Chapter 18
“You seem very cheerful today,” Lizzy remarked as she picked the petals off a daisy.
The three young ladies were enjoying a fine summer afternoon in the gardens, lounging on a trimmed square of lawn surrounded by fragrant rose bushes.
Selina had been humming to herself and caressing the velvet petals of a rose against her palm. She stopped and stared at her friend, feeling as if she had been caught in the act last night.
“It is a lovely day,” she said stiffly. “How else should I be?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Fretful, exhausted, sick to the back teeth of roses, certainly.” Lizzy chuckled. “Even I am tired of roses, and I wasn’t the one who had to smell every bouquet that my grandmother shoved in front of your nose.”
The morning had been filled with preparations for the ball as well as initial preparations for the wedding.
Truthfully, Selina hadn’t realized there were quite so many things to consider about becoming a bride: what type of linens she wanted for the tables; what sort of flowers she preferred; what sort of orchestra she wanted to play at the festivities afterward; what jewelry she wished to borrow from the Dowager Duchess, who had a vast and intimidating collection.
“I hate to disappoint you, but I don’t feel the least bit stressed,” Selina replied, struggling to hide a smirk.
After Philip had revealed his particular talents to her right in these very gardens, albeit in a different spot, her utter relaxation had yet to wear off.
“I have no reason to,” she continued. “Your grandmother has everything perfectly in hand. I don’t need to do anything other than nod my head or shake it.”
Melody, who had been examining the different varieties of roses and making extensive notes in a small notebook, raised her head from her endeavors.
“You do seem more cheerful than usual,” she noted. “Not that you are ever truly gloomy. You just seem… brighter, like these beautiful orange roses.”
Not you too!
There was a part of Selina that desperately wanted to tell her friends what had happened last night. The trouble was, one of her friends happened to be the sister of her betrothed. Lizzy wouldn’t want to hear of such things; it would make her sick to her stomach.
“I think it must be because I am away from home,” Selina offered, silently praying they would accept the excuse. “I don’t have to worry about my father and his temper. Yes, he will be here for the ball, but he will be on his best behavior in front of so many people.”
Lizzy beamed, as if Selina had just given the correct answer. “It suits you. I knew it would. You can’t help but be giddy when you know you are about to spend every day with one of your best friends.” She flopped dramatically onto the grass. “I have been so lonely, Selina! You can’t imagine it.”
“I doubt you could be lonely in any room that has a mirror, Lizzy,” Melody quipped and promptly covered her mouth, her eyes wide in astonishment.
It was uncharacteristic of the quietest member of their group to be so deliciously cutting, though they were no strangers to friendly teasing.
Rather than take offense, Lizzy suddenly sat up and clapped her hands together in vigorous applause, laughing raucously. “That was exemplary, Mel! Finally, finally, my sardonic wit is rubbing off on you!”
“Goodness, I’m sorry,” Melody replied, shaking her head. “Truly, I don’t know what possessed me. I think it must be the perfume of these flowers addling my mind.”
“Don’t you dare apologize,” Lizzy insisted. “That was utter perfection. Besides, you are not wrong. I know I am vain, but vanity is the only thing I’ve had to amuse myself with for so long. Until I met you two.”
Selina smiled at her beloved friends. “What about your grandmother? I doubt there has been a dull moment with her around.”
“That’s true,” Lizzy said, “but she naps for hours, and I daresay that her social calendar is even busier than a debutante’s. She is always off doing something with one friend or another.”
Stroking the rose petal, Selina closed her eyes to the bright, warming sunlight. “Do you think we’ll be that way when we’re old and grey? Do you think we’ll see each other often?”
“You can’t escape us, Selina,” Lizzy teased.
“I hope so,” Melody said. “I never really had friends until I met you two. Certainly none who… didn’t mind me being the way I am—always studying, always prattling about one thing or another.”
