Page 60 of A Lady of Means (Roses and Rakes #1)

Chapter Forty-Seven

Moria would love to tell you about the march from her dressing room at the church to the altar where her groom waited, only she couldn’t.

She’d just…walked?

Like it was any ordinary walk, she barely heard music or her brother’s voice, or anyone in the church over how loudly her heart was roaring at her.

She couldn’t look at the guests, if she focused on what she had to do, she could almost pretend all these people weren’t there. Or the flowers. Or the candles.

And somehow her feet carried her to him, to the man she loved waiting for her at the other end.

Wait, no that wasn’t right.

This was the wrong church.

That was the wrong man.

He was taking her hand, pulling back her veil with hands that were all wrong.

But surely he wasn’t? He was looking at her with something like love in his green eyes. Perhaps she was the one who was all wrong.

When they turned to face each other, he leaned in to whisper, “You alright? You’re shaking.”

She gave him a smile, hoped it was a good one, and nodded. He squeezed her hands back.

Get it together, woman. He wants you. You love him.

Someone was talking, she should be listening. The Vicar was her friend, she’d had to pull all kinds of rank to get this particular vicar to be the officiant and she should ingest his words. But in her chest, there was a familiar kind of ache that wouldn’t quiet.

Jasper had given her away and sat back down, there was no going back now. Don’t look over your shoulder at-

Bang.

The front door of the church barged open. Her heart ruptured on a tide of collective gasps and clearing throats and shuffling bodies. The sun fell behind him, rushing to gild his dark hair and scarred face. He didn’t pause, walking up the aisle with determined grace, even with his cane.

“I have a very just cause as to why these two should not be married.”

What was he doing?

“Who the hell are you to interrupt my wedding?” the Duke objected.

“Who am I?” Her soldier flicked up his brows. “Who am I?”

“If I may—” The Vicar stepped forward to interject, but when both men looked at him, he held up his hands and took a step backward with his Bible folded over his chest.

Devyn put a hand on his chest. “I’m the man that she was supposed to marry.

But I died in battle. I’m the man who wrote her letters nearly every day for almost two years.

I know she has a scar on her arm from where she fell off a horse when she was eleven,” He was close enough now that his thumb traced a pattern on her forearm, and she couldn’t help her eyes fluttering closed for the smallest second before remembering they were in God’s house full of witnesses of the highest social caliber.

“Just there,” he continued, a dark storm in his eyes.

“She can tell you where all eight of my tattoos are, I can tell you with my eyes closed where all the freckles are on her face. And I know that she can play Mendelssohn with no music in front of her, but she prefers Elgar. She knows that I allegedly died in battle because I refused to leave a man behind, and she was angry, so very angry with me. I wasn’t supposed to do anything stupid.

I was supposed to come home,” he turned to her.

“To you,” he said, bending lower, closer, to her.

“And so I did. Here I am,” he gestured his arms wide, a broad and boyish smile cracking open on his handsomely scarred face.

“A battle-scarred soldier. Marching under no banner but yours, my lady. Here to return your words back to you,” Moria gasped at the familiar book he pulled from his jacket and wrapped her shaking hands around.

“Promising you my own name, my family, my soul for the breaking. So you tell His Grace, and you tell me, what will it be, my lady?”

Moria looked down at the book she’d clutched to her chest. She meant what she’d said in the note she’d left. It didn’t mean as much to her now; but she felt protective of her words, her book on full display for everyone to see. Her secret love on display for all to see.

The Duke stepped between them. “That was some speech,” he turned to Moria, pointing a finger in her face.

“I trusted you. We made plans, remember?” He said in a whisper that only she could hear somehow over the clamor of her heart and the collective chin wagging from the audience of their current melodrama.

The Duke placed a hand on his hip. “I can’t believe that you would betray me like this.

I could have made you a duchess, there’s so much I could have given you, and you do this here?

” He shook his head, confusion racing headfirst into ire, filling his eyes and his voice.

“Today of all days you publicly stab me in my back like some common tavern wench with no loyalty, actually a tavern wench would know her place better than-”

“That is the last time you speak to her that way,” Devyn wedged his body between them, his hands placing her behind him. “Or it is the last time you will draw breath.”

