My Wicked Marquess (29 page)

She was eager to marry Max, but not without a trace of fear, for once this day was done, there was no turning back. The thought had her gripping her bouquet so tightly she nearly crushed the flowers' delicate stems.

Her heart pounded in time with the bells' joyous caroling as the Starling family's coach rolled to a halt before St. George's in Hanover Square.

The pillars of Mayfair's most fashionable church were adorned with ribbonlike swirls of pale cloth. Large urns of flowers flanked the white carpet that had been laid down from the pavement into the church's wide-open entrance.

Inside, Daphne glimpsed a throng of people she knew, garbed in their finest attire. She swallowed hard. Last-minute fears surged and dove in her again like leaping dolphins as she contemplated all the unknowns of her future life with a man they called the Demon Marquess.

With her heart in her throat, she got out of the carriage with her father's steadying hand. They had made up their differences weeks ago, of course. Wilhelmina quickly followed, helping to maneuver her billowing skirts.

The music rose to a crescendo—then silence.

Papa gave her a bolstering smile and walked her into the church; they prepared themselves for their entrance processional while Penelope and the girls, in purple and pink, hurried to take their seats.

The music started up anew; the congregation rose.

Letting Papa watch for the preacher's signal to come forward, Daphne scanned the crowded church with her pulse throbbing. She spotted Max's sister, Lady Thurloe, and her children and husband. The countess had had a hand in the planning for today.

She also took note of his friends, the Duke of Warrington and Lord Falconridge, standing with a giant, grizzled Scottish laird in full Highland regalia.

Lord, who is that imposing fellow?
she thought, then her gaze traveled on until she spotted her great-aunt Anselm seated in the first pew at the front of the church.

Jonathon was close by, and when their eyes met, he grinned and sent her a boyish wave. She smiled fondly at him, put at ease a bit by his clownish humor, but she had never been more sure that she had made the right decision.

Carissa stood nearby with her haughty cousins. The petite redhead gave Daphne a firm nod of encouragement, which, in turn, thrust Daphne's attention back to the task at hand.

As Max stepped into view at the front of the church, just where he should be, any last misgivings evaporated like the morning dew. The sight of him swelled her heart with renewed certainty.

He stared at her from across the church, waiting for her by the altar, looking like a dream of Prince Charming, in a dark blue morning coat. This he wore over a silver waistcoat and cream-colored breeches with formal white stockings and black shoes. His gloves were also white; he had a white flower bud boutonniere.

Papa's light nudge jarred her from her staring with the signal to move ahead. Gathering herself, she glided forward with all the refined grace she had made it her mission to learn from an early age, in an effort to make her mother's spirit proud.

With each slow, smooth step she took down the aisle of the simple, crowded church, she kept her stare on Max.

As she neared him, her heart began to soar. Very well, then, so she was marrying the Demon Marquess, and once she spoke those vows, she would never look back.

There was a splendid radiance about his dark male beauty this morning, his glowing scrubbed skin clean-shaved, his black hair combed back and tamed neatly with a light coating of pomade. She could not take her eyes off him. Joining him, she let her father pass her on to this man without any further argument, her gaze fixed on him, while her soul exulted. Being near him was pure heaven.

No one has ever loved me
, he had said that day in the hayloft. The words still made her heart clench.

I will
, she thought. In that moment, she made up her mind irrevocably.
I am going to love you, and give you everything I've got
, she told him with her heartfelt gaze.

He searched her face through her translucent bridal veil, a subtle question in his eyes, a curious flicker on his brow as he offered her his hand.

Instead, she took his arm and moved even closer to him.
I hope you're ready, Max, my love. You asked for it.

The music drew to a close. He slanted her another mystified, slightly suspicious glance from the corner of his eye. Daphne smiled at him in anticipation, then they both turned their attention to the balding reverend, who looked up from his open prayer book.

