Page 91 of Miss Desirable
Fournier shrugged into his waistcoat. “As long as Lord Fortescue leaves me and mine in peace, I have no quarrel with him. I am famished, though, for some sustenance and for the company of my darlings. Shall we to breakfast, gentlemen?”
“You make me wish I was part French,” Sycamore said, gathering up the swords. “This was quite well done of you, Fournier. Not too violent, but memorable. Most assuredly memorable.”
“Your wife is half French,” Fournier said, donning his coat. “We may thus have some hope for your children,non? Let us collect the family lordships and begin embellishing our stories for our respective ladies.”
Ash guffawed, and Sycamore Dorning, for once, was left with nothing to say.
* * *
“Now, this,” Sycamore Dorning said, “is a wedding breakfast.” At the top of the terrace steps, in full view of the assemblage, he slipped his arm around his wife’s waist and bussed her cheek.
“And this,” Jeanette replied, saluting with her glass, “is exquisite champagne. If Orion hasn’t broken out his best vintage, then he has some nectar of the goddesses stashed away in his warehouse.”
Fournier suspected the Dornings had some French blood stashed generations back. They were affectionate, ferociously loyal to family, and they knew a fine champagne when they sipped it. They had also turned the Richmond estate garden into the perfect venue for a large, merry wedding breakfast.
“Le champagne,” Fournier said, “est magnifique. As is the noise.”
“Get used to it,” Jeanette muttered. “This family is always noisy when happy.”
The Earl of Casriel, who along with Worth Kettering had stood up with the happy couple, appropriated Sycamore’s champagne, offered the glass to his countess, then took a sip himself.
“We Dornings do love a garden, and your wife is a Dorning, Fournier.”
Sycamore snatched back his glass, which was empty. “Catherine wasn’t a Dorning for too long, but she is now. Dornings thrive in the out of doors and in gardens in particular.”
Catherine chose that moment to catch Fournier’s eye, while the young Marquess of Tavistock babbled away beside her, looking earnest and handsome. She was at the table beneath a white awning that stretched down the center of the garden, and one by one, the Dorning family members and guests were paying their homage to her.
She’d sent Fournier after her shawl, though the day was warm, almost as if she’d known that he needed the activity.
“If you ask me,” Casriel observed, “when Catherine gazes upon her husband, she’s entirely a Fournier.”
Fournier winked at his wife, who was bearing up with good grace under this riotous show of familial support. She looked all of a piece with the blooming irises, billowing lavender, and majestic delphiniums—also with the adoring swains. The youngsters racing about underfoot, and the mastiffs gamboling about with them, bothered her not at all.
I needed this.The thought cascaded into Fournier’s mind as bright sunshine illuminated old cathedrals and ancient forests.I needed this joy, this celebration, this exuberance, and most of all, I needed the smile from Catherine that says without a single word that she understands me.
His imagination carried him forward in time, to more loud, happy family gatherings, some of them at the château. Catherine would smile at him exactly thus, and he would smile back, and his heart would ache with love for the woman who had brought him home from the wars.
“Catherine is her own person,” Fournier said, “and it is my greatest honor to be her devoted spouse. If you will please excuse me, I must relieve my wife of a smitten marquess.”
“Talk to him of grapes,” Jeanette called. “Tavistock has become mad for grapes.”
Tavistock, in a display of tact and good manners that had doubtless served him well on both sides of the Channel, excused himself as Fournier approached Catherine.
“His lordship is charming,” Catherine said. “He very much enjoys France and will return there when the Season is over.”
Fournier slid into the seat the marquess had abandoned. “We will call on him at the end of our wedding journey. Have you had enough to eat?”
“Yes, and drink.”
Catherine had declared that, for the weeks of courting, intimacies were to be suspended. She’d used the time to begin easing her way into Marie’s life, while allowing Fournier all the affection he could have asked for.
Which, of course, had made his longings only more intense.
“You are content that Deems will manage the warehouses in your absence?” Catherine asked, holding a petit four up to Fournier’s lips.
He bit off half—lemon-flavored—and Catherine popped the other half into her mouth. Foolishness. Wonderful, married foolishness.
“Deems was born to manage inventories, and he will tolerate no slacking. You are prepared to travel with me and Marie from Bordeaux to Champagne?”
