Loving The Lost Duke (Dangerous Deceptions #1)(80)
‘Sophie, my love, come here.’
She did, all unawares, and was seized by a strong left hand, pulled down to the bed and very thoroughly kissed.
‘Do I appear to be at death’s door?’ Cal demanded when he finally let her up for air.
‘No.’ Sophie considered fanning herself and decided it would make him too cocky. ‘But if you want to do that again today you will do as I ask and stay in your sitting room.’
His eyes developed the sensual, heavy look that sent shivers down her spine. ‘My sweet, I am entirely yours to command. When today, exactly?’
His uncle and cousin went in to see him, looking like aristocrats on their way to the guillotine and emerged an hour later looking shaken but relieved. Lady Peter, who had been on the receiving end of nerve-wracking confessions, wept all over Sophie, which was an alarming experience and Isobel ran her ragged with constant chatter and demands to be taught to create French knots in the two hours they spent together, despite being assured that they would make a very knobbly handkerchief.
‘I am exhausted.’ Sophie collapsed on the sofa in Cal’s sitting room. ‘I would like to take to my bed for a week and you certainly should.’
He felt as though someone had put him through the mangle in the washhouse, not that he would have admitted it under torture. But the steak that Flynn had smuggled past Sophie’s watchful eye was making up for a day on broth and he could, he considered, do almost anything provided he did it flat on his back.
‘I can arrange that.’ He picked up the folded parchment on the table at his elbow. ‘Marriage licence. We do not have a chaplain in the household, but the vicar has been round and we can get married in four days time, here in the chapel. I thought that was long enough to let Chef whip up a feast, Mrs Fairfax polish the place from attics to cellars and the gardeners to decimate the flower beds.’
‘Four days? Cal I haven’t a thing to wear. And stop looking like that.’
‘A man may dream. And do not tell me your mother let you come down here without a trunk full of new gowns.’
‘Yes, but… We were not going to get married yet.’
‘That was when we were not in love. Now we are.’ Which was such an unlikely miracle that he kept thinking he was dreaming. ‘Do you really want to wait?’
‘No.’ When she smiled at him like that he wondered how he stayed in his seat, when all he wanted was to haul her into his arms and kiss her senseless. ‘No, I do not. And we have an entire houseful of guests already. All my bridesmaids are here too. Who will be your best man? Hunt, I suppose.’
‘No. I talked to him about it this morning. I have asked Ralph.’
‘Ralph? But he…’ She broke off and he watched her face, enjoying the thinking going on behind those lovely blue eyes. ‘You could not send a clearer signal to the world that it was an accident and to the Thornes that you trust them both.’
‘Exactly. And Sophie, I want you to sleep in your own bed until then. I find that marrying the woman I love has made a romantic out of me.’
All girls dream of their perfect wedding day. Sophie realised that she had stopped dreaming after she had escaped from Jonathan, that night in London. Now she had no need to dream, because this was reality and the fantasy man had a face. Cal’s face.
The chapel was smaller than a church, with no long nave and chancel to traverse, so she could see his expression from the moment that she stepped through the door on Step Papa’s arm.
Cal was pale and unsmiling, but Sophie did not make the mistake of believing that he was not happy. She knew him too well now to mistake that look for anything but intense feeling.
Half way between the packed rows of pews she stopped, took hold of her veil and threw it back because she did not want to look at him through a haze of silk gauze. Then he smiled and held out his hand and for all she knew later she ran those last few steps to his side.
The ceremony passed as though they were in a glass bubble of sharply-focused colour and sound and beyond the glass was simply a blur. Other people were there, people she loved – her mother and stepfather, little Isobel, Toby – and she felt their love surrounding her and Cal, but they were not real, not as he was. Not real like her hand in his or his ring on her finger.
When the vicar said, ‘You may now kiss the bride,’ it all flooded back and she went into Cal’s arms amid the scent of roses and the hum of happy voices and the sound of her mother sobbing joyfully into her handkerchief.
‘You look beautiful,’ Cal said as they went back down the aisle, his hand firm over hers on his arm.
‘Mama sent for my wedding dress.’ She looked down at the shimmering pale blue silk, the fluttering silver ribbons that she had chosen because they matched Cal’s eyes, the bouquet of Love-in-the Mist, the flowers Cal said matched hers.
‘That is exquisite, of course. But you would have been beautiful in a sheet, walking towards me, your veil back, your eyes telling me how much you loved me.’
The wedding breakfast lasted all afternoon until finally all the usual toasts had been exhausted.
Cal stood up. ‘Before my bride and I depart on our wedding trip, I wanted to say a few words,’ he began. Sophie shut her mouth with a snap and tried to look as though she knew what he was talking about. Wedding trip? What wedding trip? She thought there would be dancing tonight and a buffet and eventually they would be able to escape up to their suite. Which would all have been lovely, although she had wanted so much to be alone with him now, immediately.