Enchanting Pleasures (24 page)

“I feel obliged to warn you—”

But Gabby interrupted him again. “You needn’t go on,” she said, her tone airy and light. “I realize that you have decided to…throw me over, and I would rather not discuss it. After all, I have a positive embarrassment of riches. At the moment I have two fiancés. I shall quite happily marry Peter.” She almost dusted her hands to emphasize the finality of her comment, but she clutched them together instead. Something about the way Quill’s face had darkened during her little speech made her heart skip a beat.

“Do you dare to imply that
I
am trying to break off our engagement?”

Gabby nodded.

“I would never do such a thing.” Quill’s voice was thunderous.

Gabby suddenly realized her mistake. Once again she had insulted the English sense of propriety. She had offended Quill by implying that he wished to break off their engagement. A gentleman never spurned a lady—he forced the lady to break off the engagement instead.

She placed a gloved hand on his sleeve. “Quill, as friends, can’t we speak truthfully to each other?”

Quill stared at her in some bewilderment. He didn’t want her to speak truthfully if she was going to gibber on about having two fiancés and it not mattering which she married. She had
one
fiancé. And he was it. And she was going to have him as a husband too. After plaguing him all day, his conscience had gone silent. She was
his
.

He scowled at her. “Go ahead, then,” he barked.

Gabby bit her lip. He looked just as angry as Peter had when she tried to kiss him in public. Truly, English gentlemen gave absurd credence to their rules of conduct.

“All I mean to say,” she said, as reasonably as possible, “is that given our friendship, you needn’t pretend that you still wish to marry me. You needn’t try to find ways to make me jilt you. I completely understand.”

There was a sick pain in her heart that belied her statement, but she’d think about that later. The important thing now was to preserve her dignity as much as possible, given that she’d just been thrown over. Luckily, the only person who knew about their brief engagement was Lady Sylvia, since they had decided not to disclose her change of fiancés to morning callers.

The horses were trotting down a lane on the north side of Hyde Park. Quill pulled on the reins, put on the brake, and tucked the reins into the curricle rail, without saying another word.

Gabby was feeling quite sick to her stomach now and would much rather return to the house than continue this unpleasant discussion. She expressed this desire in a slightly querulous tone.

Satisfied that his geldings were peacefully at a standstill, Quill turned his large body toward Gabby, which caused his thigh to press against her leg. Gabby flushed. It was embarrassing to remember how she had clung to his body that morning. No wonder he had rethought their marriage.

When Quill didn’t say anything immediately, Gabby took a deep breath and repeated herself. “If you wouldn’t mind, I should very much like to return to the house.”

The traffic in the park was gradually increasing as the hour of six o’clock drew near and London gentlefolk turned out to admire themselves—at least those who braved a chill. The snap in the air had given Gabby’s cheeks a pink glow that made her look as delectable as an apple tart, to Quill’s mind.

He had registered the fact that she leapt at the chance to break off their engagement. Not that he was going to let her get away with it. Quill was used to setbacks. They happened frequently in business endeavors and only made him the more determined to gain whatever it was he wanted. However, there was no reason to further blacken Gabby’s reputation by jerking her onto his lap in public and kissing her until she begged him to marry her.

That could wait for the evening.

Without bothering to say another word, he untucked the reins, loosed the brake, and deftly turned the horses back into the circular drive.

Gabby swallowed hard. For a moment she had thought that he was angry enough to kiss her. But he must have caught himself, remembering that he had got what he wanted: he was a free man once more. She stared at the flicking ears of the horses, trying hard to calm the furious misery in her heart. Luckily she still had her first fiancé. It was providential, like keeping one’s money until the milk had been tasted. Now that her second fiancé had turned sour, she hadn’t really lost anything.

Except that the lump in her throat told her that there had been an irrational—and quite stupid—transfer of affections. To put it in a nutshell, she wanted rather desperately to marry Quill, and she didn’t give a fig whether she married Peter or not. And to make matters worse, she thought that Peter probably felt the same about her.

She pressed her lips together hard. You will
not
cry, she told herself. You thought you were in love with Peter only yesterday, for goodness sake.

Quill cast her a sideways glance. She had a queer, pinched look around her eyes, his Gabby did. And then he remembered a line of Peter’s, something to the effect that Patrick Foakes had convinced everyone that he was madly in love with Lady Sophie by throwing civility to the winds.

He stopped the curricle, pulling it over to the right once again.

“Quill! I should very much like to return to Dewland House now!” His future wife spoke in a regrettably shrill voice.