“You would threaten a Duke over a cheating whore like her?”

“I would die for her!” Devyn roared in his face, still clutching the skirt of Moria’s dress in one hand, placing his body in front of her like a shield. Moria could barely see for the tears in her eyes.

“This man needs to be arrested,” the Duke called, looking for someone to support his claim.

What? No.

She was the criminal here.

If anyone deserved punishment it was the culprit. After his words, the effort he must have gone to to retrieve her words, the way he’d promised her his body and then so quickly demonstrated his claim wasn’t for show by stepping between her and the Duke?

Her decision made, Moria grabbed onto Devyn’s arm. She wasn’t letting anyone take him away from her. Not ever again.

“Actually,” Perry cut in, Tristan nodding in a silent show of encouragement. “Not to ruin such an impassioned speech, but I have to cut in here.”

He made his way between the two men, placing himself in front of his brother the way his brother had done for him, repeatedly, in the past.

“Brother, what are you doing?” Devyn said in a lowered tone.

“What I should have done long ago,” The Earl of Clairville adjusted himself to his full height to address the Duke. “You cannot have this man arrested. Technically speaking, he is an Earl. The true Earl of Clairville. And I’m sorry to say, Your Grace, he hasn’t committed any crimes.”

“Not yet, at least,” Devyn sneered in the Duke’s direction.

“Why don’t we all discuss this in private?

” The Vicar suggested. Moria looked over her shoulder at the people assembled, her eyes falling on her family, her friends.

The Vicar was right, he offered Moria his arm to lead her toward the sun-streaked transept.

She took it. They could finish this conversation and she could say all that she needed to say without an audience leering.

“Moria, wait!” It was Olivia coming to catch up to her from her perch on the altar steps. She fixed the incredibly long train of Moria’s gown, then took the book from Moria’s hands, and kissed her cheek. “We are with you, whatever you decide. Don’t let—”

“I think she’s already made her decision, Olivia,” the Duke cut her sister, her perfect baby sister, off with a mocking jeer.

Moria had heard enough. She had her words back, she had her family’s blessing, she’d seen the Duke’s true colors.

She had to move forward with her decision like she should have done in that cottage behind the mews. Before then.

With a grunt, she pulled the paste-stoned tiara from her head. Then, she flung back her veil in a bevy of lace and tulle. There was a collective gasp from the assembled crowd.

“You know what?” She turned to face the guests seated in pews, the weight of her lies and her masks pressing in when it was long past time to let them go. “He's yours,” she took the crown in her hand and broke it into a third. It broke rather easily, actually.

She hurled a piece into the crowd. It landed near a guest with a thud, the crowd fell silent.

“Half the people in this room are mad at me over the book that was printed, and the other half think I don’t deserve to be here.

If you were hurt by the burn book, I’m sorry.

I wasn’t the only one who wrote in it, but I’m still sorry.

I know many of you didn’t come here because you were happy for me, you wanted to see what kind of duchess I would make.

Apparently a bad one. I think everybody looks like royalty today, but you can try it on for size, see if the title fits as well as you’d imagine when he insults you,” she found Devyn’s eyes, “and the man you love, in front of you.”

She hurled another piece of the paste crown, Gretchen caught it in one hand.

“Here, take it. Even you can be a duchess,” a piece landed next to Kate Herring. Kate looked down at it like it was something toxic and life-giving both at once.

“And you? You could be a duchess.” She heaved a piece of tiara in the direction of Letitia.

“Why not you? You are definitely duchess material.” Another landed at the feet of Carina Smythe.

“Or you? Fancy being a duchess?”

Another piece of the crown. Moria threw two more.

The seam of one of the arms of her gown gave a little tear on her final throw.

A couple of hairs slipped from her coiffure.

She must look a fright, but Devyn smiled at her.

She could only hazard a guess at all the reactions around her in that church, didn’t bother to look too closely because his was the only one that seemed to matter.

His smile, full of pride and awe, like she was both a madwoman and a heroine, suffused her with hope.

