Lost In Love (Road To Forever Series #1)

by Louisa Cornell

  “And you, of all people, should know why I am marrying Marcus.” She hoped her voice did not betray what she did not say. She had no idea why Marcus insisted they marry. Nor was she certain he would ever love her the way she loved him. If Adelaide’s tone betrayed her, Anne gave no indication of it. Her cousin was one of the few people who knew how long Adelaide had pined after the handsome major, worried over the wounded soldier, and ached to comfort the grieving man.

  “And you are happy, Addy? Truly happy?” Dear, sweet, Anne had only ever wished for Adelaide to be happy. It made her the perfect confidant.

  “I am, Anne. So very happy. And I will make Marcus happy too. Wait and see.”

  “Not if we don’t find that blasted shoe,” Anne declared as she linked her arm through Adelaide’s and led her back to the dressmaker’s stool. The revived modiste motioned for the bride to step up, even as she glanced around nervously in search of the “vicious” creature that had made off with the still missing shoe. “Percival, you come out this minute. Mummy is very cross with you.” Anne stamped her foot for emphasis.

  As if summoned by the call for the thieving rabbit, Henrietta Formsby-Smythe came in from the adjoining parlor wringing her hands.

  “This is all your fault, Anne Deleford,” she cried. “My Adelaide’s wedding is ruined and it is all your fault. Whatever possessed you to bring that flea-bitten creature to your cousin’s wedding? Adelaide is to become the Duchess of Selridge in less than an hour and now the entire thing is a disaster.” Her rail-thin little maid followed as Adelaide’s mother paced the already trampled carpet in agitation. “Do you have any idea how much all of this has cost? Your Uncle Williford has spent over a thousand pounds on Adelaide’s trousseau alone. And that does not include the money His Grace and his mother have spent on gifts for my dear girl.” The tirade continued as Anne looked up at Adelaide, who had this moment rolled her eyes for possibly the hundredth time that morning.

  “A thousand pounds?” she asked quietly.

  “At least,” Adelaide and the modiste said together. The exhausted woman went back to her last bit of hemming.

  “And when did you become her dear girl?” It was Anne’s turn to roll her eyes in her aunt’s direction.

  “Around the same time I landed a duke, I suspect.” Before they could share a laugh at the accuracy of that sentiment, a loud scream issued from the dressing room. The scream was followed by one of the six or so upstairs maids, who had been scurrying around the suite, running into the bedroom and out the door into the corridor.

  “Got you, you little devil.” The duchess’s voice. Adelaide cringed. The last person she expected to join in the hunt for Percival was Marcus’s mother. What must she think of her and her odd collection of relations?

  “Are you quite all right, Your Grace?” Anne inquired, peering around Adelaide towards the dressing room.

  “What, Miss Deleford?” The elegantly dressed duchess strolled out into the bedroom with a very docile Percival resting in her arms. “Oh, we’re quite fine, aren’t we, Percy, dear?”

  Right behind her came, Bess, Adelaide’s new maid, with the missing shoe in one hand and a bunch of carrots in the other. The carrots she handed to the duchess, whilst the shoe she brought to the stool and motioned for Adelaide to lift her foot. Wilhemina shrieked sharply and crumpled onto the bed.

  “Oh, get up, Wilhemina,” Mama snapped. As quickly as her hysteria appeared, it vanished. “You’re wrinkling that dress. Thank God, you found him, Emily. This entire episode has frazzled my nerves to the quick. Anne, take the creature from Her Grace this instant.”

  With a last pat on the head, the duchess placed Percival into Anne’s arms and turned to look at Adelaide as she stepped off the dressmaker’s stool. Two of the modiste’s assistants opened a three-fold pier glass in front of her. Bess, in a series of deft, practiced movements, worked carefully to affix the length of the gossamer Honiton lace veil to the crown of roses. When she finished, she stepped back and the entire room grew silent.

  Adelaide scarcely believed her eyes. She stared into the mirrors in wonder. Anne returned from securing Percival in the oversized hatbox that served as his traveling case and came to stand next to her.

  “Addy, you were right. You were absolutely right,” she said, just above a whisper.

