Page 98 of A Convenient Fiction

Paris, France

September, 1860

Alex shepherded Laura into his suite of rooms at the Hôtel des Rois. The heavy damask curtains were open, revealing an enviable prospect of the Champs-Élysées. The fashionable Paris avenue was ablaze with gaslight. It was the same view that had attracted him so many years ago.

It attracted Laura as well.

She walked to the window as she stripped off her gloves and bonnet. He heard her catch her breath. “Good heavens.”

“Do you like it?”

“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”

He regarded her from across the room. She’d spent most of the rail journey from Surrey poring over the documents Weatherwax had sent to them. At Dover, however, Alex had taken charge of the papers and directed her attention to more pressing concerns. The steamer ship, and the sea, and the exciting adventure before them.

Her wide-eyed wonder as they’d crossed the channel and traveled by rail from Calais had made the sights and sounds of France new to him again. He felt as though he were seeing it for the first time. The beauty of the countryside, the dazzling lights of Paris. And most beautiful of all, his new bride. A lady he admired. That he adored beyond reason.

A lady he hadn’t even properly kissed yet.

“How long have you lived here?” she asked.

“A few years, off and on.” He dropped his hat and gloves on a marble-topped table near the door. “Though I wouldn’t call it living.”

She glanced at him over her shoulder.

“It isn’t a home,” he said. “It’s simply a place I come to rest when I grow weary of traveling.”

“You must feel some affinity for it. Why else would you keep coming back?”

“Convenience.”

Her lips tilted in a smile. He recognized the expression on her face. She didn’t believe him. Not entirely.

Alex couldn’t blame her.

He wandered past the tufted velvet sofa to the glass oil lamp at its side. As he lit the wick, he heard Laura moving about the room behind him. The skirts of her green silk traveling dress rustled over her starched petticoats, the fragrance of her perfume a faint but stirring floral note in the stale air.

“I’ve never brought a woman here before.” The words tumbled out, unplanned. He grimaced to hear them. “Not that you’re just any woman. That is to say—you’re my wife.”

“I’m flattered.”

He turned to look at her again, feeling oddly out of his depth. “Are you tired? I can order dinner for us here. Or we can go out. Whichever you prefer.”

“I think I’d rather stay in, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Not at all.” He half smiled. “One of the benefits of living part time in a hotel. And they launder the linens.”

“How long has it been since you’ve been back here?”

“A few months. Longer. I can’t recall.” It had been nearly a year, in fact. Indeed, he’d been sitting right here, in an armchair near the fire, reading the London paper, when he’d come across the notice of Justin’s marriage.

On the 27th September at the District Registrar’s Office in Abbot’s Holcombe, Burlington Street, Captain Justin Thornhill, of King’s Abbot, to Lady Helena Elaine Reynolds, daughter of the late Earl of Castleton, Hampshire.

Alex wondered if Justin loved his wife. Was their marriage one of mutual respect and affection? Or had Justin wed Lady Helena solely for her wealth and pedigree? Either way, a registrar’s office seemed a ramshackle place to marry. At least Alex had wed Laura in a church. They’d had a proper ceremony, with all of the trappings.

And now they were going to have a proper wedding night.

He rang for a footman. The summons was answered almost immediately by a hotel employee in impeccable livery. He took their dinner order, and departed, promising to return within a half an hour with their meal. As the door shut behind him, a knot of anxiety formed in Alex’s stomach.