Dreaming (39 page)

And so it was that
Letitia
Olive Hornsby spent the remainder of that afternoon and evening preparing herself for a wedding. A whirlwind of hours that gave her little time for thought, until she was alone in her bedchamber.

She pulled tight the belt on her wrapper and walked over to the dormer window. She sat on the chintz-covered window seat as she had a million times in her nineteen years, and it wasn’t but an instant later that Gus leapt onto the seat and settled next to her.

She leaned her head against his wrinkled neck, her arm resting over his huge back. He laid his big muzzle on top of her head and they just sat there, looking out the window.

“Oh, Gus, do you think it’s truly going to be fine?”

He gave a choked whimper.

Letty
stared up into the dark night sky, so vast, so unknown. Just like her future. It wasn’t long before a cloud seemed to weaken and grow wispy; then it just faded away. In its place was a single star, winking down at her. And the mantel clock chimed nine times.

Chapter 23

No one left an earl waiting at the altar.

Richard paced the small vestibule with the same long strides as he had for the last ten minutes. The Hornsby carriage would arrive any moment.

However, the hellion wasn’t just anyone. She didn’t care a fig for his title. He stopped. What if, after chasing him for years, she didn’t show up at the church? That worried the cynic in him. Rang too true to life, ironic as the thought was.

And he couldn’t blame her if she did exactly that after what he had done to her. He ran an impatient hand through his hair, then checked his watch.

Damn . . . Damn . . . Damn . . .

He tapped the bouquet he held in his other hand against his thigh. Her father would have sent him a note if she had refused to go through with this.

However, Hornsby wasn’t known for his sense of responsibility. The man had said that he wouldn’t force her. Only a loose screw of a father would refuse to force a compromised young woman into marriage.

Richard paced some more, then slowed. His own father wouldn’t have hesitated to force any child of his to do whatever he wanted.

At that thought Richard ground to a halt.

A small voice of reason asked him if he would force a daughter of his own into marriage. Truthfully, he didn’t know the answer to that. He supposed it would depend on the man.

Odd, how once
Seymour
had said the word “compromised,” things had changed for Richard. It had seemed so simple. He had already ruined her; therefore marriage was a way of saving her.

He shook his head, frowning. He’d been around the hellion too much. His thinking was beginning to sound like hers.

A carriage came to a halt in front of the church.

Richard froze, then stretched his neck and straightened his cravat. He patted his right pocket. The Special License. He patted his left pocket. The ring.

The small room suddenly dimmed and shadows bled across the floor. He looked up. She stood in the doorway on her father’s arm. He couldn’t see her face. The two figures were limned in the afternoon sunlight. He knew, however, that she was looking at him, and he wondered if she could sense his nervousness.

God, he thought, my hands are shaking like a green lad. I should have taken a drink.

No, he amended that thought. No drinks.

“
Downe
,” Hornsby said, and they stepped inside.

Richard nodded to her father and stepped forward. “
Giana
Hunt sent these. She said they were for you. For today.” He held out the flowers, feeling as if he were sixteen.

“The Titian roses,” she said with soft awe and lifted the bouquet to her nose, breathing in the scent.

Her face broke into one of those wonderful smiles—similar to the kind that used to be for him. He had to admit that he missed those smiles. What he didn’t miss was the awestruck quality of them. They had always made him feel as if she thought he was God.

Not a comfortable thought for a man old in the ways of sin.

He could never hold up to an image like that. He had fought long and hard to be what he was, not what someone else—either his father or even an awestruck girl—imagined he should be.

Richard was just a man who made mistakes, a man who needed her to see him as a man, not a god.

She lowered the bouquet. He saw that she wore pearls. Perfect pink pearls. Her mother’s pearls. They looked like teardrops lying on her neck, and they reminded him of that night when she was bent and sobbing.

He drew himself up and said more sharply than he intended, “The reverend is waiting.”

She looked up at him, and her smile died.

Damn.

He opened the doors and watched her pass. Then he whipped in behind her, placing a hand on her shoulder.

She froze and looked up at him in surprise.

“I can be an ass sometimes.”

She searched his face, then said, “Yes, you can. But you don’t have to be.”

Her father came through the doors and took her arm before he could say anything more.

The Reverend
Poppit
looked up from his pulpit. “Oh, fine, the bride has arrived. Yes, yes. Time to get started. Mrs.
Poppit
! Mrs.
Poppit
!”

A head covered in a mousy shade of brown hair popped around the sanctuary door. The expert on rakes, Richard thought as he joined them at the altar.

