Chapter 24
CHAPTER 24
“ G eraldson! Ready the horses. We must move quickly,” Frederick shouted out as the doors swung shut behind them.
“Your Grace?” said the brown-haired young coachman from Heartwick Hall, looking up in bewilderment with a pipe in his mouth as Frederick and Annabelle came rushing down the church steps toward the row of parked vehicles outside.
“You read and write, don’t you, Geraldson?” the duke added, baffling Annabelle now as much as the servant.
“Yes, Your Grace. I completed the local school in Heartwick before I joined the estate.”
“Good man.”
Annabelle felt as though she was in a dream or daytime fantasy, running away with Frederick. Running away with Frederick?! Was that really what was happening? When he swung her bodily down the last few steps for speed, taking her breath away, she knew that this time it was no dream. Frederick was here and he loved her, as she loved him.
While no one else showed any sign of yet emerging from the church, the various carriage drivers were looking at one another speculatively and exchanging uneasy words at the peculiar appearance and behavior of the Duke of Heartwick and the young woman many of them recognized as as the supposed bride for today’s ceremony.
“To my agents, Carter & Lombard, just off Piccadilly,” Frederick instructed loudly, helping Annabelle into the small open-topped carriage that had brought him and Duchess Sarah to the church and getting in after her.
Recovering his wits but keeping his pipe in his mouth, Geraldson had already checked the horses and jumped back into the driver’s seat. At a nod from Frederick, he set off down the street with the horses at a brisk trot.
“Everyone will know where we are going,” pointed out Annabelle as they pulled away. “Stephen will certainly follow us to your agent. I don’t know how long Duchess Sarah will manage to keep him in the church.”
“We won’t be there more than five minutes,” Frederick assured her. “Only long enough to sign affidavits that we are free to marry. Geraldson here is the one who will be waiting around longer to take Mr. Carter or Mr. Lombard to call on the Bishop of London. This young man is going to be the one to collect the marriage license.”
“A marriage license?” the young man repeated, turning his head briefly and speaking with an incredulity that might have been impudent if the circumstances had not been so bizarre that all three of them were only inches from hysterical laughter. “For you, Your Grace?”
“Yes, for me and Lady Annabelle,” Frederick confirmed. “My agents are going to need a sworn statement that we are each free to marry. However, we are likely to be pursued to Carter & Lombard. I am therefore relying on you Geraldson, to be my proxy today and help my agents to carry out my instructions urgently. Duchess Sarah must take a hired cab.”
The young man grinned at the unfolding of this plan but kept his eyes on the road, his expression indicating that this morning was turning out to be better sport than he ever could have planned.
“A marriage license?” Annabelle laughed more freely now that the church had receded into the distance. “Haven’t you forgotten something, Frederick? Something involving me?”
She unfastened her jacket and shrugged it off, delighting in the breeze running over her almost bare shoulders and bosom.
“Not single detail, no,” he said and smiled, also relaxing a little more as his eyes roamed in wonder and pleasure over every visible aspect of her face and body. “That is not really an appropriate morning dress, Annabelle, but it damned well should be. Look how those people are staring at us!”
Indeed, pedestrians and working men at carts and roadsides were gaping and some even pointing at the Duke of Heartwick’s carriage, easily identifiable by the crest on its side.
“Well, if one is going run away from one’s wedding, one might as well do it as scandalously as possible,” Annabelle returned, reveling in her freedom and the promise of love renewed as well as Frederick’s appreciation of her physical form. “I must insist however, that you have forgotten something. You have never actually asked me to marry you.”
For moment, he looked amazed and then surprisingly doubtful and even slightly abashed. Finally, he simply leaned in and kissed her so passionately that Annabelle feared they might end up causing some serious public disorder.
“That was me asking you to marry me and never leave me,” Frederick said at last, as they finally drew apart panting. “My heart would break if you did not say yes.”
While his handsome golden face was as charming and good-humored as ever, Annabelle perceived the vulnerability beneath his surface. Despite all that had happened between them over recent months and now in the church, Frederick was somehow not yet fully assured of her love.
Madame Deveaux’s words came back to Annabelle then:
…Men too may feel unworthy of love. They may seek love without knowing that is what they chase. Some seek it again and again with woman after woman but it is never there until someone convinces them they are worth loving…
It was obvious to Annabelle now that the dressmaker had been speaking of Frederick, hinting at what was clear to a woman of her age and experience but that neither of the young people had yet been able to acknowledge.
“I was always going to say yes, Frederick,” she told him. “When we are married, I hope to demonstrate that convincingly enough that you will never doubt my love.”
“My Annabelle,” he breathed, again embracing her more closely than the denizens of London might expect or approve in an open carriage at this time of day. “Thank God, you are here with me.”
As they approached Covent Garden, Frederick opened his jacket, took out a wad of banknotes and peeled off several which he then leaned forward and pressed into the top pocket of the coachman.
