It was a moment of connection, just for them.
It felt…
Well, it felt an awful lot like the way he’d felt when they’d kissed.
He hadn’t chosen Phoebe Turner. He likely wouldn’t have chosen her, given his pick of women.
But in that moment, as she made a tiny little face at him down the long length of the church, he was not at all sorry. He had the sudden thought that she might make that pert, sly sort of expression when he bedded her.
But then he tried to put that thought away, because Aaron might not be a particularly religious man—it was hard to believe in abenevolent God after all the carnage he had seen—but even he drew the line at getting an erection in church.
“Did you ever think, in all those days spent as an admiral, that you’d have such a fuss kicked up about you signing a piece of paper?” she asked him quietly as soon as her father had placed her hand in Aaron’s. It surprised him enough that he scoffed out a little laugh.
Out of the corner of his eye, Aaron saw that the bishop looked scandalized. Jacob, however, looked as though he was in raptures.
Well, he could fuck right off and find his own wife. This one belonged to Aaron.
“I’m not an admiral any longer,” he reminded her. “I’m a duke.”
“Oh, Idobeg your pardon, Your Grace,” she said with a small roll of her eyes. “I’m not sure how I was supposed to know that, given that you seem determined to treat everything like a battlefield?”
He bit his lip against a smile.
“Are youquitefinished?” the bishop asked irritably.
Phoebe gave him another conspiratorial look, and Aaron thought that he might not suffer overmuch if he could fight alongside this woman for a while.
A good soldier was only ever as good as the men at his back after all. Or woman, as the case may be.
And her wit was just the weapon needed in this stage of his life. One that he lacked, and she possessed.
Phoebe kept her gaze on him as the bishop read through the sermon. She was so expressive; he could tell that every time she flicked her eyes away and then back, it was because she was struggling not to laugh. Impertinent little thing. He squeezed her fingers tight in his, and she squeezed back just as tightly.
“I now pronounce you man and wife,” the bishop intoned, sounding as though he was thrilled to be over with this nonsense already. “You may kiss the?—”
But Aaron was already kissing her. He needed to keep his self-control in reserve so that he didn’t let the embrace go on for longer than was appropriate.
He managed it, though. It took only slightly less focus than he required to charge down a musket pointed directly at his skull.
“Come along, then, wife,” he said.
And then he led her outside to the swirling snow and watched as the flakes settled upon her chestnut hair like sugar dusted over the most wonderful confection he’d ever seen.
CHAPTER 12
“First, please let me express my sincerest joy that you are now part of my family. I am absolutelythrilled. But second?—”
“Ow!” Phoebe cried as Ariadne began smacking her repeatedly on the arm. “Stop that! Why are you hitting me?”
“Why am I—?” Ariadne finally stopped with the swatting when Phoebe flailed enough to knock her out of reach. “I got back here to a letter that says,Please urgently tell me everything about your cousin, the Duke of Redcliff, with no additional information?—”
“There wassomeadditional information,” Phoebe argued. “Just, you know, not a lot of it.”
“Andthen,” Ariadne continued, “I dig further in my pile and what do I see? I see a summons from my brother telling me that you are getting married. To Aaron. Today.”
“Um,” said Phoebe. “Yes. I mean, I was there.”
Ariadne hit her again.
