My Only Love (38 page)

The
wedding was held in Braithwaite's rose garden, amid the scores of brilliant
blooms that filled the June air with heady perfume. The sky was cloudless and
vibrant blue.

Three
hundred guests attended the ceremony. (Olivia ran out of favors!) Folks came
from Gunnerside. From Middleham. From London. They spread out over Braithwaite's
immense gardens surrounding the house and watched somewhat misty-eyed as Olivia
and Miles stood upon the raised platform of a rose-covered gazebo and renewed
their vows before a minister. As Miles slid the heavy gold wedding ring onto
Olivia's finger, a roar of approval rose up from the miners.

Jacques
was in heaven as the guests oohed and ahhed over his seven-layer wedding cake
and champagne punch. Armand complained that they would be forced to build a new
wing on the house to store all their wedding gifts, and Sally got tipsy by
drinking the dregs of punch remaining in the bottom of glasses.

As
the day's festivities drew to a close, Olivia and Miles Warwick stood in the
receiving line and shook the hand of each guest who passed by. As Miles's best
man, Earl Warwick stood at Miles's side. Janet attended Olivia, but wandered
off occasionally, only to be found in deep conversation with Charles Fowles,
who appeared to take great pleasure in explaining to her the peculiarities of
running a top-notch stable.

Once,
much to Olivia's dismay, she discovered Bryan embroiled in a shockingly fierce
wrestle on the ground with Earl Warwick's oldest son, Patrick. Miles and Damien
dragged them apart while Bonnie, the Countess Warwick, and Olivia stood to one
side, eyebrows lowered disapprovingly as their husbands set the boys on their
feet.

"Hey
ho!" came a voice from the crowd. "My money's on Bryan!"

"And
mine on Patrick!"

"There's
simply no question," announced the third voice. "My shilling's on a
draw!"

Frederick
Millhouse, Philippe Fitzpatrick, and Claur-ence Newman, friends of Earl Warwick
and Miles's, surrounded the boys and argued heatedly over which cousin would
oust the other, while Miles and Damien stared at one another a long tense
moment, then burst out in laughter. Then Damien offered his hand to Miles and
said, "Welcome to the family, Mr. Warwick."

As
was customary, after all the guests had departed, the Braithwaite servants
lined up and accepted tokens of appreciation from Olivia. There were new caps
and aprons for the maids, and new gloves for the men servants. Each beamed
their appreciation and voiced their best wishes for Olivia and Miles's happiness.
When all the help had departed, Bertrice lingered in the shadows, humming to
herself, and casting furtive glances at her employers.

Miles
gave Olivia a wink and said, "Come here, Bertrice."

With
her gray hair in tufts, the old woman waddled up the foyer and stopped before
Miles. She regarded him somewhat skeptically.

"I
have something for you as well," he explained.

Her
penny-shaped eyes widened with surprise and pleasure.

"Bryan!"
he called.

Bryan
walked from a drawing room, hefting a fat yellow tabby in his little arms.
Bertrice's eyes welled with tears, and she clapped her plump hands. "Oh
Lud," she declared, "y've found me—"

"Kitty!"
Olivia, Miles, and Bryan cried in unison.

Putting
the purring cat into Bertrice's waiting arms, Miles said, "I'm certain you
and Bryan will find a way to entertain Dickens throughout the remainder of the
evening. Won't you, dear?"

Her
mouth curved in a smile. " 'Course." Taking Bryan's hand, Bertrice
turned and started for the door, pausing only long enough to look back and say
saucily, "Dickens was black."

Miles
slid his hands in his trouser pockets. "Ungrateful old woman," he
muttered. "I should fire her."

"But
you won't." Olivia drew her arm around her husband's and smiled up into
his face. "Now for your wedding gift."

"A
wedding gift for me?" He grinned like their son; his eyes danced with
excitement.

