Chapter Forty-Eight
Champagne popped warm and sweet in Benedict’s blood. It was barely nine in the morning, and yet he was misty-eyed and maudlin at his friend’s wedding.
Everything had worked out for Max when it should have been a disaster of epic proportions.
The wedding at St. Paul’s Cathedral had gone off exactly as Prinny had once decreed.
Indeed, when the prince had learned of Max’s intention to wed Yihui, he proclaimed that he had known it all along.
He also declared that he would honor the couple by serving as Max’s best man.
With so royal an endorsement, the duke and duchess had no choice but to accept the match.
Even Emmaline had appeared joyous, though Benedict could see the shadows that still darkened her expression.
Still thinking of Lord Christopher, no doubt, who was certainly dead and gone.
Benedict had brought all his considerable network in on the search and found nothing.
Which meant the man could not to be found short of dredging the river Thames.
As if to bless the day, the queen sent news that the mad king’s bowels were markedly improved.
The bride explained that it was because of her very strong tea.
Privately, Benedict believed it was because they stopped forcing arsenic on the king.
Either way, it was good for the bride and her Chinese apothecary shop.
All of that was to say that Max had come out of this disaster smelling like a rose. Prinny cheered the nuptials, the queen was a known customer of the apothecary, and…and none of that appeared to make the least difference to Max.
Why? Because the man was besotted with his wife, and she appeared to be equally enraptured. Happiness like that was impossible to fake, and Benedict ached to experience that for himself.
Clearly it was time for him to find his own wife. Well past time to sire his heir. His gaze wandered to Lady Emmaline and Lady Kimberly. Good women to be sure, but his mind was caught up with Lady Janelle as she skulked about London in her secret profession.
He loved the idea of a wife with a mystery. Better yet, it proved she had a flexible mindset for his own secret passions.
His courtship would be more difficult than Max’s. He had no benefit from royal attention. And if either of their secrets were exposed, then the results would be calamitous. But he had every faith that it could be accomplished.
And so he drained the last of his glass of champagne and looked to Major Gabriel Lance, his right-hand man.
“It’s time,” he said. Thankfully, the major understood what he wanted.
“You’ll propose?”
“Tomorrow night. Can you have all the details in place by then?”
The major nodded. “Everything will go just as you want.”
How he wanted, not how it ought to be. Because what Benedict intended was not in the least bit proper.
“Then let it begin.”