Chapter 4
“Right, should we petition for another marriage license and get it all done in one day?” Perseus asked as he clapped Laertes on the back.
Laertes let out a groan. “I don’t think that will be in order,” he replied ruefully, as he leaned against the billiards table.
Perseus and Deimos had slipped into this room at some point to get away from the crowd and have a bit of a good time together. But not before they must have witnessed his exchange with Lady Seraphine.
The colored balls were rolling about the felt billiards table. Perhaps a round would be good. Perhaps it would take his mind off the sudden and complete transformation of his Christmas Day.
He had not expected something like this to occur at the beginning of the twelve days of Christmas celebrations that his family always took part in.
He hoped to God she stayed. He hoped to God that she did not flee off into the wild, wicked weather that she had braved traveling through to get there in the first place.
But she might. Indeed, she might because he could tell that she, like her brother, Oliver, had been trained in a specific way of being.
And that way did not include the wildness and affection of the Briarwoods.
Laertes shook his head, thinking of her face when he had mentioned the wedding taking place today.
“Did you see how she looked when the word wedding got mentioned, and she thought that it was a jest about herself and me?”
Perseus grinned. “I might have, but you tell me. What did she look like?”
Laertes winced and thrust a hand through his hair. “She looked as if she was being threatened with the guillotine.”
“That bad, are you?” drawled Deimos.
Perseus nodded. “It is true. You are absolutely that bad. We wouldn’t wish you on anyone.”
Then Deimos guffawed with laughter. “Dear God, she’d be lucky to have you. Anyone would be lucky to have you, Laertes. You’re the best of us.”
Laertes groaned. “Thank you, but…now that I recall, I’ve heard rumors about her.”
“Ooh, I do like a rumor,” Perseus said, grabbing his billiard stick and tilting it off to the side. “Tell it.”
Deimos winced. “Actually, so have I. Maybe more rumors than you’ve heard. You see, I’ve heard it directly from her mother, the duchess… Soon to be dowager.”
“I wonder how she’ll like that,” Perseus mused as he eyed the scattered balls on the table.
“What have you heard?” Laertes asked, having a terrible feeling that Deimos was about to solidify what he had suddenly recalled from the very back of his mind. It had whispered through him when she’d looked so stunned by the word wedding.
“That lady is destined for royalty or someone terribly important,” Deimos said. “Her mother is a stunner herself, but terrifying. She has plans for Lady Seraphine.”
“He’s terribly important,” Perseus pointed out, gesturing to Laertes. “He’s going to be an earl.”
“Yes, but to a duchess, that is a step down,” Deimos put in with a shrug of his excellently developed shoulders that had been formed by his ancestors and a love of fighting and training with Hartigan Mulvaney.
Laertes began to pace around the billiards table. “Shall we play?”
They racked up the balls again, so that they could all play, and Laertes got ready to make a shot, hoping to strike the balls all over the table and sink a few into the pockets.
Perseus let out a sigh. “Imagine being an earl and not being good enough for someone.”
Laertes couldn’t stop the laugh that slowly began booming from him. “There are some people who are never content with anything.”
“She doesn’t seem like that, does she?” Deimos asked, frowning.
“She’s beautiful beyond compare,” Perseus said, “so perhaps she does feel as if she should marry a prince.”
“I have a funny feeling that since she could waddle about, she’s been told she should have a prince,” Laertes said softly, without acrimony. In fact, he felt pity. In his experience, princes were terrible people. “And I’m no prince.”
“Yes, you are,” Perseus corrected.
“Prince of our hearts,” Deimos said.
“You two stop,” Laertes tsked, though he was touched. “I’m going to get a terribly big head. I’ll become a horribly arrogant rotter.”
“Not you,” Perseus stated quickly.
“Never,” Deimos said flatly. “Perhaps one of us, but definitely not you.”
Perseus snorted. “You, old boy, walk around like a wounded poet, knowing that you’re only a step from the grave. You love all that dark stuff.”
“Don’t say that,” Laertes protested, grabbing a billiard stick from the wall, tempted to clobber his cousin with it. “That’s not how I go about life at all. I love life. Grandmama knows it. Everyone knows it.”
“Yes, you do,” allowed Perseus. “But it’s because you’ve got the one foot in the grave or the shadow in your heart. You, likely because you love Hamlet even more than Grandmama, know about ‘this mortal coil.’”
“Everyone in this family knows about ‘this mortal coil,’” Laertes drawled, rather irritated to be painted so blatantly regarding his aching soul.
