Slightly Sinful (42 page)

"Later," he said. "Give me a moment to enjoy the sight of you all again and to recover from Freyja's blow. You still throw a mean one, Free."

He could see his Aunt and Uncle Rochester pulling up in a carriage with two ladies Alleyne did not know, and the look of shock on his aunt's haughty, aristocratic face was almost comical.

Where was Bewcastle?

But then he was there, standing on the terrace some distance away, and such was the power of his presence that everyone seemed to sense it and fell back away from Alleyne even as they stopped talking. There was still all sorts of noise, of course-horses, carriage wheels, voices, the water spouting out of the fountain-but it seemed to Alleyne as if complete silence fell.

Bewcastle had already seen him. His gaze was steady and silver-eyed and inscrutable. His hand reached for the gold-handled, jewel-studded quizzing glass he always wore with formal attire and raised it halfway to his eyes in a characteristic gesture. Then he came striding along the terrace with uncharacteristic speed and did not stop coming until he had caught Alleyne up in a tight, wordless embrace that lasted perhaps a whole minute while Alleyne dipped his forehead to his brother's shoulder and felt at last that he was safe.

It was an extraordinary moment. He had been little more than a child when his father died, but Wulfric himself had been only seventeen. Alleyne had never thought of him as a father figure. Indeed, he had often resented the authority his brother wielded over them with such unwavering strictness, and often with apparent impersonality and lack of humor. He had always thought of his eldest brother as aloof, unfeeling, totally self-sufficient. A cold fish. And yet it was in Wulfric's arms that he felt his homecoming most acutely. He felt finally and completely and unconditionally loved.

An extraordinary moment indeed.

He blinked back tears, suddenly ashamed. And it was just as well he had not given in to the mortifying temptation to weep. Bewcastle took a step back and possessed himself of his quizzing glass again. Perhaps he too was feeling embarrassed by such a public display. He was looking his usual cool, haughty self again.

"Doubtless, Alleyne," he said, "you are about to offer an explanation for your long absence?"

Alleyne grinned and then chuckled.

"When you have an hour or three to spare," he said, looking about at them all-his family, with more acquaintances and other guests arriving every moment. "But it looks as if my arrival has taken the focus of attention away from the bride, and that is unpardonable of me. I must beg your indulgence for a moment longer, though."

He looked toward the open doors of the house and could see Rachel standing just inside, in the shadows. He smiled at her as he strode toward her and held out one hand for hers. She was horribly frightened, he could tell, but she was outwardly calm as she set her hand in his and allowed him to lead her out onto the terrace.

She looked incredibly beautiful, he thought, even though her pale green carriage dress and hat did not nearly match in splendor all the wedding finery about them.

"I have the honor," he said, turning back to face his family, "of presenting Miss Rachel York, niece and heir of Baron Weston of Chesbury Park in Wiltshire, and my betrothed."

There was a great deal of noise and fuss as Rachel smiled, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed. But it was Bewcastle, as usual, who had the final word.

He made Rachel a stiff, very correct bow.

"Miss York," he said, "I am acquainted with your uncle. Welcome to Lindsey Hall. Doubtless Alleyne will be able to regale us with many stories during the coming hours and days. But this morning there is a wedding to celebrate and guests to entertain and a breakfast that is awaiting us all. The Earl and Countess of Rosthorn will lead the way inside."

The Earl and Countess . . .

He was referring to Morgan, who, now that the first shock of her brother's return from the dead was over, was smiling radiantly at Rosthorn, and that gentleman was looking back at her with an answering look of adoration and offering her his arm.

Wulf was bowing and offering his to Rachel.

And she had been right, Alleyne thought as his grandmother took one of his arms and Freyja grabbed the other as if she intended never to let go. He would surely remember this day as one of the happiest of his life.

But only because Rachel was with him, by Jove. Without her he might have procrastinated until he was in his eightieth year or beyond.

S OME OF THE TREES ABOUT THE LAKE WERE BEGINNING to turn color. Rachel looked down on them from the window of her bedchamber. September had been a wet and chilly month, but yesterday had finally been sunny again, and today it felt almost as if summer had returned just for the occasion.

Her wedding day would have been glorious in drizzle or thunderstorm or blizzard, but she supposed that every bride dreamed of blue sky and sunshine to greet her as she stepped out of the church with her bridegroom.

She was ready to leave for the church. But she was early, of course. Geraldine had arrived in her dressing room at the crack of dawn, followed by two footmen carrying the hip bath and a whole stream of maids following with pails of hot water. Geraldine had insisted upon staying to wash her back and then help dress her in the ivory lace and satin confection of a dress Uncle Richard had insisted she have made for the occasion, in addition to a dizzying number of bride clothes.

It was not fitting for the housekeeper to play the part of her maid, Rachel had said with a laugh. But Geraldine had insisted anyway.

"Rache," she had said, "I am going to be the bride of a valet-or a gentleman's gentleman, as Will prefers to call himself-before Christmas, so that makes me more or less a maid by marriage, doesn't it?" She stopped to laugh. "Did you hear what I just said? A maid by marriage. And me a maid. Anyway, no one can do your hair as well as I can, and today it has to look extra special for Lord Alleyne to look at all day and take down tonight when the two of you go to bed. I don't suppose you need any advice for the occasion seeing as you don't have a mother, do you?"

The other ladies had ended up in her dressing room too before the morning was well advanced, though Phyllis had not been able to stay long because there were guests staying at the house and, in addition, she had insisted upon catering the wedding breakfast herself.

