“You’d better…or I will.” Chassy stood up, ordered her dress and made sure she had her reticule. “I need to get back and tell Dare about—”
“No, you can tell him nothing.”
Chassy’s hands tightened on the strings of her small purse. “Of course I must. He’s sure to hear the rumors about town and I don’t want him upset or thinking I’d actually marry his father, for star’s sake.”
Her father came to her, placed his hands on her shoulders and drew her into his embrace. “Does your Dare love you enough to forgive you, Chassy?”
“What are you saying, dad?” she whispered, tears clogging her throat. She didn’t want to hear whatever it was. The thought of making Dare believe she would dump him for another…seeing the hurt betrayal in his eyes…” she closed hers. “I can’t bear to hurt him.”
“If the younger Darian learns the truth, his reaction will not be authentic. Our prey has eyes and ears among society. They will know if something, any little thing, is amiss. We’ll lose this opportunity. I’m not the only target any more. My would-be killer has to think you are in my confidence. You have now become an equal or greater threat.”
He patted her shoulder, offering the only comfort he knew how. “People who know Dare will look for him to react a certain way. We need your ex-lover’s anger, his hurt bellowing to make this appear legitimate. When this is all over, I will explain everything to him. I promise to make all right again.”
“What if he can’t forgive me, dad? What if I lose him forever?”
“If he truly loves you…” Her father paused at the fierce look she shot him.
“What do you know of true love?”
He paled.
“If I lose Dare over this, your killer might as well shoot me, for I’ll be dead inside.” Sinking back down onto the settee, Chastity folded her arms on the raised rolled arm, tucked her face in the crook of her elbow and burst into jagged tears.
Chapter Eleven
“Dare, please stop. If you drink any more, I’ll throw up.”
“Shut up, C.C.,” Darian snarled, snatching the brimming tumbler from the reluctant waiter. His hand shook as he brought the glass to his lips. “I can still smell her so I can’t have drunk enough, yet.”
Chezann propped his elbow on the bar, his chin on his palm and gazed in pity at his older brother. He’d never seen Dare like this. Even in the days directly following the deaths of his brother and mother, his sibling had radiated an air of aloofness, maintained the impression he was impervious to pain.
Today, the man looked a mess. Clothes wrinkled and unkempt, he slouched at the card table, idly rifling a worn deck of fargo cards. Hair uncombed and beard unshaven, his bloodshot eyes glared out at the world, counting every inhabitant his mortal enemy.
C.C.’s eyes narrowed. Jaw tight, he thought about Chastity and her fickle heartlessness, glad beyond words she’d seen fit to pass him up. The bitch played hardball with people’s emotions and he wished she’d one day experience even a small portion of the pain she so blithely dished out.
Dare didn’t deserve what she’d done to him. It wasn’t right for her to use him then discard him for…how had she put it? “…The catch of the season.”
“If she’d chosen any one else, I could have understood it, C.C.” Darian had lifted his head and mumbled the words through dry, cracked lips. One glimpse of his eyes had C.C. lowering his, unwilling to see that level of gut-deep pain.
“I mean, let’s face it—I’m not the best catch. Disowned by my family, looked down upon by society—she could easily find a better man than—”
“Oh, hell Dare. Spare me the self-pitying spiel.” C.C. slapped his hands on the table and leaned into his brother’s surprised face. “I’ve had it up to here with your sad rendition of a woman scorned.”
Dare straightened up, his back stiffening against the chair. His lips thinned as he narrowed his eyes and tried to focus on his brother. “I thought you, of all men, would understand.”
“The thing is, I do understand Dare. I understand that you are going to sit here drinking yourself to death while the woman you love marries our father.” The thought made him sick to his stomach. Maybe he could make his brother sick enough to put a halt to the monumental disaster taking place as they spoke.
