by Nikki Poppen
The aisle seemed longer now that she had to walk it with everyone looking on. She was glad for the reassuring pressure of Giles’s hand on hers when she arrived at the front, happy to have gotten there without tripping.
Later she would not remember much of the actual ceremony just images of candles and stained glass, the scent of roses, the sound of Cecile’s music, and the blurred background voice of the clergyman intoning the words that would bind her to this man that she knew well and yet not well at all. But the one thing that remained always clear to her was the moment Giles sealed their union with his kiss and led her back down the aisle as his wife and into her new life.
Giles rushed Cate down the aisle in a half run through a gauntlet of well wishers raining them with fragrant rose petals. The weather and the lateness of the ceremony would not allow for the guests to shower the wedded couple out of doors, so it had been arranged to follow the customary tradition indoors.
Cate suspected Cecile and Isabella had plotted it without Giles’s knowledge. Everyone was laughing and in high spirits as she and Giles passed down the aisle. Even Giles seemed exuberant. He’d been serious when he’d spoken his vows but now he squeezed her hand affectionately and paused in the archway of the church to look back over the guests, an extraordinary smile wreathing his face.
Giles swung her into his arms, causing her to stifle a little shriek of surprise and treated the villagers to the sight of a dramatic kiss. They cheered loudly and he reached for a leather bag that had been left at the back of the church on a small table. Opening its drawstring neck, he drew out a handful of coins and tossed them high into the air, another custom that had to be followed when the lord of the manor married.
Everyone made a show of madly scrambling for the coins. Alain took over after that, flinging the remaining handfuls while they made a quick get-away to the waiting carriage. Giles swept Cate up and saw her tucked safely inside before climbing in beside her.
He stared at her intensely as the carriage started the short drive to the abbey. “How are you, Mrs. Moncrief? Or do you prefer Lady Spelthorne?” He teased in high humor.
“I am fine, more than fine,” Cate confessed, knowing that tears glimmered in her eyes. “I can’t believe that was my wedding. It was so beautiful. I never imagined . . ” She was at a loss for words. “Everyone did so much for me and they don’t even know me”
“The night’s not over yet. Wait until you see what’s at the abbey” Giles’s eyes twinkled in anticipation.
Cate heard music as soon as the carriage turned into the drive. Not orchestra music or the refined music that had played at Giles’s house party ball, but to her mind, “real” music. Music with fiddles, drums, and tambourines. The music of the countryside.
A bonfire burned large and bright in the courtyard, warming the cold night. The doors of the house were thrown open. Cate saw immediately what Giles had planned.
“A real All Souls night!” She clapped her hands in delight.
Already, villagers who had stayed behind to make everything ready were dancing to a polka. Giles jumped down from the carriage and helped her out.
Cate beamed, letting Giles sweep her into the dancers.
The night was filled with dancing and drink and food on groaning trestle tables set up out of doors. The fire and the dancing kept everyone warm although there was access to the house for those who could not stomach the cold night. Cate was exhilarated and giddy with the excitement of the party. It was the perfect way to celebrate the wedding among the Spelthorne peoplesa tribute to old England as it was in the days of the first earl, James Moncrief.
Eventually, it was time to end it, at least their participation in it. Giles offered one last toast to his bride and made a great show of lifting her in his arms and carrying her across the threshold of the abbey. The crowd roared its approval. They would stay outside and continue their merrymaking as long as they wished.
Tristan, Alain, and their wives followed them in. Giles set her down gently and gave her a light kiss. “You’ve made me a happy man tonight, Cate. I’ll take one last drink with Tristan and Alain, and then I shall come to you” He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles in a gallant gesture that made her tremble in anticipation.
Isabella and Cecile came upstairs with her and played at maids, helping her out of the lovely gown and setting it safely aside to be stored away for another generation. To their credit, they didn’t stay long and were well gone before Giles made his appearance.
