At the Duke's Wedding (A romance anthology)

by Caroline Linden

  “Henry again?” Poor fellow. In love with a girl who didn’t care a jot about him. At least he wouldn’t have to wait till he was nine-and-twenty to learn that lesson.

  “No! It’s Lady Sophronia.” Charlotte whispered, pulling him down on the pew beside their brother and father, just behind Lady Sophronia and her companion, Miss Black.

  “Well, get on with it, child,” Lady Sophronia whispered over her shoulder. “I haven’t got all day for you to tell him. The ceremony is about to begin.” She gestured to the Archbishop of Canterbury standing at the side of the chancel while his clerk adjusted his gold-embroidered mitre and stole.

  Charlotte grinned. “Brother, you will not believe it, but guess who Lady Sophronia intends to adopt as her ward? Oh you must guess.”

  His attention shifted to Miss Black for a moment, then he offered his sister a tolerant eye.

  Her grin broke into a full smile. “No!” She leaned close to his ear. “Henrietta has accepted Lord Willoughby’s proposal of marriage and is no longer in Lady Sophronia’s employ.”

  Willoughby stood at the head of the church, awaiting his role as best man to the duke. At this moment, the least likely man in the place to settle down to married life—or any other single pursuit—was gazing at Miss Black with a broad, besotted grin on his face.

  Trent’s gut felt heavy. “Charlotte—”

  “Now guess. Who else needs a respectable and wealthy patroness to establish herself in society?” She was nearly bouncing in her seat. “Guess!”

  “I cannot presume to.”

  “Then I will tell you.” Charlotte gripped his arm. “Miss Cowdrey!”

  Trent’s heart stumbled. “Is she here?” Despite himself, he turned and scanned the pews full of people.

  “No.” Charlotte’s lower lip protruded. “I thought you might know if she is coming.”

  He swallowed back the ache—like a man—like his father would—and shook his head.

  “Oh.” His sister’s eyes dimmed. She leaned forward and spoke at Lady Sophronia’s shoulder. “Your solicitor will find her, won’t he?”

  Lady Sophronia cast him a scathing glance. “He will indeed.”

  Trent turned his face away. He didn’t want to know who Angela truly was and why she had gone. Finally, one lesson his father had taught him would be useful: stoic strength in the face of pain.

  A hush washed over the guests from the rear of the church to the front as the Duchess of Wessex glided up the aisle. Just before the chancel she halted and faced the congregation.

  “I’m afraid there will be no wedding today,” she said. “Miss Grey and my son have decided, quite mutually, that they do not suit after all and no longer wish to be married. I’m dreadfully sorry for such late notice, but I do hope you will understand.”

  Everyone was talking—some whispering, some chattering at full volume. Some stood while others remained seated, as though disbelieving and still waiting for a ceremony. Of course they didn’t believe it. A duke didn’t cancel his wedding at the last moment.

  Unless ...

  Trent’s blood rushed in his ears. Unless the duke intended to marry his bride’s widowed sister instead.

  The duchess’s serene voice rose above the hubbub again. “You must all join me in wishing Miss Grey very happy with Mr. James Blair. Mr. Blair is our cousin, and we are delighted that he has secured Miss Grey’s affections.” Her smile was at once pleasant and commanding. “I invite you all to extend your stay at Kingstag Castle a few more days for another ball, in honor of Miss Grey’s marriage to Mr. Blair and to celebrate my son Wessex’s recent betrothal to Mrs. Cleopatra Barrows. I couldn’t be happier for both couples.”

  A moment of silence gripped the guests. Then everybody was talking again at once.

  “Paper,” Trent heard himself utter. “Pen. Ink.”

  Charlotte wrinkled up her nose. “What did you say?”

  “I need paper.” He stood and moved into the aisle. “And a pen.” The archbishop’s clerk hovered in the corner of the chancel. Trent dashed up onto the dais in two strides.

  “Have you paper and pen? Perhaps the marriage license? Or a spare page from that book?” He pointed desperately. “Anything?”

  The clerk’s nose pinched. “My lord, you cannot tear a page out of the Book of Common Prayer. It is simply not done.”