“Just think about it…in a little while they’ll leave the church. Knowing our randy parent, he won’t wait long before he lifts her skirts—probably stop along the way and fuck her in the carriage. Yeah, and while he has her heels in the air, she can grip his thick cock with her pussy—hey, did I ever tell you how my mother went on and on about him being built like a horse?—and scream his name. Can’t you hear it…?” Speaking in falsetto, he chimed, “Oh, Darian, yes…fuck me with your big cock, ram that pole up my tiny little ass…!”
“Mother fucker, C.C., shut the fuck up…!”
Outside, a cloud of angel-serpents spun and dipped in frenzied flight, their shrill cries disturbing and nerve-jangling.
C.C. watched them, stunned at how they mirrored Dare’s emotions, had always done so. They and his brother shared a connection that had baffled the naturalists for years. No one else, before or since, had bonded with so many of the finicky avians.
Moved by Dare’s pain, irritated by the high-pitched screams of the serpents, he still couldn’t allow himself to stop prodding. The wedding was scheduled for twelve o’clock and it was past eleven. He had to shake Dare’s aplomb, enrage him to action before it was too late.
“Ah, but you’ve already heard those words, haven’t you?” His hand gripped his brother’s arm. “Can you bear thinking about her calling your name while she lies under our grunting father, getting your next little brother or sister plowed into her? Can you bear it? Because I know I can’t. I’m not going to let that lecher put his filthy hands on her. If you don’t want her, I’ll take her. I’m going to the church to stop the wedding.”
A thud sounded against the window and then another and another until the glass shook under the impact. The angel-serpents were attacking the window, trying to get in, trying to get to Dare.
A waiter, frightened at the cacophony, ran from the room, his slaver held over his head as a protective shield. On impulse, C.C. went to the window and flung it open.
A cloud of small bodies rushed past him, arrowing toward his brother. At the last minute, most sheered off, content to circle his head and coo at him. Four of the largest mantled Darian’s shoulders and arms, rubbed their sinuous heads against him, their tiny forefeet petting and rubbing him. The fifth creature settled in his lap, reached up and placed her small feet on his chest and simply stared into his eyes, crooning a little trilling song.
Dare broke.
C.C. reacted quickly, knowing his brother would rather die than expose his feelings to the public. “Everybody out!” he shouted, waving his arms and herding the patrons and serving staff from the establishment. As he pushed the complaining owner toward the door, he thrust a thick wad of bills in his hand. “I’m renting your place for the rest of the afternoon. Keep everyone out of here.” The innkeeper shut up and closed the door behind him, his ruddy face wreathed in smiles.
C.C. returned to find his brother literally covered in angel-serpents. Their mournful accompaniment was the perfect foil for a strong man’s tears, but the low, ululating cries raised the hair on his arms.
Dare’s shoulders heaved as sobs poured from him, a rain of tears flooding his face. His body shook uncontrollably. “I love her, C.C. I love her until my heart hurts with it. I’d walk barefoot across glass shards to her and she threw me away like yesterday’s trash.”
“If you’d walk across glass, how hard can it be to walk across town? Or are you going to sit here and wallow in sorrow when you have one more chance to change her mind?”
“You didn’t hear what she said to me when she gave me that obscene amount of money and told me we were finished. That she had a position to maintain and as a society lady she was expected to wed a particu
lar type of man.”
“Wait, Dare, hold it!” C.C.’s heart thumped with excitement. “She said all that, in those exact words? Are you sure?”
“It’s burned in my memory. Her words will smolder in my mind till the day I die.”
A grin spread his mouth wide. “Oh brother, you need to get home and clean up. Better yet, clean up later. We have a wedding to halt.”
“What are you talking about, C.C.? Haven’t you heard a word I said?”
He couldn’t help smiling. “I heard you Dare. After all my work on getting you two back together, I want the first boy named after me…Crofton, not Chezann. No one deserves to be stuck with a name like Chezann.”
The angel-serpents’ lilting song registered the renewal of Dare’s hope before his face revealed what he was feeling. “You know something I don’t?”
