Leticia stared. “It’s astonishing.”
“It is uniquely ours,” he said as he slipped the ring on her finger. His fingers were steady, though his breath was not. He pressed something small into her hand, a folded envelope, sealed in his script.
“Later,” he murmured, too low for anyone else to hear.
She let out a shaky breath. “I am ready.”
Within minutes, they stood before the altar, garlanded with roses twined through autumn ivy, candlelight gilding the carved wood as the astonished guests hushed beneath the painted rafters. The vicar’s voice ran like velvet over stone as he asked Gabriel if he would take this woman, Leticia Salisbury, to be his wife.
“With all that I am,” Gabriel answered, his gaze drinking in each inch of her face.
When Leticia’s moment came, she spoke without tremor, “I do. With all my heart.”
The rings slipped into place, his large and ancient, hers delicate and newly forged, and as the vicar’s words echoed against the stone, the past fell from her shoulders as surely as the future settled into her hands. When the words were spoken and vows complete, Gabriel kissed her as though she were the only woman who had ever existed, taking her gently at first, then with growing certainty until laughter and adoring sighs filled the aisle around them.
Her arms came around his neck shamelessly. Her slippered toes tipped high. The kiss broke only when Barrington loudly cleared his throat to declare it time for cake and triumph.
Felicity swept through the knot of guests with theatrical gravity. She pressed the back of her hand to her brow and leaned toward the bride.
“Letty, quick, I’m going to swoon.” She peeked slyly from beneath her fingers, lips curving. “You did warn me this day might come.”
Gabriel’s voice came dry, edged with wryness. “Best wait until after the cake. Kenworth has enough chaos without you toppling into it as well.”
Laughter sparked around them, lighting the air, and Leticia’s smile carried the memory of a jest that had at last turned into truth.
They stood before their guests arm in arm, Baron and Baroness Ashcombe, no longer divided by doubt or disguise. At last, together by choice, and by law.
Epilogue
The Morning After
Sunlight poured acrossthe bed in honeyed stripes, warming the tangled, unhurried hush of the chamber. Leticia stirred against her husband’s bare chest, solid, warm, familiar in ways that still made her heart skip with disbelief. Gabriel murmured something low and sleepy, tightening his arms around her like he meant to keep her cuddled against his body forever.
“I was trying not to wake you,” she whispered against his collarbone.
“You failed,” he rumbled, his voice deep with sleep and satisfaction. “And now that you have, I cannot be held responsible for what happens next.”
She laughed, breathless and unashamed, and pressed her lips to the pulse beating just under his jaw. It leapt for her as if his heartbeat were the answer to her kiss.
“I am your wife,” she reminded him softly.
His hand curved over the slope of her hip, possessive and reverent all at once. “Best sentence in the English language.”
The star-ruby caught the morning light on her finger, warm against her skin beside her wedding ring. She turned her wrist slightly, tracing the edge of the stone with her fingertip. “I still cannot believe this is real.”
Gabriel tipped her chin so she had no choice but to meet his steady gaze. “Believe in this. I will love as long as I draw breath… and beyond it, if I am permitted.”
Tears slipped unbidden down her cheeks, and he brushed them away with his thumb, kissing the tracks where they had fallen.
“And,” he added with that wicked flicker she now recognized as her undoing, “I intend to begin showing you exactly how devoted I am the moment you finish breakfast.”
“Breakfast?” she repeated, amused.
A knock sounded at the door.
Kenworth’s voice floated through, dry as ever. “Begging your pardon, my lady, but victory eggs and ham have arrived on the tray. Shall I leave them at the door…or dare I risk entering?”
Leticia collapsed into Gabriel’s shoulder with a muffled laugh. “Victory eggs?”
