An image flashed through her mind of Araminta handing back her reticule after she’d dropped it amidst the stampede. Despairingly, she tossed away the reticule as she sank against the wall, covering her face with her hands. “Sir Aubrey, I had the letter!” she wailed, nearly choking on the bitterness of her hollow victory. “Truly I did and now it’s gone.”
When she raised her head she wasn’t sure if doubt or disappointment clouded his expression.
“I came here with the express purpose of delivering it to you.” Disappointment turned to icy resolve. “But I shall!” she vowed, as she swung toward the door, adding grimly, “I know exactly where that letter is and I shall have it with me when I return.”
Sir Aubrey gripped her wrist and pulled her back to him. “My offer is not dependent on that letter.” His voice was urgent. “Don’t leave. I know you are pure of heart, Hetty. I know you’d do anything to help me… And you have.” His expression softened as he cupped her face. “You have made me realize what is important. That it’s more than advancement and material gain. Happiness is based on neither of those but rather the mutual felicity and affection between two worthy people. I want you, Hetty. I want you to be my wife and to enjoy you forever.”
Footsteps crunching on the walkway made them draw away guiltily, a short rap on the door seeming to underline their recent transgressions. However, when a solemn-faced clergyman was shown in, Hetty gasped with delighted surprise, squeezing shut her eyes at the sheer joy of her suddenly altered situation, her disappointment at the loss of the letter for the moment forgotten.
When she opened them it was to the thought that never in her wildest imaginings could she believe her dreams would come true. She truly was going to marry the man of her dreams. He’d declared in the most sincere and ardent of terms his love and desire and now, here was the clergyman he’d summoned.
Reality seemed suspended as the reverend performed the rites, Hetty murmuring her responses, Sir Aubrey speaking with firm conviction as he slipped the ring upon her finger, his eyes kindling with warmth, his smile reassuring her that this was everything he wanted.
“I’m sure you never imagined you’d dress as a Spanish guitar player for your wedding,” he teased at the conclusion of the rites and once the clergyman had departed.
“I never imagined I would marry at all,” she admitted. “Araminta is the beauty. She’s a bird of paradise and I’m a little brown peahen. Papa used to say it all the time.”
“And you decided you were destined to live up to this description?” Sir Aubrey shook his head, his mouth pursed with amusement. “Until you were so afraid for your life you thought giving yourself to me was the only way to preserve it.”
He was leaning into another embrace when Hetty stayed him with a hand upon his chest.
“Now it is my turn to redress the balance.”
She had the means and she should have acted earlier, before Araminta could pass on the letter to Lord Debenham. Hetty was married now and Araminta no longer posed a threat to her happiness. But Hetty could secure even greater happiness for her new husband if she hurried. Sir Aubrey, from his position of greater power, in consequence of her actions, would ensure Lord Debenham was a spent force and unable to harm her family or Jem.
“I promised I would restore the letter…where it would do least harm and achieve the greatest good.” He must never know that she’d entertained, even for a short while, the intention of giving it to Lord Debenham.
But if she didn’t hurry, that’s just who would be receiving it.
“Hetty! Where are you going? Won’t you stay—” He pulled her back to him, his lip curling with suppressed amusement despite her sudden urgency to get away. “For the finale? Now that it’s legal?”
“Oh, my darling, I promise you the greatest finale,” she replied, reaching up to kiss him quickly on the lips. “You stay right here, make yourself very comfortable and be prepared for my triumphant return.” Running her hands down his thighs, she whispered, “I have a surprise for you, my love, and I do recall hearing you say once that all good things were worth waiting for.”
Chapter Fourteen
Araminta eyed her prattling cousin with a decided lack of felicity as she sat wedged between the two young women who were ogling all the passing gentlemen with absolutely no shame.
She was embarrassed to be with girls who reeked of country and lacked address. Worse was wondering where Hetty was. Her sister had dashed off into the shrubbery, claiming nature called and reassuring her she’d return shortly.
But she hadn’t and there was not a thing Araminta could do. Oh, she knew Lord Debenham was waiting for her in the third supper box behind the orchestra but he’d be waiting for a long time. He was not going to get the letter Araminta had snatched after Hetty had fortuitously dropped her reticule.
It was tedious having to bear her cousins’ company while she listened to the strains of Mozart drifting into the starry night air but she relieved the boredom by contemplating Hetty’s dismay at discovering her trophy gone.
No doubt Hetty planned to hand it to Sir Aubrey.
Despite reassuring herself that Sir Aubrey would rather wed an orangutan than her sister, Araminta simply could not rid herself of that shocking single glance she’d intercepted when Sir Aubrey had looked at her sister. She’d almost describe it as mawkish except that Sir Aubrey was certainly not mawkish.
Hetty was the ugly duckling of the family and it would be kinder to keep her hopes in check.
When she saw her sister hurrying toward them from the Druid’s Walk, she leapt up, making her excuses to her cousins in order to waylay Hetty near the fountain.
Hetty swung ‘round when she was several feet away, startling Araminta with her hostility.
“What have you done with Sir Aubrey’s letter? You took it from my reticule. I know it was you!”
When Araminta tried to calm her with a conciliatory hand upon her shoulder, Hetty threw it off, muttering, “You’ve given it to Lord Debenham, haven’t you? You’re a fiend.”
Poor Hetty, thought Araminta. Clearly she’d returned disappointed from her assignation to hand over the letter to Sir Aubrey who, if she wasn’t mistaken, had hired one of the supper boxes in the darkened walkway from which Hetty had just emerged.