After standing up as best man for Guy while he married Leah, James knew he was going to need every calming balm under heaven to ease his troubled soul. He had to get away. The look of hopelessness on Leah’s face, and the sight of her gaunt figure when she’d stood in the courtyard at Fulham Palace, had haunted his dreams during what little sleep he had managed to get after returning home from Guy’s stag party in the early hours.
“Get through the service, then out the front door,” he muttered.
After the previous evening of saluting his best friend and wishing him every happiness with his new bride—all the while fighting the nearly overwhelming urge to punch Guy in the face—James knew he did not have the strength to maintain his composure for the wedding breakfast. The sight of the best man in tears while the groom made his thank you speech would raise too many uncomfortable questions.
The one saving grace this morning was that the rest of the Radley family had left early for the wedding. His mother and sisters had accompanied his father into town. The Bishop of London was due to conduct the wedding service at St George’s.
Time alone at home was a precious respite for James before the impending agony of the wedding.
“Yes, just get through the service.”
By the time he left the house, those words were constantly on his lips. The more he said them, the more he hoped they would help to keep his emotions in check.
Standing next to the groom at the front of the church would mean he was in the center of much of the attention. He owed it to Guy not to reveal his true feelings in front of several hundred guests. He also owed it to Leah not to make what he could only imagine would be the worst day of her life any more difficult. Neither he nor Leah wanted this wedding, but both were bound by social expectations and commitments.
His sudden disappearance from London immediately following the marriage service would be a touch awkward to explain. Hopefully Guy would be too concerned with securing his preselection for parliament to give much thought to the odd timing of James’s departure for Derbyshire.
He promised himself that once he was back in London, he would see how things were settling between Leah and Guy before deciding on how best he could support her. If what she had said was right, and Guy no longer trusted him around her, he would have to tread carefully.
He sighed. Why did loving someone have to be so damn hard and life so bloody complicated? In another lifetime, they would have met, fallen in love, and married. They would have been happy. Leah would have been his. And in that other life, he knew she would have loved him.
“Oh, don’t be a fool, James. There is nothing you can do to stop this wedding. Just get on with. Get through the service, then leave,” he muttered.
After one last check of his jacket and bronze-colored waistcoat, he picked up his travel bag and headed downstairs. In his luggage was a hip flask full of the finest French brandy from one of his Uncle Charles’s recent shipments. The travel trunk was already loaded onto the roof of the coach. Everything was in readiness for his swift departure from town.
After the wedding, he intended to make short work of the contents of the hip flask, then get started on the first of the three bottles of brandy he had stowed inside the travel coach. The bottom of a brandy bottle seemed a very good place for him to be right now.
By the time the coach did leave the cobbled streets of London and make its way onto the Great North Road, he intended to be well into that first bottle and on his way to drunken oblivion.
After climbing aboard the coach, he checked his pockets. He had enough money from his father to last a good month in Derbyshire. The next few weeks, he would concentrate his time and efforts on getting theDerbyshire Twinsunderway, then he would return to London and speak privately to Leah and make sure she was alright. When it came to be helping her, James was powerless. He could at least offer her a sympathetic ear.
The journey from Fulham Palace to St George’s Church should have taken less than an hour, but James was in no particular hurry this day. Several times he rapped on the roof of the travel coach and asked for the driver to slow down. He knew it was foolish of him to try and delay the inevitable, but still, he did.
The coach was travelling at little more than a snail’s pace when it finally drew up outside the front of the church in St George Street. His heart was beating so hard in his chest that he was tempted to ask the driver to take a second turn around the block while he tried to calm himself. He looked down at his hand. It was shaking. He curled it into a tight fist.
“For God’s sake, man, pull yourself together,” he muttered.
Time and tide waited for no man. The wedding would be going ahead whether he made it up the front steps or not. It was poor form for the best man to be late, which he was, and today of all days he did not want to test anyone’s patience.
With one last resigned sigh, he opened the coach door and stepped out. He lifted his gaze to the driver and his mate who were seated on the top of the coach.
“I won’t be more than an hour. Then we can start the journey north. And I promise that when we leave, you can set the pace,” he said.
The two men gave a tip of their hats in reply. James was grateful for the patience of long-time family servants. The men knew him well enough to accept him and his odd foibles.
He clenched his fist once more and gave a small pump in the air. He could do this; he owed it to his father not to make a scene in the church.
After a quick look left and right, he dashed across St George Street and turned left, heading in the direction of the entrance to the church. He had just set foot on the pavement when a flash of white caught his eye.
Down the church steps raced a figure dressed all in white, a large bouquet of white lilies in her hand. As she reached the bottom of the steps, she stopped and threw the flowers back in the direction from where she had come. A hand reached up and ripped the coronet of flowers from her pale fair hair. She tossed it after the bouquet. Then, picking up her skirts, she fled down St George Street.
For a moment James stood rooted to the spot, his mind struggling to process what his eyes had just witnessed. His feet started moving before he had a chance to think. He broke into a full run. “Leah!”
Stepping into the street, she hailed a hack and after opening the door, leapt inside. As soon as the door had closed, the driver sped away, not sparing the horses.
Wedding guests raced out of the church. Fortunately, Guy was not one of them. When he caught the eye of one of the other guests, James quickly pointed in the opposite direction to the one Leah had taken. He held his breath, praying that his misdirection worked.
“Thank god,” he muttered, as several male guests ran off up St George Street.