Pushing his round spectacles back up onto his nose, the vicar beamed at them, and at the congregation, in turn.

“Dearly beloved,” he began, “we are gathered here today…”

 

He was married. Just like that, it was done.

A couple of hours later, at the reception, Max could still
barely believe he had finally achieved his goal and won his chosen lady.

She had put up quite the battle royal, as he had told his friends, but after all his meticulous planning, he had learned beyond any doubt that the heart of a woman was a force of nature no man could control.

If there had been any doubt of that, her kiss at the climax of the ceremony had removed it.

When the preacher had told Max he was free to kiss his bride, he had lifted her veil and lowered his head to claim her lips, only to have her throw her arms around him and kiss him passionately.

He had not been expecting that—and neither had Society. Several people in the church had laughed, but she paid them no mind, planting a wedding kiss on his lips that soon had the whole congregation cheering and applauding them. A loud wolf whistle from the back of the church had come from Rohan, but even Max had felt a little sheepish by the time his bride had got through with him.

It seemed he'd found himself a Demon Marchioness.

Delighted, and already anticipating tonight, they proceeded on to Almack's, which her father had let for the day for the reception. Musicians played; greetings and gifts from the crème de la crème of London Society streamed in; wine and liquor flowed, some of the best to be had in the world. Tables loaded with food were laid out, and eventually, together, they made a wish and cut into the fanciful white tower of a wedding cake from Gunter's.

It was all a bit of a blur.

Still, Max found it rather odd that he should have been married only a couple of hours, and already was beginning to feel like more of a member of the world.

At length, he was summoned outside for a celebratory cigar with his father-in-law and the set of older gentlemen who made up Lord Starling's circle of friends.

To keep the cloud of smoke from drifting indoors and annoying the ladies, they congregated in the alley between Almack's and the livery stable next door.

While Max was smoking, grinning at the old married
men's ribbing about how he must at least appear to comply with all his new wife's orders, he noticed a hackney coach go driving by very slowly out on King Street, perpendicular to the narrow alley where the men were loitering.

At first, he thought nothing of it. There were any number of onlookers who might want to get a glimpse of an aristocratic wedding, especially one that was not hidden away in some distant country house.

Word of their pending nuptial date had run in the Society columns, and the journalists who made their living tattling on the lives of the ton would no doubt be lurking to see what they could see.

But then, as the hackney rolled past the intersection with the alley, in plain view, Max saw the passenger inside. Behind the looped-back swath of dingy curtain, a face appeared. A face he knew at once.

Max froze.

The man's stare met his own for a fleeting second with dark, intense eyes.

Max stood motionless, barely able to believe his senses.
A ghost? Hallucination?

He saw the face of a fallen brother. The coach passed, picking up speed. For a second, Max just stood there in utter shock.

Drake.

In the next instant, he threw aside his cigar without a word of explanation to his father-in-law or anyone else.

He ran out of the alley, turned left, and began chasing the hackney coach up King Street.

“Rotherstone, I say!” he heard Lord Starling exclaim. Max did not look back.

Having picked up its pace, the coach was already turning left onto busy St. James's Street a good stone's throw ahead.

Max ran faster, questioning his own sanity but somehow refusing to doubt. He knew what he'd seen, and dear God, if Drake was alive…

He could not even think about the implications right now. He had to know for sure. Hope and ominous questions swirled in his mind. He dashed past pedestrians milling around the
various shops. Chasing the coach down St. James's Street in the direction of Piccadilly, he fought the unsubtle urge to call out his friend's name to try to get him to stop.

If it was indeed Drake and he was alive, he would have stopped already if everything was all right. If he had wanted to be found.
Dear God, had Drake gone rogue?

Maybe he was mistaken. Maybe it wasn't he at all. Max thrust a growing sense of dread out of his mind and pushed himself to run harder, though the slippery soles of his formal shoes were not helping matters. He'd be lucky if he did not land on his arse. The bustling traffic had checked the coach's pace, but still, on foot, Max was no match for the two horses drawing the vehicle.

