“Osgood has excellent taste,” Priscilla said. “And he can indulge his taste because Marchmont never cares what anything costs and refuses to be bothered with choosing gifts. He refuses to be bothered with anything that looks like a decision or a responsibility. All the world is agog that he chose your ring himself.”
Zoe had simply assumed he’d chosen it. She hadn’t realized how significant this was. Oh, this made it worse. He was making her feel special. She’d never be able to steel her heart against him, and he’d break it.
“There’s no making him out, to be sure,” said Priscilla, “but I’m very glad for you, indeed.”
She left minutes later.
When the door had closed and her sister’s footsteps had faded away, Zoe looked down at the diamond on her finger, the immense center stone surrounded by smaller ones, like a queen surrounded by her attendants.
She told herself not to be an idiot. She told herself not to be a sentimental fool. But how could she help it? He’d taken care about her ring, and he’d truly wanted her to like it—and that was too sweet of him, more sweetness than she could bear.
Her chest heaved and a sob escaped her. Then another. And another.
She put her face in her hands and wept.
The night before the wedding, Zoe held a little party in her bedroom.
The guests were her sisters.
“A party in your bedroom?” had been the first reaction. “Whoever heard of such a thing?”
She had waved her great diamond ring in their faces, and the fussing subsided.
They had all married well. They all owned heaps of fine jewelry. Zoe’s engagement ring, however, had a magical effect upon all of her sisters, not only Priscilla, the least insane of them all.
Zoe had ordered little sandwiches and delicate pastries and tea and lemonade and champagne.
When they’d supped and drunk and gossiped and offered the usual marital advice, she had Jarvis bring out the treasures Karim had showered upon his second so-called wife and favorite toy.
Rubies and garnets, sapphires and emeralds, diamonds and pearls and topaz of every color. Necklaces and bracelets and rings.
She gave them all away to her sisters, all but a few pieces she’d reserved for Jarvis.
They were shocked into silence.
Then, finally, Priscilla spoke up. “You said you’d share, I remember, Zoe, but all of it? Are you quite, quite sure?”
“That was my old life,” Zoe said. “I won’t take it with me into my new life.”
In the end, in spite of what Zoe’s sisters had claimed about hole-in-corner affairs, the wedding turned out to be large and complicated.
Once they’d invited all of Zoe’s siblings and their spouses, they’d had to invite Marchmont’s aunts and uncles and cousins. And then, since Adderwood must stand at his side, the other fellows must be asked, too. There were royals, too, who must come. Even leaving out the respective nieces and nephews, the large drawing room of Lexham House became suffocatingly crowded.
Or so it seemed to Marchmont.
At last the clergyman appeared, and Zoe entered the room soon thereafter, wearing a shimmering silvery confection that made Adderwood say in an undertone, “Oh, this is deuced unfair. Some fellows get all the luck. She looks like an angel.”
Zoe Octavia was not an angel, not by a long stretch, but at this moment she looked purely innocent. At this moment it seemed to Marchmont that she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. As she joined him before the clergyman, he felt a surge of pride, which was not at all surprising, and a quick, deep stab to the heart, which was.
The ceremony began. No one speaking up when the time came to declare “any just cause, why they may not be lawfully joined together,” and neither of them announcing any impediments, it continued to the end, through each promise and “I will,” and through her father’s giving her to be married, his eyes sparkling with unshed tears, while his wife sobbed openly. On it went through Marchmont’s placing the wedding ring on Zoe’s finger and wedding her and worshipping her with his body—the easiest of promises to make—and on through psalms and the prayer for fruitfulness and more prayers and advice from St. Paul.
It seemed to him that he’d spent a lifetime marrying Zoe, but at last the Solemnization of Matrimony came to an end.
At last she was the Duchess of Marchmont—his Duchess of Marchmont. His wife.
He had a wife.
He was responsible for her. He’d sworn it before heaven and before witnesses.