When he was finished setting the brake, Quill turned to Gabby and dragged off his gloves.

Gabby’s eyes darted to his bare hands and then back to his face.

Without a word he reached out and took her left hand. He bent his head and began to painstakingly unbutton the small pearl buttons at her wrist.

Gabby stared at his tousled hair. What the devil was he doing? He tossed her left glove to the floor of the curricle and began on the buttons of the right. Gabby looked up, but when she caught the eyes of a stranger passing in a carriage, she looked back at Quill’s head. He tossed her right glove to the floor.

It was shockingly intimate, the touch of his bare hands on hers. Still without speaking, Quill drew her hands to his mouth and placed a kiss on each palm. His mouth lingered, velvet soft, slipping to her wrist. Gabby shivered as a flush of heat swept down her legs.

One hand rounded her shoulders, slid down her back, leaving a path of molten nerves behind it. Gabby heard Quill’s breath catch in his throat as the hand swooped under her bottom, paused for a moment, and then lifted her onto his lap in one sure movement.

His mouth came down on hers with a shudder. She opened her lips to his silent command, and he plunged into her mouth. Gabby didn’t notice that she was winding her fingers through his hair and holding his head in case he tried to stop kissing her. She had no idea that four separate carriages drove slowly past the curricle, their passengers eagerly assessing the boundaries of the scandal.

In fact, when Quill finally did pull back and say, his voice a hoarse whisper, “Do you still think I want to jilt you, Gabby mine?” she couldn’t find words to reply.

Instead, she leaned toward him and feathered her lips across his. He stopped the torment. A large hand jerked her head against his lips, held her there while his mouth ravaged hers.

But he drew back again, leaving her with choked breathing and a racing pulse. “Do you still think that I want to jilt you?” he repeated.

“No,” Gabby breathed.

“Then don’t ever say it again,” came a growling command. He had pushed off her bonnet, and her hair was falling around her ears.

He pushed both hands into the amazing, beautiful weight of it. “You’re going to be my wife. Not Peter’s wife. Not Peter’s fiancé even. Mine.”

“I would like that,” Gabby whispered. A trace of shyness counteracted the flush high on her cheekbones. “I don’t want to marry Peter, Quill. I want to marry you.”

There was just a trace of conscience left in Quill’s soul, and he summoned it to the forefront.

“Even given—”

“Even if you were thrown under a carriage on the way home,” Gabby said.

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Quill said, gathering together the shards of his self-control. He picked up Gabby and placed her on the seat, his fingers only lingering for a second on the delicious curve of her bottom.

Gabby picked up her bonnet, with trembling fingers, and pulled it over her tumbled hair.

Quill shot her a glance as he maneuvered the horses back onto the drive once more. “I’m afraid that I’ve dented your reputation once again.”

“That’s all right.” Gabby’s heart was singing. She was in love and he was in love and they were going to be married. She was marrying Quill—great, huge, beautiful Quill.

“Will you speak to Peter this evening?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe that he will mind terribly,” Gabby said meditatively, picking up her gloves from the carriage floor as it swept around the corner into Piccadilly, heading toward St. James’s Square.

“You may be right,” Quill returned, his face deliberately noncommittal.

Q
UILL
HELPED
G
ABBY
down from the curricle, with a secret smile that warmed her to the tips of her toes. She fled upstairs to dress for dinner, only to be thoroughly scolded by Margaret. Margaret had no belief in the benefits of fresh air and felt that winter was no time to be taking drives in an open curricle. She dismissed Gabby’s rather feeble excuses with a sniff.

“You’ll be sick as a stout, no doubt about that. And you coming from a warm country as well! Just mind what Mr. Peter says about this. I expect he won’t want you to be tucked away in bed for the next few weeks.”

“Actually, I have decided not to marry Peter,” Gabby said cheerfully, helping Margaret remove what few pins remained in her hair.

Margaret’s mouth fell open. “You’re not marrying Mr. Peter?”

“I have decided to marry Erskine instead.”

Margaret crowed. “You’re going to be a viscountess! Oh, this is splendid!” Her eyes were shining with excitement. “I’m going to be a personal maid to a viscountess!” Then her face fell. “That is, if you still want me. Perhaps you had better hire one of those French maids. Viscountess Dewland has an awfully starched maid named Stimple. She calls herself a
mademoiselle-de-service
, rather than a plain maid.”

Gabby laughed. “Never fear, Margaret. You will be a lady’s maid to a viscountess. But not for a long time, hmmm? I wouldn’t wish the viscount any ill.”