“I know she must have been trying to give you a message but she sent it through the wrong brother. Chassy is totally against society marriages and never planned to make one. Her father and she fought about it on a regular basis. If you don’t believe me, ask her.”
“I believe I will.” Dare surged to his feet and jammed his arms into his jacket, his abrupt movements startling his bevy of angel-serpents. They flew up and circled him, crying and—C.C. could swear—giggling, their iridescent wings a beautiful kaleidoscope of ever changing, shifting colors.
C.C. opened the door and out they flew, staying in tight formation around Dare’s rushing figure. He brushed past C.C. with a muttered apology, long legs carrying him after the serpents, which were all heading toward the Landing cathedral in the midst of town.
“Hurry up, little brother. We have a wedding to crash!”
Chapter Twelve
“It’s your turn, Cheryn. Which one do you think he’ll use?”
The maids, all cousins, chattered in the corner, their high spirits a marked contrast to the pall shadowing the face of the bride.
The youngster thought a moment. Her eyes lit up. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…”
“Oh, that’s so cliché, don’t you think?” One of the older cousins asked the group. Some nodded, others ducked their heads and avoided answering. “Okay, now Dilly…”
The youngest cousin twirled a fat curl around her finger and chewed her lip. She wasn’t very good at this favorite game of predicting which wedding phrase the priest would begin with.
“I think he’ll do the ‘mawwig’ one. You know, the one that goes: ‘Wuv, twu wuv…’’
“Oh, yes Dilly. I’m with you,” piped a cousin from her father’s side of the family. “That one is always so sweet.”
“I don’t know,” the eldest of the group interjected. “More than likely he’ll choose the one that begins—she cleared her throat-- “We are gathud heah, todayuh…”
“Oh, I love that one, Mair. I hope he does that one. Is it too late to switch?”
They all laughed. “Dilly, you can’t vote against yourself!”
She pouted. “But I just know that’s the one he’ll choose.”
Chastity sighed deeply. Listening to the innocent chatter of her young cousins did nothing to raise her spirits.
“Be still. I only have a little more to do.” Alicia spoke around a mouthful of pins.
Stoically holding her pose while Alicia fidgeted and twitched and pinned her gown in to place for what felt like the tenth time, she sighed again.
“All done. Now, step out of the dress. The seamstress needs to take it up one last time.” Getting up off her knees, Alicia dusted the non-existent dust from her shins. “Thank goodness the wedding is today. You’ve lost so much weight we’ve had to take your dress in five times.
I haven’t lost enough weight to suit me. I want to fade right away and become nothingness.
“I wish my father were here.” So I can strangle him for making me do this.
“Oh, honey I know!” Ali threw her arms around her, gave her a loving squeeze. “But soon you’ll have someone of your very own. Someone to keep you company and—”
Chassy stared at Ali as if she had two heads. “Are you totally insane, Ali? The Earl of Chesley is the biggest womanizer since Landing. The man’s a sleaze, a dog—my apologies to dogs everywhere—and a total reprobate. How could you possibly imagine I’d be happy with him?”
Ali swallowed. “B-because you asked father to arrange a contract of marriage with him…?”
“Arrgh!” Chassy reached toward her hair, seriously contemplating yanking the unruly mass out by the roots.
“Don’t do that!” Ali screeched, running forward and grabbing her cousin’s hands. “The hairdresser took two hours creating this masterpiece. Don’t dare make a mess… Oh!” She slapped palm over her mouth. “I said the D word. I’m so sorry.”
Chastity tapped her cousin’s forehead. “I know you have a brain in there, Ali, I’ve heard it rotating.”
“How can you be so mean on your wedding day?”
“Oh, this is the day to be mean, trust me.”
One of the cousins stuck their head around the door. “The bridegroom has arrived. Everyone get ready.”
The seamstress returned with her modified dress and helped her slip it carefully over the hairdresser’s masterpiece.
