Page 9 of Marry in Secret
“Damned gossipmongering vultures,” Ashendon continued. “Aunt Agatha’s right. This is private family business. We’ll sort it out at Ashendon House.”
He turned toward the audience and raised his voice. “My apologies, ladies and gentlemen. As the duke said, the wedding has been canceled. Thank you for your attendance. The wedding breakfast is canceled. Your gifts will, of course, be returned.”
He gave a nod to the small knot of females surrounding Rose. They immediately rose and hustled Rose out of the church. At the church door Rose paused, turned, gave Thomas one long, unreadable look, then disappeared into the daylight.
Once the bride and her female relatives had left, under Ashendon’s gimlet gaze the remaining guests reluctantly dissipated, talking nineteen to the dozen in hushed, excited voices of the scandal they’d witnessed. The wedding of the season, in absolute, delicious ruins. It would be all over the ton by teatime.
Chapter Two
How hard it is in some cases to be believed!
And how impossible in others!
—JANE AUSTEN,PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
“You stupid, stupid,stupidgel!” Aunt Agatha began her rant the moment the door closed behind the Rutherford ladies in the large drawing room at Ashendon House. “A completewasteof a duke! All my efforts to arrange a splendid match for you—weeksof negotiation—down the drain. All eyes upon us, and then, the wedding of the season turned into a scene from a lowbrow farce!”
Rose sat silent on the sofa. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Aunt Agatha’s fury pelted against her like hail against a window, registering, but not touching.
Her brain had room for only one thought:Thomas was alive. And she hadn’t recognized him.
How could she not have known him when he’d turned up at the church? She’d been so certain it was some dreadfully cruel joke. But how could it be, when nobody knew about her marriage?
No matter how wild his hair or thick his beard, no matter what he was wearing, sheoughtto have recognized him. Oh, there’d been that moment of hesitation, that flicker ofdoubt, but he’d been in her thoughts just moments before, and she’d convinced herself that was the reason.
A wife should know her own husband. Instead she’d effectively rejected him. Guilt flayed her.
Aunt Agatha continued, “If there was any irregularity in your marital status, why did you not inform us before it came to such a disgraceful—and public—scene!”
“Oh, be quiet, Aggie,” Aunt Dottie told her sister. “Can’t you see the gel’s had a terrible shock?”
“She’s not the only one, Dorothea! She’s brought scandal on us all with her thoughtlessness! We’ll be a laughingstock! I won’t be able to hold my head up in public for, fordays!”
“Oh, poor you,” George muttered. Aunt Agatha gave her a baleful glare.
George had brought her dog in with her, Finn, the gangly Irish wolfhound. He sat with his head on her knee. Rose watched absently as George scratched him gently behind the ears.
“How do you feel, Rose, dear?” Emm asked, leaning forward. “You’re looking very pale.”
Rose couldn’t answer. She didn’t know how she felt.Thomas was alive.All these years thinking he was dead, and now...
She should be rejoicing—and she was. Or she would be, soon. When he arrived. When she could see him, touch him, speak to him in private. Know him again. Surely then, it would all come flooding back, the way it had been, four years ago.
And yet...
He’d changed so much.
He was so thin. She’d felt his ribs clearly when he’d held her against him. Thomas—herThomas, the one she remembered—had always been lean, but in a slender, boyish kind of way. This Thomas looked somehow... gaunt, as if all flesh and softness had been burned out of him. And yet he also seemed bigger, tougher, harder. She thought of those hard, ropy muscles visible through the ragged shirt, the broadness of his chest and shoulders.
He’d aged too, much more, it seemed, than four years. And there were lines around his eyes, and shadows beneath them, as if he wasn’t sleeping. She’d always loved his eyes—such an unusual silvery blue, like snippets of a summer sky at twilight. Their color hadn’t changed, of course, but today it had been like looking into burning ice. There was a hardness there she didn’t recognize...
That look he’d given her as she’d left the church.
When she was a little girl, before she and Lily had been sent away to school, an old lady in the village had died, and her cat, a small, sleek black-and-white tomcat had run off, probably because nobody had remembered to feed the poor little thing.
Rose had come across it in the woods several years later. She knew it was the same cat—the unique black-and-white markings were unmistakable. It was thin, with its ribs sticking out, yet it was bigger—rangy and ragged-looking. She’d called to it, but it no longer trusted people. It had hissed at her and vanished.
Something about Thomas reminded her of that cat.