Olivia
pulled him toward the open front door, where Armand waited, looking very
distinguished in his black suit and white gloves, one eyebrow raised in
amusement.

Olivia
and Miles stepped from the house. Twilight cast a rosy glow upon the
countryside, and at the foot of the stairs stood Charles Fowles, doing his best
to calm the pawing, prancing black Arabian that whinnied the moment its liquid
brown eyes saw Miles.

Miles
stopped short. "Gdansk."

"It
took months to track him down," Olivia explained, immeasurably moved by
the emotion that tightened the muscles of her husband's face. "Since he
was auctioned off last December, he was sold three times. Seems he'll allow no
one to ride him but you. He'll make a grand sire for Perlagal's foals, I
think."

Miles
closed his eyes, then, with no warning, he swept her up in his arms and
returned to the house, mounted the Jacobean staircase while Olivia threw back
her head in laughter and declared that he would surely break his back before
reaching the spiraling summit.

But
he wasn't so much as breathing hard by the time he slid her to the floor in his
bedroom. For a long time, they stood before the cheval mirror and watched their
images, together, reflected in the glass: she wearing an exquisite wedding
gown that countless Warwick wives had worn before her—including Damien's wife,
Bonnie—and he, Miles Kemball Warwick, her husband, wearing a stunning short
frock coat of blue cloth, with a velvet collar edged in silk cord. His
waistcoast was of white drill, and his trousers were dove-gray. A snow-white
rosebud peeked from the buttonhole on his coat.

"I
love you," he said at last.

Olivia
closed her eyes and thrilled in the fresh rush of pleasure that robbed her of
breath.

His
fingers moved slowly down her back, releasing each tiny button until the gown
slid, with a gentle rustle of silk, over her shoulders, to the tops of her
breasts, exposing the pale pink rose on her white skin.

Miles
touched it lightly, traced the delicate image with his fingertips, all the
while his eyes holding hers in the mirror. "Did I ever mention to you that
I adore roses?" he asked.

She
nodded as, with an easy flip of his hand, he nudged the gown further, so it
slid to her waist, barely noticing as it shimmied by her hips and pooled around
her ankles. Her vision, her senses, were focused on the magic his hands were
working on her body, her breasts, her thighs, and in between, where the hot
sexual heart of her warmed and ached with the anticipation of loving him again.

Miles
nuzzled behind her ear. "The first time I took you, I hurt you," he
murmured. "You were a virgin and I was too damned hurt and drunk to
realize. Yet you forgave me. You saved my life in every way imaginable, and I
rewarded you with pain. I'll spend the rest of my life making it up to
you."

She
did not speak. She felt too marvelously weak. Too incredibly alive.

Somehow,
he removed her corset, chemise, and drawers. He slid her shoes from her feet
and peeled the filmy embroidered stockings from her legs. Then he laid her on
his bed of white silk sheets and scattered red rose petals.

And
soon he joined her, naked as she, aroused, touching, tasting, tongue against
tongue, upon nipples, sliding into the wet heat of her until she cried aloud
and quivered with the delicious ecstasy of love found and fulfilled, until they
lay spent and shivering from the night wind blowing through the open window.

"Thank
you," he finally said.

Olivia
smiled. "For what?"

"For
believing in me. But mostly for loving me." He took Olivia in his arms and
held her tightly, until the warmth of her body suffused his, until the passion
became hot once more and he rolled her to her back, spilling her hair like a
dark rich fire amid the pillows and petals. And he entered her again, slowly,
exalting in the rhapsody of her welcoming body.

"Thank
you for my son," he said.

She
gasped, and sighed, the rapture too intense, the transport almost more than she
could bear.

"There's
only one thing that could make me happier than I am now," came his gentle
words through her heaven.

"Tell
me," she breathed. "Quickly, husband, and I will do all that I can to
make it happen."

Miles
kissed her, lightly, and drove himself home as he whispered, "A daughter
who looks just like you."