I Spy a Duke (20 page)

From anyone else, pity made him defensive. He’d learned quickly to project a veneer of confidence, so that people wouldn’t think him weak—or worse, ask too many questions. With Arden, he couldn’t hide.
 

“I’d hoped you were finally experiencing some peace.” She came to his side of the bench, slowly sitting down beside him.

“As the Lion always said, ‘there’ll be peace when our work is done, and our work is never done.’”
 

“You always do that,” Arden chided him. “In fact, I can’t remember the last time I heard you refer to him as ‘Father.’ It’s always ‘the Lion.’ Why is that?”

He blinked. “No reason.”

Arden gave him one of her characteristic “you’re not going to get rid of me that easily” arch looks.

James ran a hand across his chin. “I don’t know. He might have been our father, but he was a legend. Isn’t that more important than whatever he was to us?”
 

Arden shook her head. “We were taught to think that way. You especially, since you’re the heir. You don’t get a chance to see the smaller picture—to see each life individually. The stakes are so much higher for you, our leader.”

“‘Lose one life to save a hundred,’” James quoted, recalling the Lion’s words when a favorite agent had died foiling an assassination plot against the Prime Minister.

“Yet you punish yourself every day over Louisa’s death.” Arden laid her hand on top of his.
 

He thought of the portrait in the family album. Louisa’s wide smile, her front tooth missing. The ribbons in her hair he knew were pink, though the sketch was charcoal. He remembered the dirt always streaking her hands, even as she aged—she’d been so daring, never daunted by anything.

But he couldn’t recall the sound of her laugh.

“Every day, I remember a little less about Louisa.” He did not know if he spoke to himself or Arden. With one foot in the past and the other in his new future with Vivian, he lacked a hold on the present. “I was with Vivian today, going over Elinor’s family album. For an hour with her, I made jokes and I laughed.”

Arden smiled. “If the memories are becoming cloudy, then that’s a sign. Your mind’s trying to tell you that it’s time for you to be happy.”

He sighed. “I don’t know.”

“I do. When you told me you’d asked Miss Loren to marry you, I thought maybe you’d found a way to be happy,” Arden said. “I’ve seen the way you look at her. If anyone deserves happiness, it’s you, Jim.”

He didn’t believe her, but God, how he longed to. Arden knew him better than anyone else. From the moment the Lion had brought Arden home that stormy night fifteen years ago, they’d been as thick as thieves.
 

“I’m coming with you,” Arden declared, breaking into his thoughts.
 

“Where?”

“When you take Miss Loren for training,” Arden said. “My trunk’s already packed.”

“Ah.” The trip he’d planned to tell Vivian was a wedding trip, but in actuality was Clocktower protocol.
 

He didn’t have the slightest idea how he’d explain Arden’s presence on such a trip, yet he couldn’t bring himself to ask her to stay away. Having her there made sense, from an instructional perspective. If Vivian were going to learn self-defense, it would be better that she received help from someone of similar build.

“I’m going so you don’t always have to be the spy.” Arden patted his hand, rising from the bench. “Let me watch your back, while you spend time with your new wife.”
 

It was a nice idea, but highly improbable in practice. “You know the mission comes first.”

“For me, yes,” Arden answered. “I checked the manifest. We’ve a good team in place. Elinor scheduled Nixon to drive, and I’ll be taking Northley too, of course.”

He shuddered at the mention of Arden’s maid, who’d picked up more than a few defense maneuvers in her time with the family. He now had a perpetual fear of parasols thanks to that old woman.

Arden smiled at his reaction. “Leave the intrigue to us. Make something real with Miss Loren.”

He stayed on that bench long after she left, listening to the silence of the conservatory. Smelling the flowers that reminded him so much of Vivian. Maybe it was time for a new mission. For the last year, he’d held onto Louisa’s memory, punishing himself. He had thrown himself into work and little else. He stopped living.

But every time Vivian entered the room, his breath caught in his throat. She’d somehow managed to demolish his walls. He felt
alive
again. And that feeling centered him, gave him purpose. Whatever Sauveterre tried to bring to them, he’d fight, and he’d win. For Vivian. He might not be the man she deserved, but he was the man best suited to guarding her.
 

And he would not fail this time.
 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Precisely fourteen days after the Duke of Abermont had proposed to her, Vivian stood beside him at the newly constructed altar in his family’s parlor and prayed to God that she was making the right decision.
 

The old grandfather clock in the hall chimed eight in the morning, signaling the beginning of the wedding. Vivian grasped the bouquet of lilacs tightly in her hand, her knuckles no doubt whitening from the force of her hold. The flowers were the same color as the silk dress she wore, with its lavender netting, spangles, and long train.

She glanced over her shoulder at the assembled coterie. James’s friends and family, for the ceremony had been arranged too swiftly for her to write to her old friends in Devon. She shouldn’t have been surprised by the efficiency with which the Spencer family had arranged the wedding. Everything they did was quick and well organized, with nary a detail forgotten.
 