  Her mother was crushed Adelaide insisted on a simple gown of muslin and lace. She was adamant the bride of a duke must be married in French silk. Adelaide was just as insistent a duke who had nearly been killed by the French would not appreciate seeing his bride in a gown that ignored his sacrifice. Looking at herself now, Adelaide knew she had made the right choice.

  The simple pale green column dress of the finest embroidered muslin over a chemise of satin, fit her to perfection. It made her look lithe and statuesque. The scooped neckline and the delicate capped sleeves framed her creamy complexion like the subject of a Rembrandt painting. The gown’s overlay of delicate Belgian lace enhanced the embroidery, making its intricacy even more beautiful.

  Her jewelry was simple—her grandmother’s delicate pink pearls and the matching earbobs. Bess, a true godsend, had managed to curl and pin her mass of hair into a soft feminine sweep that seemed to defy gravity itself. The veil fell to the floor like the tail of some mythical bird. As two of the parlor maids bent to spread it out across the carpet, Adelaide looked over her shoulder to see the Selridge family crest embroidered in white at the end of it.

  From the top of her rose-crowned head to the tips of her white satin slippers, Adelaide felt like a fairy princess. She was beautiful. Surely Marcus would see it and fall a little bit in love with her. Only a little bit, and she would do the rest.

  Acquiring a husband at the age of twenty, having been out only one season, and a dismal one at that, was quite the accomplishment, if she did say so herself. Her fortune did not enter into it at all. In the marriage settlements, Marcus had insisted Great Aunt Adelaide’s legacy be put in trust for their children, with Adelaide as the sole trustee. Perhaps in time he’d trust her with the contents of his mysterious letter. Even if it was from his, she-had-better-be-former, mistress. Drat. She wasn’t going to think about that today.

  Landing a duke had, no doubt, already made her the talk of the ton. The announcement of today’s wedding appeared in every London paper within twenty-four hours of Abercrombie’s arrival in Town. Marcus’s poor man of business had worn himself to a frazzle doing the duke’s bidding, the duchess’s bidding, and Adelaide’s mother’s bidding.

  None of it mattered to her. She stood in her wedding finery, surrounded by her family and a host of admiring servants. What she hoped to gain from this day was one thing and one thing alone, the chance to make Marcus love her. Nothing else mattered.

  “My dear girl,” Emily said. Her breathless tone shimmered with tears. “I have never seen a more beautiful bride. My son is the most fortunate of men. Henrietta, she is beyond lovely. I am so glad you brought her here. So very glad. Oh dear.”

  The moment she fluttered her hands in search of a handkerchief, every servant produced one from their pocket or up their sleeve. She took two and handed one to Adelaide’s mother. The two mothers stood arm in arm and gazed at Adelaide in contented silence.

  “Do you think they planned this all along?” Anne asked as she picked up one nosegay of lavender and Queen Anne’s lace and handed Wilhemina another.

  “I would not put anything past Aunt Henrietta,” Wilhemina said. “She is right, Addy. You are lovely. Far prettier than Clementine looked on her wedding day.”

  Anne and Adelaide stared at their cousin in disbelief.

  “For goodness sake, don’t tell her I said so.” Wilhemina gifted them with one of her rare genuine smiles which made them all giggle. “Today, dear Anne, I daresay, she is prettier even than you.”

  “Oh ho, cousin, you are bold,” Anne teased. “You are completely correct, though—which is as it should be. The bride outshines us all, and all is right with the world. Addy, if he d
oes not fall at your feet, he is mad.”

  “Both of you stop it, or I shall be going to the church with red eyes and a swollen nose. This illusion of beauty is only good for an hour or two, I am certain. Let’s not waste it.” Whilst Wilhemina, with her plump form, frizzy brown hair, and usually scowling, pasty face would never be a beauty, her compliments were sincere and meant a great deal to Adelaide.

  Anne, on the other hand, was one of those women who would be elegant and lovely when she was ninety. Her tall, willowy figure crowned by yellow golden hair and a complexion like porcelain, was made all the more lovely by her kind and generous heart. Her crystal blue eyes told anyone who looked into them, they were accepted and understood.

