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Hartmore was also available for weddings. There were two wedding parties scheduled for the next day, the first at one in the afternoon and the second at four, both in Saint Ann’s Chapel, with receptions to follow in the State Dining Room and on the grand terrace, respectively.
By five-thirty, the second party had left the chapel. Hartmore staff got right to work switching out the flowers and hanging a fresh set of lace and floral swags from the ends of the gorgeous old mahogany pews.
At a quarter past six, Genny walked down the red-carpeted aisle in the six-hundred-year-old sandstone church on her father’s arm. She wore a sleeveless white-lace creation bought three days before in Montedoro and carried pink roses from Hartmore’s rose garden. Rafe waited for her at the altar dressed beautifully in a charcoal morning coat, buff waistcoat and gray trousers. To her, the whole experience had an air of unreality.
She was on her father’s arm and then, as if by magic, she stood at the altar with Rafe, beneath the stained glass window depicting the crucifixion and ascension of Christ. There were vows and she said them, obediently and a little bit breathlessly.
Rafe kissed her, his soft lips brushing hers for the first time since he’d kissed her goodbye after their brief time together two months before. She shivered a little at the contact and her body ached. For him.
So strange, really. She’d been at his side constantly in the five days since she’d climbed the villa wall to tell him she was having his baby. But they hadn’t really talked, not about anything beyond their plans to marry and what had to be done next.
And they hadn’t made love. He’d been distant and carefully gentle with her. Attentive, but in no way intimate.
Right after the ceremony, as she posed with Rafe and the family and Rory flitted about snapping picture after picture, she wondered if, just possibly, she might have lost her mind. Pregnant. Marrying Rafe, her dearest friend, who was now like a stranger. Mistress of Hartmore.
It didn’t seem real. It was all like some weird, impossible dream.
They had dinner, just the family, in the small dining room in the East Wing, where the family lived. For the occasion, Genny would have liked to have used the State Dining Room again. But it wasn’t to be. The paying wedding parties were still going on in the heart of the house. After the meal, they moved to the East Solarium. There was wedding cake, as well as champagne that she pretended to sip while Rory took more pictures.
At eleven, she found herself in Rafe’s bedroom, the East Bedroom, as it had always been called, though there were many more bedrooms in that wing of the house. The East Bedroom had its own sitting room, a dressing room and bath—and a second bedroom beyond the dressing room. The East Bedroom had been part of the original design of the house, back before the turn of the eighteenth century, and was revolutionary in its day. An en suite bath was rare at the time. Even the very wealthy went down the hall—or even out the back door—to the loo.
The bedroom itself was furnished with Chippendale lacquer furniture and an enormous, ornately draped canopy bed. Wearing the white satin, low-backed bit of silky nothing she’d bought the same day she bought her wedding gown, Genny sat at the lacquer dressing table and stared at her wide-eyed reflection in the slightly streaky antique mirror. She worried that he might not be coming to join her.
She started to chew her lower lip over it, but made herself stop. And then she leaned close to the glass to whisper furiously at her own reflection, “If he doesn’t come, you are not going just sit here and wish that he would. You are getting up and going to find him.”
And when she found him, she would insist that they sleep together as man and wife.
Because they had to start somewhere to build a real marriage. And since the sex had been so good with them, she couldn’t help hoping that lovemaking might be a way to break through the wall of emotional reserve he seemed to have erected around himself.
“No need for that, Gen. I’m right here.”
She gasped and whirled to find him standing there, not six feet away. “Rafe! You scared me to death.” Frantically, she tried to remember just how much of what she’d been thinking she’d actually said out loud.
He stood absolutely still, the crescent scar pulling at the side of his mouth in that perpetual false hint of a smile, his black eyes watchful. “Forgive me.”
She thought of the wild boy he’d been once, tormented by his own father, wary of everyone—except her. And nowadays, he was wary of her, too. She had no idea what he might be thinking.
His thick brows drew together. “Are you all right?”
“Of course. Yes, fine.” Dear Lord, this was awful. They really were like strangers, with the long, awkward silences followed by stammered-out reassurances. She rose and faced him, feeling way too uncovered in the revealing nightgown.
