Chapter Twenty-One
Mayfair, London
Gus came to Zeph that night, and they sat by her fire and talked.
“I hope I did not cause you distress that I was gone, and for so long.”
“I knew where you were. How could I worry when I knew you were with Rafe?”
“He and I are to marry.”
Gus tipped her head, exuberant. “I expected nothing less.”
“He promised to get a special license so we can be married soon. Day after tomorrow, if possible.”
Gus broke into a grin. “Would you like the wedding here?”
“I would. May we do that?”
“It will be Kane’s and my pleasure. I will tell the staff. They will be thrilled.” She cocked a brow. “They worried about you, gone in the middle of the night, you see.”
“I appreciate that they care for me.”
“Oh, Zeph.” Gus took both her hands. “We want you to have everything you desire.”
“Only Rafe.”
“And you shall have him. And for this”—Gus shivered with her excitement—“we need a breakfast menu and a wedding cake. Tall, lots of sugar icing. And flowers. Oh, what can we get at the end of November? A challenge, but do not fear.”
“I need a gown, Gus. Every one I’ve had made recently is too severely cut to be a proper wedding dress. Do you think your modiste can add a fichu to one of my day gowns?”
“I’m sure of it.” Gus patted her hand. “Now, the guests.”
“Oh, we must invite everyone. I want them to know, to see, to believe that Rafe loves me and that I…”
Gus knitted her brows. “That you what?”
“Love him. Desire him, not as the one who saved me from doom, but as the man I would have chosen no matter how we met.”
“Zeph, I have long known just by looking at you that you are in love with him. Even blind, one could hear in your words how you care. Never fear that you will be questioned.”
“I want no one to assume he married me from pity.”
“Sweetheart, the way the man has worried over you for months leaves no doubt that, to have you as his own, he would burn down the world.”
*
The next morning at breakfast, Friendly entered the small dining room, mumbling to himself about the post, the cook, the scones.
He was becoming more senile. Zeph glanced at Gus.
She was unaffected. But the man bent to each of them and presented a note first to Zeph, another to Gus, and a final one to Kane.
Each read their own letter and dropped it to the table to take stock of the others’ reactions.
Zeph ground out her frustration. “Rafe cannot get a special license until the American Minister to Great Britain affirms I am an American citizen.”
Kane shook his head. “You could both be married by the ambassador, but to be perfectly legal in Britain, you both must be married by a cleric of the Church of England.”
“You know the American ambassador, don’t you, Zeph?” Gus was worried.
“I do. He is an old friend of my father. Do you suppose I must present myself to him?”
Kane said, “No need for that. Rafe’s note to me suggests that I call upon the man and take a letter to him from you, in which you ask for his affirmation of you as your father’s daughter and a citizen of the United States.”
“I worry there may be another problem,” she told them.
“What is that?” Gus asked.
“My father took me to the Methodists for church.” Her father had told her that, even in Virginia, many who attended the British church looked down on the new sect of Methodists.
Kane scoffed. “Not a problem.”
Gus waved the matter away. “The Methodists are close enough.”
“But Papa always said the Methodists were a ragtag bunch.”
Kane rose to his feet. “Write your note for me to deliver. State your birth date and place of birth; say nothing about the Methodists. We shall have a wedding tomorrow. How’s that?”
Gus got to her feet and grinned at Zeph. “Let’s go to Half Moon Street, shall we? I say we need a proper wedding gown!”
*
After three that afternoon, Kane entered the salon with a joyful smile on his face. He declared that he returned with a letter from the American ambassador, and presented a copy to Zeph. “One copy of this he has sent to Doctors’ Commons, and another to Rafe.”
“And Zeph will have a wedding gown by two tomorrow afternoon,” Gus said with glowing satisfaction in her green eyes.
“Which means we can have the wedding the following morning, isn’t that so?” Zeph was hopeful.
“Right you are!” Kane grinned. “Happy to see it for you both!”
Zeph sat, her heart floating in all the good news.
She had a gown. Gus had ordered a posy of evergreens from a florist near Piccadilly for her to carry.
She was ready to be married, except for one item.
She had deliberated with Gus about purchasing a proper gift to give her groom.
But Rafe needed no watch, no pipe. Perhaps a cravat pin was in order, but she had no time to shop for one worthy of him.
Instead, she thought she had one unique gift that she could never buy anywhere. This item he would rejoice in. It would serve him and all their friends fresh discoveries.