Selina opened her eyes, saddened by the sight of Melody’s chin dipped to her chest. “We adore you just the way you are. We always will. It is because of your nature that I cherish you.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” Lizzy nodded. “Why, I am at least twice as intelligent as I was because of your friendship. I was an utter dunce before I met you. I am not ashamed to say it.”
“You were not,” Melody protested, blushing.
“I was! Whenever I didn’t understand a word before, I would just remain ignorant, but now my vocabulary has expanded because I can ask you for the meaning, and you will know it instantly,” Lizzy insisted.
“Just the other day, I used ‘plangent’ in a sentence, and not only did I use it correctly, but I also knew what it meant.”
Melody began to chuckle. “Why on earth were you using ‘plangent’ in a sentence?”
“Grandmama was singing, and my goodness, she is a depressing soprano!” Lizzy exploded with laughter, joined by her friends. “I asked her… if she was preparing… to sing at a funeral!” she cried between bursts of laughter.
“You didn’t!” Selina choked out, her hand on her belly as giddy tears filled her eyes.
“I did!” Lizzy snorted. “I thought she was going to launch… her teapot at… me. She called me an imp!”
They were so busy howling with laughter that they did not hear the gate swing open, nor the grandmother in question hobbling toward the lawn.
“What is the jest?” the Dowager Duchess asked.
At once, the three young women ceased their rowdiness, their laughter spluttering to a halt.
“Nothing, Grandmama,” Lizzy said sweetly, though a subtle glance at her friends almost had Selina buckling into a fresh bout of hilarity. Melody, her hand over her mouth, seemed to be struggling too.
“Well, if it is nothing you are doing, then you must come and help me,” the Dowager Duchess urged.
She lowered her voice to a hiss as she added, “The Dowager Countess of Connington has just arrived, and she is already judging my flower arrangements! Not only that, but the witch has brought her grandson with her! I suppose she thinks she can find him a bride at my grandson’s wedding—the wretched harpy. ”
At that, the three young women dissolved into laughter once more. And though the Dowager Duchess pretended to purse her lips in disapproval, there was a flicker of amusement in her eyes too.
By the following afternoon, Selina wished she could snatch back her insistence that she was not at all stressed by the wedding and ball preparations.
The wedding was troubling her less, for it was further away, but the ball…
she feared she would be too exhausted to even attend by the time evening came.
The manor was filled to bursting with guests, and needing a moment to herself before she started to get ready for the night’s revels, she had stolen away to the gallery. According to Lizzy, no one bothered to go there because there was nothing worth seeing.
I don’t know what she was talking about. These are beautiful.
She wandered among the displays of expertly realized country landscapes, striking depictions of towering mountains, and a few stern portraits of ancestors.
One painting was covered with a black cloth, piquing her curiosity. Before she could investigate, however, another portrait caught her eye: a painting of a much younger Lizzy, perhaps seven or eight years old.
Even then, there had been that mischief in her eyes.
“What an adorable creature,” Selina chuckled, wishing her friend were there to be teased.
“If that is what you want to call me, I won’t argue,” a voice replied, nearly startling her out of her skin.
She whipped around, gasping, and found her betrothed leaning in the doorway of the gallery. A smirk lifted his lips. Lips she had thought about kissing almost constantly since she had left him after their encounter in the gardens.
Was it really possible that that was almost two days ago?
They had seen each other at breakfast and dinner, but always at opposite ends of the table, unable to do anything but steal glances at one another.
Aside from that, Selina had been inundated with wedding things, and Philip had vanished.
Probably into the seclusion of his study, where he could avoid being asked a thousand questions about flowers and menus and cakes and linens.
“You scared me!” she scolded.
He pushed off the doorframe and walked toward her.
Like the first time he had ever approached her, her skin began to warm, her heart beating a hard rhythm. If she were the swooning kind, she would have done so right then.
“Apologies.” He smiled. “I couldn’t resist watching you for a while.”