  “Your Papa is waiting downstairs, dearest,” her mother said gently. “It is time to go.”

  Adelaide looked one final time in the mirrors and took a deep breath. When she turned to go to the door, the maids and modiste smiled as they cleared a path for her.

  “Merci, madame.” She stopped before the petite French ex-patriot who had worked so diligently to fashion the gown exactly as Adelaide asked. “Merci beaucoup. C’est magnifique y tres anglais.”

  “Oui, madame,” the woman curtsied deeply. “Je suis d’accord. Vous êtes magnifique.”

  “That was very well done,” Emily said softly as she came to stand at Adelaide’s side. “You are going to make my son a marvelous duchess.”

  “I’ll settle for making him a wonderful wife.” One from whom he did not keep secrets. Like letters on a personal matter.

  Chapter Twelve

  Whilst Winfield Abbey had a lovely little private chapel on its grounds, most Selridge weddings were conducted in the nearby village of Birstal. St. John’s was the parish for the estate and the Dukes of Selridge had provided the living there for over one hundred years. The church was even older, as evidenced by the Norman architecture and the ancient gravestones within the walled cemetery.

  When the family was in residence at the Abbey, it was an event for the village and the parish at large. It usually did not happen until summer and thus, was a special boon for the local merchants any other time of the year. The added activity of an aristocratic wedding and a hoard of visitors up from London, was nothing short of Christmas and Eastertide, all rolled into one.

  It was the last week of April. Hints of spring could be felt and seen every day now. The crowd of villagers and estate tenants gathered at the gates of St. John’s, discussed the particularly good omen of the skies overhead. They were an endless shade of blue. The brisk, cool air was the only reminder the season had not quite changed. It did nothing to daunt the stout Yorkshire men and women, dressed in their Sunday clothes to honor their duke and his duchess-to-be.

  The duchess had suggested open carriages for their trip to the church. Adelaide was glad of it when she saw the number of people lining the cobblestone lanes to St. John’s. Men in their best white shirts and woolen jackets and caps, stood with red-cheeked women in carefully kept best dresses and bonnets. She found the children especially appealing—with their newly scrubbed faces and hands and neatly patched ensembles handed down from sibling to sibling.

  The little girls stared at her in starry-eyed wonder. She knew at once exactly how they felt. How many ton marriages, those of cousins and the older brothers and sisters of friends, had she attended with just such an expression on her face? She’d never dreamt one day the beautiful bride who arrived at the church would be her. How much more fantastical was it, that inside this very church, Marcus waited to make her his wife.

  The first carriage carried Emily, Duchess of Selridge, and her late son’s former valet, Jeffries. If the crowd that parted for them to pull up to the church, saw anything amiss in the nearly dowager duchess being accompanied by a former servant, they did not show it. The next carriage was occupied by Anne, Wilhemina, and Adelaide’s maid, Bess. Adelaide and her parents rode in the last carriage, festooned with white ribbons and garlands of wildflowers. There were rousing cheers as each of the wedding party was handed down and made their way up the cobblestone churchyard path. The path wound through a very neatly kept cemetery, sheltered by the towering twists and turns of its ancient oaks.

  The closer they drew to the thick wooden doors, the more an icy stillness crept over her. A year or more of girlish daydreams and heartfelt hopes, grew daunting and terribly real in the moment they were about to be fulfilled. Great Aunt Adelaide had been fond of saying, “Be careful what you wish for, gel.” Another equally opinionated woman, very much alive at this point, was often heard to say “When God wants to punish you, he gives you what you want.”

  Who was she to believe? Neither sentiment sounded encouraging. Aunt Adelaide had never married and had lived happily and proudly in her singularity. The other sage, Lady Gertrude Haverly, had buried four husbands. She was said to be in search of number five, in spite of having more than seventy years in her dish. Aunt Adelaide never smiled, not in all the years Adelaide had known her. Lady Gertrude never stopped smiling. There was an answer in there somewhere.

