Page 74 of How to Tempt a Duke

“Truly disastrous.” Then the humor in her eyes shadowed. “Are you quite sure this union will be considered valid?”

“Very.” He looked to where Mr. Paisley was being fed a posset of some kind by the younger man.

“I now require that ye make a declaration!” Mr. Paisley bellowed from across the room. From his bed.

Truly, it was shocking.

He waved them over and they obliged, walking closer.

The man eased himself into a sitting position and breathed heavily with the effort. “I would ask that everyone present please be upstanding,” Mr. Paisley continued. He indicated them each in turn. “Charles Christopher Pemberton and Eleanor Susan Murray. Before ye’re joined in marriage, it is my duty to remind ye...”

Mr. Paisley’s voice rattled on and on, reciting words he had clearly spent a lifetime saying.

Charles’s attention, however, was on Eleanor—the woman who would become his wife, the daughter of his father’s greatest enemy. There was a twinge in his chest as he regarded her, a sharp affection that had crept up on him through their lessons with Lottie, on those promenades through Hyde Park, in the quiet, intimate moments shared between them.

“Charles Christopher Pemberton!” Mr. Paisley called. “Will ye take Eleanor Susan Murray’s right hand in yers?”

Charles took Eleanor’s small, delicate hand in his and stared down into the eyes of the woman he was giving his name to, sharing his title and his life with. “I, Charles Christopher Pemberton, am taking Eleanor Susan Murray’s hand.”

The young man quietly rushed over, took their joined hands and carefully pulled them in slow shuffling steps until they were directly over the anvil. He nodded, then dashed back to his place beside Mr. Paisley’s bed once more.

Mr. Paisley proceeded to shout out the most important words of Charles’s life—the vows which would bind him to Eleanor and have him see her forever cared for. It was a series of “wilt thee” and “wilt thou” Charles could barely understand with the man’s slurred and shouted speech.

“I will,” Charles replied when the man stopped talking.

Mr. Paisley asked the same of Eleanor. The mirth quieted in her eyes and turned into something warm and affectionate. “I will,” she answered with reverence.

“The ring?” Mr. Paisley barked from where he sat.

The younger man ran over with his hand outstretched. Charles pulled from his jacket pocket the emerald ring he’d taken from the safe at Somersville House—his mother’s. It was the one his father had given her on their wedding day. The green stone glittered against the fashionable gold setting, almost a perfect match to Eleanor’s eyes.

The younger man took it to Mr. Paisley, who muttered over it a moment.

“We won’t have to kneel, will we?” Eleanor asked in a quiet whisper, with a grimace toward the dirty floor.

Charles had only time to shake his head before the younger man brought back the ring and he was advised to present it to Eleanor. Complying, Charles slid the ring on her finger and smiled as it fit perfectly.

“Oh, Charles, it’s perfect,” she whispered, and stroked the emerald with her thumb.

Mr. Paisley hiccupped and then continued with the ceremony, until at last he uttered the final words they had all been waiting to hear. “I now pronounce ye man and wife.”

The young man rushed over with his quiet steps once more, hefted a hammer and struck the anvil with a resounding smack. He grinned up at them. “Felicitations on your union.”

Felicitations, indeed.

Charles pulled close his lovely bride and kissed her full on the lips for all to see. It was a slow kiss, with the parting of mouths and the tantalizing skim of tongues—a tease for what would certainly come soon. Very, very soon. Thank God.

His body roared with an eagerness to fulfill his wedding vows. Eleanor melted against him with matched expectation.

A male voice splintered through the moment.

“Are you Joseph Paisley?”

Charles broke off the kiss and regarded a young couple, standing anxiously at one another’s side.

“I believe our time is up.” Charles led Eleanor from the building with Lottie following them. Thomas remained behind a moment longer to collect the marriage lines.

No sooner had Charles stepped into the freshness of clean air, away from the prevailing heat and sickness in the building, Lottie threw up her hands in exasperation. “What the devil was that?”