Tess tried not to blush as she stroked her fingers over the smooth globes. “Oh, it’s just a silly joke. A nickname he’s made for me because of my red dress the first time we met.”
“How sweet.”
Tess nodded, but she wasn’t quite sure how to feel about the gift. She had a niggling sense that she was being bought, but perhaps that was being unjust. After all, Thornton was so rich that five hundred pounds to him was the same as another man spending fifty pounds on her.Itwasa sweet gesture, even though he probably thought she expected such gifts as her due.
Had he chosen it himself? Or merely had one of his minions select something for her? Either way, it was lovely. Perhaps she should tell him that the eighth duke hadn’t given her a single thing for her wedding, apart from the title of duchess. It was her father who’d pocketed the two thousand pounds.
A shiver of excitement, or perhaps apprehension, ran through her as she imagined Thornton placing the necklace around her neck himself. His long fingers would brush the skin at the nape of her neck while the pearls would warm to her skin. Perhaps he would kiss her shoulder.
The thought of him kissing her again—anywhere at all on her body—made her pulse flutter. She might be dreading the wedding night, but there was no denying there was an element of anticipation there, too.
Her reply was equally brief.
J,
I thank you for the gift. It is beautiful.
Regards,
Tess
She refused to call herself Scarlet. As tempting as it would be to go into her wedding night with that shield, it would be too easy to hide behind the sobriquet. She was not a coward. She would face him unmasked, as Tess.
Even if she still had plenty to hide.
Chapter Twenty-One
Ellie and Daisy were her only guests at the wedding.
Thornton, too, had only invited a couple of his old school friends as witnesses: Ellie’s cousin Edward, and Thomas Careby. Tess supposed Careby deserved an invitation, considering it was his party that had precipitated this unlikely turn of events.
The six of them stood in the powder-blue drawing room at Wansford House—one of Tess’s favorites, since she’d redecorated it to her own taste—as Charles Manners-Sutton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, conducted the ceremony.
The general public, and indeed most of theton, seemed to think it their right to be included in the wedding of a duke, but Tess was extremely grateful that Thornton hadn’t wanted a huge, public wedding at St. George’s, Hanover Square. She had no desire to be gawked at. There would be enough gossip as it was.
Her first wedding had been an equally low-key affair, but that had been due to the eighth duke’s miserly desire to save money, rather than any particular preference forprivacy. They hadn’t even had a wedding breakfast. At least this time her father wasn’t hovering by her side, scowling when she tripped over her words or sent desperate, longing glances at the door.
She didn’t want to escape today. Rash and inadvisable it might be, but the choice was entirely her own. Thornton stood at her side looking impossibly handsome in a navy jacket so dark it was almost black. A diamond stickpin glimmered at his throat amid the neat folds of his white cravat.
He was beautiful in profile, so different from the wrinkled, powdered old duke. His voice, when he said his vows, was deep and sure, and his hand, when he took hers, was warm and steady.
To have and to hold, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.
Tess paused slightly onto love and to cherish, but when no lightning flash interrupted her, she rushed on tountil death do us part.
It passed so quickly, almost like a dream. In less than no time he was slipping a plain gold band on her finger, and they were pronounced man and wife.
When Thornton finally turned to her, her stomach flipped at the hot satisfaction in his gaze and the irresistible curl of his lips as his face broke out into a smile.
He raised her hand to his lips and looked deep into her eyes. “My duchess.”
He straightened and pressed a chaste kiss to her cheek, and she quashed a ridiculous feeing of disappointment that he hadn’t broken all sense of decorum and kissed her on the lips instead.
Everyone crowded round to offer their congratulations.The men shook hands, and Daisy and Ellie hugged her tightly, taking care not to crush the delectable cream-and-silver dress she’d purchased at vast expense from Madame Lefèvre.
Impatient for cake, Daisy ushered them all toward the wedding breakfast that had been laid out on the sideboard, but Tess was too nervous to do more than nibble at a bread roll.
“Not wearing the necklace I sent you?” Thornton’s quiet voice at her shoulder made her jump.