Deimos and Perseus exchanged a glance.
“It’s true,” Deimos agreed. “You just understand it even better than most, as if you were born knowing what the darkness was for. The sorrow of this life. And yet it’s left you undaunted.”
“But she?” Perseus pursed his lips.
“She doesn’t know it,” warned Deimos. “Likely, she’s never been encouraged to think about the fact that her life could be but a ‘brief candle,’ as our man Shakespeare says.
She’s going to live out her life completely miserable, married to some fool from Europe, or some idiot who escaped France because there are no princes in England that can marry her, or archdukes for that matter. ”
“So she’s in for it,” added Deimos. “All because of her mother’s plans.”
“You should rescue her,” said Perseus, waggling his brows.
“How the bloody hell will I do that?” Laertes asked. “If she’s determined to marry a prince?”
“Well, I have a funny feeling that it’s not her who wants the prince,” Perseus said sadly. “But she seems like a very good young lady, who will do as her mama says. It is the terrible fate of most of the young ladies alive these days.”
Deimos’s brows shot up. “You could always ruin her. I mean…not horribly. Just a wee bit of seduction, and we could catch you, and—”
“Closets are excellent for this,” enthused Perseus.
“There’s precedent!” agreed Deimos.
“Your own parents were caught in a closet at Christmas,” rushed Perseus.
Deimos frowned. “Was it a closet? I can’t remember the story now.”
“No, I couldn’t,” Laertes gritted. “You know I couldn’t. None of us could do that.”
Deimos and Perseus exchanged a glance before they both said in unison, “You could.”
“That only works out when the other person wants it to happen,” he countered.
“Our family has had a few of those run-ins, my mother and father included, and it sounds like they’re always a really sticky moment.
What if it all goes wrong? And she hates me?
I can’t be doing that.” He scowled. “Besides, it sounds far too complicated. How would I even get her into the closet?”
“Well, you could—”
“Stop,” Laertes cut in. He loved his cousins, but this was too much.
Deimos and Perseus did indeed stop, exchanged another glance, and then guffawed.
“You thought we meant it, didn’t you, old boy?” teased Perseus.
“Just testing,” Deimos said.
Laertes narrowed his eyes, not believing them for an instant. Then he turned back to the billiards table, eyed a ball, and struck his stick forward.
The balls rattled across the felt table again.
“I think you need a brandy,” Perseus said.
“The last thing I need is a brandy,” he replied. “I need to keep an extremely clear head.”
His Uncle Ajax walked in. “Who needs a clear head?”
“Him,” said Deimos, pointing, his lips twitching with delight at the whole circumstance.
“Oh, you, Laertes,” Ajax said, nodding his head, and then his Uncles Zephyr and Hector strode in as well.
It was going to be a long Christmas Day.
It was supposed to have been one full of celebration and triumph, for the fact that he had brought Oliver and Phoebe together, though that hadn’t been his original intention.
And most importantly, Oliver had let go of all that shame and pain that had been controlling him since he’d been a boy, but now Laertes’s Christmas had transformed in but a few moments, and he was in a knot over a young woman.
Briarwoods weren’t supposed to be in knots over young ladies. Were they?
Ajax grinned at him. “So when is the wedding?”
“No,” he said, “there will be no wedding. She was horrified at the word wedding even being said in my near vicinity.”
Hector blew out a sigh. “Silly thing.”
“She’s not silly,” Laertes said tightly.
“Ooh, sensitive are we?” Hector asked. “Already defending our lady love.”
“She’s not my lady love,” he returned, surrounded by his oh so loving family that loved a good ribbing. And most of all loved when people were, well, falling in love.
“Yes, she is,” Perseus said.
Ajax, Hector, and Zephyr all poured out brandy from the decanter for themselves.
“None for you, puppies. You need to keep your clear heads. Laertes is right. That one?” Ajax arched a silvery blond brow. “Lady Seraphine? She’s going to be quite hard to handle, but I do think it will be worth it.”
Laertes scowled, feeling a strange wave of apprehension travel through him. “I think it was just the music. I think that I heard her voice, she played with me, and I thought she was the one, but it was actually just a shared affinity of music.”
Ajax stared at him for a long moment. “Just keep telling yourself that, puppy. Everyone in the room knew. We clapped eyes on the two of you together. No doubt, your mother is upstairs with Grandmama and Duchess Mercy picking out potential betrothal gifts for you.”