The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(22)
He executed a flawless bow, turned on his heel, and marched out.
“Moncrieff.” Veronica blinked rapidly, as one might after glancing directly at the sun. “I’m sure I would have—that I’ve never—is he new?”
“Apparently.” Taking one last glance at herself, Lorelai decided she looked perfect for a second-rate wedding day. Her dress, a simple gold affair, set off the sun-stained metallic highlights in her hair. Her maid had arranged it into an intricate coiffure of braids, leaving long darker curls to tumble down her back. Generally, her round cheeks and high color hid her age, but Veronica was right, her recent weight loss painted every one of her thirty-and-four years onto her terse features. She appeared as limp and listless as she felt.
“You look like a goddess.” Veronica affixed the Southbourne sapphire tiara to her hair, arranging the attached veil with deft puffs and pulls.
“I look like a gibbon,” Lorelai groused.
Usually, a maid or seamstress would make any last-minute adjustments to the clothing, but Veronica had both a talent and zeal for fashion.
“Do you want your cane?”
Lorelai shook her head. “Not today.” With her luck, she’d rest her cane on her dress and rip it on the way down the aisle, or something equally mortifying.
They hurried—as fast as Lorelai hurried anywhere—to the carriage.
Mortimer had decided Veronica was all she required in the way of bridesmaids. The countess wrestled with the dress while Moncrieff was kind enough to lift the veil off Southbourne Grove’s circular drive.
The carriage must have belonged to Mr. Gooch, as it was larger and grander than any Mortimer owned by at least half.
Clouds hung over the bay, inching toward the mouth of the Black Water River, pregnant with the promise of rain. A few ships moored in the distance bobbed in the choppy waves. Sloops, sailboats, and a rather large, dark ship with curiously few masts. A steam-belching stranger to these familiar shores. Though, she supposed, Maldon and Heybridge attracted more and more industrial commerce these days and, unfortunately, men like her husband-to-be.
Her ankle ached in weather like this, and she favored it as she made her way down the steps to the coach. A tall, ebony-clad coachman, with a collar turned up to ward off the increasing wind, held a team of four restless black steeds in check.
An appropriate color, in Lorelai’s assessment, as it felt as though she were being conducted to her own funeral, rather than her wedding.
Tucked into the carriage with Veronica, Lorelai fought a suffocating sense of surrealistic dread the entire way. Every moment this day progressed promised to be more horrifying than the last.
It would begin with a promenade down a long aisle, conducted by a brother who would think nothing of tripping her if only for the sake of his sick amusement. At the end of such a potentially disastrous walk stood a fiancé she’d only met but once, on the day he’d won her and Southbourne Grove in a poker game, and come to inspect his prize like one would a brood mare.
He seemed more impressed with the estate than his bride.
Sylvester Gooch. A beady-eyed, sour-faced glutton with prominent jowls who seemed to snore even when awake.
The soiree after the wedding would be nothing less than a chore, accepting disingenuous felicitations, watching others dance when she could not, and doing her best not to obsessively dread what came next.
The wedding night. God, how was she going to endure it?
She must. Or she and Veronica—to say nothing of Mortimer—would be out on the street. The ancient Weatherstoke name ruined beyond repair.
And worse, her animals would be without a home, and the meager staff she’d hired to keep them, unemployed.
Too many souls, both human and otherwise, depended on her for their survival.
And, once again, Mortimer had crippled her—hobbled her, more like—forcing her to suffer for his own heinous iniquities.
Devil take him, she railed to the incoming clouds. Take him back to hell where he belongs.
As though to answer her invocation, a burst of sudden thunder broke over the mouth of the river, gathering a parliament of angry clouds to the east.
“Frightful weather,” Veronica mumbled, fussing with the peacock feather in her lovely headdress. “I hope the footman and coachmen don’t catch a chill should they become drenched.”
“Perhaps we should order them to keep going right past the chapel,” Lorelai suggested wryly. “Challenge them to outrun the storm.”
“Tempting,” Veronica sighed.
The coach trundled to a stop, fascinating a parcel of latecomers still filing into the church.
Lorelai held her breath as Mortimer forced his way through a small crowd rudely gathered at the open doors of the gray stone cathedral, his mottled skin matching the wine velvet of his vest.
“He doesn’t look pleased,” Veronica fretted, a sheen of sweat gathering on her brow despite the plummeting temperatures.
Lorelai forced herself not to remark upon the colossal proportion of her sister-in-law’s understatement as the Earl of Southbourne stalked toward her. His hair had thinned, and his waist had thickened over the years, but he was still the same bulky, manipulative sadist she’d been raised to fear.
If she disembarked the carriage by the time he reached them, the people milling about would take note of their arrival, and an audience would at least decrease the likeliness of an unpleasant interaction of a physical nature.