The woman looked at him and her eyes grew wide. He had the sense that, had the woman been Catholic, she would have crossed herself. Or perhaps she would have just held a cross up in front of her.

“Come, Mrs.
Poppit
. Hurry! Can’t keep the earl and his bride waiting now, can we?”

Richard turned toward
Letty
and held out his hand. Hornsby placed his daughter’s hand in his. The symbolism of the gesture wasn’t lost on Richard. He paused for a second. He was marrying not only for the sake of family and heirs, for his pride and because of compromising positions. He was accepting a lifetime of responsibility for her.

Marriage became more than a ceremony, or something to avoid. He was taking a wife. He looked down at her, frowning slightly. His wife.

The permanence of marriage hit him square between the eyes, as surely as if she had bashed him with that driftwood again. This small brown-haired woman would be the mother of his children, the woman he would grow old with.

The look she gave him was as dazed as he felt. He gently pulled her hand through his arm and covered it with his own. He didn’t know why, he just did. She stared at their hands for the longest time. He felt her fingers tighten slightly, but she didn’t look up at him. And he knew then that she was afraid to look at him, because of what she might see.

He wanted to say something to put her at ease. But it was important that he say the right thing. He leaned over and looked at her until she had to look up at him.

“So how do we go on from here?” he whispered.

Her brow furrowed slightly and she murmured, “I don’t know.”

He was struck by how she looked, frightened and flawless. No more dirt smudges after long hours of being locked in a hold. Her dress wasn’t tattered from their ordeal. Her dress was blue. The same icy-blue color of her worried gaze, when she would look at him after some disaster.

She had small pink flowers of some kind woven through the brown curls gathered high on her head. For some reason that struck him as solemnly as the pearls had. Today was special to her. He remembered that first ball. He had the same sense of chivalry that he’d felt then, as if her happiness were dependent upon what he did.

After a moment she gazed up at him through curious eyes.

While the reverend fumbled around, searching for his Bible, he stood there, trying to think of something he could give her to make the moment special. He leaned down again and said, “I forgot to ask you something.”

“What?”

He leaned down so that only she could hear him. “Will you marry me?”

Startled, she looked up at him.

He shrugged. “Something to tell our grandchildren.”

She smiled, then gave a weak laugh.

“I take it that’s a yes?”

Before she could answer the reverend began the ceremony.

As quickly as it had begun, it ended. Richard stood there somewhat disappointed. Somehow that didn’t seem the way it should be. After so many years of avoiding the altar, it seemed to him that the wedding should have been more reflective of the fight to finally get there. But it wasn’t.

They went through the motions, signing the book, the standard congratulatory comments from the reverend and his wife, everything as mundane as the day seemed to be.

In the vestibule they stopped. He watched as
Letty
looked at her father. The man had damp eyes. He opened his arms, and the hellion was in them. The older man held her as if he was loath to release her.

Richard turned away. He couldn’t look at them right then because he felt some odd, piercing twist of emotion. It was confusing as hell.

He didn’t understand. From what he knew, Hornsby was forever off in the North Country, looking for some broken piece of Roman pottery, while the hellion spent years running wild.

Yet what he saw pass between them was sincere. She loved the man in spite of his neglect.

He heard her say it: “I love you, Papa.”

Perhaps you’ve said those words without meaning them, Richard. But I never have.

He spun back around and watched her, remembering her words. She never left someone she loved without telling them how she felt. She turned around then, her hand going to the pearls at her neck.

He stared into her face. The small room was silent and seemed suddenly oppressive with the multitude of questions in her eyes and the jumble of words on the tip of his lips.

His wife was looking back at him. His wife. He exhaled a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.

He knew what he had truly been nervous about. He’d been afraid. Not that she wouldn’t show up at the church. But that she wouldn’t be able to forgive him.

Silently they left the church, and he lifted her into his open carriage. If his hands lingered a little longer on her waist, he didn’t notice. If he sat a little closer to her than was necessary, he could not say. If no words passed between them, then that too was fine by him, for now.

Letty
looked around the room and felt even more nervous and out of place. Since the moment she’d stepped into the church it seemed that nothing had passed between her and Richard except half a day of awkward moments.

Oh, there had been a look here, a touch there, but none of those things had alleviated the tension. She stood near the fire, rubbing her hands nervously and just listening.

Above the crackle of the burning logs, she could hear sounds coming from the next room: a drawer closing, the murmur of a servant’s voice, the sound of their adjoining door clicking open.

Richard.

Her head shot up.