Trouble at the Wedding

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  Eight years since she’d experienced the glorious sensation a man’s kiss could bring, so long since she’d felt this hunger for a man’s touch, this desire for a man’s body, and everything within her demanded more. She let go of his jacket and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her body against the hard wall of his.

  He made a rough, ardent sound against her mouth. His hands slid from her cheeks down the sides of her throat, over her collarbone, to her breasts. He paused there for only a second, just long enough that he must have felt the beat of her thudding heart through the thin satin of her gown. Then he wrapped an arm around her waist and yanked her upward off the ground, bringing her hips against his.

  The feel of him, hard and aroused against her, brought her back to reality with painful force. She tore her mouth from his, gasping, and brought her arms down between them to push his aside as he set her down. Wrenching herself free, she stepped back.

  He was breathing hard, watching her, and she stared back at him, wordless, as arousal, shock, and dismay coursed through her blood.

  Oh Lord, she thought wildly, I never learn. I never, ever learn.

  That awful admission had barely crossed her mind when suddenly the floor seemed to cave in beneath her, opening up to send her falling down into a dark abyss, and her last thought before everything went black was that she was in serious trouble now.

  “Annabel?”

  She sat up, sucking in deep gasps of air, her heart thudding like mad in her chest, as if she were a wild rabbit on the run from a hungry wolf.

  The room was dimly lit by the oil lamp burning on the table beside her bed, but the pale gray outline of light around the closed draperies of the window told her it was morning.

  “Annabel?” her mother’s voice came again, followed by a knock on her door. “Annabel, are you in there?”

  A dream, she thought, and the sound of her mother’s voice sent relief washing over her in a flood. Praise Jesus. She pressed a hand against her pounding heart. She’d just been having a dream.

  Upon that conclusion came another. She didn’t feel well. Her head hurt, her throat was parched and cottony, and she felt slightly sick to her stomach.

  “Annabel?” Her mother knocked again, louder this time.

  “I’m here, Mama,” she called back, and as her door opened, she started to push back the covers to get out of bed. But then she caught the glimmer of pale blue satin, and a vague memory of why she was wearing a tea gown instead of a nightgown flashed through her mind, along with a pair of smoldering blue eyes and swirling gray mist. At once, she jerked the covers back up, barely managing to cover herself before her mother entered the room.

  “Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” Henrietta said, bustling in. “Today is your wedding day, remember?”

  Annabel stared at her mother, and her wedding was the furthest thing from her mind because she was realizing with horror that she hadn’t been dreaming at all. She really had sat in the Ford last night getting drunk on moonshine with Christian Du Quesne.

  “Why, Annabel Mae,” her mother exclaimed, coming to a halt at the foot of her bed, “you’re as white as a sheet. What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

  Sick? Annabel put a hand to her head, which was aching fit to split. “I don’t feel well,” she mumbled. “Get me headache powder, Mama, would you, please? And some peppermints?”

  “Of course, darlin’.” Henrietta departed in search of the requested remedies, and Annabel jumped out of bed. Frantic, panicky, she yanked off the tea gown and tried to recall the events of the previous night as she put her nightclothes back on.

  She hadn’t been able to sleep last night, she remembered. She’d gotten out of bed, taken one of George’s bottles of home brew from the liquor cabinet in the sitting room, thinking it would help calm her jangled nerves and make her sleepy, and she’d gone for a walk. She’d gone down to the cargo hold where she’d thought sure she’d be unobserved, and she’d sat in the Ford for a while, imagining herself motoring along England’s country lanes with Bernard. She’d tried to envision herself in her new life as his countess, hoping to restore her confidence about her decision to marry him. And then . . . and then . . . Christian had shown up. That, of course, was when the trouble started.

  He had followed her down there, which was aggravating enough, but even worse was the incomprehensible fact that she’d let him stay. Christian Du Quesne, the cause of her cold feet, her insomnia, her doubts. She’d let him stay. What had she been thinking?

