Hardly a Husband (Free Fellows League 3)

"It's the least I can do to save the man I love." She smiled at him. "I love you, Jays, and I'd be honored to marry you and become your wife and lover and marchioness."

"Thank God," Jarrod breathed, slipping the ring onto the third finger of her left hand. "I've got a special license. I can send for a vicar right now and we can have a wedding right here and honeymoon at Shepherdston Hall until I have to return, but I thought you might prefer to be married in your father's church in Helford Green tomorrow…"

"I would," she admitted. "But I hate the thought of Reverend Tinsley marrying us and he's the rector now."

"He won't be by the time we reach Helford Green," Jarrod said. "The archbishop wouldn't sell me the benefice, but we negotiated the removal of Reverend Tinsley in ex-change for my promise not to withdraw the funds for a new wing of the cathedral in Bath. We decided Reverend Ingram from the village of Ashford would do nicely."

"Oh, yes!" Sarah flung her arms around his neck and covered his face with kisses.

"You won't mind consummating our vows before we take them?" he asked between kisses.

"Of course not," she told him. "I've seen the papers, Jays. I'm already ruined. I might as well enjoy it."

"Good," he announced, "because I've another present for you and I would feel very foolish if you'd decided differently." He untied the cords of his traveling cape and let it fall to the floor, revealing himself to her in all his naked glory — except for his boots. "You came to me in your nightclothes and asked me to be your lover," he reminded her, quickly toeing off his boots and kicking them aside. "I thought it only fitting that I do likewise."

"Oh?" She arched her eyebrow in an imitation of him.

"I've come to give you lessons, Miss Eckersley." He closed the space between them.

"In seduction?" she asked, breathlessly pulling his face down to hers.

"No," he whispered. "In making love."

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Epilogue

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Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing.

— Proverbs 18:22

They were married by special license in the church at Helford Green by the Reverend Ingram two days later, having spent the first night of their honeymoon in London in Jarrod's room at Ibbetson's Hotel.

Sarah emerged from Ibbetson's on the morning of her wedding day, well and truly practiced in the art of making love courtesy of her teacher, Jarrod, Lord Shepherdston.

What had seemed impossible just days earlier, had come to pass.

Sarah Eckersley, the rector's daughter from Helford Green, had become Lord Shepherdston's mistress — if only for the one night before she became his wife. And Sarah loved every moment of her educational, liberating, and wildly passionate fall from grace.

She awoke in Jarrod's arms to find that Henderson had delivered Jarrod's idea of breakfast — coffee and French pastries from Gunter's on Berkeley Square.

They made the journey to Helford Green in record time and resumed their honeymoon at Shepherdston Hall shortly after the wedding.

Other gifts awaited her at Shepherdston Hall. For Jarrod had included the return of her family's furnishings from the rectory in his negotiations with the archbishop over the removal of Reverend Tinsley. And Pomfrey, the butler at Shepherdston Hall, had made a place for all of them in her new home.

Sarah was welcomed home to Shepherdston Hall and greeted as if she had always belonged there.

But their idyllic honeymoon there was necessarily brief.

Although he couldn't tell her everything, Jarrod told her as much as he could. He explained that the Free Fellows League had grown from a secret childhood club to an indispensable secret weapon in the fight against Bonaparte. He explained that while he wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of his life making love to her at Shepherdston Hall, there were lives at stake and he was needed in London. There was a leak of information in the War Office and he was determined to stop it.

The fact that the Duke of Sussex and the Marchioness St. Germaine had disappeared, seemingly without a trace, was also of great concern as well as the news of the assassination plot against Wellington and a list of other prominent leaders. Jarrod was needed to relay the news to Wellington and the gentlemen at Whitehall.

So long as England was at war, there was vital work to be done and, as leader of the Free Fellows League, Jarrod had to return to it.