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Madelyn was walking up the aisle on the arm of his secretary, who looked as though he was about to be thrown to the lions in the arena. That was enough to cause a stir, but he hardly registered it when he looked at his bride. Madelyn was wearing a gown of heavy leaf-green silk, deeply gathered under her bust and falling to sweep the ground with a hem of some white fur. It was cut in a swooping vee to display her shoulders and décolletage and the deep, dark, primitive glow of the ancient necklace that lay against the curves of white skin. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, straight, unconfined except for the garland of leaves and white flowers that sat like a crown on her head. In her hands, framed by the medieval bell sleeves, she held white lilies and the soft green of ferns.
She might have stepped straight from a tapestry on a castle’s walls. There should be a slender greyhound by her side or a lion or, Jack thought wildly, a unicorn.
Madelyn looked magnificent, beautiful, powerful. Magically strange. Jack’s body tightened. He felt his pulse kic
k up, even as he absorbed what a disaster this was. Her gown was scandalous, wildly eccentric and she was defiantly throwing society’s expectations back in its face. She was her father’s daughter, defying Jack’s wishes—his instructions, damn it.
Those in the congregation who were not staring at Madelyn were looking at him. He forced his expression into neutrality—a smile was beyond him—inclined his head in greeting, then turned back to face the Vicar.
The rustle of silk dragging over tile, the click of Lyminge’s boot heels, Charlie fidgeting from foot to foot... Then out of the corner of his eye he saw a sweep of green, the sheen of golden hair and caught the scent of lilies over the ecclesiastical odour of damp and dust and prayer books.
‘Dearly beloved...’ The Vicar’s voice trailed off in the face of the whispering from the wedding guests. ‘Dearly beloved,’ he repeated with some emphasis.
Finally, the congregation fell silent. Jack wondered fleetingly whether the bridegroom turning on his heel and marching off down the aisle would actually make anything worse. He could always keep going. As far as Bristol, perhaps. Catch a ship, end up in America...
Yes, it would make things worse. Much worse. And he had given his word to marry Madelyn. He might be Jack Lackland, but he was still a gentleman. For better or worse. Worse. For richer or poorer. Richer. With my body... Yes, that at least. And she looks...wonderful.
* * *
Somehow, they reached the end of the service without disaster, which was a miracle considering that he felt utterly distracted and goodness knew what Madelyn was thinking. Revenge? Was that what this was? he wondered as they turned and she took his arm to walk back down the aisle.
I insisted that she conform and this is her reaction—to make me a laughing stock?
They reached the steps outside the church and stopped, looking down on the crowd in St George’s Street. There was the usual scrum of passers-by, idlers, the curious. There were faces he recognised who were runners for the newspapers and who would be scribbling descriptions for the Society columns and, as he had predicted, there were two artists, rapidly sketching. The new Countess of Dersington’s wedding gown would feature in Ackermann’s Repository next month and, in all probability, in La Belle Assemblée and The Lady’s Monthly Museum, as well. Every last, outrageous, medieval detail of it.
Jack took a deep breath, fastened an expression suitable to a bridegroom on his face and led Madelyn closer to the edge of the steps. ‘Let the artists have a good look at you, my dear. You want your gown to be accurately depicted, do you not?’
She went, obedient to his direction, and when he glanced at her she was smiling serenely, lovely in the sunlight, a figure out of time magicked there by some mysterious force. ‘You do not mind?’
‘I mind like hell,’ Jack said pleasantly. ‘But if you think I am going to make a scene about it in public, you are very much mistaken.’ He turned more towards her, the picture of a devoted husband, blinking at the reflected light from the barbaric splendour of the rubies and emeralds on her breast. ‘That will do, the carriage is here, we have guests to entertain and, I imagine, gate-crashers to repel once word of this gets around.’
‘Jack—’
‘Not now.’ He helped her mount the step into the open landau, settled her on the cream-leather upholstery and sat beside her. At least that spared him from having to face her directly.
‘I wanted to appear my best for you and I know I cannot do that in modern clothes.’ Her voice shook, despite the defiance, and he turned to look at her fully for the first time. Her chin was up, the smile was fixed in place, but tears sparkled in the corners of her eyes.
‘What flatters you does not matter,’ he said harshly. ‘And keep your voice down,’ he added low-voiced with a jerk of his head towards the coachman and the grooms. ‘Conforming matters, fitting in matters, appearing normal matters. I thought you understood that. Or do you think this marriage is all about gaining a legitimate father for this brood of children you want and then retiring to your confounded moated castle to raise them in your fantasy land?’
Meanwhile I am left, the Earl who married this mad woman for my lands... No, she is not mad, just far cleverer than I realised. Cleverer and more ruthless.
‘I am now a countess,’ Madelyn said in an intense whisper. ‘I am a rich countess with my own sense of style. I do not care what they say and neither should you. I thought you were too proud and too independent to care.’ The tears had gone, replaced by a look of sparking anger. ‘After all, you are the man who had the nerve to reject his own title out of a sense of self-esteem.’
I had years of seeing my father and brother behave with utter self-indulgence, neglecting their lands, ignoring their tenants and every one of their responsibilities. Years of sneers over my lack of land and now the knowing looks and admiring remarks about my skill at catching an heiress. How much worse will it be as word spreads that by marrying you I have restored my inheritance? Do you think I want to continue to be an outsider? Do you think I do not want my children to grow up ordinary, accepted, members of society?
He almost said it all, but he was not pouring out his heart with two pairs of ears flapping on the box and another pair clinging on behind.
‘We are nearly there,’ Madelyn said as the landau swung out of Old Bond Street into Piccadilly. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘At the wedding breakfast? Smile, my dear. Smile,’ Jack said grimly. And afterwards? How was he going to come to terms with a wife who so utterly failed to understand what was important? Then a cluster of crossing sweepers on the corner of St James’s Street set up a cheer at the sight of the carriage and its ribbons. Madelyn smiled at them and waved and he thought, She looks like a queen and I want her. I have made a devil’s bargain.
Chapter Fourteen
Jack was formidably angry. The very control he was exercising told Madelyn that. His smile was wider, tighter; the beautiful blue of his eyes was cold; the grip of his hand as he helped her from the landau was that of a jailer, not hard enough to hurt, but firm enough to restrain any attempt to bolt.
As though I am going to run away now, Madelyn thought. She felt sick with nerves and with the realisation that her act of defiance had gone so very wrong. She had thought that Jack would see how much better she looked in her own style, she had imagined that the guests would be intrigued, or perhaps charmed, by such a harmless choice. It is my wedding day.
But at the church the guests had reacted as though she had appeared in wild animal skins, and Jack was livid, even though, when he looked at her, she could sense desire smouldering behind the anger.