…to love her, comfort her, honor and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all other…
Forsaking all other.
It dawned on him, then, what he’d done.
He’d given his word.
There was no turning back, no undoing.
His life was going to change, like it or not.
Thirteen
Some hours later
Zoe remembered the wedding ceremony vividly. Events thereafter were not so clear. A great many guests. Speeches and introductions. Food and more talk. A sea of people to wade through.
She hadn’t slept soundly the night before, and by the time it was all over, and she and he left Lexham House, weariness overcame her. She fell asleep in the carriage during the short drive to Marchmont House and didn’t wake up until the vehicle stopped. She’d started out on the seat opposite Marchmont, but when she woke she was sharing his side of the carriage. He had his arm around her.
When she looked up at him, he laughed. “Am I that boring?”
“Getting married is hard work,” she said.
“Your labors aren’t quite done,” he said. “Now you’ve got to meet the servants. Brace yourself. The good news is, it will soon be over.”
He was right. It didn’t take long.
They found all the staff awaiting them in the gleaming entrance hall. Harrison made a formal welcoming speech. The duke introduced his secretary, Osgood, and Harrison introduced the upper servants. And that was all.
The formalities completed, the duke took Zoe by the hand and whisked her up the carpeted stairs.
“That’s the lot,” he said. He looked down over the iron railing, where below, the numbers of servants dwindled. They marched out of the entrance hall, a small army in strict order of rank. “I didn’t realize there were so many. I don’t recall ever seeing them before in that way, all at once and in one place.”
There were a great many, yet their numbers didn’t daunt Zoe. In Cairo she’d lived among hordes of slaves and servants, and before long she knew each and every one.
This day she studied the faces of Marchmont’s staff, because she meant to know all of them, too. She’d noticed that the footman who’d attended her the first time she’d been here was absent.
Not surprising. In Yusri Pasha’s palace, if the chief eunuch was reprimanded or embarrassed, he usually executed any witnesses to his discomfiture.
“It was gently hinted to me by certain of the ladies that my new bride might require time to rest and otherwise prepare herself for the wedding night,” Marchmont said.
“I shall need time to change my clothes, yes,” said Zoe. “I’m glad I chose to be married in this gown. It’s very beautiful. But to get it off will be the most tedious process. A thousand tapes to tie and pins to take out and buttons and hooks, and then all the things underneath.”
“Well, I would be happy to help, of course,” he said.
She could picture him undoing her, bit by bit, taking off her clothes, layer by layer, and she felt as though she walked next to a moving fire, so heated she became.
She looked up and found him looking down at her. Heat flickered in his green eyes.
“I should look forward to that, in fact,” he said. “But perhaps tonight is not the best time for complicated ceremonies.”
It most certainly wasn’t. With a few words and a look he’d made her unbearably impatient for this night’s bedding. She was more impatient than most new brides sinc
e she had an excellent idea of what it would be like. Tonight it would be far wiser to let Jarvis get her out of the wedding dress and into something much flimsier. The less time Marchmont spent undressing his new bride, the more time he could spend making love to her.
“Yes, let us have complicated ceremonies another time,” she said.
They had reached the first floor. He led her down one side of the gallery landing to a corner where a pair of mahogany doors met.
“This will take you to the duchess’s apartments,” he said as he opened one of the doors. “You’ll find a connecting door between our bedrooms. I thought we might sup quietly together this night, in the great bedroom, rather than dine in state.”
She squeezed the hand clasping hers. “Thank you,” she said. “I’d like quiet. I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like.”
“Not too quiet,” he said.
She looked up at him from under her lashes. “Not too quiet,” she said. “As you wish. I vaguely recollect promising to obey.”
“I supposed it would be the one item about which you’d have only the dimmest recollection.” He lifted her hand to his lips and lightly kissed her knuckles. “I shall look forward to seeing you again in a little while, Your Grace.”
Your Grace.