He’d managed the special license. Had secured what Lady Judith informed him was the second-nicest chapel in London and therefore acceptable for a ducal wedding.
Securing St. Margaret’s had involved a shocking amount of bribery in the form of a promised installation of a commemorative stained-glass window and a consolation gift of a Continental honeymoon tour for the displaced bride and groom, but Lady Judith didn’t ask for details.
Selina had arranged the guest list, and the wedding breakfast, and appropriate attire for not only the two of them, but for Freddie and Lu as well. Lu’s resistance to wearing a formal frock had been forestalled by its color—a rather alarming carmine—and an introduction to Selina’s former fencing master.
They’d both forgotten to buy rings, and had only realized their oversight when they arrived at the chapel within minutes of each other. Selina had vanished into an alcove at the church’s entrance and reappeared a few moments later sans hairpiece and bearing two circlets twisted out of the brass wire that had formerly held a little crown of pearls atop her golden hair.
“Good enough,” she said, and Peter felt something shift in his chest.
She was so clever—always fixing things—and he…
He had failed at enough things that at some point it had become safer not to try. Better, it somehow seemed, to deliberatelyflout convention than to try to please some impossible standard, stretching ever farther out of his reach.
Yet somehow now he found himself wanting to try. He wanted to give her better than good enough. He wanted to be more to her than a problem to be solved.
He shook himself and took the little brass circle, vowing to buy her something better—for God’s sake, he’d bought two perfect strangers a wedding tour. And then, almost before he knew what had happened, they were married.
They’d breakfasted at Rowland House, and then they’d taken Freddie and Lu back to Great-great-aunt Rosamund’s house in Bloomsbury. The children had been disturbingly civilized all morning. Peter felt a trifle concerned for their health.
And now here they were. Back at his house.
Which was nowtheirhouse.
Which meant that his bed was nowtheirbed. Which meant—
“Peter,” said Selina. “Do you think we should… go inside?”
He looked dazedly at her and tried to pretend he hadn’t been thinking about licking the curve of her inner thigh.
“Yes,” he said. “Listen, Selina, perhaps I should warn you about the house.”
Her brows drew together. “I’ve been in the house.”
“Ye-es. It was dark, though.”
She looked mildly alarmed. “Go on.”
“Well, when I inherited, you know that the duke was in his late nineties.”
“Yes, of course.”
“And that he’d been living at the estate in Sussex for quite a while.”
“So I understand.”
“He hadn’t been in London for some time.”
“Peter, if you do not get on with this story and tell me what is on the other side of this door, I shall push it open and find out for myself.”
He winced. “He hadn’t been to London in many years. Many, many years. Decades. And he’d rented out the house for quite a while, until the last year or two before his death. So when he died and I took possession, it was a bit, er… empty.”
She blinked. “Yes, I’d have assumed as much.”
“Not of inhabitants. I mean, it was completely empty. I believe the last several families that rented it simply took the furniture with them when they left. The art too, and the curtains. The wall coverings, in some cases.”
“I… see.”
“I’ve been meaning to furnish it,” he said, a little weakly. “But once I hired Humphrey and Fleming—that’s the cook—things seemed to crack along all right. I did fix the plaster that was falling down. And of course there’s… a place to eat. Er, and sleep.”
