Epilogue #2
Fortunately, he and Emeline had agreed that the entire affair should be as simple as possible due to the relative urgency of the dig.
Just yesterday, Anthony St. Briac had uncovered three of the amber and lapis beads Emeline had glimpsed just before the trench walls collapsed on her.
She and Louise were now convinced that they were on the verge of discovering a second, female grave, and Emeline hesitated to take time away even for her own wedding.
Hart had felt obliged to write and invite Austell and Margaret, but perhaps the letter had arrived too late for them to make travel arrangements.
Privately, he was relieved to be spared the presence of his twin.
It would feel deuced unsettling to be at Woodcroft Priory at the same time as Austell.
Hart still hadn’t quite worked out what to do with the knowledge about their birth order, and this hardly seemed the time to focus on it. Today was meant for Emeline.
As Hart allowed William to arrange his starched white cravat, he scanned his clothing. Would Emeline approve of his charcoal-gray frock coat and waistcoat of midnight blue silk? He glanced at his reflection, and a smile touched his mouth. Yes, she would definitely approve.
Hart looked around the room. “Kindly remind Mrs. Dawson to bring a few small vases of flowers.” He straightened his cuffs.
“Also, her ladyship and I will have dinner served here, with wine.” Hart opened a drawer and took out the two green glass goblets they had uncovered in the dig.
Now carefully cleaned, they glowed in a ray of sunlight when he set them on the table.
“I will turn them over the British Museum along with everything else, but first I can’t resist toasting our marriage with these tonight. ”
William beamed. “May I be so bold to say, my lord, that I could not be happier for you and her ladyship today. I’d begun to worry that you might never take a wife…especially not in an arrangement like this…”
“Do you mean a love match?” He flashed a smile. “To tell you the truth, it didn’t seem possible for me, either…until Emeline.”
As the clock on the mantle chimed, the two men went out into the corridor.
Nearby, the door to his mother’s rooms was unlocked and ajar for the first time in years.
Hart paused to look in. Some of her clutter had now been packed away, but her scent still lingered.
He was gradually coming to terms with a new image of his mother now that he understood the reasons behind her fretful, overprotective attitude toward him.
Peachey’s words continued to ease the moments of old pain: The dowager duchess was not a perfect person, but who among us is?
If she was a bit mad, perhaps she suffered in the same way you did.
They all had suffered at the hands of his autocratic father and continued to bear the scars. Just then, the clouds parted outside and sent a shaft of sunlight streaming into his mother’s bedchamber, and Hart drew a deep breath. Thank God he didn’t have to live that way another day.
“We must go, my lord,” William murmured from the doorway. “Your bride will be on her way to the church, and you must be waiting there.”
“God, yes.” Joy swept through him. As they started down the stairway, Hart saw that the massive front door stood open and he glimpsed the carriage outside.
Monte came scampering out of the library, trailed by a beaming Mrs. Peachey, to meet him at the foot of the stairs.
“How splendid you look, Lord Jasper,” she said. “This might be the happiest day of my life, for I feared it might never happen.”
He went forward and captured her slight form in a warm embrace. “Allow me to express my gratitude and deep affection, Peachey. I never would have reached this day without you and William.”
Monte danced on his hind legs for a moment and yipped.
“I suppose you think you had a part in this, disreputable mongrel?” Hart said with a laugh. He was bending to pet the dog when a shadow lengthened in the doorway.
“By Jupiter, so it is true after all!” declared a voice he knew as well as his own.
Monte began to bark madly as Hart straightened to see the Duke and Duchess of Caversham entering the house.
“Silence,” Hart ordered Monte, and the dog instantly closed his mouth and sat down on the cold flagstones. Going forward, Hart greeted Austell and Margaret with as much pleasure as he could muster. “This is a welcome surprise!”
“Accept my apologies for our last moment arrival,” Austell said. “Estate business, you know. But couldn’t miss my little brother’s marriage!”
Hart could feel Peachey watching him. “Well, I am glad. I feared the only guests on my side would be Peachey and William, but now our simple wedding will be graced by the presence of a duke and duchess.” Drawing on his gloves, he added, “Sorry to ask you to turn around and get back into your coach, but we are due at the church. I hope you don’t mind. ”
“Not a bit!” Austell took Margaret’s arm and they started back outside. “Won’t you drive over with us?”