When it turned the corner ahead, he lost visual contact for about two minutes, but, chest heaving, he soon arrived on the corner with Piccadilly. He looked to the left, the direction he had seen the hackney turn, but quickly lost it in the sea of nondescript black carriages trundling back and forth on the grand avenue.

Damn it!

Other carriages were parked along both sides of Piccadilly, waiting to pick up passengers going to and from the row of fashionable shops and clubs and coffeehouses.

Max scanned the pavements in both directions in case Drake had slipped out of the hackney and continued on foot.

He focused on the male pedestrians, but it was difficult to tell since nearly all of them wore hats, their faces shaded by the brims of top hats, round hats, beaver hats, or military bicorns. Beginning to feel stymied, Max spotted one of the hackneys in the row of parked carriages and thought the horses similarly colored to those of the coach he had been chasing, one a ragged chestnut, the other a slightly darker liver brown.
That could be it.

Max raced toward it, ignoring the stares of passersby. He supposed he looked like a fool running around the streets of London dressed in some of the most formal clothes he owned. What would Society say about a groom running like hell from his own wedding reception, and for that matter,
what would Daphne think?

He could not deal with that now. If Drake was alive and had gone rogue on them, he had much more serious problems than the disapproval of the Patronesses of Almack's. He rushed down the street to the parked carriage, and threw the door open without warning.

It was empty. If Drake was there a moment ago, he had vanished like a puff of smoke.

“Can I 'elp you, sir?” the hackney driver asked from up on his box. “Need a ride?”

“Where did that man go? Your passenger!”

The driver shook his head and gave Max an indifferent shrug.
Don't know, don't care.

“Stay there, I need to talk to you!” Max ordered him, but he was fairly sure he was on the right path. Quickly checking the shops right near the place where the hackney had pulled over, he looked into several of the merchants' open doors. A milliner's, a confectioner's, a candle maker's, a linen draper's.
No
. But when he glanced into the crowded sundries shop, staring past the aisles down to the far end of the long, narrow space, he caught the briefest glimpse of a man in black disappearing through the back exit.

Max sprinted after him, ignoring the shopkeeper's “ 'Hoy! Where are you going?”

Max went tearing out the back door and bolted into the garden.

There was no one there. A high brick wall girded the shopkeeper's kitchen garden. The family probably lived above the shop. Max swept the area with a baleful glance and listened for any sound.
Nothing
. He could not see him or hear him, but he felt him very near.

“Drake!” he bellowed all of a sudden. “Show yourself!”

Instead of his brother agent, the shopkeeper came storming out the back door after him at that moment. “ 'Hoy! Trespasser! What do you think you're doing? You can't come back here!”

“Did you see a man run through here?”

“Aside from you?” the beefy, aproned merchant demanded, hands on hips.
Bloody aristocrats,
his pugnacious
glower seemed to say.

“Sorry,” Max muttered, but he walked away from the man all the same and climbed up onto the wall.

“I'm going to call for the constable if you don't get off my property. You got no right to be here.”

“Fine.” Max jumped down on the other side and continued the hunt, just as Warrington and Falconridge rushed into the merchant's garden.

“Max!”

“Who the hell are you?” the merchant cried angrily.

“Sorry, we're trying to find our friend.”

“He went that way.”

“What, over the wall?”

“I'm right here,” Max called back in disgust, finding no sign of Drake. He climbed back over the shopkeeper's wall and rejoined his friends.

“The three of you move along or I'm sending for the constable. I don't want your money!” he retorted when Warrington tried to offer him a fiver for his pains.

“What the hell is going on?” Jordan murmured.

They left the shop.

“I saw Drake.”

“What?”

Max glanced grimly at them as they put some distance between themselves and the indignant shopkeeper, who was still standing in his shop doorway making sure they were not coming back.