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“Not a mouse?” Viola asked.

He didn’t answer, but only because his arms were around her and somehow he’d managed to pull her into his lap. Surrounded by his strength and warmth, she could feel desperation coursing through him. For her!

She started kissing him as fiercely as she knew how, letting her body tell him all the incoherent things she felt, things that had nothing to do with the virtuous Mr. Marlowe or, indeed, virtue at all. She felt overheated and wild, every bit of her attuned to his body: to the catch in his throat, the hoarse, helpless sound when she rocked against him, the way his hands were trembling.

She didn’t even notice Joan was in the room until Devin pulled back. Viola was staring at him, trying to reconcile her normally demure self with a new version of herself that saw nothing wrong with ripping off her fiancé’s neck cloth and licking his neck.

Not that she had, of course, but she had imagined it.

Joan was standing not far away, an arm melodramatically cast over her eyes. “Mother sent me to fetch you, Viola. Your Grace, my father is waiting for you in the library and I wouldn’t be tardy, were I you.”

“Devin,” Viola breathed. “I . . .”

“I as well,” he said, his penetrating gaze hungry. The roughness in his voice made her squirm in his lap. His eyelids drooped and he stood, bringing Viola to her feet. “All right?”

Viola was turning pink. She almost—almost—blurted out that she “needed” him. The only explanation was that she had temporarily lost her mind.

Devin took a deep breath and shook his head. “Whatever just came into your head, don’t say it until we’re in private, Viola.”

“I don’t want to know what’s in either of your heads,” Joan remarked.

Viola pressed a hand to her chest, willing her heart to stop thumping.

“Lady Joan, I will be honored to call you sister-in-law,” Devin said.

“I don’t know that it’s such an honor,” Joan said, laughing. “You picked the better Wilde sister by far. Now come along!” She turned and marched toward the door.

Viola caught Devin’s arm as he turned to follow Joan.

“That was—” The right words didn’t come to mind. Improper? Marvelous? Terrible? Bad? Good? Wrong? Words tumbled through her mind like dried weeds.

He took a deep breath. “Special license, so we needn’t call the banns?” His eyes bored into hers, and for once, they were not unreadable. They were hungry, and possessive, and believable.

That little part of Viola that always felt anxious about not belonging, calmed.

“We belong together,” she whispered.

He glanced at Joan, waiting by the door, and bent his head closer to her. “I can’t wait to see your cowshed.”

They walked to the door together, hand in hand.

Chapter Twenty-one

Three Days Later

St. Margaret’s Church

Miss Viola Astley married the Duke of Wynter in a ceremony that, had the bride bothered to envision her own wedding, she would have considered perfect.

St. Margaret’s Church, next to Westminster Abbey, was closed to all visitors, and only her dearest family thronged in the front pews. The Murgatroyds were practically Wildes at this point: Sir Reginald sat beside Aunt Knowe; Hazel had claimed Diana and North’s baby Peter and cuddled him the entire time; and Joan and Otis sat together, wearing equally naughty expressions. Even Willa came, leaning on Alaric’s arm, and risking—as Aunt Knowe said—a baby born in the pew.

Devin was magnificent in a suit fitted to such perfection that Lavinia had reached out and touched his coat. “I adore the cut of this lapel,” she had said dreamily. Parth had swooped in and advised Devin to ignore his wife. “I know she looks as if she wants to rip the coat off your body,” he had advised, “but she just wants to inspect the lining.”

Viola forced her attention back to the words of the marriage ceremony. “Will you, Viola Astley . . .” The Dean of Westminster Abbey, the Very Reverend Henry Damson, went on and on, listing a frighteningly precise inventory of all the things that she and Devin might have to weather together.

“Yes,” she said, looking at Devin, not at the ground, “I will.”

When he slid a ring on her finger, Viola smiled down at the exquisite circlet. “Not my mother’s,” Devin had told her the night before. “We will begin our own tradition.” The ring was silver, with a pattern of leaves adorned with small diamonds and a very large diamond for good measure.