Brookhaven looked over his shoulder. “No, no sign of her.”
The bishop came in at that particular moment, adjusting his long, elaborate robes before he smoothed his hand over his silvery mustache. “The bride is not present,” he intoned.
Chase narrowed his eyes. “She has not yet arrived,” he agreed, stopping from making commentary about the bishop’s powers of observation.
“How very strange.” The bishop let out a little laugh, then patted his prayer book. “Usually, brides are the ones that are nervous. You seem most nervous this morning, Your Grace. Is all well?” He wagged a white-gloved finger. “Special licenses often mean that something is not quite as it should be.”
Chase assumed that if he pounded the bishop into the chapel floor, the man would renege of the special license. And so he refrained. His voice was strained as he replied, “Everything is just as it should be. I am only unaccustomed to the idea of being wed.”
“Ah, yes,” said the bishop. “All young men are nervous about giving up their freedom. It is a great moment when they must take on the yoke of matrimony and bid adieu to the wild oats–sowing days of their—”
“Yes! Yes. Thank you,” Chase cut in, not particularly wishing to hear the words “oats” and “sowing” from a man of the cloth.
Nor did he wish to know what the bishop might have to say about taking up the yoke of matrimony. No, he was simply here to fulfill a ceremony that would protect the young lady in question, potentially her sister as well, and ensure his peace from ton mamas.
Thanks to the ornately dressed fellow before him and Victoria—when she arrived any moment, surely—he would no longer have to avoid young ladies doing their very best to encourage him to believe that they were the dreaded one.
How could he explain after all that there would be no one? That there would never be a young lady he would fall in love with and give himself entirely to?
He was not allowed that. And he never would be.
He had a secret, and he would protect it to the day he died. A secret that no one knew about, and no one ever would. His father had made certain of that.
Sometimes, he wondered if Brookhaven had suspicions. Brookhaven knew most of his machinations…but even his closest friend did not know his true secret.
Unable to take it any longer, he began pacing the worn stone floor. “Hell and damnation,” he barked. “Where is she?”
The bishop’s gray eyes bulged. “Your Grace! One mustn’t speak too rudely in the house of the Lord.”
Chase smoothed his hand down the front of his waistcoat. In general, he did not lose composure. “Thank you for the timely reminder. I shall endeavor to be a gentleman.”
The bishop sniffed. “I have heard that you are not always so. But when one is a duke, one is allowed to behave in certain ways.”
Chase ground his teeth. He didn’t like being made to feel an arse. And by such a fellow.
But the bishop wasn’t mistaken. When one was a duke, one could do just about anything they preferred.
It was one of the positive things of being a duke.
Chase liked using his powers for good, because he could get away with the most scandalous behavior and help young ladies like no one else could.
His sudden agitation hit him hard.
Would he be able to carry on the greatest ruse of his life under Victoria’s nose?
Chase was a false rake.
And the only ones who knew were Brookhaven and the ladies he pretended to have affairs with.
Since he’d become a duke, he’d spent a great deal of time in boudoirs without doing anything that most people thought should be done in boudoirs.
His presence in married ladies’ chambers was to arrange the end of relationships, not the consummations of new ones.
And just as he was about to think of the next boudoir he would invade, one Lady Worthington in just a few days’ time, in which he would free her from her marriage, the crushing truth that he was going to be involved in yet another criminal conversation hit him.
He’d be married just a few days. But it was too late and too dangerous to change that arrangement. For all of them. He couldn’t leave Victoria with her father. And he couldn’t let Lady Worthington linger with her monster of a husband.
As he stood in the church, he felt as a man upon the rack, being pulled in two directions.