  “Give him the marriage license,” the archbishop said with a roll of his eyes. “Wessex won’t be using it, after all.”

  “Good heavens, your grace.” With a sniff, the clerk produced the license.

  “Pen and ink?” Trent insisted.

  They were found in the sacristy. Trent flipped the document to its blank side, dipped the pen in the bottle, and drew.

  o0o

  Arnaud Chappelle’s memoir offers no hints as to the reason he chose to publicly reveal Sir Richard Howell’s crimes while maintaining silence on all others, Angela typed into her laptop. The quiet, early-morning mumbling of café patrons and the grinding of the espresso machine surrounded her in a cocoon of scholarly concentration. We might presume he was motivated by an outside source, an anonymous character who at present eludes history’s probe. The keyboard clicked softly beneath her fingertips. But until further documentary evidence presents itself, this historian must remain mute on the subject. And so, although the mystery of his public repentance may never be discovered, Arnaud Chappelle’s story here comes to a close.

  She clicked Save, backed up the article, opened her email, and typed a cover letter to the editor of the American Historical Review. She attached the article to the email and clicked Send.

  Leaning her elbows on the tiny café table, she rested her chin on her palm. The AHR might reject her revisions, but she couldn’t lie, and she sure as heck couldn’t tell the truth.

  Even without an AHR article, she might get a decent job. Both Dartmouth and UNC had invited her to on-campus interviews. Her classmates were impressed. Her Evil Advisor was pleased. She should be elated.

  No emotion was further away. She no longer felt like she was missing something, because now she knew what that something was. Now she just felt empty.

  Behind the counter, Cyndi whipped off her apron, picked up two steaming mugs, and came to Angela. She plunked one mug down on the tiny café table next to Angela’s laptop. “Triple shot caramel latte. Just what the doctor ordered.”

  “The doctor ordered sleep and Zoloft because she thinks I’m crazy for swimming in two-degree water. Twice,” Angela said.

  Cyndi dropped into the chair across from her and snapped Angela’s laptop shut. “I know something that’ll cheer you up.”

  “I don’t need cheering up.” She needed Trenton Ascot.

  “Bull.” Cyndi took a swig of her latte. “You know that comic book you bought the other day? The one you said you loved? Well, yesterday the comic-book-store guy found this in the back room.” She pulled a folded page out of her back pocket and dropped it onto Angela’s laptop. “It obviously went with the one you bought, maybe pages that had fallen out? He didn’t know where to find you, so he brought it to me at the tattoo parlor. It’s a totally transparent excuse to see you again. He asked me to give you his number.” Pointing to the upper corner of the page where ten digits were carelessly scrawled, she waggled her pierced brows. “I think he’s hoping you’ll take him up on my offer.”

  Angela couldn’t move. She recognized the paper. It was similar stock to the book Trent had drawn, but this time with writing across it. A legal document. A marriage license?

  “So, are you going to call him?” Cyndi said. “Though he’s probably not awake at this hour, being a scruffy comic-book-store guy and all.”

  Call him ...

  Angela reached for the paper. It was in fact the marriage license of the Duke of Wessex and Helen Grey. With shaky hands, she unfolded it to the inside.

  The sketches were in the same style as the others. The image in the top panel showed a man and a woman standing at the altar of a church filled wit
h people. The couple faced each other and he held her left hand in both of his. The man was Trenton Ascot. The woman was her.

  Below, in the bottom frame, he stood alone in the middle of the aisle, looking out of the page at her and extending his hand. The caption read: DON’T MAKE ME WAIT.

  “Ange?” Cyndi’s voice came to her through a fog. “Ange ... is that you?”

  Her throat was too clogged with tears to speak. She nodded.

  On the table beside the latte, her iPhone buzzed. The display showed a number in England. Through the cloud of tears she fumbled for the phone.

  “Hello? Angela Cowdrey here.”

  “Miss Cowdrey,” the voice on the other end sounded distant but clear. “This is John Wright, vicar at Saint Anne’s Church in Wareford. Mary Raj at Oriel College rang me up yesterday with your query. I managed to unearth the parish register from the period of your interest. Would you care to hear what I’ve found?”