Margaret sobered immediately. “Of course I don’t wish that, miss.” She started to brush out Gabby’s heavy locks. “None of us does, belowstairs. We’re that fond of the viscount. It doesn’t seem right, him dying off in some strange place rather than in his own bed.”

“I don’t think he’s dying,” Gabby said, rather startled. “I believe that his health is improving all the time, Margaret.”

Margaret shook her head. “Once a person has one of those attacks, there’s another right around the corner, miss. He should be home where he belongs, that’s what. We all think so.”

“I’m sure he’ll return to London just as soon as the doctors think it advisable,” Gabby murmured, rather shocked by Margaret’s comment. “And I certainly hope you are wrong about the possibility of future attacks.”

Margaret set her mouth obstinately and would only repeat her belief that the viscount ought to have been brought home by now.

The viscountess arrived from Bath just in time to join the family for supper. At first Gabby was very glad for the interruption, because she and Peter were avoiding each other’s eyes in a tedious fashion. She could only assume that Quill had caught his brother after their ride in the park and informed him that the betrothal was at an end.

But Kitty’s news was not good, and it seemed that Margaret had, in fact, been correct in her lugubrious prediction. Apparently Thurlow had slipped into a state of confusion, from which he was roused only with difficulty He seemed to sleep most of the time, and the doctors held out very little hope for recovery.

Gabby looked at her hands, uncertain how to offer sympathy. Peter stood behind his mother’s chair, gripping her shoulders. And Quill stood alone, next to the mantelpiece. What she really wanted to do was to walk over to Quill and take his hand. But she stayed next to Lady Sylvia on the settee.

This time Kitty wasn’t the least hysterical, and she did not weep as she told them the news.

“How much time has he got, Kitty?” Lady Sylvia’s voice was uncharacteristically gentle.

Kitty’s blue eyes were bleak. “Likely only a few days.” She paused and the words sank into the room’s silence.

“You and the boys should leave tonight,” Lady Sylvia said after a moment.

Kitty turned to Gabby. “My dear, I am terribly regretful that this unhappy event has occurred during your first weeks in England.”

“Oh, no! It is of no account. I am sorry, my lady….I am so sorry to hear of the viscount’s health.”

“You are a sweet girl, Gabrielle. I am sure you will be a great comfort to me.”

Kitty had clearly accepted the fact of her husband’s imminent death. Gabby’s heart twisted. What if it were Quill lying there? Without thinking about it, she rose and walked over next to him.

Quill looked down at her and smiled. He put an arm around her shoulders. “Mother, Gabby has decided to marry me rather than Peter,” he said.

Gabby instinctively looked at Peter, but he wasn’t angry. As a matter of fact, he smiled and nodded at her most genially.

Kitty Dewland’s eyes rested on Gabby and Quill in bewilderment and then lightened. “I am
so
happy, Quill! And dear Gabrielle.” She rose and walked over, taking each of their hands. “I always hoped that my children would marry for love, as I did.” She bent and kissed Gabby. “A double welcome to the family, dearest.”

She kissed her elder son and then paused. “We shall soon be in mourning, Quill.”

He nodded. “Perhaps I should marry Gabby tomorrow, by special license, Mama.”

A glimmer of tears shone in Kitty’s eyes, but her voice was quite steady. “Perhaps that would be for the best, dearest.”

Quill leaned down and kissed his mother on the cheek.

She blinked away tears. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be maudlin. It’s just that Thurlow would have liked to see you and Gabrielle …”

“Shall we be married in Bath?” Quill suggested.

One tear escaped and rolled down Kitty’s cheek. “That would be very amenable of you, Quill.”

“Then that is what we shall do, Mama.” He drew his mother over to a chair and she sank into it, clearly exhausted.

Lady Sylvia took charge. “Time we told the servants to pack,” she said. “And then we must have that meal before Cook has conniptions. If we’re going to be in a carriage half the night, we need some hot food first.” She rang the bell and snapped at Codswallop when he appeared. “Quill, you’d better go out and rouse Beilby Porteus. He is a bishop, and he is also a friend of the family. He’ll hand over a license with no fuss.”

It took most of the night to reach Bath, and there was little conversation in the coach. Gabby finally fell asleep on Quill’s shoulder as they jolted their way down the Bath road.

The following morning Gabby dressed in the most demure of Madame Carême’s gowns, and Margaret piled her hair into an elaborate design. Most surprisingly, Margaret then produced a wedding veil, a beautiful bit of gauze embroidered with white-on-white flowers.

“Where on earth did you find a veil?” Gabby asked, startled. She hadn’t thought there would be anything weddinglike about the ceremony, under the circumstances.

