The Earl and the Wedding Crasher (The Brides of Elderglen #3)

Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

" S peak after me," the priest said, his kindly face wreathed in concern. "I, Louisa, take thee Cedric Pembroke as my lawful wedded husband."

The lace around her throat was itchy and the lacings of her dress were too tight in a way that she was not used to. The fabric was heavy and moved with a soft, thick rustling that was too loud over her strained nerves. Louisa had no idea how this had happened or how she was repeating after the kind priest every word he said until he gave her hand into Cedric's own, but she managed somehow.

Ever since the failed wedding three days before she had felt sick to her stomach.

I took someone's lover from them she would find herself thinking over and over. And now I am forcing him to marry me instead. Oh what a fool you are, Louisa Balfour. What a fool!

Her elder sisters sorted out the dress, but in such a short timescale they could not get one tailored to her. They were lucky enough to find a very good dressmakers where a bride had called off the wedding before the big day and there was a very fine gown that could be adjusted to fit Louisa well enough that she would be presentable.

It was not a dress that she would have picked out for herself, a little old fashioned and too showy, a pale pink that did nothing for her coloring with flowers embroidered along the train in large bouquets that Louisa found far too sweet and fussy.

It was heavy and did not quite fit right. She wanted to tear it off and put on one of her light gowns and not be in this chapel wedding a stranger who must certainly hated her!

"Those who God has joined together let no man put asunder," the priest said. He kept talking after that, but Louisa was no longer able to even feign paying attention to him. She was married.

There had been a moment when the priest had asked - with honest fear in his eyes - whether anyone had any objections and someone had dropped something at the back of the chapel. She had a vision of Lady Bettie barging through the doors to demand her fiancée and her wedding back.

Was it wrong that she had not known in that moment whether she would be relieved or not?

Louisa looked out over the crowd and saw her family smiling back at her, every face creased with concern behind those smiles. Just before the wedding Alexandra had pressed her to her chest and kissed her cheek and said, "This is a wonderful chance for you, dear sister. I am certain all will be well."

Alexandra had never lied to her before.

Penelope had squeezed her hands and talked about the weather for five minutes, which was even more proof that her family was desperately concerned about her. Penelope never talked about the weather except when she was trying very hard not to say something terrible but true.

Louisa closed her eyes for a moment and then when she opened them her new husband was right before her, holding her hand and ready to escort her to the door of the chapel where they would get in a carriage to their wedding breakfast.

"Thank you," she said softly, barely above a whisper.

Cedric bowed his head slightly, the picture of elegance. He was even more handsome than he had been three days ago, wearing a different suit and standing as though he were carved from stone, the perfect example of a gentleman.

However was she going to manage this? When he was so much more composed than her and it made her want to hide her face and kick him in the shin at the same time?

"Oh I say, that's particularly good ham, let me carve you some more, my dear."

"I thought I would die when Mrs. Darlington dropped her bag at the chapel, why we might have been trapped in an endless cycle of weddings! No, no, please, I'll only have a little of the cake. My health is too delicate for all this rich stuff."

"Oh is that chocolate? I haven't had chocolate since the dinner party that Lord Redgrave threw last summer. I shall have at least three cups!"

"Never you mind, my dear, two weddings in one week with only one cake might be a little disappointing but we have gotten to the cake at last."

"Louisa!"

Louisa blinked a little, looking up to see Alexandra standing next to her chair trying to speak with her. She had been sitting absolutely still for some time now, just listening to what everyone who had been to her wedding thought about her and the breakfast that should have belonged to Lady Bettie.

Perhaps if she sat still enough no one would remember that she existed.

"You have barely eaten a thing," Alexandra said, smiling a little. Her lips were turned up but there was a crease on her brow. "Let me get you a roll and some ham. There is a lovely selection of meats and some tongue as well. Let me put together a plate for you."

Louisa smiled back, her lips pinched together against a rush of nausea. "Bless you, my dear, but I am not hungry with the excitement. Perhaps a little cup of coffee and an egg will settle my nerves?"

To her left was Cedric, speaking with Theodore and Margaret about some matter happening at Thornfield. He was the picture of ease, drinking and eating and laughing with his friends.

It wasn't fair! How could he be so unaffected by what was happening to the two of them? He had married a stranger instead of a woman he loved and all in the matter of a couple of days, yet it was as though nothing had changed!

"Here you are," Alexandra said, sliding the plate in front of her. "I stole the sugar rose from the cake, I remember how much you love those."

When they had been children, Alexandra and Louisa had once hidden beneath a table when their father and mother had thrown a great party. While all the guests were dancing and speaking with each other, they had stolen every single sugar flower off a cake that their mother had arranged to display. They had eaten them all and become terribly ill.

"Oh you shouldn't have," Louisa laughed a little. "I cannot even look at it! You must take it away and give it to Penelope or hide it beneath your fan."

Alexandra laughed as well, making the offending flower disappear with some cunning movement of her hands. "There, I knew it would make you smile. Take a sip of this coffee and a little food and you will soon feel better."

She went back to her seat, and as she sat, Gabriel leaned in from where he was seated at Louisa's right and murmured. "You look very well today, Louisa. I am sure that you and Cedric will be very happy."