Moria felt so many pairs of eyes assessing and judging her, it didn’t feel like a heavy weight she needed to carry anymore. At least not alone. “When you hold your future in your hands, it isn’t all that you thought it would be. What if it’s all fake? All for show? Do you still want it then?”

Silence.

She chanced a glance at her family, several had tears in their eyes; there was love, there was pride. Olivia and Noelle were holding hands.

“Because I don’t.” She turned to Devyn. “I’m tired of being the best liar in this town because I wanted to tell you all for a long time that my affections are no longer for sale.

I made a promise to a man long before now and if he hadn’t nearly died, I would have kept that promise.

But then I thought maybe this was how it was supposed to be.

It’s what I thought I was destined for anyway,” she clutched his hand tighter for support.

“But clearly it wasn’t, or you’d have died or my feelings would have changed.

And they never have and they never will. ”

He was rushing her, pulling her into him with their enjoined hands, fusing his mouth to hers.

She hadn’t had the fortitude or the respect or whatever the hell one wanted to name it to care how wrong that was, in this place of all places, on today of all days.

She was supposed to be kissing the man she’d come here to wed, having promised to love, honor, and obey him.

But there was only one man she could make such a promise to, even the obey part, and he was kissing her in full view of society’s highest inner circles.

A throat cleared in front of her, but Moria didn’t let go of Devyn, only peeked one eye to see that it was Jasper.

“Oh god,” she said, pulling her lips from Devyn’s possession. “You’re going to challenge him to a duel, aren’t you?”

“Which he?” Jasper said, quirking one eyebrow. And then, he pulled the Duke by his lapel, and hit him with a stout right hook. The Duke was holding his bloodied nose in his hands.

“Westmoreland! What the fuck have I done?”

“No one talks to my sisters like that,” Jasper said, his fists still balled. “Not even a Duke.”

Lawrence scoffed, taking a step forward to back his brother up, but Fitz and Henry held him back.

Devyn looked to Moria, still holding her against him. “That was wicked,” he said next to her. She had to bite her lip to stifle a giggle.

“If you’re still here hanging around like a bad smell,” Jasper turned to the guests seated in the pews, “then you might as well adjourn to Pembrooke House to dismantle the mounds of food and mountains of cake waiting for the luncheon for this farce of a wedding.” He turned to the Duke with an accusatory finger, “Except for you, you slanderous villain.”

“I’m going to love being part of your family,” Devyn said, his mouth so close to her hair. Her eyes closed at his nearness.

“And I’m going to love surprising you every day and keeping your bed warm every night.”

He hung his head against her shoulder. “I’m getting hard in a church, thanks for that.”

Moria whispered in his ear, “Get us a carriage back to the house, and I’ll get on my knees for you. I’ll make you my church.”

Devyn swore. But he didn’t answer her, one hand gripping her waist, he called for Llewyn.

“Vicar! Do you perform hand fastings?”

Olivia gave a little squeal, squeezing Peregrine’s hand. On the other side of Peregrine, Tristan gave Moria a wink. Kathleen said, “Moria, you did change your bridegroom on the day of your wedding, you little minx!”

Fitz and Noelle both collapsed into each other laughing.

Lawrence lifted a flask in salute to Moria and her soon-to-be-bridegroom, then handed the flask to his cyprian, Sarah.

Letitia had picked up the flowers Moria had dropped and handed them to her.

Lady Gretchen and Carina both grasped Moria from behind in an obsequious embrace.

Moria looked over her shoulder, it was just those she cared for most in the church now, those who weren’t invested in catching one lady of means as she fell from her pedestal, long vacated.

“This is by far the best wedding I’ve ever been to,” Carina offered, squeezing Moria’s waist.

“It’s about to get even better,” Devyn parried, kissing the top of Moria’s head. “Everything only gets better with you, my lady.”

And when their hands and lives were bound together with an altar cloth as London’s diamond and the captain who stole her heart spoke ancient words in Latin and vows of their own making, Moria couldn’t hold back her tears.

Of all the tears she’d cried over loves won and lost, these were the happiest.