The morning sunlightglinted off the carriage door as Barrington handed Mrs. Bainbridge inside. Gabriel followed, pausing to rest one gloved hand on the frame before looking back toward the portico.
Leticia stood there beside her aunt, skirts stirring in the crisp air. “It is an honor,” she said, “that His Majesty himself wishes to see you both and offer his blessing.”
Mrs. Bainbridge leaned out the window, laughter bright as a bell. “A royal summons and a wedding blessing in the same week, can you imagine? Do try to keep Kenworth from strangling the florists while we’re gone.”
“I make no promises,” Leticia replied, smiling despite the knot in her chest.
Gabriel met her eyes for one heartbeat longer than was proper. “We’ll not be long.”
She inclined her head, but her hands folded at her waist as the carriage rolled down the long lime-lined drive, raising a storm of golden dust and fluttering leaves. She stayed where she was until the wheels vanished behind the hedge, and even the faint rhythm of hooves was gone.
Only when she stepped back inside did her breath leave her in a soft rush. The house had not rested for a moment since Tresham’s capture. As if in gratitude, it had flung itself wildly into motion. Unsurprisingly, Barrington’s home had become a hive of effort for his and Mrs. Bainbridge’s wedding, not hers. Florists arrived with bolts ofpalest peach ribbon and armloads of half-closed ivory roses. Crates of china were taken to the Sommer Castle. The housekeeper muttered about guest rooms and bed linen, while the discreet tray of subtle gossip passed between underfoot-men like a torch.
Kenworth, who had already proven himself unflappable under explosions, kidnappings, and aristocratic scandal, now faced his greatest adversary, wedding chaos. He had traded his pistol for a notebook the thickness of a small brick and stalked the corridors with relentless purpose.
“I warn you, my lady,” he told Leticia in the hall one afternoon, “if even one more person enters this house with a floral sample, I shall personally lock them in the potting shed.”
She laughed before she could stop herself, the sound startling in its freedom.
In her absence, Mrs. Bainbridge had pressed Leticia into the role of surrogate hostess with breathtaking boldness, insisting that a future baroness ought to stand at the helm and learn to wield diplomacy as deftly as placing a cut-glass decanter. So Leticia smiled at each arrival, accepted compliments on plans that were not truly hers, and learned the necessary art of making directions sound like gentle suggestions.
By mid-week the house had swollen with counts, countesses, colonels, and at least one near-deaf dowager accustomed to speaking at cannon volume. Trunks filled with gowns thumped against carved banisters. Maids whispered, footmen hurried, and once a frantic shriek erupted when a spider was discovered in the chapel at the back of the property.
Her aunt remained calm and watchful through it all, seated on a settee as though poised for a hunt, her embroidery never once missing a stitch while her gaze took the measure of each guest. On Wednesday afternoon, when Leticia managed five blessed minutes of peace in the morning room, her aunt entered and closed the door behind them with finality.
“We must speak,” her aunt said. There was no refusing that tone.
Leticia set her teacup down carefully. “Yes?”
Her aunt surprised her by sinking down on the sofa beside her, not opposite, and after a moment of silence, folded Leticia’s hand into her own. The gesture was unfamiliar and unbearably tender.
“There is something I have not told you, and I cannot let you marry, or begin your life anew, while I still keep it clenched like a thief hoarding sorrow.”
Leticia’s pulse skipped. “What is it?”
“The brooch,” her aunt said on a sigh, sounding tired beneath her determination. “Years ago, the summer after Robbie died… a man came asking questions. A man claiming he was writing a history of minor jewels. He wanted to know if Robbie had ever purchased an unusual sapphire piece, and if I knew where it might have gone.” Her brows knit. “Even then, I suspected he was not what he claimed. I promised I had no idea. And I begged your mother to destroy it, or sell it, for safety’s sake. She assured me it was gone.” Her voice fell to a whisper. “I believed I had kept you safe.”
“She gave it to me as a gift before she died,” Leticia said softly. “She never said a word of danger.”
“I think she believed love protected more than secrecy,” her aunt replied. Tears gathered but did not fall. “I watched you walk into that soiree with it at your throat, and all my guilt came roaring back. I should have told you long before. I should never have left you ignorant of the risk.”
Leticia turned their hands and squeezed her aunt’s fingers gently. “There was nothing cowardly in wanting to keep me safe. You tried to remove the threat without stealing my mother’s memory. I cannot condemn that.”
Her aunt’s relief was quiet but immense. “Do you forgive me?”
“With all my heart.”
They sat so for a long moment, palms warm, before the bells rangfor luncheon and the world bustled forward again without mercy.
*
The days thatfollowed blurred beneath a sweeping tide of ribbons, deliveries, and the sharp scent of rose oil. Barrington’s home grew steadily more crowded and chaotic. Mrs. Bainbridge’s seamstress arrived with armfuls of lace and trim while Kenworth trailed behind with the expression of a man who has stared too long into hurricane winds and begun to catalog the debris with grim determination anyway.
Kenworth paused beside her, scanning the arrangements with the air of a general surveying a battlefield he did not entirely trust.
“The ribbons are staging a rebellion, my lady,” he said quietly. “They refuse symmetry.”
She managed to pat his arm gingerly and advise him to breathe.
