Never a Gentleman (7 page)

Diccan laughed, shaking his head. “A sad want of consequence for a duke. No wonder my father thinks he should have been the
heir instead. He says hello, by the way.”

Kate swung around, stunned. “Your father? He’s here?”

“Oh, yes. Simply seething with righteous indignation.
Delighted to his toes that I have once again proven his low opinion of me.”

“He’s a sapskull. And he never sent me greetings. He loathes me even more than he does you.”

Diccan lifted her hand and kissed it. “We are a pair of reprobates, aren’t we?”

Taking a long moment to study Diccan’s saturnine features, Kate found herself furious for him. “It’s not fair,” she said.
“To either of you.”

“Ah, sweetheart, you know better than that,” he said, continuing down the street.

“Yes, I do,” she said, matching his easy stride. “Cousin Charles has agreed to marry you?”

“He will officiate at our service himself, this afternoon at four.”

She nodded. “I’ll arrange a little wedding breakfast.” She paused, her focus on the half-timbered houses they passed. “Diccan.
About Grace…”

Diccan looked over. “She hasn’t bolted, has she?”

“Of course not. If there is one thing Grace has had beaten into her over the years, it is her duty. She certainly wouldn’t
turn her back on it now. Which brings me to my threat.”

Diccan’s smile was unbearably sweet. “I’m afraid you’ll have to stand in line for that, old dear.”

She stopped, bringing her much taller cousin to a halt at the edge of the River Stour. “Grace gives everyone the impression
that she’s made of iron,” Kate said. “She’s always the first one to help. The person everyone goes to. But I have a feeling
Grace is more fragile than we know. She hasn’t even had the time to grieve for her father. I know you better than anyone,
Cuz, and I know that as much as you would protest to hear it, you are as honorable as she.”
She looked up at him, her favorite person in the world, and she did something inconceivable. She begged. “Promise me you won’t
hurt her.”

Diccan lifted a lazy eyebrow. “You make me sound like a savage.”

Kate snorted. “All men are savages, Diccan. You’re just more elegant than most. Promise me.”

For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t answer.

He looked away to where swans floated by on the narrow ribbon of water. “I can’t.”

Kate would have railed at him, if she just hadn’t seen his eyes. Fathomless, icy gray, rimmed in blue, usually as opaque as
mirrors. Suddenly, here on a street in Canterbury, she could see uncertainty, dismay, pain. She saw that her cousin, the man
the
ton
called the Perfection, was vulnerable as well.

“Can you at least tell me you’ll try?” she asked softly.

He sighed and shifted his shoulders, as if the weight of his promise were almost too heavy. “Yes, Katie. I promise I’ll try.”

Kate lifted up on her toes to kiss his taut cheek. “Then I am satisfied. Just remember. I’m always there for you both.”

Giving her hand another kiss, he turned them back toward the inn. “Well, that should keep you busy for the next fifty years
or so.”

Grace was married with a full military honor guard in Canterbury Cathedral. And not in a side chapel, where she could have
at least felt inconspicuous. No. The Most Reverend Charles Manners-Sutton, Archbishop of Canterbury,
insisted that his cousin Diccan be married right at the high altar, as if it would help impress on him the gravity of the
moment.

And then, as if Grace weren’t uncomfortable enough, Diccan’s father joined them at the altar. A tall, thin, balding man, he
would have disappeared into his rich ecclesiastical robes except for the icy disdain in his eyes—the same glacial gray eyes
his son possessed, but infinitely more inhospitable. He stood just behind the archbishop and glared without once blinking.

Diccan seemed to find the whole thing entertaining, his face set in a knowing half-smile. Grace found it overwhelming. The
great church was frigid, the stone beneath her slippers unyielding. Clouds had rolled in to obscure the glorious light from
the Trinity Chapel windows above the high altar. Candles flickered, but the stone walls rose dim and distant, the archbishop’s
plummy tones rising into their shadowy recesses like incense.

Even the attendees conspired to unnerve Grace. Diccan sported his customary faultless black and white, with a silver-threaded
ivory vest. Pristine to a tee, he had tied his cravat in a perfect
trone d’amour
and secured it with a ruby of obscene size that matched the one that gleamed in his ring.

