distinctive gables and elaborate chimneys. Alex had long found great peace there, wandering about a rolling landscape laid out centuries earlier by Capability Brown.
At the head of the parade of automobiles was Alex’s gunmetal grey 1939 Bentley Saloon. Behind the wheel, Alex could see the massive figure and smiling face of Stokely Jones, former U.S. Navy SEAL and NYPD copper and a founding member of Alexander Hawke’s merry band of warriors. Sitting up front with Stokely was Pelham Grenville, the stalwart octogenarian and family retainer who had helped to raise young Alex following the tragic murder of the boy’s parents. After the subsequent death of Alex’s grandfather, Pelham and a number of uniformly disappointed headmasters had assumed sole responsibility for the boy’s upbringing.
“Let’s duck inside, Ambrose,” Alex said, with the first hint of a smile. “Vicky and her father are in one of those cars. Apparently, it’s unlucky for the groom to see the bride prior to the ceremony.”
Congreve’s eyebrows shot straight up.
“Yes, I believe I mentioned that custom to you any number of times at the reception last evening. At any rate, we’re supposed to have a final rendezvous with the vicar in his offices prior to the ceremony. He is here, actually, I saw his bicycle propped by the vicarage doorway as we drove up.”
“Quickly, Constable, I think I see their car.”
Congreve breathed a brief sigh of relief that Hawke had not bolted on him, and then followed his friend through the graceful Norman arch into the cool darkness of the little church. Now the event itself was inescapably set in motion, Alex seemed to be shaking off his case of the heebie-jeebies. Here was a man who wouldn’t blink in the face of a cocked gun. Amazing what a wedding could do to a chap, Ambrose thought, glad he’d so far managed to avoid the experience.
The church could not have looked lovelier, Ambrose observed as they approached the rear door leading to the vicar’s office. Because of the narrow leaded glass windows, candles were needed even at this time of day and the churchwarden had lit them all. Their waxy scent mixed with the lily of the valley on the altar caused a rising tide of emotions within Ambrose’s heart. Not mixed emotions exactly, but something akin.
He adored Vicky, everyone did. She was not only a great beauty, but also a dedicated child neurologist who had recently won acclaim for her series of children’s books. Alex had met Dr. Victoria Sweet at a dinner party thrown in her honor at the American ambassador’s residence in Regent’s Park, Winfield House. Her father, the retired United States senator from Louisiana, was an old family friend of the current ambassador to the Court of St. James, Patrick Brickhouse Kelly.
Kelly, a former U.S. Army tank commander, had come across Hawke during the first Gulf War. Hawke and “Brick,” as he called the tall, redheaded man, had remained close friends since the war. The soft-spoken American ambassador, whom Congreve now glimpsed sprinting up a side pathway to the chapel, had saved Hawke’s life in the closing days of the conflict. Now, Hawke’s chief usher was late.
Congreve had goaded Alex into asking the beautiful American author to dance at Brick Kelly’s home in Regent’s Park that night. The two of them had been inseparable ever since that fateful first waltz. Vicky had, that very evening, effectively put an end to Alex’s legendary status as one of Britain’s most eligible bachelors. No, it was not Victoria’s future Congreve was so much concerned about, but rather the long-term prognosis of his dearest friend Alex.
Alexander Hawke led, to put it mildly, an adventurous life.
Having been thrice decorated for bravery flying Royal Navy Harriers over Iraq in the Gulf War, Hawke had subsequently joined the most elite of the British fighting forces, the Special Boat Squadron. There they’d taught him how to kill with his bare hands, jump out of airplanes, swim unseen for miles underwater, and blow all manner of things to kingdom come.
Having acquired these basic skills, he’d then gone into finance in the City. His first order of business was to resurrect the somnolent giant known around the world as Hawke Industries. After his grandfather retreated from the boardroom, he reluctantly relinquished command to young Alex. Hawke had no great love of business; still, he never dared disappoint his grandfather and so, a decade later, the already substantial family interests flourished once more.
