heard most of what had happened already, albeit slanted in a far more scandalous direction. Sir Norton has many ears in society, and to his credit, he rarely believes what he hears. James asked that he officiate, and he agreed.”
Corrie choked on an oyster patty. James immediately slapped her back.
“Are you all right?”
“Oh yes. It’s just to have your father speak about our getting married in such a matter-of-fact way- sometimes I still can’t believe it’s going to happen. Good heavens, in only three weeks. It closed off my throat there for a moment.”
James said, “It closes off my throat too. Don’t dwell on it. We’ll get through it. Now, I know you wanted a thousand people at least to overflow St. Paul’s, all of them cheering and waving you on your way, but Corrie, it’s not to be.”
“Perhaps five hundred?”
James laughed, and his mother said, “Maybella and I believe that it is best if we have about thirty people to witness our drama.”
James said, “I will ask several members of the Astrological Society to come. I wish you to meet them. Ah, perhaps you would care to come to a meeting with me, next Wednesday?”
“And I will show them you are getting the perfect wife. I will myself write and present a paper,” Corrie said, and looked so wicked Jason nearly spewed a mouthful of wine on his mother’s tablecloth.
“Yes,” James said, his voice serious as his Uncle Tysen’s when he was looking sin right in the face, “I think you should. I have already written about the cascade phenomenon. What should you like to present to the learned group?”
Corrie gave this some thought while she observed the roast goose on her plate. She picked up a roll, waved it at James, and said, “I want to speak about how vampires can come out only at night under bright moonlight, but not in the day when the sun beats down. That is, it beats down only occasionally here in England, which makes me wonder if English vampires have more freedom of movement than do, say, vampires from the Sahara Desert.”
James rolled his eyes. “No more about Devlin Monroe. I saw him hanging about you yesterday. What did he want?”
“He tried to convince me that he would make a superior husband to you.”
James, who took the bait swiftly, nearly leapt to his feet. “That damned bounder. That’s more than enough, that’s-”
“That was a jest,” Corrie said and gave him one of her patented sneers that he hadn’t seen since before she’d come to London.
Amidst the laughter, Alexandra led the ladies out of the dining room, leaving the gentlemen to their port.
“She got me,” James said, red-faced, staring into his glass of port.
“Yes, she’s quite good at it,” his brother agreed, “has been for years.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, I believe that Judith is as skilled as Corrie. She too could bait a dead man, make him leap up, curse, and rattle his bones.”
“Yes, I’ve seen her do it,” James said. “I do wonder what Devlin Monroe is up to, though.”
“Nothing,” said Simon. “Nothing at all. I myself spoke to him, told him Corrie had been in love with you, James, since she was three years old, to which Devlin replied that Corrie was too unripe in the ways of men and the world to know what was what, that she was too young to be forced into this marriage, that you were taking gross advantage of her, and that I should challenge you to a duel and shoot you. I thought for a moment that the poor boy would burst into tears. But then he got himself together and said it was a lovely overcast day, didn’t I agree. Of course I agreed. Nearly every day is overcast. I didn’t want anymore of his melodrama. I wanted him to leave. Is he really a vampire, do you think?”
Corrie had been in love with him since she was three? A child adoring an older brother, yes, he could see that, but was this how her uncle saw it? She loved him? As a man?
At that moment, the gentlemen looked up at the sound of running feet, raised voices.
Corrie threw open the dining room door and yelled, “Quickly! James, oh dear, come quickly!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
WHEN THEY BURST into the stable it was to see that the three villains were gone, Remie was unconscious beside the door, and three stable lads were bound and gagged in the tack room.
The horses were distressed-neighing, tails swishing, shuffling about in their stalls.
James dropped to his knees to feel for Remie’s pulse. It wasn’t strong, but at least it was steady, and he was coming around.
Judith said, her voice high-too high-shaking a bit, “Corrie wanted to come out and question them the moment we left you. She knew you, my lord, would go all stiff and proper on us and deny us our chance. She didn’t want to put it off until tomorrow, and so we told your mother that we needed to go to the ladies’ withdrawing room, but instead we came out here and they’re gone, escaped, and that means someone helped them.”
Jason said, “Yes, that young man who was standing across the square. He must have circled back, seen his men taken into the stables, observed the routine, then made his move.”
“He succeeded,” Douglas said, rising and dusting off his hands on his breeches. “Damn him. I will call for a doctor for Remie and send off a note to Lord Gray.”
As it turned out, neither Remie nor the stable lads had seen who had assaulted them. Remie said he’d heard something, but then he’d been struck on his head and that left him on his nose in the straw.
Lord Gray, when he was drinking a brandy in the Sherbrooke drawing room late that evening, allowed he’d heard about the attempts on Douglas’s life, told him he was now involved and would find the men responsible. “Since you have determined who the man is, why then, I will myself search him out,” he said comfortably, tossed back his brandy, kissed Alexandra’s lovely white hand, and took his leave.
No one believed him, even though they wanted to.
THREE WEEKS LATER
All seventy guests-forty more than originally intended-cheered wildly when James and Corrie, Viscount and Viscountess Hammersmith, came out of St. Paul’s, and ran, hand in hand, toward the open landau, festooned with every white flower Alexandra Sherbrooke could locate in greater London. It was, to everyone’s surprise, not a frigid, overcast day as all expected, but a cool, crisp, sunny day, unheard of for the end of October in England.
“It is because I am beloved in the celestial realms,” Corrie had said.
James had laughed. “Ha, it’s because those celestial realms are mightily relieved that I’ve saved you from being a fallen woman.”
Corrie also confided in her new mother-in-law that she’d promised up good works for twelve months if God would send down sunshine on their heads.
“What good works will you do?” Alexandra asked.
Corrie looked perfectly blank. “Do you know, I didn’t believe it would work at all, so I have no idea. I was expecting rain and thick fog up to my knees. This will require thought. I don’t wish God to believe that I wasn’t serious.”
Jason was saying to Judith, “All is forgiven and soon to be forgotten. Corrie saves his life, and now they’re married. Rules are sometimes the very devil.”
“I think they’re perfect for each other,” Judith said. She moved a bit closer, came up on her tiptoes, and whispered in his ear, “Corrie told me that James gave her only one hint about what would happen on their wedding night.”
Jason didn’t so much as twitch. “And what would that be?”
“He was going to kiss the backs of her knees.”
Jason laughed, couldn’t help himself. And Judith, demure as a nun, looked up at him through her dark lashes and said, “You mean that he’s lied to her? This isn’t what he’s planning?”
“Oh, I’m sure he’ll tend to her knees,” Jason said.