Cate liked Giles’s friends well enough, considering the circumstances surrounding their befriendment of her, but she wanted these next few moments to be between she and Giles alone. Ever since she’d appeared at Spelthorne and laid her claims at Giles’s doorstep, the two of them had been surrounded by people. First, the house party guests and then the constant presence of his four close friends. Now, it was time just for them.
Giles opened the bedroom door. “Are we alone?” he asked, unknowingly echoing her sentiments.
She smiled as he pulled at his cravat, unraveling the complicated knots he liked to wear. “Absolutely, completely and utterly alone”
The grin on his face was part rake and part happy bridegroom. “Finally, I shall have you to myself at last”
She went to him and pulled him close. “The future starts now-our future, Giles Moncrief.”
“Indeed, it does” Giles cupped the back of her head in his hand and bent to claim a deep kiss, smiling as he did so. Cate gave herself over to it.
She would not wonder until much later how simply won her happiness and Giles’s had been once they’d decided to wed. In the five days since the afternoon of Giles’s proposal, obstacles had vanished and talk over her legitimacy had ceased. Life had gotten smoother. If she hadn’t been so enthralled with her new husband’s passionate attentions, she would have recognized sooner that it had all been too easy.
Marriage agreed with him, most definitely, Giles decided over the next few days. He looked up from the papers he was reading on his desk three days later to savor Cate’s presence feet away from him on the settee.
They were enjoying the quiet of a deserted Spelthorne Abbey. Tristan and Alain had discreetly packed themselves and their families off to their homes for the holidays, leaving the newlyweds on their own-something Giles was exceedingly grateful for. He wanted to thoroughly bask in the serenity that currently claimed his life.
Giles was fully aware that Cate was the source of the contentment that surrounded him these last days. His mind was no longer whirring with a thousand plans and a hundred worries. Spelthorne was safe. The claims against him and his legitimacy had been thoroughly scotched with the marriage.
He had done his duty for Spelthorne, although in a most unconventional way. Most gentlemen he knew did their titular duties by marrying a wife of fine pedigree. He’d done his duty by doing the opposite. He had Cate to thank for that.
Cate looked up from the book she was reading and caught him staring. “What are you thinking?”
Giles laughed at having been caught. “I am thinking how beautiful my wife is and how much more lovely she’ll be when she has clothes of her own. We can’t have you wearing Bella’s gowns forever.” He’d won Spelthorne and in exchange, she’d won a new life-a life he’d gladly lead her into. It would be his first gift to her. His lovely new bride would need an entire wardrobe. He could help her see to an appropriate country wardrobe here at Spelthorne well enough but they’d need to go up to London and do her town wardrobe there.
Time enough for that after the Christmas holidays. Strangely enough, he had no desire to go haring up to town for the Michelmas session of parliament. The House of Lords would have to do without him this year for the first time since he’d assumed the title. The thought of a country Christmas at Spelthorne with Cate made him grin up at the ceiling. He was looking forward to sharing all the traditions with her. This year, there would be a very personal meaning for him of peace on earth.
“I have news”
Lady FoxHaughton’s latest protege said casually, leaning his wellpolished boots against the fender of her fireplace.
She threw a pointed glance at the ill-placed boots and he hastily removed them. The man was handsome enough with his broad shoulders and Norse good looks but breeding was lacking. That’s what happened when one had to settle for a third son of an earl out of Sussex.
Splitting with Giles had left a sour taste in her mouth after she’d returned to London in the fall. In hindsight, she supposed she’d been too quick to pick a new apprentice.
She scoffed. Apprentice was not a word she’d ever have chosen to use to describe Giles, but the word definitely fit the young Norse god lounging in her parlor. At least this man could be taught, and he wasn’t astute enough to have his own views. When she wanted his opinion, she gave it to him.
“You said you had news?” she prompted.
“Yes. Spelthorne won’t be coming up to town for the Michelmas session.”
