Stealing the Bride (31 page)

“No need to apologize, my lord,” the sheriff said. “Mr. Pymm explained it. Honored to help you. Deeply honored.” He nodded to two other fellows, obviously his assistants, who began to cart the unconscious Marden out of the church.

Temple then turned and caught Diana in his arms, pulling her close. She collapsed against the familiar strength of his chest. His arms wound around her and she knew, just knew, she’d been a fool not to listen to him earlier.

He held her as if he would never let her go.

Then he bent his head down and kissed her soundly, scattering any further doubts that Pymm’s words might have cast onto her heart.

When he finished, she glanced over his shoulder to find Nettlestone untying Penham, while Stewie assisted the pale and shaky vicar.

“Aren’t you going after the others?” she asked Temple, prodding him to follow their enemies.

“No,” he said, kissing the top of her head, brushing her cheek with his fingers as if this were nothing more than another lazy morning.

“Why not?” she bristled. “They were about to kidnap me and make me the Empress of France.”

Temple ruffled her hair. “Only you would complain of such a fate.”

“Have you met the groom?”

He grinned. “Actually I have.”

“I still think you should go after them.” She pointed at the door with one hand, her other balled into a fist and planted on her hip.

Temple shook his head, affecting his Corinthian stance. “No need, my lady. Pymm and a band of ruffians he brought along with him are outside. I would gather by now they have it all well in hand, not to mention the able services of our good friend, the Sheriff of Nottingham. Besides, I have business here that needs attending.” He nodded to the white-faced vicar who stood shakily before the altar. Stewie lent the man of God a steady hand, confident in his place as Temple’s groomsman.

Diana grinned and nodded and started to walk hand-in-hand with Temple toward their future.

Only their path was blocked by Nettlestone and Penham.

To her surprise, the pair bowed respectfully and conceded their previous claims to Temple.

“No hard feelings, eh, my lord?” Penham said, offering his hand.

“None, sir,” Temple told him.

Nettlestone made his apologies as well, and the three shook hands. Then the baron and Lord Harry dodged past them, headed for the door as if they were late to their own weddings.

“Where are you going?” Diana asked. “Aren’t you going to stay?”

Nettlestone shook his head. “Would love to, but the Earl of Kingswell lives not twenty miles from here. Rumor has it he has two daughters of a marriageable age. Penham and I have decided to go have a gander at the chits.”

“Twins,” Penham said with a wink, then a nudge into the baron’s ribs. “And well dowered.”

“Couldn’t get to town this Season because their mother fell ill.” Nettlestone shook his head as if the tragedy was more than he could bear. “Terrible luck that, but it means we’d best nab the birds before the countess makes a recovery or knocks off and they go into mourning.”

But they didn’t make it very far before they were collared by Diana’s father and dragged back up the aisle.

“Diana!” the Earl of Lamden said. “Don’t take another step.”

Diana held her ground, hands on her hips. “Father, there is no need to shout. I am safe.”

“That’s not the problem,” the earl said, his voice shaking with anger. “Who was it?” He rattled Nettlestone and Penham like a terrier might a pair of rabbits.

“Who was what?” she asked.

Her father’s mouth set in a hard line. His brow furrowed, and then he spoke. “Penham, you’ll not be running out on my daughter.”

Diana realized what had her father so upset. She rushed over to the young man’s side before her father strangled him with his iron grasp on the poor boy’s collar. “Papa, it wasn’t Lord Harry.”

Her father grimaced. He leaned forward and whispered. “Not Nettlestone, gel. Tell me it wasn’t him.”

She shuddered and shook her head.

The earl let out a deep sigh of relief, dropping his two prisoners. “Then who did this?” he bellowed.

As for Penham and Nettlestone, they scurried out of the church and out of sight for fear the earl might change his mind.

“Who did this to you?” Lamden shouted.

The answer came from the front of the church. “I did,” Temple declared.

Lamden’s gaze swung from him back to his daughter. “That idiot?”

She nodded, grinning from ear to ear.

“You want that horse’s ass to be my son-in-law?”

“Oh yes, Papa. I do.”

Being a man faced with a ruined daughter and the likelihood of having the
ton
’s biggest idiot for a son-in-law, Lamden did what any right-minded father would have done.

He raised his pistol and pointed it at Temple.

