Someone to Love (Westcott #1)(78)

She saw Avery as he was now, dressed with conservative elegance. And she thought of him as he had been a few hours ago, wearing only tight breeches and demonstrating a seemingly inhuman swiftness of reflex and an unearthly defiance of gravity. She felt the panicked fear that she did not know anything about him except that he was dangerous. And that his real self, whatever that might be, was hidden deep within layer upon layer of artifice and she might never uncover it.

But they had come to a halt at the altar rail, and it was too late to panic. They stood and faced the clergyman, while Elizabeth took a seat in the front pew and Mr. Goddard stood beside Avery.

“Dearly beloved,” the clergyman said to the four people gathered before him, and he was using the familiar voice of clergymen everywhere. If there had been five hundred people in the pews, every one of them would have heard him clearly.

Neither of the witnesses spoke up when invited to do so if they knew of any impediment to the marriage. No one dashed into the church at the last moment to yell stop! Anna promised to love, honor, and obey the man in whose hand her own was clasped. He made similar vows to her. “With my body I thee worship” was one thing he told her, his blue eyes very intent upon hers from beneath half-lowered eyelids. Mr. Goddard handed him a gold ring, and he slid it onto her finger, watching her face, not her hand, as he did so. It fit perfectly. How had he done that?

And then, before she had quite composed her mind to the realization that she was getting married, she was married. According to the clergyman, she was Mrs. Avery Archer.

So many names. Anna Snow. Anastasia Westcott. Lady Anastasia Westcott. Mrs. Archer. The Duchess of Netherby. Was she? She found herself alarmingly close to laughing as she had a sudden picture of the children at the orphanage when Miss Ford read to them the letter that would announce the marriage. Their Miss Snow was now Lady Anastasia Archer, Duchess of Netherby. She imagined widened eyes, gasps of awe, sighs of satisfaction. What frivolous and silly thoughts to be having at such a moment.

They were being taken into the small vestry, where the register was awaiting them, opened to the correct page, an inkpot beside it, a freshly mended quill pen laid across a blotter. Anna signed her maiden name for the last time—she stopped herself only just in time from writing Anna Snow. Avery signed his name with bold, swift strokes—Avery Archer. Their signatures were duly witnessed. And that was that, it seemed.

They were man and wife.

The clergyman shook hands with each of them outside the vestry, wished bride and groom a long and fruitful life together, and disappeared back inside. Anna still did not know his name. Elizabeth was hugging her tightly, tears swimming in her eyes, a smile on her lips, while Mr. Goddard was shaking hands with his employer. Then Elizabeth was hugging Avery, and Mr. Goddard was bowing to Anna until she held out her right hand and he took it.

“I wish you all the happiness in the world, Your—” He glanced at the door of the vestry, which was slightly ajar. “Mrs. Archer.”

“The poor man,” Avery said when they were all halfway back up the nave, “would perhaps have had an apoplexy if he had been told of all the handles that attach themselves to my name, and now to yours too, Anna. But the marriage is quite legal even when I have been stripped to the bare bones of my identity. You are my wife, my dear, and my duchess.”

The sun seemed blinding when they stepped outside, and the air full of summer warmth. A woman was hurrying by on the other side of the street, a child holding her hand and jumping cracks in the pavement. A horse was clopping along the road away from them. Farther back a young boy was sweeping a steaming pile of manure out of the street. From the high window of a house behind him, a maid shook the dust from a rug and called down to the boy. All the ordinary activities of daily life were proceeding around them just as though the world had not changed in the last fifteen minutes or so. Sunlight gleamed on Anna’s ring, and she realized she had not even worn gloves. How appalling.

“There is a bookshop close to here that I have been meaning forever to have a look at,” Elizabeth said. “Mr. Goddard, do you like bookshops? Would you care to accompany me there? We can return home in a hackney cab. I am sure you must be an expert at summoning them.”

“It would be my pleasure, my lady,” Mr. Goddard said. “With His Grace’s permission, that is.”

“Edwin,” Avery said with a sigh, “you may go to the devil for all I care. No, perhaps I ought not to be that rash. The devil may not be willing to give you back when I have need of you, having discovered for himself how invaluable you are. And I will have need of you, I daresay. Not today, however.”

Elizabeth smiled sunnily at them both and availed herself of Mr. Goddard’s arm. They walked away along the street at a brisk pace without looking back.

“You do not need a chaperone any longer, you see, Anna,” Avery said as she watched them go. “Not when you are accompanied by your husband.”

She turned her head to look at him, and it was as though the reality of it all finally hit her full force. She gazed at the Duke of Netherby and felt all the strangeness of him and all the reality of the fact that he was her husband.

It was as though he had read her thoughts. “Until death do us part,” he said softly, and offered his hand.

He seated himself beside her in the barouche this time and took her hand in his again. He was not wearing gloves either.

“Much as I would like to take you back to Archer House and close all the doors and windows to the outside world until tomorrow morning,” he said as the barouche moved forward, “it cannot be done, alas.”