“Not coming?” Candice hid her surprise. Such an action wasn’t like Giles at all. He was always so overly responsible. Not even her vaunted skills could pry him away from parliament when he had an issue on the floor for discussion.
“Indeed. Rumor has it he has married and is spending Christmas in the country as a winter honeymoon of sorts with his new bride.” He delivered the last bit with a smug cockiness, knowing that for once he knew something she didn’t.
“Wipe that look off your face. I would have heard it tonight,” Candice rallied. “If you really know something, you know her name.”
“Jealous are we?” he asked, piqued at her set down. “Wishing you had Spelthorne back?”
Candice snapped her fingers. “If I wanted Spelthorne back, I’d have him. He wasn’t as promising as I’d hoped” She gave him a meaningful look to say that the same thing could happen to him. Then she sat down and picked up a newspaper, ignoring him entirely. It wouldn’t do to look too eager for the name of Giles’s bride.
She let Daniel fidget uncomfortably for a few minutes, knowing the hothead wouldn’t be able to contain himself.
She covertly looked at the clock. Within five minutes she’d have the name if he knew it.
On cue, Daniel stood up and began pacing. “Don’t you want to know?”
“Know what, dear?” she said sweetly, as if their spat hadn’t happened.
“Her name?”
“Only if you know it. I was under the impression you didn’t know it.”
“Of course I know it! I didn’t leave the club until I had all the information available. What do you take me for? Spelthorne has married his fourth cousin, Cate Winthrop” He gave a derisive snort. “I would have thought a man like Spelthorne could have done better than marrying some poor distant relation none of us have heard of. Poor sot”
The last had been said more to himself than to any audience, but Lady FoxHaughton picked up on it immediately. “Are you sure?” She was all attention, her mind firing quickly.
“Quite sure.”
She strode to the shelve where she kept her important reference books and pulled out her well-used copy of DeBrett’s Peerage. She thumbed through the pages until she found what she was looking for. She hadn’t given it much thought upon her return over a month ago, but now it suddenly seemed of pre-eminent importance since Giles had gone and married the girl.
“Ha! He couldn’t have married Cate Winthrop because she doesn’t exist.” Candice moved her finger through the Winthrop lineage. “She’d have to be the daughter of Stonebridge’s younger brother’s son to be a fourth cousin,” she muttered, scanning the lines to make sure she didn’t overlook anything. “Ha! There is a C. Winthrop but it’s a child who died in infancy and my copy doesn’t denote if it was male or female”
Daniel looked perplexed, a furrowing marring his smooth brow. “Then how can he have married her?”
Candice slammed the book shut with an impressive bang. “He didn’t marry her. He married someone pretending to be her.” She tapped a hand on the table, thinking fast. “The question is, does Giles know? Perhaps someone is hoodwinking him or perhaps they are in it together and they want us to believe that is who she is.” Now why would Giles, the most ethical man she knew, try to perpetrate a scheme that was bound to fail? Surely everyone would know there was no such person as Cate Winthrop?
“Daniel, I need you to do something for me, darling. I need you to get a look at that marriage certificate. Whose name is on it? I’ll wager it’s not Cate Winthrop’s”
Spelthorne Abbey, December 24th
Wke up, sleepyhead!” Cate shouted, throwing back the heavy draperies cloaking the master chamber windows in floorto-ceiling elegance. A burst of rare winter sunlight filled the room. “It’s time!”
In the bed, Giles groaned and threw a hand across his eyes. She laughed in satisfaction. She’d risen early on purpose to tease him. Usually, he was the first one up and he loved to rib her over her penchant for sleeping in. Today she’d bested him.
It hadn’t been that difficult. Her excitement over the impending holiday had propelled her from bed early.
She tugged on the satin comforter and threw it back. Giles groaned again. “What’s so special about today?” he yawned.