Bewigged and mitered, the two bishops were arrayed in vestments that shimmered, and Kate wore her best peacock lutestring
and Oldenburg bonnet. A contingent of Grace’s Grenadiers had gathered in the choir, their uniforms a bouquet of color, each
restless shift setting up a clattering of swords and spurs that almost drowned out the archbishop’s words.

And Grace? Given only six hours to prepare, and with no modiste available who carried ready-made dresses for
an Amazon, Grace stood up in her gray serge traveling dress and bonnet, a moth among the butterflies.

Indeed, they had all come in their uniforms, Grace thought, so they could be easily identified. Her soldiers, her dilettante
husband, her notorious friend. The stately bishops and the unwanted bride.

“Repeat after me,” the archbishop intoned. “I, Richard William Price Manners Hilliard…”

Grace was sure she should be paying attention. But she couldn’t seem to focus on anything but Diccan’s cool amusement as he
repeated the words that would bind them, as if this were some parlor game. She couldn’t drag her eyes away from the unearthly
pale gray of his eyes, or feel anything but the warm strength of his hand. She couldn’t think of anything but the fact that
here on one of the highest, holiest altars in Great Britain, she was making a pact with the devil. By taking these vows, she
was committing herself to a life of grief and loneliness and regret.

At least, she thought, she would reap one benefit. Soon Diccan’s elegant hands would be on her again. Soon she would be initiated
into the mysteries of lovemaking by the greatest master of the age. For the first time in her life, she wouldn’t be outside
looking in, a scrubby brat with her hands on a high fence. She would be wrapped in the amazing sensations only hinted at that
morning.

Diccan would take her, and her life would be different. Suddenly she couldn’t quite concentrate on anything else.

“Miss Fairchild,” the archbishop said in patient tones.

Trying hard to hide the chills that chased through her, Grace snapped to attention. She looked up to see an expression on
the archbishop’s face that let her know he was repeating himself.

“I, Grace Georgianna Fairchild,” she echoed, her voice dissolving into a tiny white cloud of chilled air, her hand caught
in Diccan’s surprisingly gentle grip, “take you, Richard William Price Manners Hilliard…”

The next thing she knew, the archbishop was blessing her ring. She had no idea how Diccan had found it, a plain gold band
to match his plain gray wife. The archbishop handed Diccan the ring. Diccan deliberately stripped off his gloves and handed
them off before accepting it.

When he once again took hold of Grace’s hand, she flinched. She couldn’t help it. She thought his fingers must hold lightning.
She was shocked to the soles of her feet, the hot energy spearing right into her belly. He slid the plain gold band onto her
ring finger, and it felt as if he were pouring warmth into her, life, energy. It felt as if the odd magnetism between them
had solidified into physical light.

“A wife wouldn’t shy at her husband’s touch,” he murmured, his eyes dark.

“A husband wouldn’t speak so to his wife before a priest,” she retorted just as quietly.

Suddenly, he went still. Grace looked up to see the words had suddenly registered.
Husband
.

Wife
.

Diccan Hilliard was one of the most elegant gentlemen of his age. No one had perfected ennui as well as he. Yet just for a
moment, Grace saw the truth register on his face. She saw horror flash in his gray eyes. She saw him try to hide it. She felt
it strike her anyway, harder than the lightning from his fingers, colder than the glare from his father. More fatal than a
wound from a rusty blade.

Too quickly for anyone else to note his lapse, he regained his patented smile. But not quickly enough for
Grace. If he hadn’t had such a firm grip on her, she would have disgraced herself by bolting right down the cathedral aisle.
For in that fleeting moment of honesty, she had seen her future.

“For as much as Diccan and Grace have consented together in holy wedlock,” the archbishop intoned, his hand over their joined
ones.

No
! Grace thought wildly.
He’ll destroy me.

“… I pronounce that they be man and wife together, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.”

Too late. She saw it in Diccan’s eyes. She heard in her own heartbeat, surely the only sound in the stark silence of the cathedral.

“Amen.”

Grace wanted to pull away. She wanted to close her eyes, as if it would help her escape the inescapable. She wanted anything
but the bleak acknowledgment in her new husband’s eyes.

And then from behind her came Harry’s voice. “Well, kiss her, you clunch!”

