Gabriel sat at his usual place at the head of the table, sipping coffee. On his right sat Alathea Morwellan, dreamily staring straight ahead, a tea cup in one hand, a piece of nibbled toast growing cold in the other.
She looked radiant. And a trifle flushed. As if…
Stunned, Lucifer looked again at Gabriel. His brother appeared a great deal too well fed for someone just about to tuck in.
The dread conclusion hovering in his mind grew weightier, steadily taking on substance.
Gabriel sensed the draft from the door and looked up. He met Lucifer's astonished gaze with one of transparent unconcern, raising a querying brow as he gestured to Alathea. "Come welcome your sister-in-law-to-be."
Lucifer plastered a smile on his face and stepped across the threshold. "Congratulations." Alathea, he noted, still looked a trifle lightheaded, but then, he knew his brother. "Welcome to the family." Leaning down, he gave her a brotherly buss. He couldn't help muttering as he straightened, "Are you sure you haven't both run mad?"
It was Alathea who frowned him down. "We were never the ones to run mad, as I recall."
Lucifer abandoned that tack, along with any hope of ever understanding. He made all the right noises, said all the right words, while he floundered to make sense of any of it. Alathea and Gabriel? He knew he wasn't the only one who had never thought it. Which just went to show.
"The wedding," Gabriel informed him, "will be as soon as we can arrange it, certainly before we or the Morwellans, or indeed, the rest of the ton, desert the capital."
"Hmm," Lucifer returned.
"You will be there, won't you?"
At Alathea's pointed look, Lucifer summoned a smile. "Of course."
He'd be there to see his brother, the last of his confreres still free, take up the shackles of matrimony. After that, he'd leave.
He was going to disappear.
London-indeed, the ton in its broadest sense-was far too dangerous for the last unmarried member of the Bar Cynster.
The Season ended as it always did, with a rash of tonnish weddings, but this year, amid the many, one stood out, very definitely "the wedding of the Season." The tale of how Lady Alathea Morwellan had turned her back on her own prospects to help her family in the country, only to return eleven years later to tame the most distantly aloof member of the Bar Cynster, fired the romantic imagination of the ton.
St. Georges Church off Hanover Square was filled to bursting on the day Lady Alathea took her vows. The crowd outside the church was just as dense, those not invited to the festivities finding reason to be passing at the time. Everyone craned to catch a glimpse of the bride, regally radiant in ivory and gold, three unusual flowers anchoring her long veil. As she appeared at the top of the church steps on the arm of her proud husband, flanked by a troop of imposing Cynster males and a bevy of beautiful Cynster wives, the crowd let out a communal sigh.
It was just the sort of fairytale romance the ton and all of London delighted in.
At three o'clock, long after the crowds had retreated to savor all they'd seen, to recount the details and embellish their memories, Gabriel was still giving thanks that they'd managed to fight clear of the crowd of well-wishers before the church and repair to Mount Street for the wedding breakfast.
Standing by a window in the drawing room of Morwellan House, he peered through the fine curtains, reconnoitering the street. There was a small crowd waiting to watch them leave, but it was manageable.
"Almost free?"
Gabriel turned as Demon strolled up. His cousin looked disgustingly pleased with himself; Gabriel reasoned that Demon was yet too newly wed for his expression to ease into the deeply content expressions Devil and Vane now habitually wore. Richard was harder to read, but the glow in his eyes when they rested on Catriona was equally revealing. Gabriel knew a vain hope that he would not be quite so easy to read. "Almost." He turned back to the window. "Add the guests inside and it'll still be a goodly crowd, but hopefully we'll make it away in reasonable time."
"Where are you headed? Or is it a secret?"
"Only from Alathea." Briefly, Gabriel outlined his plans to whisk Alathea off on a quick tour of the shires, visiting cities like Liverpool and Sheffield that she'd never visited before but that featured prominently in his business dealings.
"We'll end by going directly to Somersham for this summer celebration our mamas have planned."
"Miss that at the risk of your life-or worse."
Gabriel grinned. "Richard's obviously taking no chances." He nodded to where his cousin's black head was bent over his wife's fiery locks.
"Not on any count," Demon agreed. "He says they'll be on the road north the day after the celebrations. He's not at all sanguine about having Catriona traveling in the condition she'll be in then."
"I'm sure Catriona will have everything precisely planned. Even if she hasn't, she'll just pass a decree and matters will fall out as she wishes-comes of being Lady of the Vale."
"Hmm. Still, I can understand Richard's feelings."