“What’s so special about today?” she said in mock disbelief, hearing the teasing tone in his voice despite his complaints. “It’s Christmas Eve!” Her first Christmas as a married woman and in some ways her first Christmas ever. Never had she spent a Christmas surrounded by the activities that had the abbey already bustling at dawn. This morning the abbey and all who wanted to come were going out to fetch the greenery and the yule log. Tonight there’d be a grand party, and later a quiet church service in the little Norman chapel.
Giles smiled widely, something he’d done more often since their marriage. He reached up his hands to grasp hers. “Is it too early to say Merry Christmas?”
Cate giggled, sensing his excitement too. “You’ll have to hurry; people are already gathering in the stable yard. They await their lord. Shall you get up, or shall I tell them to go a-greening without him?”
Giles sprung out of bed in a fluid motion. “I’ll be ready in a moment’s notice.”
She flashed him a final smile before going downstairs to wait for him. She’d come to treasure spontaneous moments like these when they were alone, not surrounded by the servants or the demands of earldom.
It was those moments where she learned the most about Giles the man, who he was apart from being the embodiment of Spelthorne. She had not known him before their marriage, but in their brief acquaintance before the wedding, she’d deduced he was a man of great responsibilities, someone on who others relied. He took those responsibilities seriously, leaving little time for himself to relax and set those burdens down. These days, she thought he did a bit more of that-for the better. He laughed easily, smiled, played, found a certain exuberance in doing the everyday tasks required of him.
He had shown her every courtesy a man could show his wife. She was overly conscious of the fact that he never treated her with anything less than the honor she deserved as his partner. He was sincere in his regard and tender in his affections. In short, he was as much a paragon of a husband as he was an earl.
Although she knew the grounds upon which he’d offered for her, she also knew she was dangerously close to falling in desperate love with her new husband. In spite of their rocky start, there was no reason not too. And perhaps that was what held her back from pledging the very last piece of her heart that was not already his.
He was too perfect. He’d accepted his situation with equanimity. Not once had he ranted over having to take a wife that was beneath him or that there was the intangible taint of blackmail surrounding his proposal. He’d simply made the best of it and forged ahead.
Perfection and the attainment of happy-ever-after were not part of the hard life she’d known with the gypsies. Cate worried about accepting the smooth reality Giles’s life laid at her feet. She was con
vinced all she’d found with him would eventually be obliterated. Some day the carpet would be pulled out from under her and the reality beneath the illusions of their life would be cruel-even heartbreaking if she let them. So she did her best to protect herself against the coming of that day.
But it was a hard task, one she would put aside today as a holiday gift to herself. Magda had laughed scornfully at her whimsy when she’d quietly come to help her dress that morning. Catherine would not be deterred. It was a real Christmas, the kind she’d dreamed of as a little girl, and she would embrace it fully no matter what cynicisms Magda threw her way.
“What are you thinking?” Giles asked, coming down the stairs to join her. “You were miles away just now” He grabbed up their cloaks and mufflers from a bench.
She shook her head. “Nothing. Everything.” She turned to let Giles drape her riding cloak about her shoulders, liking the brush of his hands on her shoulders as he fitted the cape across them. “I’ve never had a proper Christmas. I suppose I am excited.”
Giles laughed. “I hope Spelthorne lives up to your expectations then”
She smiled up at him. “How could it not with you in charge of everything? I bet even the mistletoe grows according to your plans”
“Let’s go find out” Giles held out his hand for her and she took it, letting him lead her outside into the waiting throng of merrymakers who were eager to be off.
In the stableyard, Cate clapped her hands at the sight of the converted wagon that would convey them out to the Spelthorne woods. The wheels had been replaced with runners to glide over the snow. The empty wagon box would serve to carry back the greenery to the abbey later. Two draft horses had been harnessed with sleigh bells that jingled in the crisp air.
“Your chariot, madam. I am glad you’re pleased,” Giles said softly beside her before boosting her onto the wagon bench where she’d ride beside him as he drove the team.