And Diccan, with a wry smile for his audience, bent to kiss her. She knew he hated it. How could he not? But how could he
know that it was her first kiss? And oh, it was a kiss a maiden could dream of, gentle and slow and sweet. It was the kiss
that sealed Grace’s fate, for the warmth of it settled too deeply into her heart for her to ever let it go.

“Well, wife,” Diccan whispered against her ear, “shall we greet our loyal supporters?”

She could do naught but nod, so he bowed to the bishops and turned her down the aisle.

“No,” she suddenly said, seeing all the steps she would
have to take. They had come in by the side door. Now Diccan pointed her toward the massive doors that had been opened at the
far end of the great nave, spilling light along the long, dark aisle. Grace realized she would have to make a painful, lurching
progress all the way to the door. “Can’t we go back out the side?”

Diccan held more tightly onto her hand. “And disappoint your Grenadiers? I believe they’re waiting to honor you.”

She looked over to see that the choir was empty. Only Kate and a man Grace suspected to be Diccan’s valet occupied the chairs
in the presbytery. She wished with all her heart that she could have had all her friends here to support her, Olivia and Lady
Bea and Breege and Sean Harper. But Olivia was in Sussex, and Lady Bea was waiting at Kate’s home. Even Breege and Sean weren’t
there, because she had sent them on to Longbridge to prepare it for her.

She wouldn’t need it done now, of course. Her new husband would probably tell her that she wouldn’t need her home, or a one-legged
Irish ex-regimental sergeant and his big, loud wife. And God alone knew what he would think of her cook.

She would have quite enough time to deal with that later. Right now she had to focus on a successful exit. Laying her hand
on Diccan’s arm, she turned toward the door. She was ungainly, and her knee hurt. She tried to ignore both. Her attention
fixed on that great, gaping door four or five miles away, she limped down stairs worn hollow by generations of pilgrims’ feet
and started down the aisle.

“A smile might be in order,” Diccan reminded her as he guided her past the ornately carved choir screen into the soaring nave.

She did her best, even though she knew it looked like
a rictus. She was shivering now, and decided to blame it on the cold. The church seemed to expand around her, the shadows
whispering its magnificence, the great west door a mile away. She was sure it must be raining. It seemed only fitting.

And then she and Diccan stepped through the great doors into the clearing afternoon, and she saw where her Grenadiers had
gone. They were lined up down the steps, five officers on either side at full attention, Guards and Hussars, Dragoons and
Riflemen. The minute they saw her, the order was barked, and they swept up their swords to form an arch. Harry even called
for three huzzahs.

Beyond them, a crowd had gathered in the yard, attracted by the ceremony. Grace barely saw them. She saw only her friends,
gathered at attention to honor her. She only heard their cheers. Emotion clogged her throat, and she was suddenly afraid she
would humiliate herself before them. But they were all smiling. They meant the best for her. So she smiled back. And with
every ounce of dignity she could muster, she limped through the arched swords, head high and her hand on Diccan’s arm.

“Stand down, men!” she called gaily. “My husband has just declared that no soldier will pay for a drink this day.”

The cheer that met her words was full-throated. With another command, they turned with a snap and followed the wedding couple
as if on parade.

“Impressive,” Diccan said, never looking back.

“Do not,” she warned, very serious, “make light of them.”

He shot her a look of pure astonishment. “You wrong me, madam. I was just thinking of the kind of person who would warrant
such devotion. And wonder at the fact that she is my wife.”

It was Grace’s turn to look astonished. She turned to her husband, expecting to see that familiar sardonic gleam in his eye.
But his his eyes were clear. He lifted her hand and kissed it. Behind them, the men again cheered. Grace didn’t know what
to do but walk on.

T
he wedding breakfast was boisterous and fun. Lady Kate set the tone when she gifted every soldier with a glass of champagne
and a kiss. Diccan circled the room as if at a diplomatic reception. The Grenadiers, knowing well how to celebrate, celebrated
well.

Grace never moved from the wing chair Diccan had positioned for her between the great brick fireplace and mullioned windows.
It was a thoughtful gesture, as if he could tell how much her leg ached and her head spun. Her Grenadiers lined up with hugs,
congratulations, and promises of support. She smiled and she sipped her warm champagne and balanced a plate of uneaten food
on her lap, battling a growing sense of dislocation, as if she had been dropped into a play and didn’t know her next line.