Barely a Bride (Free Fellows League 1)

“Lady Alyssa knows I’m leaving.”

“Her knowing won’t make any difference. You’re going to leave her—with or without a child—and when you do, Alyssa will never be the same.”

“I think you underestimate your daughter, Lady Tressingham.” Griff took a deep breath. “Lady Alyssa is made of sterner stuff. You needn’t worry that she will pine away with love for me. Your daughter and I understand one another.”

“You understand. Alyssa is an innocent.”

“She may be an innocent, but she is a woman fully grown, and she knows exactly what she wants out of life.”

“And that is?”

“A home of her own.” Far away from you, Griff added silently. “I can give her that.”

Lady Tressingham looked Griff in the eye. “You offered for her, and my husband accepted that offer against my better judgment. I can’t change that. But, you should understand, Lord Abernathy, that I don’t—”

“Want me for your daughter?” Griff snorted once again. “Believe me, madam, I would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to understand that. And I am none of those things. You don’t like me? Fine. You aren’t required to. But you will have to endure my presence for the next week, so I suggest you make the best of it for Lady Alyssa’s sake. If you’ll agree to be civil to me when Alyssa is present, I’ll do my best to keep my opinions and comments to myself, and I’ll do everything in my power not only to please Alyssa but to stay out of your way. Agreed?”

Lady Tressingham hesitated.

“You won’t get a better offer from me,” he warned.

“Agreed,” she reluctantly replied.

Griff and Lady Tressingham had reached an understanding by the time Alyssa joined them downstairs. They were polite and civil to one another when they were forced to engage in conversation, but they kept the conversation to a minimum.

Unfortunately, their new agreement did not include Alyssa, and Lady Tressingham decided her daughter was fair game.

“This is madness, Alyssa,” her mother told her as soon as they were seated comfortably in the carriage. “You cannot accomplish so large a task in so short an amount of time.”

“Watch me.”

“If you attempt to pull off a society wedding and fail, you’ll make us the laughingstock of the ton.”

“I have no intention of making you, me, or Lord Abernathy and his family the laughingstocks of the ton,” Alyssa said calmly. “Because I don’t intend to fail. I will use every resource at my disposal in order to accomplish my task. Invitations go out tomorrow afternoon by special post. Two hundred select members of the ton will be invited to attend the wedding of the season.” She leveled her gaze at her mother. “You can help, or you can stand aside and watch.”

Lady Tressingham heaved a theatrical sigh. “You’re my daughter, and I’ll not let it be said that your father and I failed to give you a proper society wedding…”

* * *

“I’m impressed,” Griff said softly, stealing up behind Alyssa in the receiving line at Lady Harralson’s and leaning close.

It had been nearly an hour since they arrived, and Griff had had the devil’s own time keeping track of her in the crowd.

Lady Tressingham had stepped down from the carriage, grabbed her daughter by the hand, and whisked Alyssa out of the carriage and into the crush of arrivals. Griff, waylaid by several acquaintances, barely managed to catch up.

“With what?” Alyssa turned slightly and looked up at the underside of his jaw. She leaned back against his shirtfront, enjoying the novelty of being surrounded by his strength and his warmth.

“With you,” he whispered. “And the way you handled your mother.”

She shivered as his warm breath tickled her ear.

“Cold?” he asked, placing his hands on the flesh of her upper arms left exposed by her evening gloves and her sleeveless gown.

She shook her head. It was impossible to be cold, surrounded as she was by so much heat, but to her delight, Griff kept his hands where they were, increasing the soothing friction. “The trick to handling my mother is to take charge of the situation before she does,” she told him. “And you were doing an excellent job of it when I joined the two of you downstairs.”

“You heard that?” He felt the color rise in his neck, felt the heat of it in the tips of his ears.

“Not all of it,” Alyssa said. “But enough to know that the two of you have reached an understanding.” She nodded toward a group of chattering women.