“My favorite part of the whole brawl was when Remington fainted like a girl.” Downstairs in the foyer, the duke of Magnus slapped his knee and roared with laughter.
Gabriel put his hand to his forehead and pretended to collapse, and the rest of the men roared, too.
Remington stroked the adoring Lizzie’s head and waited until the laughter had died down. With a superior smile, he said, “You’re jealous because I rode back in the coach with my head pillowed in the ladies’ laps.”
The men all laughed again, nodded and affectionately thumped Remington on the back.
Annoyed, Eleanor turned to the ladies gathered in the upstairs gallery of Magnus’s home in Sussex. “Listen to them. They’re cackling like fools. Don’t they know he took a concussion to the head and almost died?”
“To say so would indicate compassion.” Madeline dismissed them with a wave of her hand. “Compassion isn’t manly.”
“They’re men, what do you expect? Logic?” Lady Gertrude looked lovely in her green satin gown, and her cheeks were rosy with excitement.
“I think they’re nervous.” Mrs. Oxnard’s eyes were wise. “It’s not every day you stage a double wedding for two such distinguished couples.”
The ladies fell silent as they considered that great truth.
Magnus had decided that if Eleanor and Remington could repeat their vows, he wanted a chance to give his own daughter away, and so the single wedding grew to a wedding for Remington and Eleanor, and Gabriel and Madeline. In an hour the event would take place on the estate in the de Lacy chapel.
Eleanor looked at Madeline. She was lovely in a gown of pale blue muslin, which showed her arms and bosom to an advantage. Eleanor wore a matching gown in pale pink, but the straight line of her Empire waist skirt draped over the slight swell of her belly.
“You look beautiful,” Madeline said, proving again that the cousins thought alike. “I envy you. You’re done with this dreadful nausea.” She pressed a hand to her still flat abdomen. “It would be dreadful if I was ill during the ceremony.”
Eleanor laughed. “But memorable.”
Their children would be born two months apart. Remington and Gabriel were convinced they would be girls and, they said, as much trouble as their mothers.
As usual, the men would be wrong.
With an upwelling of affection, Eleanor hugged Madeline. “Who would have thought eight years ago, when you took me in, we would come to this?”
It had taken four months to organize the wedding Remington had proposed. Four months of upheaval and excitement. Word of Lord Fanthorpe’s demise at Magnus’s hand swept the ton, leaving them openmouthed with shock. That Fanthorpe had killed Magnus’s sister made the elders nod and claim they’d always suspected it was so. That Fanthorpe had gone after Magnus’s niece left everyone disavowing any association with him. Everything about his memory was now tainted.
When Lady Shapster’s part in Eleanor’s kidnapping became common knowledge, she received the cut direct from every hostess and slinked home to her husband—who didn’t care to attend his daughter’s wedding. It was grouse hunting season, and anyway, wasn’t she already married?
So Magnus would give Eleanor away, too, and she found herself indifferent to her father’s neglect. After all, she had Remington.
The day was fine, the morning sun shining as everyone waited for the call to go to the chapel. Only family and close friends had been invited, so the guests would number a mere two hundred, and Eleanor couldn’t help a clutch of fear as she thought of facing all those staring eyes. After all, she was still Eleanor, shy and quiet—except when those she loved were threatened.
When Remington had recovered enough to sit up in a chair and receive visitors, Magnus had paid him a visit. When Magnus had lost Madeline in a hand of cards, he had decided he’d had no choice but to recover the family fortune. He’d been investigating the old business of providing supplies to His Majesty’s Navy. He had pulled strings; he had the contract, and he wanted Remington to handle it and take the profits. Because, he’d said in his bluff manner, he’d promised his father he would make reparation to the Marchants for the great injustice done to them. And because Remington had given Magnus a great gift—the truth about his sister’s death. All those years, Magnus had been convinced it was his brother, Lord Shapster, who had killed Lady Pricilla. Now he knew the truth, and both Lady Pricilla and Abbie could rest in peace.
Remington had agreed to take the business, on the condition Magnus continue to use his influence in the government for a percentage of the earnings. They had shaken hands on it, and it wasn’t until Magnus had left that Remington had found the deed to his father’s old estate on the table beside him.
The animosity between the families was over.
Stepping to the banister, Eleanor looked down at Remington’s fair head. The hours he’d been unconscious haunted her still, the lump on his head and his swollen face giving witness to the beating he’d taken. The healing had taken weeks, and she had guarded him fiercely from too many visitors—and from himself, when he’d tried to get up too soon.
She’d almost lost him. She would never forget.
As if he felt her gaze on him, he looked up at her and smiled.
With the sunshine falling on him from the atrium above, his blond hair glowed and his eyes crinkled at the corners. He was still the most handsome man she’d ever seen, and she could scarcely believe he was hers—and that he loved her.
But he did. He expressed it in every way. And when she’d told him about the babe, he had sat down with her in his lap and held her as if she had given him a miracle.
“The carriages are here,” Magnus called.
“Oh, the carriages are here. Girls!” Lady Gertrude clapped her hands. “You need to don your bonnets and your pelisses.” Leaning over the banister, she called, “And Remington, dear boy, the doggie cannot go to the church with us.”
Remington laughed and handed Lizzie over to her own special footman.
Since acquitting herself so admirably in the fight four months ago, Lizzie had gone from being a stray to being an honored member of the family, and she adored Remington with all her canine devotion. And Remington, although he wouldn’t admit it, adored her, too.
“Do you know,” Lady Gertrude said in a low voice to Mrs. Oxnard, “that Remington actually asked if Lizzie could carry the wedding rings? I think he was jesting, but really, I’m not sure.”
Madeline and Eleanor submitted to being dressed by Horatia and Mrs. Oxnard. They accepted their bouquets. They started down the foyer.
Gabriel and Remington came to the foot of the stairs.
Gabriel stared proudly at Madeline as she descended.
Remington held out his hand to Eleanor as if he couldn’t wait to hold her again.
On the last step, she gave him her hand.
Lifting her fingers to his lips, he kissed them and in that dark, dangerous, beastly growl she loved so much, he asked, “Eleanor de Lacy, will you marry me today and be mine forever?”
Her joyous smile broke forth. “With all my heart.”