“Yes, thank you.” To William, he said, “Why don’t you and Peachey use my carriage to travel to the church?”
When they were settled inside and the liveried groom had closed the door with its ducal crest, the magnificent team of grays started forward.
Austell met Hart’s eyes. “I brought a small gift for you.” Reaching into his coat pocket, he brought out a small oval miniature and set it in Hart’s hand. “Something…personal.”
“My God.” He stared at the exquisitely rendered image of their mother, painted perhaps about the time the twins were born. She wore a serene, kind smile that was quite different from the fretful woman Hart remembered.
“Father insisted I keep it after Mama left and returned here to live…about the time you went up to Oxford. She had it made for him early in their marriage, but when she left us, Father said he couldn’t bear to see her face again.
” Austell looked on wistfully as Hart put the miniature in an inner pocket of his coat.
“You must have it, Jasper, not I. And now Mama is present, in a way, for your wedding.”
Surprisingly, Hart did not find this concept as appalling as he would have a few days ago. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“It’s only right,” Austell assured him. “No matter what I did, Mama always favored you. I suspect she wished you had been firstborn, heir to the dukedom, so that cast a shadow over our bond.”
Hart drew a painful breath. “If that’s true, Mama was wrong. Not only are you a splendid duke, but we both know I would fail dismally at it.” Smiling at his sister-in-law, he added, “And Margaret was born to be your duchess.”
As they approached the small Norman church near the village, Austell replied, “You are kind to say so, yet Margaret and I are both keenly aware that we have not produced an heir in our five years of marriage.” Leaning forward, he gripped Hart’s forearm.
“I must admit, this wedding is a great relief, for I’d begun to fear the dukedom might die with me.
I am reassured to know that, if you have a son, he will one day be Duke of Caversham. ”
Before Hart could acknowledge this truth, the door to the coach opened and he had a view into the flower-bedecked church. Soon he would be at the altar, exchanging vows with the woman whose love had transformed his life. A warm tide of joy swept through him, carrying off every other concern.
As the groom put down the steps and handed Margaret out, Hart clasped his brother’s hand. “Our past is over; the future awaits.”
My heart is full, Emeline thought as she and her father alit from their carriage and entered the ancient church, waiting just inside the doorway. Ahead were gathered the people she loved most.
At the altar, Hart stood waiting for her, still sinfully handsome yet no longer showing signs that he might be about to bolt.
Among the small party of guests were Mama, Charles, Anthony, Frederica, and little Oliver, who lifted his pudgy hand and waved.
Her Raveneau grandparents turned in their seats to look at her, and she was filled with gratitude that they were able to be there.
Grandpère was more than ninety, yet he continued daily to walk his dog around Grosvenor Square and work at his study desk.
When Emeline lifted her simple bouquet of autumn wildflowers and mouthed, “I love you,” he touched his fingertips to his heart, and she glimpsed the rakish privateer captain who had captivated her grandmother sixty years ago in New London, Connecticut.
The elderly organist commenced, somewhat unsteadily, to play a prelude, and Emeline saw Louise sitting with Tobias, across from a couple she didn’t recognize at first.
“Goodness,” she whispered after a moment, looking up at her father. “The Duke and Duchess of Caversham are here.”
Justin St. Briac nodded, apparently unsurprised. “As they should be. And all eyes are on the utterly exquisite bride.” Leaning down, he kissed her brow. “I have never been prouder that you are my daughter.”
“Papa…I know this wasn’t the man you would have chosen for me—”
“But you are wrong, ma petite.” He gave her an enigmatic smile.
“You and Hart were each utterly determined never to marry. Yet how is it possible you two arrived at this moment?” As Emeline stared back in disbelief, he nodded and tucked her hand into his arm.
“Only someone as cunning as your papa could have managed to herd you both along, all the while claiming to disapprove of the match.”
Before Emeline could react to this outrageous revelation, the organist launched into Handel’s joyous “Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” and everyone rose, watching them.
As her father escorted her down the aisle with his usual assurance, she couldn’t take her eyes off Hart, the most effortlessly compelling man she had ever beheld.
At the altar, when he took her hand, she felt dizzy with anticipation.
“At last,” Hart murmured, his breath warm on her cheek. “Our life begins.”