“The master fetched it from Madame Carême yesterday,” Margaret explained, deftly pinning it to her mistress’s hair.

Gabby smiled. Quill had left the house directly after their conversation, and while the rest of them ate a glum and rather silent dinner, he was presumably obtaining a special license. But it seemed that he thought about the wedding itself as well.

A few moments later, Lady Sylvia appeared. The wedding was to be held in the viscount’s bedchamber on the upper floor of the inn. Gabby stood rather awkwardly on the side of the room, trying not to peer at the bed. Given that she had never even met the viscount, it seemed very odd to be in his chambers.

Quill was standing beside a young minister as he blessed the viscount. Gabby shivered. She couldn’t help thinking that the occasion was rather morbid. This wasn’t how she had pictured her wedding day. She had envisioned an elaborate ceremony and had seen herself walking up the aisle of an enormous church while Peter watched, his brown eyes alight with adoration. Gabby sighed. Quill had only glanced at her this morning. Except for the fact that he pulled her onto his shoulder in the coach, they might have been nothing more than acquaintances.

Grief had pulled Quill’s face and darkened his eyes; exhaustion was giving him a pronounced limp on the right side. Gabby longed to help him, but had no idea what to do. It didn’t seem correct to move toward the bed.

After what felt like an interminable period, the minister walked over to her and bowed. “Miss Jerningham, my name is Mr. Moir. I am ready to conduct the ceremony.” He, too, was looking pale and strained. This was a most unusual wedding for everyone.

The family moved to the side of the viscount’s bed. Lady Sylvia remained seated at the side of the room, next to the viscount’s doctor.

Quill’s face was expressionless. Gabby stood next to him and the minister, on one side of the bed. Kitty and Peter stood on the other side. Kitty picked up her husband’s limp hand.

“We might as well go ahead,” Quill said. His voice was not rude, but there was no emotion in it at all.

Gabby put her hand on his arm. “Quill,” she half whispered.

“What is it?”

“Will you introduce me to your father?” she asked awkwardly.

“Of course,” Quill said courteously, and he moved away from the bed so that she saw the viscount for the first time. He was a tall man, with an unmistakable resemblance to his elder son. He had Quill’s eyelashes, lying dark against drawn cheeks. Death spoke in the white look of his face. But he also seemed very peaceful, sleeping so quietly that the breath hardly moved in his chest.

Quill stooped over and said, “Father, I would like to introduce you to Gabrielle Jerningham. I am going to marry her.”

There was no response from the sleeping man.

Kitty put her hand on his cheek and said, “I believe that Thurlow can hear us. This morning I told him all about the wedding.” She leaned over and called, “Darling!”

Thurlow’s eyes flickered open and sought out his wife, standing by the bed. He murmured something.

“What is it, darling?”

“Cherish,” he said, quite clearly. “Lovely Kitty.”

Gabby could feel tears in the back of her throat. She reached out and laid her hand briefly on top of the viscount’s. “I am very pleased to meet you, sir.”

“Dearly beloved,” Mr. Moir said, his voice gentle. “We are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this family, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony….”

Quill took Gabby’s hands in his large, warm ones. Gabby looked up at him and clutched his hands as if they were lifelines.

“It is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand,” Mr. Moir was saying, “unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding, but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the face of God.”

Quill took a deep breath. Part of his mind still couldn’t believe that he, Erskine Dewland, was marrying Gabrielle Jerningham. As a matter of fact, it was hard to believe that he was marrying at all. He was aware of his father’s inert body at his right shoulder, of Mr. Moir talking of procreation and remedies for sin, of his mother holding his father’s hand to her cheek.

But most of all he was aware of his almost-wife. Of Gabby’s lovely brandy-colored eyes, shining with grief for a man she had never met. Her glorious hair was shaded by a veil that looked like a wisp of cloud.

And he repeated after the priest, “I, Erskine Matthew Claudius Dewland, take thee, Gabrielle Elizabeth Jerningham, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer …”

Gabby was dimly aware that the viscountess was cradling her husband’s hand against her cheek and that Peter was smiling slightly on the other side of the bed. But the room had narrowed to Quill’s deep-green eyes and to his large hands, still holding hers tightly. “In sickness and in health,” she said clearly, “to love, cherish, and to obey, till death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I give thee my troth.”

Quill smiled then, and the smile flew to her heart. He took her hand and slid a ring onto the fourth finger.

“With this ring I thee wed,” Quill said. “With my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.”

Gabby swallowed hard. The viscountess was weeping silently on the other side of the bed.