  “Addy, girl, have I told you how lovely you look?” Her father’s question interrupted her search for that answer. They were standing in the church vestibule. She did not remember the walk inside. Her cousins and Bess surrounded her. They adjusted her gown and the train of her veil for the walk down the aisle. With a last flurry of kisses, they slipped into the sanctuary.

  “You have told me, Papa,” she assured him. She squeezed his arm before she put hers through it. “I have no qualms about you saying it again, if you like. You may say it as often as you wish.” How dear his face appeared as she looked into it and saw the pride and love there.

  It occurred to her how quickly relationships with one’s family could change. Since their arrival, the past two days, her brothers treated her far differently than they had even a month ago. It seemed a sister, who was also a duchess, could demand at least a modicum of respect, even from those four scoundrels. Her mother must have threatened them with severe bodily harm. Adelaide gave them a week to revert back to form.

  With her father, it was different. She knew she was his favorite, had been his favorite from the moment of her birth. He was her knight in shining armor, as soon she was old enough to know what one was. He would always be her beloved Papa. Yet, after today, the most important man in her life would be her husband.

  It made her a bit sad, until she looked once more into her father’s face. He knew. There was a melancholy there, but also a quiet happiness, a certainty. She might have doubts about a marriage made under these circumstances, but he did not. Her answer was in her father’s serenity. Williford Formsby-Smythe loved one of the most “difficult” women in the ton. His marriage, however, was envied by more than would ever admit it.

  “If you have any doubts, pet, now is the time.” He’d read her mind. He usually could. He spoke softly into her ear as they stood arm in arm before the sanctuary doors. “As much as I think Selridge is the man for you, if you do not want him, we will hop back in the carriage and point the horses south.”

  “Williford. You will do no such thing. Think of the scandal.” Her mother, as usual was eavesdropping. She tortured the monstrous lace handkerchief in her hands. “William, bar those doors at once. Your sister is going down that aisle if I have to drag her. Emily, do something. Think of the scandal.”

  The eldest of Adelaide’s four brothers had awaited their arrival in the vestibule, whilst the “youngsters” found their seats for the “show.” He grinned at his sister and winked. She smiled and shook her head.

  “A bit late for that, Henrietta,” the duchess said. “We are holding the wedding of one duke six months into mourning his predecessor. I was escorted into the church by a former valet. The wedding announcement appeared in the papers less than two weeks before the wedding, and the bride’s only sister was once the groom’s fiancée. Did I miss anything, Jeffries, dear?”

  “No, Your Grace, not that I am aware of at this point.”
Jeffries’s expression, as usual, betrayed nothing of his feelings on the matter.

  “Jeffries, I am so pleased you are here,” Adelaide said. She ignored her mother’s frantic mutterings with her brother. “Julius told me what a godsend you were during Marcus’s, I mean His Grace’s, convalescence.”

  “How very kind of you, Miss Formsby-Smythe.” He inclined his head. “Might I be so bold as to say you are a vision. His Grace is the luckiest of men.”

  “Isn’t he, Jeffries?” Emily agreed. “I, too, am so pleased you are here with me today. I shall lean on you quite heavily, I fear.”

  “It is my honor, Your Grace. Always.”

  Will leaned up from his position against a vestibule column and snorted in disgust.

  “Well, Adder-tongue, are you going to put the poor bugger standing at the altar out of his misery, or are you going to pull a Clementine and flee? Ouch, Mother. Was that completely necessary?”

  Adelaide laughed out loud as her brother ducked away, rubbing his ear. Her doubts and fears did not disappear. Rather, they took a step into the back of her mind. In their place, Marcus and all her tomorrows stood. All the lessons of her brief life, all she had done, had led her to this moment. The man she loved, for she knew that much for sure, awaited her. He needed her. The rest would take care of itself. Once again, she shook the hand of doubt off her shoulder.

  “I am ready, Papa.” Her voice was steady, her shoulders squared, and her smile genuinely bright. “Shall we go and make me a duchess?”

  The church of St. John’s encompassed a rather substantial main sanctuary. As with most buildings of the Norman period, the ceilings were vaulted high and the walls constructed of massive stone. The stained-glass windows were works of art, often twenty years in the making. Every inch of such a monument was designed to make a man feel insignificant and humble.