting, brave and loyal. If Hardesty is a bit rough around the edges, why, that’s nothing a good woman cannot smooth over. All will be well. You’ll see.”

What Marian saw was her groom. Hardesty had to be the handsomest man she had ever encountered, despite the raw scar that trailed down his temple to just above his eye. He was leaning on a cane and on Kirby, but he was dressed in formal attire, the first time she had seen him in anything but a nightshirt. He looked like a fashion plate, except for the scar and the sling and the unsteadiness of his balance. An elegantly tailored jacket was draped over one shoulder, but she well knew the muscles that were hidden there. His auburn hair was gleaming in the thin light through the tiny windows of the chapel, and his immaculate white neckcloth was tied in a knot that the Bath gentlemen would have envied. And he was smiling at something Kirby was saying.

Ah, that smile. Marian was half surprised none of the sisters of Saint Esperanza were swooning. She knew she felt her own senses go numb at the sight. He was always attractive; smiling, he was a god. Or a devil, come to seduce every woman in sight into indiscretion. He was a good-looking libertine, a handsome here-and-thereian, a man she could never, ever trust. And he was her bridegroom.

Heaven help her.

7

Hell, Hugh swore to himself, if the woman did not get here soon, he was going to miss his own wedding. His legs were watery, his head was light, his pulse was racing—and that was before he’d started out for the chapel. He was weaker than he’d thought, or a lot more lily-livered. He’d faced that entire French charge without a second thought. Now he was having second thoughts, and third and fourth ones too, every one of which involved fleeing, if his legs could carry him, and if he had somewhere to go. They couldn’t, he didn’t, so he might as well pass out instead.

Lud, he had never been a coward before. Of course, he’d never been married before either, but surely he could face a vicar and a dowdy female. So what if the vicar was issuing a life sentence, and the woman was to be his jailer? So what if his bride was bony, unbending, and unbiddable? He was a man, wasn’t he? He could survive. Or he could collapse in a heap and beg for a quick death.

He could not turn craven. Lady Marian had suffered more than her share of ignominy, and another failed bridegroom meant yet another scandal. Hugh doubted even that pig Lord Fredricks would have her after that. Hugh would be consigning the unfortunate woman to the life of a pauper, an outcast, a social pariah. He could not do that, not when he owed her for saving his life.

Instead he would force her into a life of luxury among the quality, a life she deserved, but one she did not want, simply because he was sharing it.

And where the devil was she, anyway? If he could get here, half crawling across the convent’s courtyard, the least she could do was be on time.

He took out his watch again, and Kirby snickered. Now Hugh regretted asking the batman to stand up with him, although the sisters’ handyman, Juan Marcos, had been his only other choice. Kirby was not precisely standing up with him anyway. The sergeant was more like propping Hugh up than acting as witness. From the iron grip Kirby had on Hugh’s arm, he must be on orders to prevent desertions.

Still, Kirby did know how to tie a neckcloth, iron a suit of clothes, and put a shine on a pair of boots that the Beau himself would envy. The old soldier was also coming to appreciate the best attribute of the British aristocracy: its money. Hugh had been so generous with his blunt, and the lady so gracious, offering to teach him to read and write, that Kirby had decided to retire from the army and accompany them back to England. He was not about to let Lord Hardesty turn tail and cost them all that rosy future.

“She’ll be here soon enough,” he said when Hugh reached for the chain stretched across his white brocade waistcoat to check his fob watch yet again. “Unless she chose young Allenby instead.”

Corporal Allenby was the youngest, least valuable member of the general’s staff, so he had been used to carry messages and instructions from the command tent to the convent. Second son to a Berkshire baron, he was seventeen, skinny and spotted, and considered himself a poet. The lad was no more suited to army life than a three-legged kitten, but he adored Lady Marian. He reminded her of her younger brother, she said, and she treated the boy with kindness. She even listened to Allenby’s dreadful verses, which more and more were dedicated to her eyebrow, her lip, her angelic voice.

“My arse,” Hugh told Kirby, smiling at the thought of his black-clad bride wedding a green-as-grass youth. Then he turned forward—and she was there. Not his Nurse Marian, not the grim scarecrow he was expecting, but a true vision. This could not be his bride, could it? No, some fairy creature must have left her bower in the woods and wandered into this little chapel in error.

She was dressed in sunbeams, all yellow and bright, with hair like honey flowing down her shoulders—her nearly bare shoulders. Lud, the swell of her breasts above that scant neckline left little to the imagination. Hugh did not need Allenby’s creative
min
d to supply a
rhyme. His heart was beating in iambic pentameter on
its own.

And her face… No mortal poet could do justice to that face. An artist could, perhaps, if he had magic in his fingers to capture the worry in her blue eyes, the determination in her pointed jaw, the pride in her graceful carriage—along with her astonishing beauty. No, he amended, his Maid Marian was not beautiful. She was too thin, too pale, too unsmiling. But, Zeus, she was stunning.

Perhaps he’d merely been away from pretty women for too long. The nuns did not merit a second look, although he did find the three hairs on Sister Paloma’s chin to be intriguing. No, Marian would stand out in any crowd, he told himself, and not merely because she was taller than most women. The acknowledged belles of the
ton
had more perfect features, and a rounder, softer beauty, which was often marred by an artificial smile, a practiced, polite charm.

There was nothing false about Marian, except possibly the hint of color on her cheeks. She was lovely, and she was frightened, obviously as nervous as he was about this ordeal, and Hugh admired her the more for it. Feelings he did not know he possessed rose in him like an underground stream seeking the daylight. Protectiveness, possessiveness, pride, he was ready to burst with all three. Something else, recently gone missing from his life, rose slightly, lifting his spirits with it.
Hallelujah!
Dampened by the occasion and the environment and lack of exercise, that inappropriate twinge quickly dissipated, but it was a start. Hugh said a short prayer of thanksgiving.

He might have been forced into this marriage, but now he had hopes of making a success of it. Marian would fit into his world, into his arms, once the broken one healed, and into his life. She was beautiful and well-bred, everything his father wished for in the mother of a future duke, and Hugh might just be able to beget those necessary babes. She was beautiful and he was attracted to her. A man would have to be dead not to be, which proved how close to death’s door he had been, that he did not see the diamond under the coal. She was beautiful and she was his bride.

Of course, he had said they would not consummate the marriage yet, and she disliked him on principle.

Heaven help him.

*

So the wedding proceeded, with more prayers than expected. The chaplain, more familiar with “dust to dust” than “dearly beloved,” fumbled a few times, but the short service went on. The groom made his vows in a firm voice full of conviction. If the bride sounded less convinced, or convincing, she managed to repeat all Lord Hardesty’s names in the proper order. The duke’s son did not faint, and the earl’s daughter did not fling her bouquet at him, which was all that mattered to the general. He cleared his throat a few times, signaling the reverend gentleman to get on with the thing. War did not wait on sermons and such.

The chaplain decided to forgo the words he’d prepared about the duties and the demands of marriage. He went right on to the part about the ring.