Setchfield Park
Devonshire, 1817

T
he fast-riding messenger who arrived at the house was shown to the duke’s private study immediately, where the important missive he carried was handed over directly to Setchfield, as it had been the courier’s instructions that no one else was to see it.

Such occurrences were a rarity at the duke’s home, at least they had become such since Napoleon had been sent to his lonely exile on St. Helena. But this was the third dusty and exhausted rider to arrive at Setchfield Park in the past week, and he provoked a flurry of speculation amongst the staff as to what these obviously important missives could contain.

Government pleas for the duke’s opinion? Tidings from the Foreign Office? England was now at peace; what could warrant so many hasty entreaties?

Then again, this was the Duke of Setchfield…it could be anything. As it was, the servants didn’t know what to think of their master and mistress. Hardly ducal, they lived life with a rare joy and country simplicity, transforming their once gloomy palace of a house into a welcome home to any and all.

It hadn’t always been thus; there were rumors that the duchess’s father had been opposed to the match, and the duke’s grandfather, the previous duke, had also been dead set against the marriage. But for some reason, they wed, despite the protests and proved all the naysayers wrong with their happiness.

Not that the old duke’s opinion had mattered for very long. Angered at Temple’s choice of bride and furious at the world’s disregard for his opinions, the duke and his general ill-temper at everything had been overcome by a fit of apoplexy that took his life. He fell dead in the House of Lords, just as he finished calling Lord Fellerby a “horse’s ass.” And though he was greatly lauded and buried with all the pomp and ceremony due his rank, no one mourned the loss.

“What is it that Rafe wants now?” Diana asked from the doorway of Temple’s study. Though her husband had held the title of Duke of Setchfield for nearly the entire length of their marriage, Temple he was to her, and Temple he would always be. She entered the room with a familiar shadow trotting happily at her heels, Tully.

“Vouchers,” Temple told her, then he grinned. “To Almack’s.”

She cringed.

“Obviously,” he said, handing the letter to her, “he doesn’t know of your long-standing exile, or he wouldn’t be asking.”

She glanced over the quick, hastily written missive and shook her head. “What would Rafe be doing at Almack’s?”

Temple shrugged. “I haven’t the vaguest notion. This latest assignment is surely going to be his death. I much prefer it when he is investigating a murder or a theft from a house party. It sounds much safer than entering those hallowed walls.”

“Why do you say that?” Diana asked. Her husband’s cousin, Raphael Danvers, had returned to England after the war, and since he had neither title nor money, had sought to make his own way in the world.

“Because if he is willing to enter Almack’s, that could only mean he’s involved with a woman.” Temple shuddered. “I predict he’ll be leg-shackled by the end of the Season.”

“Leg-shackled?” Diana said, crossing the space between them, her fair brow arched.

Her husband grinned. “Leg-shackled,” he told her, opening his arms to her and drawing her into his lap. “A tenant for life. The fate that awaits all of us unsuspecting and unwitting men. Next thing you know, Pymm will be parsoned. Oh, what is the world coming to?”

“Oh, go on with you,” Diana said. “Are you telling me you regret being married?”

He gazed up into her eyes, a wicked gleam glowing there. “Well…”

She pushed away from him and crossed the room. Tully followed her, only too aware of his mistress’s moods. He dashed past her and out into the hallway before she pushed the door shut, then turned the lock, trapping her and her husband inside.

Tully was more than happy to give them their privacy. Besides, there was always his second favorite person in Setchfield Park to visit, the cook.

Within the study, Diana shot her husband a slanted glance. “Shall we discuss these regrets?”

“Diana, I have work to do,” Temple protested, rising from his cluttered desk and crossing the room, leaving his accounts and reports in a forgotten pile.

“You’re right, you do,” she murmured as she met him halfway. For a moment they stood before each other. “Starting with this word ‘leg-shackled.’”

He reached out and caught her by the wrist, pulling her quickly into his arms as if he couldn’t manage another moment without feeling her. His mouth covered hers in a deep, hungry kiss. Eight years of marriage, and he still couldn’t get enough of his stolen bride. His tongue swept past her lips, dared her to come meet him in passion’s embrace.

Diana moaned, low and throaty, pressing her body against his. Her hips rose instinctively to his, feeling the taut hardness of his manhood, already eager to fill her.

“Goddess,” Temple whispered into her ear, while his hands skillfully divested her of her gown and chemise. “How will I ever get enough of you?”