She had not finished decoding all the pages in Vaillancourt’s red book, but she had completed a few lines of one page, which Rafe would shout was the best gift in the world.
The page for Deal had three sets of numbers on them. The first set translated across as Faucon. Next was the name Tauzain…followed by another wonderful revelation!
*
Rafe fiddled with the ends of his cravat.
“Let me do that.” Halsey chuckled as he limped over to Rafe and pulled out the knot he had made.
“My valet is young,” Rafe offered.
Kane nudged Carlisle. “Do not make it too complicated, Halsey. The poor man needs to be able to undo it easily.”
Rafe smirked at the seven men before him who were his friends, his colleagues, and to whom he owed so much.
Luc Bechard, whom Rafe had not seen in many weeks, stood near Halsey, smiling.
When the young Frenchman had arrived in London after crossing the Channel last spring, he had taken bachelor quarters in St. James’s.
He looked even thinner than he had in Paris the night they helped him escape the Conciergerie.
In fact, in past months, his hair had gone white.
In body, he seemed healthy but more wiry.
In attitude, he seemed congenial. But Rafe wondered about his health in general.
When Luc arrived, he’d been the first to be shown up to Rafe in Kane’s small back parlor.
They had talked, and Rafe had expressed his hope to see Luc again soon, when he and Zeph returned to London after their honeymoon.
“What word do any of you have of the fate of Faucon?” Rafe had to know before he married and spirited his beloved away north to the small cottage he had rented for three weeks.
Kane looked at Todd Carlton. “We hunt the southern coast.”
Carlisle added, “No sign of him in London.”
O’Neill spoke up, bouncing on his toes, a small smile curving his lips. “There’s a man we follow in Dover.”
“Not to worry,” said Halsey. “We have it all in hand.”
Rafe exhaled and rolled his eyes. “I hope so.”
Carlton lifted his hands. “No more business—we celebrate a wedding!”
*
Zeph ran her fingertips over the ruching of her bodice.
Gus’s modiste had outdone herself. Yesterday the lady had come to Ashley House and brought with her two assistants who carried three bolts of fabric.
The first was a cotton from Bengal, so sheer that Zeph could see the outline of her nails through the brilliant yellow.
The second was another Luccan silk, this one of pale blue.
The third was a Lyon silk of teal green that whispered over her hands like the sound of a breeze.
It was the last one Zeph chose for her wedding. The dressmaker and her assistants worked all through the night and this morning, and Zeph paid them double the modiste’s fee.
Now, standing before the cheval glass, she felt restored, rejuvenated. To be accurate, she felt born anew.
“Do all brides feel as if they are different people?” Her gaze met Gus’s in the mirror.
“I think,” Gus said as she handed her a bouquet of fragrant evergreens, “they do if they are in love.”
With that, they went down to the main salon.
The double doors were closed. Zeph glanced at Friendly and thanked him and all the staff for their kindness to her.
She had invited all the household servants to the ceremony.
Earlier, he had assured Zeph that they were assembled in the salon.
“I have created challenges for all of you. Do give my regards to each of them for me, will you?”
The man tipped his head. “You were always a pleasure to serve, Miss Butler.”
She challenged him with a sly side glance, and he laughed.
Then she turned to Gus. “I am ready.”
Friendly pulled open the doors. Inside stood everyone she had come to know and trust these past months.
A tall, silver-haired man approached her and, at first, she had no idea who he was.
Luc Bechard, the man who had saved her from assaults in prison, strode toward her.
His hair had gone totally white. The shock, the stress, had also made him reclusive, Rafe had told her the other day.
Now she saw how their imprisonment had changed him, put lines on his handsome face and shadows in his eyes.
“Luc,” she whispered as he took her hand and kissed it. “I am so delighted to see you and am honored you have come.”
“I would not miss this. To see you happy is a very fond wish of mine. Do marry that man who carried you away—he is unrivaled.”
She blinked away the tears that sprang to her eyes, then looked beyond Luc to the others.
In the gay springtime pinks and ivories of Gus’s salon stood the Fourniers and the Applebys.
Near them were Scarlett Hawthorne and her ever-present escort, Todd Carlton.
Amber, Zeph’s old school friend, and that lady’s husband, Lord Ramsey, looked tickled.
Near the front of the throng stood Halsey and Inès, who had saved her along with the man who stood at the side of the vicar.
Gus stopped as she neared her husband. Zeph took a step forward to Rafe. He looked magnificent, rested, joyful, her dashing man.