A June Bride (21 page)

Her mother and father looked on with tolerance, but Elias grinned at the sight.

“You remember Cousin Elias, don’t you, James? He was at our wedding,” Emmeline made the introductions. “And this is Lord and Lady Chenmarth, Alessandra’s father- and mother-in-law.”

James’s eyebrows rose at the information that his sister-in-law was now in a position to have in-laws of her own. After greeting Lord and Lady Warring, he was shown to a room, where he shook off the dust of travel—and where he kissed his wife most soundly.

When they were returned to the front parlor and food and drink ordered for his relief, James turned to his wife’s cousin, Elias, who shared a gentleman’s club in common. “Darringforth. How are you?”

“Well enough, unless my brother kills me,” was the answer.

“Is that likely?” James asked.

“’Fraid so.”

“It’s a long story, I’ll explain it all to you later, but suffice it to say that Alessandra has married, and she and her bridegroom are not on best terms,” Emmeline said quickly. “In fact, we were just consulting with Mama and Papa as to what should be done.”

“Done? Isn’t it up to Alessandra and this husband of hers to do anything?”

“Well, yes, except there was,” she glanced guiltily around the room, and then at the floor, “some meddling.”

James shook his head indulgently.

“I think we ought to see if all is well with them,” Lady Warring fretted.

“I shall feel dreadful, simply dreadful, if we have spoiled things for them,” Lady Chenmarth said with feeling, earning a nod from her spouse.

“They have been up there a long time. They’ve probably killed each other. You’re right, Amelia, let us go and speak with them, if they’re yet alive,” Lord Warring said.

“What, disturb them in their room?” James cried, aghast.

“Oh, James, you don’t understand,” Emmeline assured him, trailing at once after her parents.

James and Elias looked at each other, but when Elias shrugged, they joined Lord and Lady Chenmarth to mount the stairs.

“Is his lordship to home then?” the valet, Winters, asked from where he was poised before the Sapphire Room’s door. He looked confused. “He never rang for me.”

Lord Warring waved aside the question, giving a hushed cry of “Enough!” over all the whispers and nudging, and knocked softly, almost as if he really did expect to find dead bodies on the other side. There was no answer. He knocked again, more loudly, and still there was none. He put his hand to the latch, and finding it gave easily, he cast a wary look around the group, then pushed the door open.

There was a sort of scene of carnage inside the room: clothes were scattered about without a thought toward their care, food was left uneaten on a table that was strangely in the middle of the room, and lamps had been carelessly left burning. But what made the entire entourage gasp was when they saw two bodies on the bed, under the covers, their limbs, which could be guessed to be without benefit of clothing, entwined. They were both soundly asleep.

Lord Warring leapt back with wide eyes and a hanging jaw. Lady Warring raised her cool hands to cup her warm face. Lady Chenmarth coughed delicately, while her husband hiccupped in embarrassment. Emmeline stared at James, who looked around at the others as though they had all come directly from Bedlam. And Elias gave a gigantic, exultant whoop that at last had Geoffrey lifting his head and blinking owlishly at the crowd.

With a universal and fumbling effort at closing the door, they all moved with a belated respect for privacy toward the stairs, until the door to the Sapphire Room was yanked open again. Geoffrey stood there in his evening robe, his feet, legs, and chest obviously bare beneath it. “What’s going on?” he asked sleepily.

“Nothing. Go back to my daughter,” Lord Warring said gruffly, even as he colored up all the way to his gray-streaked hairline.

Geoffrey’s eyebrows raised, and he observed his copiously grinning brother in the group.

“Does this mean no divorce?” Elias cried.

Geoffrey blinked the sleep from his eyes as he appeared to ponder his brother’s question, but then he grinned slowly in return. “No divorce. Ever,” he said firmly.

“Did we do this?” Elias cried, pointing at Emmeline and himself. He would have gone forward to talk to his brother, but James quickly put a hand on Elias’s shoulder, holding him back.

“Of course not. Geoffrey and I did,” Alessandra said, poking her head out the door around her husband’s side. Her color was heightened, and her hair down and mussed.

Lady Warring looked as though she would faint, but Lady Chenmarth finally could not hold back a much-satisfied smile.

“I told you it would work to put them together,” Lord Warring cried to his wife, grabbing her and doing a spontaneous jig.

“Oh, stop!” she said, then laughed, and danced a few more steps with him.

“Get to your beds. We certainly wish to return to ours,” Geoffrey said, still grinning. They all saw him pull his wife to his side, plant a kiss on her happily upturned face as he pushed the door shut, and heard the key turn decidedly in the lock, followed by a trill of feminine laughter.

“May I assume Lord Huntingsley is Alessandra’s husband?” James asked the group that moved to file down the stairs.

They all stared at him, then burst into laughter, and poor James was never allowed to forget he had ever asked such a witless question.

***

Inside the room, Geoffrey asked, “Who was that fellow who kindly kept Elias from invading our sanctum?”

“My sister’s husband, James.”

“Ah. Never having spoken one word to him, I am already convinced I like him very well.” He touched her nose with one finger, and asked, “Did you hear your father’s triumphant statement?”

“You don’t wish Papa had been wrong and you had remained right, do you?” Alessandra asked, affecting a hurt pout completely at odds with the smile in her eyes.

“Good heavens, no,” he said as he wrapped his arms about her and proceeded to show her how completely content he was to have proven himself quite mistaken.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Teresa DesJardien lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, grown children, and growing grandkids. She’s been a financial and a file clerk, a mommy, a page, a bookseller, a very young and hot grandma, and an author.