  She clutched the phone to her ear. “Yes. Please, Reverend Wright.”

  “You asked after the seventh Earl of Ware’s eldest son, who became the eighth earl.”

  “Yes.”

  “Putting together a family tree, are you?” he asked pleasantly.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “Oh. I’d imagined you’d been named after your— But here now, perhaps it will be best if I simply read the entry to you: ‘Trenton Cambridge Ascot, Viscount Everett, married June the 24th, Year of Our Lord 1813, to Angela Merriweather Cowdrey in the—’”

  “Stop! Please stop!”

  “But wouldn’t you like to hear—”

  “No!” She’d already heard the only thing she needed to know. “Thank you! Thank you so much, Reverend. You’ve been so helpful.”

  “Glad to be of assistance. If you should need anything more, do give me a ring.”

  She set down the phone with a trembling hand. “Cynd.” Her heart flew.

  “Ange?” Cyndi leaned forward. “Angela, you have a really weird look on your face.”

  She couldn’t quite breathe. “Cyndi, you know how you said I needed to get a life?”

  Cyndi nodded.

  “Well, I think I did. But not quite what you expected. Or what I expected. Not quite what anyone would believe. But I did.” She swallowed hard and gripped her friend’s hand. “Thank you.”

  “What do you mean no one would believe it?” Cyndi frowned, then looked down at the drawing again. “Ange?”

  “I can’t really explain it. But ... I’ve got to go.”

  June 24? The day of the duke’s wedding? What did that mean? And the river hadn’t worked. How was she supposed to get there this time? She stared at the image of Trent with his hand outstretched. It looked so real, it seemed that as she stared they shared the same smile, the same breaths.

  She reached out and touched the page.

  o0o

  Sketch in hand, Trent stood in the aisle of a church full of milling people, staring at the door to the narthex like a fool—an insanely hopeful fool whose heart pounded so hard he could hear it over the murmurs and bustle of the duke’s erstwhile wedding guests.

  Heaving in a huge gulp of air, he extended his hand.

  “Trent?” Charlotte said. “What on earth are you doing?”

  A commotion sounded beyond the nave doors. Trent’s pounding heart jerked into his throat.

  The doors burst open. Beauty appeared in the aperture.

  Trent dropped the sketch and walked to her.

  She was weeping; his vibrant, brilliant, brazen angel’s cheeks glistened with tears. Reaching her, he took her face in his hands and captured her mouth beneath his. She wrapped her arms around his waist, pressed her body to him, and he claimed her as his own before two hundred people.

  Finally he allowed her air. She buried her face in the crook of his neck, and her slight body shook with sobs in his arms.

  “Why do you weep, Angel?”

  “I’m—” Her voice was muffled against his cravat. “I’m a little overwhelmed, you know.”

  “Only a little?” Gently he tilted her chin up. “Leap through time often, then, do you?”

  “Once a week so far.” Tears spilled from her eyes afresh. “I’ve had enough already, though. I’m calling it quits starting now.” Her smile trembled. “How did you know how to bring me back?”

  “I drew the book you had described, but you did not come. So I drew another.” He stroked the moisture from her cheeks. “I would have continued drawing until you returned to me.”

  “But that’s insa—”

  “Angela Cowdrey, because of you I have dived into a lake fully clothed, stolen women’s garments, kissed a lady to within an inch of her virtue in a garden, climbed out a third-story window in the dark, and ‘skinny dipped’ at midnight. And for the first time in my adult life, I have admitted to my secret passion. My only passion—except you. You have changed me and I will never be the same. Marry me.”

  “This is insane. My head is spinning. I don’t know how this can be. We’ve only known each other a week.”

  “The Powers That Be do not seem to consider that insufficient time.”

  “Time,” she whispered. “You called to me across time.”

  “And you came to me. You had already decided to marry me.”

  “I’ve never been proposed to in a comic book before.” Her mouth curved into a radiant smile. “I couldn’t resist.”

  He pressed his lips to her brow and held her tight. “Angel, do you think you could love me?”

  “I’m pretty sure I already do.” She lifted her lips to his.

