Chemistry of Magic: Unexpected Magic Book Five (Unexpected Magic #5)(7)
“I certainly hope it won’t come to that,” Emilia said in amusement, relieved to have the discussion over. She had known that her mother, of all people, would understand.
Daughter of an earl, wife of a viscount, Lady Daphne McDowell was the mother of six oddly-gifted children. She had to be disciplined and organized and understanding.
Emilia would do anything for her family, including die, which she had almost done once already. The pharmacopeia was a far better solution than dying.
As his betrothed had predicted, the marriage settlements hadn’t taken long, Dare acknowledged. He had spent the better part of a week learning all the parameters of the lady’s trust and dowry. He was so pleased with the result, that he was even tolerant of his new bride’s eccentric family wedding rituals.
Standing beside Miss McDowell before the vicar, he gazed with interest over the small crowd of guests on the lawns of her family’s ancestral home in Cambridge. None of them seemed concerned about the peculiar additions of cape and thorny crowns Lady McDowell had insisted he and his intended wear. He’d been a bit taken aback by the vows they’d just exchanged—where had they found a vicar willing to accept promises to love, honor, and take thee in equality? But his bride’s intense expression held Dare transfixed. He would have agreed to anything to make her smile at him. She didn’t, but under the circumstances, he couldn’t argue with her need for independence. She could be a widow within the year. He bent to kiss her icy pale cheek, and she squeezed his coat sleeve.
At the end of the service, he shook the pigeon cack off his new top hat and watched leniently as the newly-released birds flew into the park’s trees.
They’d both been caught up in the business of marriage this past week. There hadn’t been time to talk, but he’d had a lot of time to dream of his fiancée—and their marriage bed. These past months living with his mother and sisters had been frustrating beyond all patience. He wasn’t dead yet.
He supposed, though, he should have asked the lady how she’d imagined this marriage of convenience would work. Since he seldom had difficulty talking women into bed, he’d not given it much thought until now, when this one was almost within his reach.
While his own family wept with joy, his new family surged around them, shaking his hand, and hugging his bride, who didn’t seem to appreciate the embraces.
In the week leading up to their wedding, he’d done no more than kiss the new Lady Dare on her cheek. Although no one knew the cause of consumption, his reading of medical journals made him wary of contagion. Kissing seemed dangerous. His bride hadn’t complained about the lack of affection, which had him wondering about her willingness to consummate their marriage.
Dare never turned aside a good challenge.
Although he’d like to punch the one approaching now.
His cousin Peter did not look like a person one wished to punch. Slender, fashionably-dressed, an expensive beaver covering his honey-colored hair, he was a short man with an attitude behind his affable smile.
“Who invited you?” Dare asked grumpily.
“Your mother, of course.” Peter’s smile slipped as he turned his back on the crowd. “I’m your heir, if you’ll remember. She’s all that’s polite.”
Dare’s damned mother was all that and more. “You are talking of the woman you intend to put out of her home, you’ll remember.” Feeling a coughing fit coming on, he clenched his fists to hold it back.
“Your sisters will marry, and she can live with them,” Peter said with a dismissive wave of his gloved hand. “The elderly do not need the space a young family does. Rather nasty of you to marry just to make your bride a widow, though, isn’t it?”
Dare glanced at his bride, currently enveloped in the embraces of his sisters and looking uncomfortable. An unexpected surge of hope braced him sufficiently to hold back his cough and to smile malevolently at his cousin. “My wife is a paragon of female virtue. Her family is very prolific. Just look around you. This is a very small portion of her relations. My advice is not to count your hens before they’re hatched, dear cousin.”
Feeling happier than he had in months, he strode toward his bride, leaving Peter stewing in his own evil juices.
For the morning ceremony, his new wife had worn a white muslin gown and matching wide-brimmed hat adorned in white and black roses. He despised those hats that hid her face and kept him at a distance. But in the August humidity, she looked cooler than he did. Still he noticed she surreptitiously removed the silly rowan crown they’d both worn according to family tradition. He handed his to her mother, along with the ridiculous cape, now that the ceremony was over.
“Do you need more horehound?” his bride whispered, touching his coat sleeve with her gloved hand and leaning close between hugs and excited chatter.
Dare gestured at his pocket where he’d stored the honey-lemon-flavored candies she’d given him. They had a bitter aftertaste but suppressed his cough. “I have a few more. But we need to leave soon if we’re to make the first stop of our journey before dark.”
He had to concede that the challenge ahead wasn’t just his new wife, but his own damned weakness. His head pounded, and he had the strength of a limp noodle, but he wasn’t about to mention weakness to his stunning bride.
He regretted that he wasn’t the man he’d once been, but he was still a man. And Emilia was all woman, smelling of lavender, looking like a virginal Venus, and causing what was left of his blood to race. He wanted strength for his husbandly duties tonight—if only they could escape soon.