“I’m glad you’re here, sir,” said a young servant to Bridgewater when he and Undine stepped into the towering entry hall. “There’s a man here. In the drawing room. The housekeeper is looking for you.”
“’Tis the priest,” Bridgewater said with far more excitement than Undine was feeling. “I sent for another.” He squeezed her hand and ran a few steps ahead to the drawing room doors.
“Wait.”
He paused, hands on the knobs. “Aye?”
“I’m not feeling well,” she said, which wasn’t a lie, though her unsettledness was more of the spirit than body. “I think I shall go to bed.”
“Come in just for a moment. He can marry us in the morning, but you should greet him. I insist.”
He opened the doors, leaving no room for argument. The man warming his hands before the fire was not a priest. He wore a dark blue frock coat, and the straightness of his spine spoke of an overage of pride. He pulled at a cuff fastidiously. A green tricorne hid his eyes, but Undine expected to find a meanness of spirit there, and the closely trimmed beard in the latest manner of Parisians suggested their visitor was a man more intent on his appearance than his character.
The solicitor, without a doubt.
As if he’d heard her thoughts, Bridgewater said, “You must be from my solicitor’s office. Thank you for coming.”
The man removed his hat and dipped an abbreviated bow, clearly in no way moved by nobility. “I apologize for my late arrival. The bridge at Wooler was out and my associate’s carriage couldn’t make it across, but I happened to be working for another client close by, which he knew, and he sent word to me. I’m Charles Beaufort, by the way. At your service, sir.”
“Welcome, Mr. Beaufort.”
Undine started. The man’s eyes were beady and sharp, but a hint of something else lived there as well.
“Do I have the honor of addressing your fiancée?”
“Aye, you do. Undine, may I introduce Mr. Beaufort. Mr. Beaufort, this is, well, Undine. She has no surname—at least not yet.”
The man took her hand and kissed it. It was if the touch of his mouth lit the fuse of a Chinese firecracker. When he lifted his lips and met her eyes, her half-distracted perception of events turned inside out.
Mr. Beaufort was Kent!
She started so hard she nearly gave herself away. She couldn’t have been more dumbfounded if he’d turned into a goshawk and flown out the window. But how had he done it? It was like one of those trompe l’oeil drawings that look like one thing one moment and another thing the next. Now, so clearly Kent, and before, so clearly—
“…must be tired, don’t you agree, Undine?”
She shook her head to remove the cobwebs. What had Bridgewater been saying to her? “I am tired,” she murmured uncertainly.
Kent chuckled, that same enchanting rumble that seemed to vibrate through every bone in her body. “It seems as if your fiancée is as tired as I must look,” he said. “Perhaps we should all go to bed, aye?”
The charged gray of his eyes made her breath catch, and she realized her hand was still dangling midair from the kiss. She thrust it under her arm. He shouldn’t be here, and the plans she’d laid so carefully were being rearranged like a deck of cards being shuffled.
“We should,” she said.
This time it was Bridgewater who laughed. “My dear, if I didn’t know better I’d say Mr. Beaufort has transfixed you. Beaufort, take care now. I would not like any solicitor of mine to steal my fiancée.”
“I should never attempt such a thing.”
And just like that, he was Beaufort again. She stared at him as if to nail his persona in place. But she couldn’t. It was inexplicable—and maddening.
“Come, Undine,” Bridgewater said, “let me escort you to the stairs.”
“I-I…” She wanted to protest, but her tongue couldn’t work fast enough.
Bridgewater took her arm and called over his shoulder, “Let us confer in the morning, Beaufort. One of my servants will show you to your room.”
“I’m certain I shall find everything I need.”