Everyone was very keen on saying so, even Cedric was keen on acting like it was so and yet Louisa could not understand why! She turned her gaze to her husband thoughtfully, her mind a tangle of confusion. Perhaps once they were alone they would finally be able to talk about everything that had happened and what that meant for them now.

"This is St Vincent," Cedric said crisply as they walked up the sweeping front steps to the grand front doors of the beautiful old building. It was a picture perfect house, elegant and regal with ivy climbing the walls and fascinating little towers that crept up towards the sky under peaked roofs. There was an expanse of woodland just beyond the main estate buildings that gave the area a majestic appearance.

It was so different to her own home that Louisa didn't catch breath until they were standing in the entrance and Cedric was instructing one of the footmen to take her bags and another to summon the housekeeper, a Mrs. Brooks, to 'take his new wife to her rooms and then take charge of showing her the estate'.

Was this it? Was he simply going to leave her here with the servants without a word to her about how they were now married??

As the servants left, Louisa screwed up her nerves as hard as she could as she could see her husband readying himself to leave the room. "Lord St Vincent, please wait a moment."

Oh dear. Now he was waiting. And looked at her expectantly. Why did she want him to do that? Her knees quivered and she could feel her heart pounding under her uncomfortable gown as she forced herself to straighten her spine and meet his gaze head on. "Why?"

She could see that she had taken him aback. "Why? Why what?"

"Why did you marry me?" now it was said, there were a hundred more questions tumbling from her lips and she couldn't stop them. "I understand that I - ruined myself - but you didn't have to marry me because of it! I would have managed but instead you went through with it and you seem to care so little about having changed one bride for another! Don't you care about Lady Bettie? Or about the fact that I have separated you from her forever?"

She had more questions, so many from 'do you even want to be married to me' to 'was that really the same wedding cake' but she was stopped in her tracks by Cedric laughing.

Oh it was not a humorous laugh. It was dark and cold and dry. She stared at him in horror, nothing that they had been speaking about was even slightly a laughing matter, surely!

"Ah, Louisa," he said softly, stepping towards her, so close that she could feel the warmth of his body heat against her. One of his hands brushed close, so close to her cheek and then caught a curl that had escaped the hairstyle that Evelina had tamed her hair into and tucked it behind her ear. "You are still so naive. Did you think I was in love with Lady Bettie? That it was a romance between us? No. Nothing has changed for me here." He let his hand drop, his blue eyes boring into her own. "All I wanted was a bride of convenience and you were just as convenient as she was."

For a long moment Louisa said nothing, looking back at him, her lips pursed a little in thought. So this was how it would be. No rushing romance, and well maybe she had never particularly expected one, but the hope had always been there until now. No love or fondness. Nothing real.

Years of dreaming of a life that was more like one of her books where she could be daring and seen and beloved and this was what she was to be trapped in?

A marriage of convenience to a man who wanted a filler for a position with no emotion, no passion, no interest even. She could be exchanged tomorrow for another complete stranger and he would not care.

"Are you disappointed?" Cedric asked, tilting his head with one eyebrow raising in that charming but infuriating way that it had before his first wedding when he had refused to really listen to her. "Did you expect more from this union?"

Oh what an arrogant man her husband was. Louisa wished she had a pin to prick him with so she could see him deflate of all his puffed up self-satisfaction. What was he, irresistible?

"No," she scoffed, tilting her head back daringly. "I have never cared for romance. Marriage is a partnership, much more like a business arrangement than anything else. That is the best way for it to work." How dare he act as though he could demand her affection or her admiration when he would never offer her anything of the same back? Was this who Cedric Pembroke truly was? A man of ego and confidence who expected every young lady to fall at his feet but saw them as nothing but props to move about his life as he saw fit?

Well. She would not let him see her pain. He would never know from her how much she had wanted more. She would not allow him that satisfaction.

"Ah!" he was surprised, but he smiled a little as though this pleased him as well. "Well, that is good. I am glad we will be able to work together."

"Wait, why did you need a bride of convenience?" Louisa blurted. If he needed a woman to run all of this then she would not be particularly helpful to him.

Cedric frowned a little. "My niece and nephew have come to live with me. I need someone to assist with raising them as I have no experience with children. I intend them to have the best of everything, including a countess of the estate."

"Oh that is simple!" Louisa exclaimed, a little relieved. She had always known she would be a good mother, and she had plenty of experience helping Evelina and Margaret with the children. At least it was not mathematics, she detested mathematics with her whole soul. "Well then, my lord. I will take my leave of you."

She was already turning, desperate to escape him and all the tender, half-formed dreams he had murdered when a hand closed around her arm and she was turned around to find herself nearly in the arms of her new husband.

"I never thanked you," he said very lowly. "For helping me."

A blush raced up her cheeks, the heat in her face familiar now. "It was the right thing to do," she murmured.

Her gaze had dropped to the floor and she gasped a little when Cedric took her chin with one finger and raised her eyes to match his own. It felt like a moment of electricity moved between them, something as charged as the air before a rainstorm.

"I will not forget it," he said. "You are my Countess and I will provide you with anything you should want or need. Do you understand me?"

Louisa could hardly breathe. The silence felt suffocating but how was she meant to speak? Cedric kept looking at her, searching her eyes.

"Do you?" he said again.

She nodded jerkily, mouth dry and he smiled a little. Before she knew it, he was leaving the room and she was searching for a chair to collapse onto. He made her feel so many strange things!