“I am surprised to see you out in the open,” she teased, recovering. “You have been hiding.”
“Not hiding,” he countered, “just… staying out of the way.”
She raised an eyebrow. “A likely story. I know a shirker when I see one.”
“Me? A shirker?” He laughed. “Adorable and a shirker. This is certainly a day for new nicknames.”
She couldn’t resist a chuckle of her own. “I was, of course, referring to your sister.” She gestured to the portrait. “She looks so sweet and innocent here.”
“Are you telling me she is not now?” Philip reached for her hands and brought them up to his lips.
But he didn’t kiss her hands. Instead, he turned her wrist to his mouth and pressed a tingling kiss right where her pulse fluttered, his gaze fixed on hers.
“That is none of your concern,” she replied.
He kissed her other wrist. “What of you, my bride? Are you still sweet and innocent?”
Heat rushed into her face. “I walked out of the gardens a… rather different woman from the one who walked in.”
“Don’t speak to me of that night,” he groaned in the back of his throat, a sound that stirred her up. “I can’t hear of it, can’t think of it, or I will doom us both with what I will have to do right this minute. Curse these guests!”
Selina grazed her teeth across her lower lip. “And what, pray tell, would you do?”
“I would start like this,” he murmured, kissing his way up her arm. “Slow and teasing. Exploring every—and I do mean every—part of you.”
Her neck arched as his lips traced the line of her collarbone and moved up the column of her throat. His arm slipped around her, pulling her closer, while his other hand sought the sensitive skin at the nape of her neck.
“Then, I would—”
She never got to hear the next part, as loud voices shouted somewhere in the hall beyond, accompanied by the patter of feet.
“Curse these bloody guests!” Philip muttered, pulling back sharply so they would not be caught in a compromising situation. “Can I not even kiss my betrothed in the privacy of our home?”
Our home…
Selina’s eyes widened, and her heart swelled. Barlow House had never felt like home, her father had made sure of that, but Ashbrook Manor already felt like somewhere she belonged. To hear Philip call it ‘ours’ was just the cherry on top.
So much so that she did not even mind that they had been interrupted.
“We will have all the time in the world once the wedding is over,” she told him shyly.
He cast her a sly look. “Anticipation can be half of the enjoyment, I suppose.” He sighed. “What brought you in here anyway?”
“Lizzy told me no one comes here.”
“Ah, I see.” He paused, frowning. “Is it all too much?”
“No, I just needed a moment to myself,” she replied. “Although you are not so very unwelcome.”
He smirked. “I am pleased to hear it.”
Just then, his gaze flitted to the one painting that was covered with that thick, black cloth. His smirk faded, a hardness flashing in his eyes.
“Who is behind there?” Selina asked, noticing the change.
“The devil,” Philip replied, his lip curled.
Before she could ask any further questions, a familiar voice shrieked through the babble of the other guests.
“Philip? Philip, I know you are here somewhere!” the Dowager Duchess crowed. “I saw you not five minutes ago! You cannot escape me, my dear grandson. I have tasks for you!”
Philip rolled his eyes. “I suppose that is my cue to leave you, though I am very tempted to just lock the door. Let them knock and gossip; I don’t much care anymore.”
“And my life will not be worth living if I hide you from your grandmother,” Selina said, though she was just as reluctant to be parted from him.
Leaning forward, Philip pressed a soft kiss to her cheek, and with that, he was gone, calling out, “I am here, Grandmother. No need to shout.”
In his absence, Selina glanced toward the door to make sure no one was coming. Certain that she would not be disturbed, she edged toward the covered portrait and, with surprisingly shaky hands, lifted one corner to see what was behind the cloth.
Expecting horns and a fiery inferno, she was somewhat disappointed to find that the portrait depicted nothing but an old man with a stern stare and thinning hair.
Are you the man my father despised so much?
Letting the cloth drop, she was grateful that a portrait could not talk back.