"It should go well, Rachel," she had said as she was leaving, "if I can just keep my mind off the fact that I am feeding a real live duke. I have seen him. He looks like Lord Alleyne except that it seems to me that if someone were to put an icicle in his hand it would just sit there and never melt."

"He bowed to me when I went to Lindsey Hall after Lord Alleyne summoned me there," Bridget said with a sigh, "and asked me how I did. I nearly fell over, but of course he didn't know who I really was, did he?"

Flossie had arranged the veil over Rachel's bonnet after Geraldine had set it carefully in place over her coiffure, and had stood back to assess the effect.

"You are the loveliest bride I have ever seen, Rachel," she said, "even though I thought I looked pretty good myself two weeks ago."

Rachel had hugged them all when it was time for them to be on their way to church. She could not go downstairs too soon. Alleyne was staying at Chesbury, though not, of course, in his old room. All his family was staying here too. She did not want to see any of them before she entered the church. Doing so would invite bad luck.

Carriages were being brought up onto the terrace below, and she turned from the window before any of the intended passengers could step out of the house.

She had spent almost a week at Lindsey Hall before returning with Bridget to prepare for her wedding. She had been horribly uncomfortable at first, and that was an understatement. The Bedwyns seemed to ooze aristocratic hauteur from every pore. And they were a forthright, boisterous family into the bargain. But she had grown comfortable with them. She had come to like them and even to be fond of them.

Including the Duke of Bewcastle.

He was powerful and autocratic and reserved to the point of coldness in his manner. He never laughed or even smiled. But Rachel had seen his face during that long minute while he had held Alleyne in his arms out on the terrace. Probably she was the only one who had seen it since he had had his back to everyone else.

There had been raw and naked love in that face.

Rachel had felt a particular fondness for him ever since.

She had got to know them during that week, and they had accepted her without any apparent qualms. Of course, she thought, they would probably have accepted anyone under the circumstances. They had their brother back after believing for two long months that he had died while bringing the Duke of Wellington's letter back to the ambassador in Brussels. The letter had been found abandoned in the forest.

Alleyne had made it clear to them all almost from the first minute that she had saved his life.

She could hear the sound of voices below and then the slamming of doors followed by the clopping of horses' hooves and the rumbling of wheels. A few moments later there was a tap on her door and Sergeant Strickland answered her summons.

"Everyone has gone to the church," he said, "and the baron is waiting downstairs for you. My, you do look as fine as fivepence, missy, even if it is not my place to say so on account of I am only a gentleman's gentleman."

"You may say so anytime you wish, Sergeant," Rachel said, smiling and crossing the room impulsively to set her arms about his neck and kiss his cheek. "I will always, always be grateful to you. It was you who saved his life. I could not have done it without you. Thank you, my friend."

He beamed at her and looked horribly embarrassed.

And then, just a few minutes later, she was sitting in the carriage beside her uncle, her hands tingling with pins and needles, her heart thumping, her head spinning. Even now-especially now-she could not quite believe in her happiness.

She had gone into the forest to raid dead bodies. Then she had agreed to a scheme full of lies and deceptions. Then they had gone tearing off to Bath and he had recovered his memory-and left her. And then-oh, and then she had walked back from the lake and ended up running into his arms and into her present state of happiness.

Her uncle took one of her hands and squeezed it.

"I suppose I cannot say I am the happiest man in the world this morning, Rachel," he said, "since it would be strange indeed if Bedwyn did not have that distinction. But I lay firm claim to being the second happiest."

She turned her head to smile at him. He was not looking exactly robust and in the best of health. But he had improved so enormously since that afternoon when they had arrived at Chesbury that it was almost difficult to realize that he could be the same man.

There was a crowd of villagers about the churchyard gate. There would be several neighbors among the guests inside. Explanations had been tricky. They had been told of the memory loss, of Sir Jonathan Smith having been chosen as a suitable name until Lord Alleyne Bedwyn remembered his real identity. And since there was some question of the validity of a marriage in which the groom had signed the wrong name, and since both families had missed the first wedding anyway, then the decision had been made to repeat the ceremony. No one had asked about the estate in Northumberland and so no explanation had been made.

And then they were inside the church, and Bridget was waiting there to straighten Rachel's hem and make sure her hair and bonnet had suffered no catastrophe during the journey from house to church.

"You are ready, my love," she said, standing back and smiling, her eyes suspiciously bright. "Go and be happy."

Someone must have given a signal to the organist. Music filled the church, and Rachel moved into the nave, her hand on her uncle's sleeve. The pews were all filled, and everyone turned a head to see her come. But though she was aware of them, she did not really see them. She was aware only of Alleyne, standing at the front, Rannulf beside him.

He was not smiling. But his eyes were dark and intent upon hers, and in them she read pure worship. He was all in black and ivory and white and looked quite astonishingly handsome.

And then she was close to him, and then she was beside him.

And he smiled.

She blinked back sudden tears and smiled back.

"Dearly beloved," Mr. Crowell said.

I T WOULD HAVE BEEN NOTHING SHORT OF A MIRACLE IF the Bedwyns had not slipped out of the church while the register was being signed and prepared a suitable welcome for the bride and groom.

Alleyne laughed when he saw them all as he came out of the church with Rachel on his arm. The open carriage had been decorated much as Morgan and Rosthorn's had been last month, though it looked very much as if a couple of old kettles had been tied to the back of this one. And they were lined up on either side of the path armed with flower petals and colored leaves-Aidan and Eve, Davy and Becky, Freyja and Joshua, Judith, Morgan and Gervase, and Rannulf just dashing into place.

"I am afraid, my love," Alleyne said, "we are going to have to run the gauntlet of the Bedwyns' idea of fun."

"I suppose," she said, "you did this for their weddings?"