He kept walking. Down the aisle, each step more confident, more sure.
“Don’t do it,” he said, stepping out of the aisle and into the apse. “Don’t marry him.”
“Gregory,” she whispered. “Why are you doing this?”
“I love you,” he said, because it was the only thing to say. It was the only thing that mattered.
Her eyes glistened, and he could see her breath catch in her throat. She looked up at the man she was trying to marry. His brows rose as he gave her a tiny, one-shouldered shrug, as if to say, It is your choice.
Gregory sank to one knee. “Marry me,” he said, his very soul in his words. “Marry me.”
He stopped breathing. The entire church stopped breathing.
She brought her eyes to his. They were huge and clear and everything he’d ever thought was good and kind and true.
“Marry me,” he whispered, one last time.
Her lips were trembling, but her voice was clear when she said—
One
In which Our Hero falls in love.
Two months earlier
Unlike most men of his acquaintance, Gregory Bridgerton believed in true love.
He’d have to have been a fool not to.
Consider the following:
His eldest brother, Anthony.
His eldest sister, Daphne.
His other brothers, Benedict and Colin, not to mention his sisters, Eloise, Francesca, and (galling but true) Hyacinth, all of whom—all of whom—were quite happily besotted with their spouses.
For most men, such a state of affairs would produce nothing quite so much as bile, but for Gregory, who had been born with an uncommonly cheerful, if occasionally (according to his younger sister) annoying, spirit, it simply meant that he had no choice but to believe the obvious:
Love existed.
It was not a wispy figment of the imagination, designed to keep the poets from complete starvation. It might not be something that one could see or smell or touch, but it was out there, and it was only a matter of time before he, too, found the woman of his dreams and settled down to be fruitful, multiply, and take on such baffling hobbies as papier-mâché and the collection of nutmeg graters.
Although, if one wanted to put a fine point on it, which did seem rather precise for such an abstract sort of concept, his dreams didn’t exactly include a woman. Well, not one with any specific and identifiable attributes. He didn’t know anything about this woman of his, the one who was supposed to transform his life completely, turning him into a happy pillar of boredom and respectability. He didn’t know if she would be short or tall, dark or fair. He’d like to think she would be intelligent and in possession of a fine sense of humor, but beyond that, how was he to know? She could be shy or out-spoken. She might like to sing. Or maybe not. Maybe she was a horsewoman, with a ruddy complexion born of too much time out of doors.
He didn’t know. When it came to this woman, this impossible, wonderful, and currently nonexistent woman, all he really knew was that when he found her…
He’d know.
He didn’t know how he’d know; he just knew that he would. Something this momentous, this earth-shattering and life-altering…well, really, it wasn’t going to whisper its way into existence. It would come full and forceful, like the proverbial ton of bricks. The only question was when.
And in the meantime, he saw no reason not to have a fine time while he anticipated her arrival. One didn’t need to behave like a monk while waiting for one’s true love, after all.
Gregory was, by all accounts, a fairly typical man about London, with a comfortable—although by no means extravagant—allowance, plenty of friends, and a level enough head to know when to quit a gaming table. He was considered a decent enough catch on the Marriage Mart, if not precisely the top selection (fourth sons never did command a great deal of attention), and he was always in demand when the society matrons needed an eligible man to even up the numbers at dinner parties.
Which did make his aforementioned allowance stretch a bit further—always a benefit.
Perhaps he ought to have had a bit more purpose in his life. Some sort of direction, or even just a meaningful task to complete. But that could wait, couldn’t it? Soon, he was sure, everything would come clear. He would know just what it was he wished to do, and whom he wished to do it with, and in the meantime, he’d—