“Yes, a victim.” The dowager duchess shuddered at the very word. “Thetonmustn’t think that my son has taken advantage of you, but rather that this was an impromptu, glorious love match in which you two realized in the middle of the night that there was nothing that could be done but marriage. Yes. Marriage was the only way your passion could be contained. And so a special license was obtained so you two did not have to wait another moment to deny your love.”
A dose of anger hardened her mother’s usually kind face. “Because there is a snake in the garden, Jacqueline. And he must be dealt with.”
Drexel. The man was beyond vile, and his obsession with breaking her had changed the course of more than one life. “Of course. Whatever you suggest I will do in this.”
“Where is my son this morning?” the dowager duchess suddenly demanded, glancing to the wide stairs.
She sighed. “I have not seen him. When I awoke, he was gone.”
“Oh, dear,” his mother sighed.
Jack’s throat tightened, for she had felt most anxious about his absence, though she loathed to admit it. She had convinced herself he’d taken a morning constitutional. After all, no doubt he did so every day to maintain his particularly sculpted physique.
His mother tsked. “I do hope he’s not going to be difficult about this, poor boy. He has a particularly cantankerous view of marriage.” She cleared her throat. “Not the marriages he’s arranged, of course—”
“But of his own,” she finished for her mother-in-law, that dread beginning to return, despite her best efforts.
“Yes,” the dowager replied honestly. “Let’s hope he’s not terribly foolish about this. If he is, I shall have to shake him by the ears.”
She could not imagine anyone shaking the Duke of Stone by his ears. But if someone did, it would, of course, be the dowager duchess. “Please don’t do that. He’s already been made to do something he did not wish.”
“And that is?” his mother prompted.
“Marry me,” she admitted, though the two words were veritable barbs.
And at that, both the dowager duchess and her mother threw back their heads and laughed.
“My dear,” her new mother-in-law said, “I do hope you shall have more confidence in yourself than that. He might profess to the moon and back that he did not wish to marry you. But my son? He wouldn’t do anything he didn’t wish to do. And…well, he wants you.”
Desiredher, she longed to counter, but she kept such thoughts to herself.
“He has done everything he possibly can to help me and my family. But he did not wish to marry me. He was plain on that point.”
“Was he indeed? We shall deal with his doubts at another time,” the dowager duchess declared, turning her gaze to Jacqueline’s mother.
Her mother nodded sagely. “At present, let us conquer London for you, my dear, before Drexel can make a mess of it.”
“That man is an idiot,” sniffed the dowager duchess as she narrowed her eyes, looking as if she could grind Drexel like a bug beneath her beautifully shod foot. “And I have no time for fools.”
Jack agreed. She did not, either. He’d already nearly ruined her present. She was not about to let that man ruin her future.
…
James’s mother had the most excellent taste in champagne.
So it did not surprise him that hundreds of bottles of French wine, bubbling and frothing, were circling the gardens with the sort of execution that ballet dancers exhibited at the Paris Opera.
The party was already a great success.
There was no question about it.
Guest after guest was introduced at the top of the garden, their name heralded out by the perfectly turned-out footman.
The enraptured guests, who’d come because the gossip had been too delicious to resist, descended into a grove festooned with silk ribbons and flowers and arrangements of the most beautiful feathers and sparkling crystal that one could imagine.
Rainbows danced everywhere as the rays of sunshine cut through the prisms hanging from the trees.
It was a veritable wonderland.