  Annabel strove to remember more. He’d given her his coat to put on, and they’d sat in the car, talking. About the Ford, about love, and . . . oh Lord.

  She’d told him, she realized in horror, her hands stilling on the sash of her robe. She’d told him about Billy John.

  Annabel groaned, pressing a palm to her forehead, her cheeks burning. She’d confessed her most humiliating moment, spilled her most secret shame to that man. Why?

  Taking a deep breath, she shoved aside pointless questions. She had no time for those. All right, so she’d talked water uphill and revealed things even her best friend, Jennie Carter, didn’t know to a man she’d just met. What concerned her wasn’t what she’d said, anyway.

  What had she done? Annabel began to pace back and forth across her stateroom, striving to remember the rest of what had happened, trying to ignore the sick certainty in her guts that with moonshine and that man involved, she might have done just about anything.

  They’d left the cargo hold together, she remembered that. They’d started back to A-deck, and then, somehow, they’d ended up in the ladies’ Turkish bath, of all places.

  He’d kissed her. Annabel halted in dismay and shock, wondering what all had happened to her common sense. The night before her wedding, another man had kissed her. And she’d let him do it.

  Impelled by that awful realization, she started pacing again, forcing herself to recall other embarrassing details. She remembered feeling faint—from moonshine, she told herself firmly, not from his kisses. She remembered her knees sinking under her, him lifting her in his arms and carrying her back to her room, laying her on the bed, and leaving. And that was all.

  The door opened, interrupting these memories, and Annabel turned, pasting a nonchalant look on her face as Liza entered the room. She was carrying the wedding dress draped carefully over her arms, two maids behind her bringing the long cathedral train.

  “Good mornin’, Miss Annabel,” Liza said in her cheerful Irish brogue, giving her a wide smile. “Are you ready to go downstairs and say ‘I do’?”

  She felt another jolt of panic at that question, and she pressed a hand to her mouth, working to think clearly. She’d done nothing wrong last night—well, not much anyway, she amended, forcing down a pang of guilt. There were more than a hundred people downstairs, waiting to watch her marry the Earl of Rumsford, a man she still wanted to marry. Yes, Scarborough had kissed her, but what was she supposed to do about it now? Call off the wedding because of one night of madness? Humiliate a man she was genuinely fond of by abandoning him at the altar? Ruin all her hopes and her sister’s future and relegate her family back to the status of social outcasts because of one kiss from a man she’d known less than a week?

  Not a chance. Annabel lowered her hand and drew a deep, steadying breath. “I’m ready, Liza,” she said, and tried to mean it. “I’m more ready than I can say.”

  The moonshine bottle was empty.

  Christian frowned, turning it upside down, watching as one last drop of the clear liquor fell to the carpet beside his bed.

  For a man who didn’t care for the stuff, he seemed to have polished off quite a bit of it during the past few hours. He hadn’t drunk enough, however, to blot out the memory of kissing Annabel Wheaton.

  The skin of her cheeks was like silk. He could still feel it, warm against his fingers. Her mouth, so soft, like velvet, tasting of the moonshine they’d drunk.

  He fell back against the wood-paneled wall behind his bunk, closi
ng his eyes, still able to feel her body pressed against his, smell the scent of her hair, taste her tongue in his mouth. He could still hear their hard, labored breaths afterward mingling with the hiss of steam taps and radiators. And he could still see the desire in her eyes, desire he’d found quite gratifying.

  Until she passed out.

  He’d caught her before she hit the floor, and even though she’d woken up, she’d had some difficulty standing on her own. He’d carried her back to her rooms, torturing himself during every step with the knowledge that she hadn’t a stitch of clothing on under her gown. He’d gotten her back into her suite and into her room—at least, he’d hoped from the empty berth that it was her room—and how he’d managed that particular feat without waking any members of her family still baffled his alcohol-hazed mind. He’d laid her in the sleeping berth without taking even a single peek under her skirt, and sadly, his imagination had been trying to picture what he’d missed ever since.

