And he was the bridegroom she wanted, she realized with great clarity.
She felt an upsurge of happiness and smiled at him.
He smiled back, and for the first time it struck her that he was really quite handsome after all – tall and dark and lean with intense eyes and features that were rugged rather than classically sculpted.
He did not smile often, did he? The expression imparted kindness to his face. He must /be/ a kind man. A poor abused lady had confided in him when she had confided in no one else. It was to him she had run when she was in real trouble. He loved his young son first of anyone else in his life because the child needed him and the affection and security he had to offer.
It was a strange moment for such a revelation.
She was marrying a kind man, Margaret realized.
And it was enough. She moved toward him with hope.
A short while later Stephen placed her hand in Lord Sheringford's, and together they turned to face the clergyman.
The church was hushed.
Half the /ton/ was in the pews behind them, Margaret realized. More important, so were their families. But it did not really matter. She was where she chose to be, and she was with the bridegroom she wished to marry. He might be a near stranger, she might have known him for only two weeks, but it did not matter.
Somehow this felt right.
Please, please let it /be/ right. "Dearly beloved," the clergyman began.
It was all so terribly public. Although they stood with their backs to the congregation through most of the nuptial service, Duncan could /feel/ them there – avidly curious about this strange wedding of their most notorious member to one of the most respectable.
They would all wait as avidly afterward for something to go wrong.
Margaret Huxtable believed this was fate, and he had had the strange thought himself that perhaps the whole course of his life had been directed to that moment when they had collided in a ballroom doorway.
But he did not know her.
He had no idea how he would make her happy.
He was marrying her for Toby's sake. He would not be doing this if it were not for the child, would he? He would be out somewhere far from London, searching for employment. He would not have set foot in London to beg for Woodbine to be restored to him if he had had only himself to consider. "I pronounce that they be man and wife together, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen," the clergyman was saying, and it was all over.
Somehow he had missed his own nuptial service. But it did not matter. He was a married man anyway. He was married to Margaret Huxtable – Margaret Pennethorne, Countess of Sheringford.
Ah, Tobe.
And a few minutes later, having signed the register, they were walking back up the nave of the church together, acknowledging the smiles – and tears – of their relatives and the more curious stares of other guests.
The only persons Duncan really saw were his mother, her eyes shining with tears, and his grandfather in the second pew, frowning ferociously at him, but in just the way he had always used to frown as he searched his pockets for a shilling.
And then they were stepping out into sunshine and a cheering crowd and church bells just beginning a joyful peal.
As if a wedding had taken place. As indeed one had.
His own.
He looked down at his bride on his arm. It seemed that every time he saw her she looked more beautiful than the time before, but on this occasion she definitely did. "Well, Maggie," he said. "Well, Lord Sheringford." "We are going to have to correct that," he said. "You cannot be forever Lord Sheringfording me now that we are married." "Duncan," she said. "Come," he said, and led her toward an open barouche his grandfather had sent for the occasion.
It was only as they approached it that he saw it had been decorated with gaily colored ribbons and bows – and with a couple of old boots to drag behind. And there were the perpetrators, mingling, grinning, with the crowd and clutching handfuls of flower petals, which they hurled with great glee as the bride and groom passed.
A horde of his cousins – partners in crime and other mayhem from his childhood and youth.
He was really back in the fold, then, was he?
Strangely and ignominiously, his throat ached is if he were about to weep.
His bride was laughing as he handed her into the barouche and she settled among the garish ribbons and turned her face to him as he settled beside her. Her hat and dress were dotted with petals. He reached for the pouch of coins tucked into the side of his seat and tossed them by handfuls into the crowd.
The carriage rocked on its springs and drew away from the curb – with a great clattering from the boots – as the congregation was spilling into the outdoors.
Maggie tucked a hand into his without any apparent self-consciousness. "Duncan," she said. "Oh, Duncan, was it not all /wonderful/?" He squeezed her hand.
If it had been wonderful for her, then wonderful it was. He owed her that. He owed her a great deal. "It was indeed," he said as the cousins and other members of the crowd whistled and cheered and there was no abatement in the noise the boots were making – someone must have hammered nails all over them. "I suppose we had better give them all back there something to /really/ talk about.
Something juicy for tomorrow's gossip column." And he leaned toward her and kissed her on the lips – a lingering kiss that she made no attempt either to avoid or to end. Her lips clung to his and pressed warmly back against them.
The whistles behind them grew more piercing.
17
THE whole of her wedding day was wonderful, Margaret found as the hours rushed by. Finding it so took her somewhat by surprise. She had looked forward to it with determined optimism, it was true, once her decision to marry the Earl of Sheringford had been made, but – /wonderful/?
The nuptials themselves had been perfect, surely every woman's dream wedding. She had concentrated upon every moment of the service, every word that had been spoken, every vow they had made. She had concentrated upon the warm strength of her bridegroom's hand as it had held hers, upon the contrasting coldness of the ring as he slid it onto her finger, upon the faint musky smell of his cologne. She had even become fully aware, after the first minute or two, of the congregation behind them, an integral part of this solemn occasion. Her family was there and his.
Half the /ton/ was there.
And when they had been leaving the church, although they had not moved along the nave at a crawl, she had seen /everyone/ – Stephen beaming at her, Elliott smiling, Nessie dabbing at her eyes with his handkerchief, Katherine smiling through eyes bright with tears, Jasper winking, Lady Carling clasping her hands to her bosom and sinking her teeth into her lower lip, the Marquess of Claverbrook with eyes that did not quite match the ferocity of the rest of his expression … Oh, and everyone else. She saw them all individually, it seemed, and almost everyone was smiling back at her. People were not spiteful at heart, she thought.
Everyone was prepared to give her new husband a second chance.
And there had been the crowd outside the church, the colorful shower of flower petals, the elegant barouche and its garish decorations, the church bells, the clatter of the nail-studded boots on the road behind the carriage all the way back to Merton House. The public kiss. And the arrival of the guests, whom they had received at the ballroom doors, and the seemingly endless handshakes and kisses on the cheek and smiling good wishes. And the ballroom set up for two hundred guests and so bedecked with flowers that the familiar room somehow looked quite /un/familiar – but gloriously so. And the six-course meal and the toasts and the cake-cutting and the mingling with guests after it was all over.