“Let me show you where to start,” she whispered, plucking at his shirt and breeches until they were both naked, their hands claiming and loving the familiar curves and hidden secrets of the other.

Temple swept her up into his arms and carried her over to the large settee in one corner of the room. He laid her down on the velvety chaise and gazed with adoration at the beautiful woman who was his wife.

His goddess
.

She held her hands up to him. “Love me, Temple.”

It was an urgent plea, a tender command.

His lips sought hers as he covered her, tasting her sweet mouth, running kisses down over her breasts, pausing only for a minute or two to tease her nipples into hard, puckered declarations of passion.

She writhed and arched toward him, and his path went lower. First his fingers, delving between the sweet folds, opening them up so his lips could follow.

At first he lapped slowly, teasing both the bud hidden within and her into a frenzy of passion. As her breathing grew more fitful her body more insistent, he went faster, devouring her sex, until her fingers dug into his shoulders and his name came out in a ragged cry from her lips.

“Oh Temple! Oh yes!”

Diana’s joy burst forth in an intoxicating delirium. She said his name again and again as waves of longing faded into utter rapture.

Temple glanced up at her sated features and grinned. He crawled back up her, kissing her here and there, enjoying the taste of her silken skin, her fevered flesh.

For he knew that despite her having found her completion, Diana was never sated for very long, and she’d want to see that he found his desires conquered as well.

And so it was that as her own last, trembling quakes started to flee, Diana caught hold of him and pulled him into a fiery kiss, her thighs opening to welcome his hardness.

Temple needed no help to find that treasured cleft. He filled her quickly, and soon the room echoed with not one ragged cry, but two voices raised together in unison and pleasure.

“Leg-shackled?” Diana asked, now that the fires within him had been quenched.

“Happily so,” he told her. “Why, I’d marry you again, even without your father’s pistol pointed at my head.”

“He apologized.” Diana sighed and nestled closer to her beloved husband. “I miss him.”

“I do as well.”

The Earl of Lamden had eventually come to see his daughter’s choice of husband in a new light. With Pymm’s assurances that Temple wasn’t quite the fool he appeared, the earl discovered a son-in-law with whom he could share his love of politics and intrigues. And when the earl was sent with the English delegation to the Congress of Vienna for the peace talks, he insisted Temple be included in the party, as a voice of reason and experience, as well as to keep an eye on the wily French diplomat Talleyrand.

Before the earl died, he’d made one other last gesture of goodwill to his beloved family. Rather than see his title revert to the crown upon his death, he’d petitioned the Prince-Regent to see it continued by having the earldom pass to Diana’s second son. And the Prince, well aware of Lamden’s long service to his country and the family’s historic loyalty to the crown, granted the boon, amending the original medieval writ of summons and issuing a new Letters Patent.

And so it was that under their roof lived the Duke and Duchess of Setchfield; their seven-year-old heir, the Marquis of Templeton; the five-year-old Earl of Lamden; and Lady Arabella Devinn, their three-year-old daughter.

Setchfield Park had finally become a happy, loving home.

Diana pressed one more kiss to her husband’s lips, then bounded up from settee, hastily donning her clothes and heading for the door.

“Where are you going?” Temple waggled his brows at her. “I’ve much more I could tell you about the joys of being leg-shackled.”

“It’ll have to wait,” she said. “I must start packing. I do so hate packing, but it is necessary.”

“Packing? For what?”

“To go to town. I’m dying of curiosity to discover who has that rapscallion cousin of yours up in the boughs. She must be something to send
him
in search of vouchers.” Pausing for a second, Diana then said, “I must write Georgie immediately and see if she’ll meet us there to help this girl.”

Temple groaned. “I suppose I’d better go as well. Can’t let you go racing off on this fool’s errand without my help.” Then he suddenly brightened. “I’ll drive.”

Diana shook her head. “Oh heavens no, Temple. I’d like to get there in one piece. Besides, I won’t leave the children, and I won’t have you risking their lives with your driving.”

“But Diana—”

“No, Temple. You’re a terrible whip. Not every man is born a dab hand with horses. Your talents are elsewhere.”

“And those would be?”

The Duchess of Setchfield glanced once at the closed door, then back at her naked husband. He winked at her, and she happily shrugged off her gown and rejoined him, only too delighted to oblige Temple in showing him just exactly where his talents lay—in love and passion.

And in the process, put off packing for another hour or so.