  No, as much as he’d had to drink, it wasn’t enough to make him forget all that. Obviously, he needed another drink.

  Christian tossed the empty jug onto his bunk, left his room, and retrieved a bottle of whiskey from the liquor cabinet in the sitting room. Not bothering with a glass, he took a couple of generous swigs straight from the bottle, but that didn’t help much, either.

  His body still ached with desire, ignited by her stunning smile and perfect body and soft vulnerability, desire he’d never be able to act on. And he knew he must truly be an idiot because that fact bothered him a hell of a lot more than losing half a million dollars.

  He returned to bed, taking the bottle with him, but he didn’t sleep. Instead, he drank, and imagined, and listened to the traveling clock on the shelf behind his head tick away the minutes.

  He knew when Sylvia got up, he heard her ring for her maid in the room next door. He thought of ringing for his valet, but then changed his mind. Going to Annabel Wheaton’s wedding, watching her chain herself to the Earl of Rumsford for the rest of her days, was the last thing he felt inclined to do.

  When Arthur had first approached him, he’d deemed it a perfect, heaven-sent opportunity, but as the minutes ticked by, he also knew what hell it was going to be now that he had failed. He’d planned to be in town for the season, and the possibility of encountering Annabel, of seeing her on the arm of that pompous-ass husband of hers, was a god-awful prospect, one that if he wasn’t already drunk, would soon impel him to be. In fact, he might find himself spending the entire London season in a state of perpetual intoxication.

  He tried to look on the bright side. He didn’t know yet that he had failed. Perhaps some of the things he’d told her had penetrated, and she’d cry off at the last minute. He hadn’t been formally invited to the wedding, but the faint possibility that Annabel had come to her senses and that he could see her jilt Rummy at the altar was too irresistible to be ignored. He had to see for himself, and to hell with the niceties of etiquette.

  Christian sat up, twisting his head around to look at the clock, which seemed insistent upon dividing itself in two, but after concentrating hard for several seconds, he was able to determine that it was still a few minutes before ten. He swung his legs over the side of his bunk and stood up, a move that had him reaching for the edge of the nearby table, where he held on until everything stopped spinning.

  Moving carefully, he bent to retrieve his jacket, which was lying in a huddled heap on the floor by his bed, and as he put it on, the hazy thought crossed his mind that he probably looked the worse for wear. A glance in the mirror of his bathroom confirmed that he looked even worse than he thought. In fact, he looked like hell.

  The face that stared back at him showed not only his lack of sleep but also his unshaven face and uncombed hair, and probably his inebriated state as well. He ran a hand over his cheek and grimaced at the sandpapery feel of it, but there was nothing he could do about it. Being late to a wedding was worse than being unshaven and badly dressed.

  He did what he could. He splashed cold water on his face, raked his fingers through his hair to comb the unruly strands into some kind of order, and smoothed his wrinkled tuxedo. He also tried to re-form his tie into a bow, but though he didn’t know how long he spent on that particular effort, eventually, he was forced to give it up as a lost cause. Letting the ends of his tie fall, he turned away from the mirror, and left his stateroom.

  The wedding was already in progress by the time he arrived, and a glance around revealed that there were no empty seats. Annabel seemed determined to go through with it, and he leaned against one of the faux-marble columns at the back of the room, resigned to watching what was sure to be the greatest mockery of matrimony since his own wedding. A few minutes later, however, Christian discovered that it would have been better for everyone if he’d just stayed in bed.

  This was the moment every girl dreams of.

  As Annabel stood with Bernard before the minister, all the panic and guilt she’d felt earlier eased away. This morning when she’d first woken up, she’d been a downright mess of a girl, and no denying it. But the headache powder and peppermints had done their work, and along with a light breakfast of toast and tea, they had conquered any physical aftereffects of last night. The mental battle had proved a more difficult one, but she’d conquered that, too, and now Annabel felt like herself again, sure, confident, and ready for the future, as she listened to Reverend Brownley begin the ceremony.

