“Yes,” she said.
He looked less relieved than she might have expected. More terrified. Rather as though she’d stabbed him between the ribs and his lifeblood was slowly trickling out onto the stone floor.
“Are you certain?” he rasped. His face was growing whiter and whiter, and if he fainted, she was going to have the very devil of a time holding him up. “Because the bishop is right behind us, and if you come to your senses later on today, it’s going to be awfully hard to undo, and I—”
“Yes,” she said. “Malcolm. Yes.”
He leaned very slowly toward her, until his forehead pressed against hers. “Oh God,” he said. “Ruby. I hope like hell you don’t regret it.”
“I heard that,” rumbled the Bishop of Winchester. “Mr. Archer, you have raised me from my bed at the devil’s own hour, and I grow both hungry and impatient. Are you planning to make this woman your wife, or aren’t you?”
Malcolm dragged himself back to his full height. He smiled at her—the ghosts of his dimples flashing—and towed her unsteadily up the aisle to where the bishop and Alice waited.
Tamsin’s absence was an ache in Ruby’s chest. But Alice’s lips curved up, gentle and reassuring, and, hesitantly, Ruby let herself smile back.
And as she pledged herself to Malcolm Archer—as he slid the too-big gold ring past her knuckle—Ruby thought of what Alice had asked her in the dinghy. Would she defy her father for Malcolm’s sake?
Yes. To do so flew in the face of all the choices of her life before this, and yet she had done it.
When he found out, the earl was going to be furious. His elder daughter, married in haste to a disgraced naval captain—a smuggler—a confidence artist. It was nothing like what he would have chosen for her, nor even what, in her lonely childhood dreams, she had imagined for herself. It seemed possible that, when he discovered the truth, her father would never see her again.
And still, knowing that, she had made her choice. She had chosen Malcolm.
The bishop spoke the words of their joining in a sonorous voice, and as he did, she looked up into Malcolm’s pale, set face. She thought of theDelphinium—scarred and lopsided and slow and precious. Her ring slipped against his where he gripped her hand.
If there was a cost to this decision, she would pay it. With her own heart’s blood, she would pay—as he had.
Chapter 27
He felt the veriest fool as he knocked on his own cabin door that night.
He was a mooncalf. A block. As nervous as a new-married virgin or—hell—a choirboy at a brothel, something he most certainly had never been.
His wife was inside his cabin. Hiswife.
He’d had mad dreams. Vivid fancies, as he lay in his bed at Pomeroy House and thought of her, as they crept closer to London on theDelphinium. He would win his way back to the navy. He’d rescue the Princess of Monfalcone. He would be heaped in glory, and he’d pile all the honors at Ruby’s feet, and she could reach out and take his hand, and never be ashamed to say that she was Malcolm Archer’s wife. Not ever.
But when Lamentation had confronted him on the deck, he’d felt cracked open.
What would have happened to the rest of us if they’d carted you off to jail?Lamentation had demanded.What would have happened to Gerry and me if you left and never came back?
It was no fearful fantasy, no unreal nightmare vision. It had happened before, with his mother. It could happen again. There was never any certainty to his future. No matter how he lied or dissembled, he could never make them all safe enough.
And when he thought of Ruby facing her father at his house, he kept on thinking that he did not want her to be alone. He refused to let her feel dishonored by their intimacy or abandoned by his failure to act. He wanted—
Christ. He felt afraid and guilty and desperately hungry for her. He felt ashamed. He’d meant every word that he’d said to her, there in the ruined church in front of the bishop. He would never leave her, not if he could help it.
But still, when he pictured bringing his wife to her father’s house, he kept thinking:Now, at least, she cannot change her mind.
He’d meant to sail straight for London that very night, with Ruby defiant and ready at his side. But the winds had been unfavorable. A huge gusty storm had blown up from Dieppe, driving them westward until he’d given in and ordered the sails reefed until the winds calmed. Everyone was belowdecks except a sodden Alfie Enys and Gerry, who’d wiped water from his eyes with the back of his hand and said, “Go on, Cap. We’ll do fine on our own.”
It had felt like chastisement and benediction at once.
It had felt, he thought, like a sentence. His wife was belowdecks. Alone. She was in their cabin, waiting for him, and it was—God help him—their wedding night.
And what would happen if he let her down?
At the sound of his knock, Ruby pulled open the door, caught his hand in hers, and dragged him inside.