Some called his series of brilliant but hostile takeovers around the world piratical and there was some truth to that. Alex was a direct descendant of the infamous eighteenth-century pirate, Blackhawke, and he was fond of warning friend and foe alike there was indeed a bloodthirsty hawk perched atop his family tree. With his black hair, his prominent, determined features, and his piercing blue eyes, a black eyepatch and solitary gold earring would not have looked even remotely ridiculous on him.
As Alex had told Congreve after one particularly fierce takeover battle, pools of blood still much in evidence on the boardroom floors, “I can’t help myself, Constable, I’ve got the pirate blood in me.”
As the man who presided over the sprawling Hawke Industries, Hawke had friends at the highest levels of the world’s major corporations and governments. Because of those contacts he was frequently asked to engage in discreet missions for both the British and American intelligence communities.
Highly dangerous missions, and that’s what concerned Congreve. Alex Hawke put his life on the line constantly. If he and Vicky were fortunate enough to have children, well, Ambrose hated to think what would happen to the brood if—
Congreve realized he’d been daydreaming as the plump little vicar droned on and Alex, who had his own private views on religion, did his best to appear both compliant and reverential. By the rising hum of conversation now emanating from the direction of the chapel, Congreve could tell the pews were filling with ladies in shades of lilac and rose and big brimmed hats and men all in morning clothes. He could hear the level of keen anticipation growing for what was, after all, the biggest small wedding of the year in England.
Or, the smallest big wedding, depending on your tabloid of choice. Although Alex had tried desperately to keep the wedding secret, weeks ago someone had leaked the details to The Sun, sending the rest of the tabloid press into a feeding frenzy.
Security in the Cotswolds had never been tighter. In addition to members of H.M. Government, the British prime minister, and the American secretary of state and ambassador, all close friends of the groom’s, there were a number of foreign dignitaries and heads of state seated amongst a select group of Alex and Vicky’s friends and family. Alex, dogged in his determination to keep the affair small, had deliberately chosen his family’s rustic chapel. The press was barred entirely, although they were certainly manning the police barricades at every obscure little lane leading to the tiny village.
A suspicious helicopter circling above the church at dawn had been quickly escorted out of the area by two RAF fighters and—
“Well, your Lordship, I think it’s high time we got you married,” the vicar said to Hawke with a smile. “The good Lord knows you’ve broken quite enough hearts for one lifetime.”
Alex’s eyes narrowed, wondering if the vicar was having him on.
“Indeed,” Alex finally replied, stifling whatever riposte was surely forming in his mind, and he and Ambrose followed the old fellow into the chapel itself and took their assigned places before the altar. The church was full, a sea of familiar faces, some bathed in shafts of soft sunlight streaming through the tall eastern windows.
Hawke couldn’t wait to get the whole bloody thing over with. It had nothing to do with misgivings or second thoughts. He had felt nothing but spontaneous and unstinting love for Vicky since the first second he’d seen her. It was just that he hated ceremony of any kind, had no patience with it at all. If not for Vicky and her father, this wedding would have been taking place in some ratty little civil service office in Paris or even—
The organ boomed its triumphal first notes. Victoria appeared in the sun-filled chapel doorway on the arm of her beaming father. All eyes were on the bride as she made her way slowly up the aisle. Standing before the altar with a trembling heart, Alex Hawke had but one thought: By God I am a lucky man.
She had never looked more beautiful. Her lustrous auburn hair was swept back into a chignon held by ivory combs that also held the veils that fell to the floor behind her. Her white satin dress had been her mother’s; the bodice was festooned with swirling patterns of pearls which, as she moved through gold bars of sunlight, cast a soft glow upwards, lighting her face and her smiling eyes.
The groom would remember little of the ceremony.
His heart was now pounding so rapidly there was an overpowering roar of blood in his ears. He knew the vicar was speaking, having begun his intonations in a slow, deep register, and he was aware he himself was saying things in rote reply. The vicar kept upping the oratorical ante and, at some point, near the end of the thing, Vicky had squeezed his hand, hard. She looked up into his eyes and, somehow, he actually heard her speaking to
