But he couldn’t help it. She was just so damned beautiful.
"You didnae tell me," Diarmid said in a voice quiet as a breath.
Hamish had to swallow twice before he could speak. "Tell you what?"
"That she’s exquisite."
To Hamish’s despair, she was.
With dazzled eyes, he drank in every detail of Emily’s appearance. She wore a rose pink silk gown that might appear modest on a woman with a less spectacular figure. On Emily, the soft fabric clung to every sinuous line and whispered seduction. Her lovely hair was caught up in a mass of loose waves and threaded through with pearls. More pearls encircled her graceful neck and one wrist. She wore white lace gloves and carried a bouquet of white roses. A lace veil was pinned to her crown and draped down her back.
She stood straight and proud. After her attendant straightened her short train, she took her father’s arm. With a confidence Hamish couldn’t help but admire, she started down the aisle.
Especially as he knew her well enough to see the nerves raging beneath the regal air.
By heaven, she was a cracker of a girl. Her bravery made his heart swell. Any fellow would be privileged to wed her. The anger at himself, at fate, at society, that had been his constant companion for a month faded to nothing.
"She was worth waiting for," he said to Diarmid, and he meant every word.
Hamish turned to the front as his bride took her place beside him and the vicar began the service.
Chapter 9
When Emily returned to the Bloomsbury house with her new husband, it was evening and the staff had lined up on the front steps to greet them. An augmented staff, thanks to Hamish’s generosity over the last weeks.
The new butler Roberts stepped forward with a bow. "On behalf of everyone downstairs, my lord and lady, I’d like to offer our warmest congratulations and best wishes for many happy years together."
Emily made herself smile, even as she was startled to hear herself called "my lady." She kept forgetting that Hamish was a lord in his remote northern fastness of Glen Lyon. A few people at the wedding breakfast had addressed her as Lady Glen Lyon, but it was only now on the threshold to her own home that she registered the radical change this marriage made to her life in worldly terms.
Hamish must be used to it, although his title cut little mustard in the scientific circles they inhabited. He went as plain Mr. Douglas in London, even if nobody who met him could doubt that he came from society’s upper levels.
Now it seemed she did, too.
; "Thank you, Roberts." With a proprietary air that she had no right to resent, Hamish took her arm. In the eyes of the law, he owned her and all her chattels. Not that her meager assets bore any comparison to his. "Thank you, Miss McCorquodale, Mrs. Roberts, Mrs. Brown, Polly and Mary and Florrie and Elsa. And Edward, too."
Edward was the new footman. The Baylors had never been grand enough to need a footman before. Emily wasn’t convinced she needed one now. Edward was a handsome devil who sent the maids silly. Perhaps she might talk to Hamish about dispensing with his services.
Emily wasn’t surprised that her husband knew the name of everyone who worked in the house. While he might be aristocratic, he’d never been high in the instep. When he’d lodged here as a young man, he’d been a general favorite with the household. Now she noted genuine pleasure on every face as the staff welcomed her new husband.
She drew away from Hamish to climb the steps and express her gratitude to everyone there. Behind her Hamish was busy shaking hands.
"Cor, miss, you do look lovely and all," Polly said, dipping into a curtsy.
"Polly," Mrs. Roberts, the new housekeeper, said in a stern voice, "remember your place."
"It’s all right, Mrs. Roberts. I think today of all days, we don’t need to be too strict." Emily smiled at the maid who had come to the house as a twelve-year-old girl.
Polly was the only servant here who remembered her mother. Again, Emily felt a painful pang of longing. How she’d missed the late Mrs. Baylor’s quiet strength and unfailing love today, when she felt so appallingly alone.
She preceded Hamish into the house, aware that now he had a right to be here beyond the welcome of an honored guest, and tonight they’d sleep under the same roof. She tried to tell herself that he’d done that before, but he’d left the house for his lodgings at the Albany when he was twenty-four. She’d been a mere eighteen. A boarder studying with her father wasn’t at all the same thing as a husband.
"Miss McCorquodale, how is Papa?" she asked the nurse who had followed them inside.
The wedding breakfast had been a crowded affair, held in Hamish’s mother’s elegant house in Fitzroy Square. Emily’s father had lasted only half an hour, before Hamish arranged for his return home in the care of Miss McCorquodale and one of the innumerable Scots.
"He’s sleeping, my lady. He was very tired when he came back. Tired and unsettled. I needed to give him a sleeping draft." The woman curtsied. Emily had never been the recipient of so many curtsies in her life. "If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to him."