“Very well, then.” He nodded, and they returned to the altar.
The clergyman began the ceremony, and Lady Kendra kept looking around, as though she expected something unforeseen to happen. Not that Trick could blame her. He found the circumstances more than a little unnerving himself.
The preliminaries went entirely too quickly. Nobody showed just cause why they could not be lawfully joined together, and before Trick knew it, the parson was reciting the vows.
“Patrick Iain Caldwell, wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her in sickness and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?”
Trick slanted Kendra a glance, but she didn’t shake her head. “I will,” he said, and his stomach flip-flopped with the enormity of the step he was taking, but also with a sudden realization.
Kendra had no idea he was a duke.
Well, he’d known that already, of course—but she really had no idea. Whatever her reasons for agreeing to marry him, they had nothing to do with his title or his money. She didn’t know he had either. She wasn’t marrying the Duke of Amberley. She was marrying Trick Caldwell.
Despite the bizarre circumstances, the thought brought a smile to his face. Looking surprised, Kendra returned it with a tiny smile of her own.
A few more words, a simple gold band slid onto her finger, and Trick’s arms slipped around her waist, just as they had yesterday. He bent his head toward hers, toward the perfect mouth he’d spent the entire ceremony trying not to stare at.
As their lips touched, she melted against him, her lavender scent surrounding him like a cloud. She let out a tiny gasp—surely not even the nearby parson could have heard it—and then she was kissing him back with such sincere and wholehearted enthusiasm that he quite forgot where they were and who was watching.
And so far as she knew, she was kissing plain Trick Caldwell.
When her brothers cleared their throats, he reluctantly pulled away, rather stunned and out of breath. He thought with dismay of the hours and hours between now and when they could be alone, when he brought her back to the cottage tonight. He could scarcely wait.
She wouldn’t discover until tomorrow that she was a duchess.
TEN
AN IMPROMPTU wedding feast was set out on the mahogany table in Cainewood’s dining room. Kendra sat beside her new husband, her head still spinning with disbelief.
She’d been shocked speechless when the priest concluded the ceremony, shook hands all around, and walked through the front door of the chapel, all without her brothers bursting into laughter. Just yesterday she’d been an innocent girl having a silly fantasy, and now it appeared that fantasy had somehow become the rest of her life.
But this couldn’t be what it appeared.
Apparently the script called for the farce to go on a little longer. But were she a gambler, she’d wager that before night fell, her brothers would be sending her up to her old bedchamber a husbandless maiden still, congratulating themselves on the success of their practical joke.
“Aren’t you going to cut the cake, Kendra?”
Startled, she looked to Amy. Her sister-in-law was grinning widely and holding out a knife. Dominating the center of the table, the bride cake was double frosted, sugar over almond icing. Despite her churning stomach, Kendra’s mouth watered; she loved sweets.
Very well, then. If her brothers wished to continue the charade, she’d play her part.
Rising and taking the knife, she reached to cut the confection and felt Trick’s hand envelop hers. She turned her head, raising astonished eyes to find him leaning over her, bracing himself with one hand on the table. “We’ve yet to feast.” He nodded toward the servants still carrying in platters.
“Ah, Trick,” Jason said, a trace of laughter in his voice. “It’s obvious you have much to learn about your new wife. She always eats dessert first.”
Colin nodded. “And she’s taught Amy her unfortunate habit.”
“Cake!” baby Jewel crowed gleefully, banging her spoon on the table.
“Second word she learned,” Colin informed them dryly. “Right after Mama and before Papa.”
“We’ve other unfortunate habits as well,” Ford chimed in, clapping Trick on the back. “Perhaps you moved too quickly in aligning yourself with the Chases, my friend.”
Kendra felt Trick’s hand tighten on hers. Beneath his tousled hair, his eyes narrowed. “I moved too quickly?”
She stiffened at his words. He seemed to be taking this seriously. Could it be he wasn’t in on the joke? Or…
Could it be this was no joke?
Suddenly unsure, she looked around the table at her brothers’ faces. Their expressions told her nothing.
When she saw Colin with Amy and Jewel, and Jason together with Cait, she couldn’t help but wish to have a family of her own someday, like those her brothers were creating. A whole family, like the one she’d been cheated of growing up displaced and parentless during the Civil War and Commonwealth years. And she knew Colin and Jason wanted no less for her.
But finding love with any of the suitors they had presented?
That was about as likely as seeing Zeus descend from the sky.
This was her life they were toying with. She bit the inside of her cheek. Caithren caught her troubled gaze and returned it with heart-wrenching sympathy.
Trick moved again to pull back the knife, but Kendra held steady. When he grinned— approvingly, she thought—her eyes went to the tiny chip in his front tooth. For the hundredth time in the past hour she remembered what it had felt like to kiss him. Like being outside her own body…and yet exquisitely aware of every place it came into contact with Trick’s. His hands warm on her waist, hers resting on his wide