  “Angela!” Charlotte exclaimed. “You are finally here and kissing my brother, so you will marry him after all. Splendid!”

  It was only then that Trent noticed the people around them, some gaping, some whispering, the crowd of watchers spreading outward until the attention of all but the stone statues of saints were upon them. He took Angela’s hand and addressed the crowd.

  “I am pleased to announce that Miss Cowdrey has accepted my suit.”

  “With the way the two of you are carrying on there,” Lady Sophronia cackled, “the wedding better be soon!”

  A matron gasped. A cluster of girls giggled. Several gentlemen cleared their throats. Charlotte sighed. The duchess appeared beside them and with a regal smile said, “Why not today?”

  “Ha!” Lady Sophronia crowed. “Saving face splendidly. You outdo yourself, Alice.”

  “Do I?” The Duchess of Wessex lifted a single brow, her smile lingering. “But a man must follow his heart. Why delay?”

  “Oh, yes!” Charlotte clapped. “Everybody we know is already here anyway.”

  Trent looked down into his lady’s eyes. “Will you, Miss Cowdrey?”

  “I will, Lord Everett.” She squeezed his hand. “But don’t we have to wait until the banns are read? Three weeks or something like that?”

  “Not if a special license can be procured,” Trent heard his father say from the crowd. He met the earl’s benign gaze and bowed, acknowledging the only thanks he would ever get for saving their family from ruin. It was more than enough.

  The earl gestured to the Archbishop. “Your Excellency, will you do the honors?”

  The Archbishop rolled his eyes anew and extended his palm to his clerk. “Paper, pen, and ink. Again.”

  “But, Angela,” Charlotte pouted, “You simply cannot get married in that.” She pointed down. “What is it, anyway? A kerchief?”

  More feminine giggles and several strangled male utterances.

  Trent ran his gaze up the entire length of Angela’s stockinged legs to the tops of her shapely thighs. Her boots were enormous, but her skirt was no more than a suggestion. His blood heated. “No,” he barely managed. “She cannot.”

  Angela laughed, her cheeks pink. She leaned in to his shoulder and whispered, “Wouldn’t you know, I’ve never worn this skirt before today.”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  “It’s your fa
ult. I’ve been feeling unusually sexy these past few days. I wonder why?”

  Then, because she had changed him, he bent and pressed his lips to hers to feel her laughter.

  “I will see to the special license while you dress,” he said huskily against her cheek. “But don’t become too comfortable in your wedding finery. It won’t be on you for long.”

  “Promise?” she murmured.

  “Oh yeah.”

  She smiled brilliantly.

  Not taking his eyes from her, he said over his shoulder: “Charlotte? If you will?”

  His sister grabbed his bride’s hand and half a dozen girls scampered down the aisle, dragging with them the woman he had come to love in a heartbeat that stretched across two centuries.

  o0o

  Angela got married wearing a delicate pink gown with a white tulle overskirt and tiny beads on the bodice. When the ceremony was over and they recessed out of the church, Trent whispered that she was lovelier than a dog rose. It was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever said to her.

  An hour later at the party, he laced his fingers with hers and in his melting chocolate voice informed her that he was taking her upstairs. Moments later in the privacy of their bedchamber he removed the gown that made her look like a wildflower, making good on his word yet again. As he trailed kisses along her shoulder, then lower, then lower still, she came to appreciate Trenton Ascot’s dedication to honor more than she’d ever imagined possible.

  Epilogue

  January 26, 2013

  www.AnnArborPost.com

  A student matriculating at the Rackham Graduate School of the University of Michigan, Angela M. Cowdrey, allegedly disappeared in Merçi Café on Tuesday at approximately 8:24 AM. Police are examining the testimony of the fourteen witnesses. Scientists at the university’s Neural Biology Laboratory suggest that a possible contamination of the air in the café due to a gas leak may have precipitated a mass hallucination. Ann Arbor Gas Co. denies any wrongdoing.

  Cowdrey’s friend, Cyndi Jefferson, who was present in the café at the time and claims to have seen Cowdrey disappear, commented, “I’m devastated, but I’m not. She definitely got a life.”