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Excerpt
The engagement
between Lord Sherbourne, London’s most eligible bachelor, and Anne Devenish,
London’s most beautiful and well-mannered young lady, is the envy of the ton.
All might have been well but for Lily, Anne’s less than perfect widowed sister.
Since her arrival in London, Marcus and Anne’s perfect
engagement-of-convenience has been unravelling. In this scene Marcus is dragged
to attend a wedding in St George’s Hanover Square, the very church where he is
set to marry Anne in a month’s time…
‘We’re here.’ Dom
hopped down from the hackney and Marcus followed. He’d been lost in his
thoughts and hadn’t noticed where the carriage had turned on their way back
from Westminster.
Until he looked up.
Those columns…those stairs…St George’s, Hanover Square, was unmistakable.
‘What the devil are
we doing here?’
Dom paused with his
foot on the lowest step. ‘We’re here to attend my cousin’s wedding. You
promised. I agreed to go to your ball and you agreed to come with me today.’
‘When the devil did I
agree to attend a wedding? I don’t even want to attend my own.’
Dom’s eyes widened
and he flapped his hands in a shushing motion.
Marcus lowered his
voice with effort. ‘You did not mention it was a wedding, Dom. I would have
remembered that, trust me. At least I warned you I was dragging you to a ball.
You might have returned the courtesy.’
‘I’m not as nice as
you. I didn’t tell you because I knew you wouldn’t come. I must attend or my
aunt will inform my father and that means at least four pages of vicious
vitriol by the next post. But if I attended alone people might have drawn the
very wrong conclusions about my matrimonial ambitions. With you here everyone
will assume it was you who dragged me along now that you are set firmly down
the path to wedded bliss. Problem solved. Now hush and move.’
He caught Marcus’s
sleeve and tugged him towards the stairs.
Marcus called himself
to order. Irrespective of Dom’s perfidy, there was no need for histrionics on
his part. It was only a church. He’d been here several times for his friends’
weddings and survived intact. He’d just never noticed how noisy it was. And
even with the high vaulted ceiling and wide nave with the pews raised on either
side it felt…cramped and close.
The wedding party was
already there, standing in the nave and filling the pews. There were others in
the church, some on their own business and some waiting with evident pleasure
for the spectacle. It was cheaper than a penny play and not as stuffy with body
odour and tobacco smoke as the theatres.
St George’s was a
fine place to idle for a stray hour.
Marcus followed Dom
through the church to the raised pews on the left, relieved they wouldn’t be
actually joining the wedding party below. He had his limits.
At least he thought
he had. As they moved up the side aisle towards the front he glanced around the
familiar church, taking in the Corinthian pillars and the barrel vault above
the nave, across to…
He froze.
The pews on the other
side were populated by a row of young women dressed in various shades of
flowers, the silk trimmings of their bonnets catching the light filtering
through the high glass windows. They were a delightful sight for the young bucks
to ogle. Marcus recovered himself and shoved Wrexham into the first seat that
was free.
‘Not this far back,
Marc,’ Dom protested.
‘Yes, this far back,’
Marcus snarled. ‘Anne and her sister are over there. Did you know they would be
here?’
Dom shrugged. ‘They
must be relatives of the bride. Damnably small world, the ton.’
A very thin man with
more hair than head gave them an impressively vicious look over his shoulder
and they fell silent. At least outwardly. Inside Marcus was a cauldron bubbling
with several of the ten plagues—there was thunder and lightning and pestilence
and a strong urge to do away with the first born of the Wrexham family.
If this was Dom’s
twisted attempt to prove to Marcus he was wrong to be flinging himself into a
parson’s mousetrap, it was a wasted effort. He’d already come to that
conclusion himself. Like most profound revelations, this one, too, had come too
late to make a difference.
But it wasn’t the
setting of his upcoming marriage that was twisting his gut. It was the sight of
the plain straw bonnet with a single yellow ribbon amid the sumptuous millinery
confections of Madame Fanchot and her like. Or rather, the sight of the face it
framed for a moment as she settled into her seat.
Lily was the very
last woman he wanted to see in the venue where he would all too soon be
consigning himself to marrying her sister.
Perhaps the Greeks
were in the right of it. According to them the Gods delighted in setting humans
up to make tragic fools of themselves. They would have delighted in this scene.
Author Bio
Lara Temple writes strong and sensual Regency romances about complex
individuals who give no quarter but do so with plenty of passion. She lives
with her husband, two children, and one very fluffy dog and they are all
very understanding about her taking over the kitchen table so she can look
out over the garden as she writes and dreams up her Happy Ever Afters.
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Website: www.laratemple.com
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