Shrieking and laughing, the girls scrambled to get ready. Grabbing up their bouquets and slipping on their shoes, they lined up in order.
Chassy couldn’t help smiling. In their gowns colored all rainbow shades, her little cousins looked like a bunch of willowy flowers. The one good thing this mock marriage had done was bring all her family together. It had been eons since she’d seen most of the people that had gathered under one roof to wish her happy.
Lady Lucynda sailed through the door, cutting a swath through the spectators and participants with equal disdain. “Everybody out, please, I need to speak to the bride.”
Alicia bristled. “I’m the matron of honor. Why do I have to leave?”
“Because you are the matron, dear, while she is an unmarried woman without a mother. I am here to deliver the requisite pre-nuptial speech. Now shoo!”
Once the room emptied, she turned to Chassy with her usual calm smile. Lowering her voice, she whispered, “Your father is secreted off the main sanctuary. We’ve wired the small office so he can monitor everything. I have to get back out to my husband, now.” She started for the door.
“Hey!”
She looked back. “Yes dear?”
“What about my talk?”
The grandmotherly duchess chuckled. “My dear Chastity, you have been Darian Acer’s lover. I should be asking you for advice. You could probably teach me a thing or three.” She winked as she stepped through the door and closed it gently behind her.
Chassy took a deep breath. Time to get this show on the road…
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the presence of friends and loved ones to unite these two people in holy matrimony…”
Chastity glanced through the hazy gauze of her veil at the tall man standing beside her--Dare’s father, and C.C.’s. He looks like them…or should I say, they look like him? Damnit, why can’t everyone see how much he resembles C.C.?
The width of shoulder and length of leg all three men shared between them. The differences were in their coloring. C.C. had to take after his mother, his blond, blue-eyed handsomeness a far cry from his half brother. While Dare probably hated that he looked so much like the father who’d thrown him away.
She snuck another sideways glance at the man towering over her and saw the strong line of jaw was the same as his son’s. So were the liquid black eyes, shadowed with long thick lashes. Shoulders and chest and thighs, all found their echoes in the beloved flesh she’d recently stroked and measured. A fleeting question regarding similarity in length elsewhere crossed her mind and she grimaced and shooed it away. She didn’t care beans about the Earl’s hidden assets. She was a one-man woman.
She wished the murderer would hurry and show up. This ceremony was ge
tting frighteningly close to becoming real.
“…If there be anyone here who knows just cause why this marriage should not go forward, let them speak now or forever hold their peace!”
“I know!”
“I know!”
The crowd gasped in one voice as the words rang out from opposite sides of the church in synchronization.
Chastity whipped about, searching for a glimpse of those who’d shouted their opposition. That had not been her father’s voice, but she could have sworn one of the voices had been female.
The priest’s stentorian tones rang out. “Come forward and state your objection before God and this assembly.”
Darian stepped from behind a pillar and made his way toward the front of the church. C.C. followed close behind. “I claim the woman by dual right of possession and declaration. She belongs to me.”
Chassy stopped breathing.
He looked magnificent. His hair wasn’t combed and his clothes appeared wrinkled and…not up to his usual sartorial elegance, but the expression in his eyes as he approached lit her heart until it flamed like a miniature sun.
“No! I’ll not lose another son to an unworthy female. I’ll see her dead, first!”
A shot rang out, the sound deafening and echoing in the vaulted chamber. A hard push from the side sent Chastity hurling down the stairs, out of the path of the projectile.
Screams.
Shouts.
Pandemonium.
Strong hands lifted her off the floor. “Chastity, darling are you okay?” Those beloved hands ran over her shoulders and arms, traced her torso, checking for injuries.
Dare.
Laughing and crying, she went into his arms, everything and everyone around her fading into insignificance measured against the joy of having the only man she’d ever loved at her side. “Oh Dare, oh darling, I’m fine now that you’re here.” She looked around. “What’s happening?”
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