Still, she wished she had
someone
from back home. Someone who’d help her remember that she could remain largely the same person she’d always been, even when surrounded with such opulence. Someone who would console her when the threat on her life made her doubt the wisdom of staying instead of running.
 

Upon a nod from James, the minister opened his common prayer book and began to read in a sonorous tone, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony...”

Surreptitiously, she peered out from behind her veil at the duke, standing on her left side. Her eyes traveled from his startlingly black crop of hair, those smooth waves she wanted so badly to run her fingers through, to his wide forehead and his rounded chin. This man, with his hawk nose and his serious eyes that seemed to track her every movement, would be her
husband
. She’d see him every morning and end her days with him.
 

It had been so long since she’d been excited by the prospect of anything so truly scintillating, she’d almost forgotten what it felt like.
 

As the minister addressed the congregation, explaining that the purpose of marriage was primarily to procreate, Vivian’s nails dug deeper into the ribbon around the bouquet. She let her eyes drift down James’s frame, her cheeks pinking at the mere thought of being that close to him.

Of being
with
him. He stood with his strapping shoulders back, his kerseymere coat expertly tailored to display his muscular chest. And his pantaloons, God help her, his pantaloons were skin-tight, the drop front hugging that private area of his body she most certainly should not be pondering.

The masculinity of him almost took her breath away. How positively sinful, to have these stirrings of desire for him when she ought to be focused on pledging her obedience to him.
 

“I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgement when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed...” The minister’s eagle-eyed glare zeroed in on her, as if he could sense the tawdry turn Vivian’s thoughts had taken. “If either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined together in Matrimony, ye do now confess it.”

Vivian gulped. Would anyone offer a protest? It would make sense if the Spencers didn’t want a lowly governess sullying their aristocratic bloodline. She chanced a glance at Abermont’s three sisters, who flocked her on the right. Lady Elinor schooled her features into absolute blandness. Beside her, Lady Korianna appeared amused by everything she saw. And Miss Spencer simply smiled at Vivian as though she couldn’t wait to welcome her into the family.
 

Vivian decided she liked her the best.

When no one spoke up, the minister continued. “Wilt thou have this Woman to thy wedded Wife, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”

James didn’t hesitate. The surety in his voice fortified her. “I will.”
 

The minister repeated the same questions to Vivian, but her focus wasn’t on his words. She saw James. The reassurance in his eyes. His crooked smile. Somehow his presence made her feel stronger—though certainly not more at ease.
 

And so when it came to be her turn, she said resolutely, “I will.”

When the priest asked who would give her away, Vivian’s heart tugged. She’d always thought Evan would be the one to give her away. If only he could be here!

Instead, Lord Haley came forward, presenting Vivian to the minister. Perhaps that was fitting, for Haley did so remind her of her own brother, with his glib grin and his sandy brown hair.

 
The minister gestured for her to hold James’s right hand in hers. Silk to the softest kid leather, their palms touched, leaving her wondering what it would be like to feel his hand on hers without such impediments.

“Repeat after me,” the minister indicated. “I, James Alexander Spencer, take thee, Vivian Eloise Loren to be my wedded Wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.”

James’s deep voice rang out through the crowded room, rich and clear. His eyes shone with intensity, while the set of his mouth was earnest. He meant every word he said, if Vivian was as adept at reading him as she wanted to believe.

I plight thee my troth.
 

They loosened hands. She missed the solidity of his contact, the way he made her feel like she wasn’t alone.
 

As the priest repeated the vows for her, she tried to conquer the anxiety waging war within her. If she said those vows, if she pledged her soul to him, there was be no going back. She’d be his.

Quickly, so quickly she would have missed it had her gaze not been locked on him, James winked. Her heart beat faster, and for a minute, she wished she could speed up time. To get to the point where they were alone—free of this pomp and circumstance. Where they could be simply two people.
 

She reached for his right hand, covering it with hers. As she promised to love and honor him through all eternity, she gave herself to this marriage. Even though it was a marriage of convenience, even though she didn’t know if they truly would suit as he claimed, even though all the odds were against them...she’d be his wife and devil take it, she’d be loyal to him.

He dropped her hands, drawing from his coat a ring, which he laid on top of the prayer book. The priest handed him the ring, which James held out to her.
 

“With this Ring I thee wed, with my Body I thee worship, and with all my worldly Goods I thee endow,” he murmured, slipping the ring onto her finger.
 

She stared down at the gold band. Sapphires twinkled back up at her, shaped to look like leaves encircling a diamond flower bud in the center. It was majestic, surely, yet there was no way she could ever deserve such extravagance. Would she ever feel like this ring was supposed to be hers? Or would she continue to expect another woman to pop out from the woodwork and exclaim that all along Vivian had simply been a placeholder for her?

James caught her eye as the minister bid them both to kneel so that they could join in prayer.
You needn’t worry,
his eyes seemed to be saying.
You are the one I want.
Vivian had begun to think his eyes could say as much as his expressive nods.