Almost Heaven Read online

  That drove Wordsworth to actually grab her shoulders in alarm. “Listen to me!” he barked. “If you do that, you may well get your own brother killed!” Embarrassed by his own vehemence, he dropped his hands, but his voice was still insistent to the point of pleading. “Consider the facts, if you won’t consider conjecture: Your husband has just been named heir to one of the most important titles in Europe. He is going to marry you—a beautiful woman, a countess, who would have been above his touch until a few weeks ago. Do you think for a moment he’ll risk all that by letting your brother be found and brought here to give evidence against him? If your brother wasn’t killed, if Thornton only had him put to work in one of his mines, or impressed on one of his ships, and you start questioning him, Thornton will have little choice but to decide to dispose of the evidence. Are you listening to me. Lady Cameron? Do you understand?”

  Elizabeth nodded.

  “Then I’ll bid you good day and resume the search for your brother.” He paused at the door and looked back at the girl in the middle of the room who was standing with her head bent, her face ghostly pale. “For your own sake, don’t wed the man, at least until we know for sure.”

  “When will that be?” she asked in a shattered voice.

  “Who knows? In a month, perhaps, or in a year. Or never.” He paused and drew a long, frustrated breath. “If you do act in defiance of all sense and wed him, then for your brother’s sake, if not for your own, keep your silence. You, too, would be in danger if he’s guilty and he thinks you’re going to discover it and perhaps expose him.”

  When he left, Elizabeth sank back down on the sofa and closed her eyes, trying to keep her tears at bay. In her mind she heard Wordsworth’s voice. In her heart she saw Ian smiling down at her, his voice husky and filled with need: “Love me, Elizabeth.” And then she saw him as he’d confronted her uncle, a muscle jerking in his cheek, his body emanating rage. She remembered him in the greenhouse, too, when Robert barged in on them and said Elizabeth was already betrothed; Ian had looked at her with murder in his eyes.

  But he hadn’t harmed Robert in that duel. Despite his justifiable wrath, he’d acted with cold control. Swallowing convulsively, Elizabeth brushed a tear from the corner of her eye, feeling as if she was being torn to pieces.

  She saw his face, that hard face that could be transformed to almost boyishness by one of his lazy smiles. She saw his eyes—icy in Scotland, blazing at her uncle . . . and smiling down at her the day he came to Havenhurst.

  But it was his voice that revolved in her mind, overcoming the doubt, that rich, compelling, husky voice—“Love me, Elizabeth.”

  Slowly Elizabeth stood up, and though she was still deathly pale, she had made her decision. If he was innocent and she stopped this wedding, Ian would be made to look a fool; she couldn’t even give him a reason for doing it, and he would never forgive her. She would lose him forever. If she married him, if she followed her instincts, she might never know what became of Robert. Or Ian would be vindicated. Or else she would find out that she was married to a monster, a murderer.

  Alexandra took one look at Elizabeth’s white face and hurtled off the bed, wrapping her arms around her friend. “What is it, Elizabeth? Is it bad news? Tell me—please, you look ready to drop.”

  Elizabeth wanted to tell her, would have told her, but she very much feared Alex would try to talk her out of proceeding with the wedding. The decision had been hard enough to make; now that she had decided, she didn’t think she could bear to listen to arguments or she’d start to waver. She was determined to believe in Ian; and since she was, she wanted Alex’s liking for him to continue to grow.

  “It’s nothing,” she said lamely. “At least not yet. Mr. Wordsworth simply needed more information about Robert, and it’s a difficult thing to talk about with him.”

  * * *

  While Alexandra and a maid fussed with Elizabeth’s train the bride waited at the back of the church, cold with nerves, torn with misgivings, telling herself this was nothing but wedding jitters.

  She looked past the doors, knowing that in the entire packed cathedral there was not one relative of her own—not even a single male relative to give her away. At the front of the church she saw Jordan Townsende step out and take his place, followed by Ian, tall and dark and overwhelming in stature and will. There was no one who could make him abide by their bargain if he chose to ignore it. Not even the courts would force him to do that.

  “Elizabeth?” the Duke of Stanhope said gently, and he held out his arm to her. “Don’t be afraid, child,” he said softly, smiling at her huge, stricken eyes. “It’ll be over before you know it.”

  The organ gave forth with a blast of melody, then paused expectantly, and suddenly Elizabeth was walking down the aisle. Of the thousands of people watching her, she wondered how many were still recalling her publicized “liaison” with Ian and speculating on how much too soon a babe was likely to arrive.

  Many of the faces were kind, though, she noticed distractedly. The duke’s sister smiled as she passed; the other sister dabbed at her eyes. Roddy Carstairs gave her an audacious wink, and a hysterical chuckle bubbled inside her, then collided with a lump of terror and confusion. Ian was watching her, too, his expression unreadable. Only the vicar looked comforting as he waited, the marriage book open in his hands.

  29

  The Duke of Stanhope had insisted that a grand wedding banquet and reception, with everyone of social prominence in attendance, was just the thing to put a final end to the gossip about Ian and Elizabeth’s past. As a result, the festivities were being held here, at Montmayne, rather than Havenhurst which lacked not only the size needed to accommodate one thousand guests but furnishings as well. Standing on the sidelines of the ballroom, which Ian’s army of florists had transformed into a gigantic bower of flowers, complete with a miniature arbor at the far end, Elizabeth tried with every fiber of her being to ignore the haunting memory of Wordsworth’s visit this morning. No matter how hard she tried, his words still hung over her like a wispy pall, not thick enough to prevent her from carrying on as if all were normal, but there, nonetheless.

  Now she was dealing with it the only way she could: Whenever the gloom and dread closed around her, she looked for Ian. The sight of him, she had discovered in the long hours since their wedding, could banish her doubts and make Wordsworth’s accusations seem as absurd as they undoubtedly were. If Ian weren’t nearby, she did the only other thing she could do—she pinned a bright smile on her face and pretended to herself, and to everyone else, that she was the radiantly happy, carefree bride she was supposed to be. The more she practiced, the more she felt like one.

  Since Ian had gone to get her a glass of champagne and been waylaid by friends, Elizabeth devoted herself to smiling at the wedding guests who passed by her in an endless stream to wish her happiness, or compliment the lavish decorations or the sumptuous supper they’d been served. The coldness Elizabeth had thought she felt in church this morning now seemed to be a figment of her nervous imagination, and she realized she had misjudged many of these people. True, they had not approved of her conduct two years ago—and how could they?—yet now, most of them seemed genuinely anxious to let the past be laid to rest.

  The fact that they were eager to pretend the past hadn’t happened made Elizabeth smile inwardly as she looked again at the glorious decorations: No one but she had realized that the ballroom bore a rather startling resemblance to the gardens at Charise Dumont’s country house, and that the arbor at the side, with its trellised entrance, was a virtual replica of the place where she and Ian had first waltzed that long-ago night.

  Across the room, the vicar was standing with Jake Wiley, Lucinda, and the Duke of Stanhope, and he raised his glass to her. Elizabeth smiled and nodded back. Jake Wiley watched the silent communication and beamed upon his little group of companions. “Exquisite bride, isn’t she?” he pronounced, not for the first time. For the past half-hour, the three men had been merrily cong