Page 182 of A Very Bellamy Christmas

Damnit! Love? Could that be it?

He looked up dazedly from his roiling thoughts to find the Duchess of Chatham regarding him with her usual unreadable gaze.

Andrew had been startled—but pleased—when Stacia had asked his cousin’s wife to stand as her matron of honor. Her choice ought not have surprised him as the normally reserved duchess had exhibited an almost solicitous interest in Stacia ever since freeing her from the priest hole.

“Sylvester forgot the ring and had to go back for it,” the duchess explained in a quiet voice. “I believe he is almost as nervous as you.”

“Ah.” What else could he say? He was nervous; nervous that Stacia would come to her senses and abandon him at the altar.

“I like Miss Martin,” the duchess said.

Andrew couldn’t help grinning. “So do I.”

His humor did nothing to melt her icy façade. Or perhaps that was the duchess? Ice, through and through. But Andrew didn’t think so. Especially considering the way she sometimes stared at Sylvester when she thought nobody else was looking: as if she wanted to consume him.

“Chatham believes you will do right by her,” she said.

Andrew bristled at her carefully worded comment, which implied that she did not think the same thing. “That is certainly my intention,” he said stiffly.

After a long, uncomfortable moment, she said, “I agree with him.”

Andrew’s eyebrows leapt at this unprecedented sign of approval.

Before he could come up with something to say—and probably irritate her again—the doors opened and Sylvester and Stacia entered the nave, arm in arm.

He gawked like a star struck youth.

She was…radiant.

Her gown of emerald-green velvet made her look like a burst of spring on a frigid winter’s day. She held a bouquet of white hydrangeas with a few sprigs of prickly holly and bright red berries in the middle.

He lifted his gaze higher, until their eyes met.

Her loving smile touched off an explosion inside him to rival a pyrotechnic display at Vauxhall Gardens.

Andrew was far too addled to identify all the emotions that filled him to near bursting, but the cumulative effect was a feeling of…rightness.

Was that normal? Was rightness a properfeeling to have for one’s prospective bride?

It feels right because it is love, you dolt.

Andrew blinked and looked up from the revelatory thought—doubtless grinning like an idiot—and saw mild puzzlement in Stacia’s eyes.

He knew he should at least acknowledge his cousin, but he could not look away from her, more engrossed than he’d ever been in his life.

The vicar’s words all ran together. Andrew was impressed that he was able to speak his responses when it was time for him to do so.

“—you may kiss your bride.”

Those words shook him from his fugue.

Stacia gazed up at him with love. Not adoration for the handsome face and body the rest of the world saw, but love for Andrew, the flawed, damaged man inside who had made one disastrous decision after another.

Until her.

Her lips twitched and he realized he was staring. Andrew collected a few of his remaining wits and gently claimed her upturned mouth with a chaste kiss while promising, with his eyes, much, much, much more later.

The Bellamy siblings and their spouses made enough racket for three times their number when Andrew and his new wife walked down the aisle. The short journey to the dining room was a raucous, laughter-filled pilgrimage.