“That should cover the marriage license fee and any meals and other expenses you incur today, Geraldson. My agents should be able to change the smaller note to coin for you. Mr. Carter and Mr. Lombard will do the talking if you can do the driving and keep things moving. There will be a further reward for speed and efficiency in returning to Heartwick Hall with the necessary document.”
“I shall make every effort, Your Grace,” Geraldson promised. “And I shall tell everyone but your agents and the bishop that I don’t know where you’ve gone.”
“Oh, send them to the Pulteney Hotel or to Dover or to Gretna Green as you please!” Frederick agreed and Annabelle could not help a dismayed smile at the thought of Stephen’s face on hearing of any of these possibilities.
“As you say,” nodded the coachman happily, increasingly amused by proceedings and evidently on the side of the young couple rather than any potential pursuers.
“Now, my agents obviously have my personal information but in case you must confirm it for the bishop too, my full legal name is on my card,” Frederick added and put the said item in the man’s pocket too, along with a larger folded piece of card. “Lady Annabelle’s is on this wedding invitation.”
At the incongruity of this form of identification, Frederick spluttered with laughter and Annabelle giggled too, even Geraldson joining in as he pulled up in a yard and leapt down to open the carriage door for them.
In less than fifteen minutes, Frederick and Annabelle were in an unmarked black cab racing back through the streets of London, having signed the necessary affidavits, given an urgent if laconic set of instructions to the agents and left Geraldson there on site, with the Heartwick Hall carriage, to draw the sting of any pursuers and later deliver the precious marriage license into Frederick’s hands.
“Now what do we do?” Annabelle asked Frederick. “Hide out in the woods at Heartwick Hall until we can marry?”
“We’ll barricade ourselves in the house,” Frederick declared, at least partly seriously. “I’ll have the gates closed so that no carriages can pass, and set footmen to guard the doors. I’ll also send word to the rectory straight away. For the right donation, Reverend Lewis will find a spot in his schedule to marry us quickly once we have the license. I won’t let anyone stop us, Annabelle.”
She nodded thoughtfully and nestled back into his arms on the seat, reassured by his determination. Breathing in the mingled scent of Frederick’s clean skin and woody cologne, Annabelle enjoyed the entire shape and feel of his body as he swept kisses across her hair and then her mouth, lightly but surely, as though savoring her.
Her skin felt very soft and sensitive, receptive to every small touch from her lover’s hands and lips. As the misery of recent weeks and the turbulence of their sudden dash from the church faded further, desire was rising in its wake. Frederick’s golden-haired face was so handsome it made her ache and his tender smile melted all reservations.
While not yet urgent, Annabelle sensed that her physical longing for Frederick was more powerful now, like a rising tide that would become impossible to hold back once it reached a certain point. The idea of Stephen, Duchess Sarah or anyone else coming between them felt like the worst evil and could not be endured.
“There is another way we can ensure this wedding happens on our terms, Frederick,” Annabelle said intently, looking up at him as he stroked her lips with his fingers and murmured something about rosebuds. “Another way that we can guarantee no one will try to stop or delay us.”
Frederick took a long breath and held Annabelle very closely, the tension in his body tangible to her, along with his quickening heartbeat. He knew exactly what she meant and he instinctively wanted it just as much as she did.
“That is a dangerous game, my love. Are you not afraid?” he asked, his voice already roughening at the very thought of claiming Annabelle fully at last. “If I take you now, and we make no secret of it in order to force our family’s compliance, there is no going back. Even after our marriage, there may be talk of what we did.”
“I am afraid, but I know you will keep me safe,” she told him, both shivering and then putting her arms around his neck as he pulled her onto his lap. “As for talk, we have already created the scandal of the season this morning.”
This was true and neither of them could deny it. Frederick drew deep breaths as he thought Annabelle’s words over, trailing kisses down her throat and across the upper slopes of her breasts.
“I will always keep you safe, Annabelle,” he vowed. “You shall soon be the Duchess of Heartwick, my wife and the mother of my children. But I shall not begin our married life by taking you carelessly in the back of a hired cab on the road from London while you tremble with fear of discovery more than pleasure.”
Frederick’s last sentence was spoken with both a smile and a look of searing lust, one of his hands now stroking Annabelle’s silk-covered leg beneath her skirt.
“Then where and how would you like to take me?” Annabelle breathed, her eyes locking onto his and her voice catching in her throat as his fingers stroked the bare skin of her thigh above her garter.
“In the proper place – the bed of the Dukes of Heartwick, naked and aroused and eager for me,” he answered in a low throaty voice.
“Then please, Frederick, take me back to Heartwick Hall right now and make me yours forever.”
“Yes,” he growled and expressed any further nuance to his wishes through the touch of his lips and tongue and the ranging of his hands over Annabelle’s body.