“I can see that.” Letting the curtain drop, she focused on Amy. “But what they’re waiting for, I can only imagine. To laugh their heads off at me, I’m thinking.”
“Laugh?” In a rustle of dusky rose satin, Caithren came close and tweaked one of Kendra’s long curls into place. “Why would they laugh?”
“This has to be a jest. Very well done, I must admit, but there isn’t a chance they’ll make me go through with it.”
“No, Jewel, don’t eat that.” Amy took an ivory comb from her daughter’s mouth and set it back on the dressing table. “I’m not too sure they’d joke about this.”
Kendra brushed at the silver tissue underskirt that gleamed from beneath the split front of the blue silk gown she had dressed in for her “wedding.” “It’s so like them to make me get all ready, isn’t it? Their idea of justice, having found me in a seemingly compromising position. But they won’t actually make me wed a highwayman.”
“I don’t think he’s just a highwayman, Kendra.” Cait’s hazel eyes looked concerned. “He must be suitable. Jason seemed dead serious to me.”
“He’s serious about scaring me, making me come to a decision. This will be called off at the last minute, at which point Jason will expect me to happily choose one of the other men who has offered. As for Trick being just a highwayman, I couldn’t say. I don’t know the first thing about him.”
“But you like him, aye?”
“He’s…interesting.” A vast understatement. Kendra only hoped her sisters-in-law wouldn’t ask for elaboration.
“I like the way you say interesting.” Amy’s grin was too knowing for Kendra’s comfort. “Sometimes we find love in unexpected places.” Her fine features softened as she doubtless considered her own unconventional marriage, that of a shopgirl and a nobleman.
“Aye, she’s right.” Cait nodded her agreement. “If you’d told me I’d ever be in love with a man and living in England”—despite her love for both Jason and their home, she pronounced the word with a mild distaste—“I’d have said you were sodie-heid for certain.” Her gaze narrowed at the puzzled look on Amy’s face. “Featherbrained,” she added in translation.
Inwardly, Kendra sighed. While it was true she dreamt of the kind of happiness both her sisters-in-law had found, she didn’t think she would find it in a sham wedding to a highwayman. There had to be more to marriage than kissing, after all.
“Up,” Jewel demanded, providing a welcome distraction as she toddled over to her mother.
Amy lifted her to perch on one violet-taffeta-clad hip. “Did you know Colin called on Trick last night? He offered him a chance to back out of this arrangement, but he turned it down.”
“Or so Colin told you.” Could the amber highwayman possibly care for her? Kendra wondered. She didn’t think so, and she knew for sure that the little leap of excitement she felt at that thought was all wrong. “If Colin did call on him, I’m sure it was to plot this absurd, elaborate ruse. Colin is nothing if not the ultimate prankster.”
“Maybe you’re right, and this wedding is naught but a jest. But just in case”—Cait held out a silver coin—“you’ll want to put this in your shoe.”
“There she goes with her superstitions.” An indulgent smile curving her lips, Kendra took the coin and tucked it into one high-heeled satin slipper. “What other old wives’ tales might you be worrying about?”
“I’ve never said I believe it, mind you, but you know what they say. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue…”
“This gown fills three of those requirements. Old, borrowed, and blue.” There’d been no time to have a wedding dress made, so Kendra was wearing Cait’s. She brushed again at the shimmering silk skirts. “I always wanted to wear green for my wedding.”
“I’ve told you, you wouldn’t want to do that,” Cait admonished. “Green is the choice of the fairies.”
As though that explained anything.
“And as for something new…” Amy moved closer, trying to maneuver an object out of her pocket.
“I’ll take her,” Caithren offered, reaching for Jewel. Kendra thought she cuddled her niece rather wistfully. Cait and Jason had been married for nearly a year, yet there was still no sign of a babe.
Amy finally extricated a bracelet from her pocket—smooth-polished ovals of amber set in heavy gold links. Studded with sparkling diamonds, the circlet glittered in her hand. “A wedding gift,” she said, “from your future husband. Colin asked me to pass it on to you.”
“This isn’t a real wedding. And as for new, it doesn’t look it.”
“It isn’t,” Amy said in confident tones. “By the cut of the diamonds, it’s actually very old. But new to you. And it cannot hurt to wear it.” The golden stones seemed to glow from within, secrets of past centuries locked inside their translucent depths. “When Colin gave it to me, he said it would be quite fitting.”
Amy looked curious, but Kendra wasn’t about to admit she thought of Trick as the amber highwayman. How had Colin known? Had she said something inadvertently? She wasn’t usually indiscreet.
“I cannot believe the lengths your husband will go to in planning his practical jokes.” She reluctantly held out her arm. “It is beautiful.”
After Amy fastened the clasp, Kendra turned her wrist, watching the diamonds catch the light. Surely the bracelet wasn’t really Trick’s, which meant she could make her brothers let her keep it after this farce of a wedding was called off. For putting her through this, they owed her that much.
It would remind her of Trick, of the exhilaration she’d felt when he’d nearly kissed her. It would remind her not to settle for less—not to let her brothers pressure her into a loveless marriage, no matter how hard they tried.
She touched the amber pensively—warm, it somehow seemed—and drifted over to her dressing table. Watching herself in the mirror, she settled a gossamer lace veil over her hair and drew it down, tucking