  “Dearly beloved,” the minister intoned, “we are gathered here, in the sight of God and in the face of this company, to unite this man and this woman in the bonds of holy matrimony, which is an honorable estate, instituted by God . . .”

  She glanced at the man beside her, and at the sight of his profile, she felt all her fondness and gratitude coming back, along with an enormous sense of relief. Everything seemed to shift back into place, including her common sense.

  “ . . . and into this holy estate,” Reverend Brownley went on, “these two persons present come now to be joined. If any man can show just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter forever hold his peace.”

  He had barely uttered that token phrase before another voice followed, the voice of the Duke of Scarborough, ricocheting through the room with the force of a gunshot.

  “I have just cause.”

  Shocked gasps from the wedding guests echoed in the wake of that pronouncement, and people stirred, looking toward the back of the room to the man who had spoken. Beside her, Bernard turned around, but Annabel suddenly couldn’t seem to move. She felt paralyzed, stuck in place like a fly on flypaper.

  “This wedding is a farce,” he went on, derision in every word. “A farce and a lie.”

  That snapped Annabel out of her momentary paralysis. She turned around, flinging back the tulle that covered her face to stare at the man leaning against one of the columns at the foot of the grand staircase. He was still wearing the same clothes he’d had on the night before, but though he looked rode hard and put away wet, he still managed to be handsome as the devil. And just about as much trouble.

  Against her will, she looked at his mouth, and as she remembered it pressed against her own, warmth radiated through her body beneath her pristine white gown. Her own reaction caused tears of frustration and fury to sting her eyes. This was supposed to be the most beautiful and memorable moment of her life, and he was ruining it. Why?

  As if hearing her unspoken question, he looked into her eyes, but if she hoped to find any clue there as to his motives, she was disappointed, for his expression was unreadable.

  “You have voiced what is merely an observation,” the reverend said, speaking to Scarborough. “Do you or do you not have just cause to object to these nuptials?”

  His gaze raked over her. “I do.”

  Oh God, he was going to tell everyone about last night. Dread seeped into her, seeming to penetrate her very bones. When his gaze lowered to her lips, she pressed her fingers to
them. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

  He took a step toward her, but then he halted, swaying a little on his feet. Frowning, he blinked several times and once again moved to lean back against the pillar before he spoke again. “These two people are about to pledge before God to honor, love, and respect each other? Love? Respect?” He made a sound of contempt. “It’s the height of hypocrisy, at least in their case.”

  “Oh!” Annabel breathed, “Why, you low-down, despicable cur of a man . . .”

  Her voice trailed away, her dread giving way to rage, rage so great she couldn’t say another word, rage that seared away every other emotion she’d felt today, rage that seemed to engulf every part of her—from the toes of her satin-slippered feet to the top of her tulle-veiled head, from her white-gloved fingertips to the ends of her perfectly coiffed hair. Rage that poured through her like lava and felt so hot it seemed to scorch the beautiful white satin of her wedding gown from the inside out.

  “But that is merely an opinion,” Reverend Brownley told him. “What is the just cause that warrants your objection, sir? You must be specific.”

  Still looking at her, Scarborough folded his arms across his wide chest, his lips curving in a faint, knowing smile. “Shall I tell him, Annabel?” he asked. “Or would you prefer to do it?”

  It was that smile that galvanized her into action. Grasping handfuls of her long gown in her fists, she started toward him, ignoring the avid stares of the guests.

  “Tell me what?” Bernard asked behind her as she stalked up the aisle. “Annabel, what does he mean?”

  She didn’t answer. At this moment all her attention was focused on the man in front of her, a man with mocking blue eyes and the morals of a snake, a man who had made it his business to put doubts about her marriage in her mind, who had made advances upon her person, and who was now managing to humiliate and disgrace her in front of all these people. Somehow, she had to stop him.