Page 47 of Duke of Wickedness (Regency Gods #4)

Upon seeing the exasperated look on Godwin’s face, David considered that perhaps it wasn’t the worst thing that he didn’t have siblings.

He loved his bride-to-be more than he could say, but she was proving extraordinarily capable at turning her stern-faced brother into a man who seemed to lack less and less will to live with every passing moment.

“Fine,” Godwin said again. “But,” he added in the tone of someone who was desperately trying to regain control of a situation, “since there is gossip, you will be married immediately. I will send for the special license at once.”

Ariadne didn’t budge, her arms remaining crossed tight across her chest.

“I shall have to consult with my betrothed to see if he is amenable,” she said so sweetly that David felt his teeth practically start to ache.

Though likely not as much as Godwin’s teeth, as David could hear them grinding.

He let out a low, grumbling sound from the back of his throat, then turned to face David, apparently sensing that he would gain no ground with Ariadne.

David felt a funny little twist of pride. His little bird could use her beak and talons, it seemed.

“I will leave you two to discuss matters between you,” Godwin said through gritted teeth. “Come to my study when you are prepared to sign the marriage contract.”

“Of course,” David said, offering a bow. It was so very easy to be polite in victory.

Godwin stalked off. Ariadne gave a self-satisfied shimmy.

And David had to kiss her, obviously. There simply wasn’t any other choice.

“You are a menace,” he said, when he was done kissing her—which was to say, when he felt too afraid of Godwin’s return to continue kissing her. David didn’t consider himself a coward, but rather a pragmatist; if he got killed, he couldn’t marry Ariadne.

“There is an art to being the littlest sister,” she said modestly. “I am simply better at it than most.”

He laughed, then stole just one more kiss. It was worth the risk.

“I fear you’ve made your brother hate me, though,” he confessed.

She shook her head. “No, he’s just cross that we all keep getting betrothed without consulting his opinion. Don’t worry. Once he gets over his snit, he’ll begin to treat you as one of us.”

David found that he liked the sound of that. He’d never had a family, at least not a close one like these lunatic Lightholders, and he found that it was an oddly appealing benefit, getting the rest of the clan alongside Ariadne.

And his bride, in her infinite wisdom, turned out to be right. After David pulled himself reluctantly away from Ariadne’s side, he went to go sign the papers as Xander had instructed. When all was said and done, Xander stuck out his hand to shake.

David considered that this might be a trick but accepted, anyway. There wasn’t much else he could do.

And, indeed, all Xander did was clasp their hands together tightly.

“Welcome to the family,” he said. There was a pause, during which David felt genuinely touched, and then Godwin added, “And if you ever think about trying to change your mind, I will shoot you.”

“You look so beautiful,” Helen sniffed into her handkerchief as Catherine fussed over Ariadne’s hair. She had been uncommonly weepy all morning. Ariadne kept trying to recall if Helen had been the same way when her own younger sister, Patricia, had married Ariadne’s brother, Jason.

“So you’ve said,” Ariadne said, laughing and making eye contact with her sister by marriage through the looking glass. “A dozen times already today.”

“Well, it’s true,” Helen said peevishly. “I’ll say it a dozen times more if I want to.”

Ariadne turned to give Helen a warm smile, which made Catherine swat lightly at her shoulder.

“Stop that,” she chided. “I don’t want to mess up your hair.”

“You won’t muss my hair if you stop fussing with it,” Ariadne pointed out.

She felt this was extremely reasonable—her maid, after all, had been the one to put up her coiffure in the first place; Catherine was just fluttering about—but Kitty and Helen exchanged a look that said little sisters are so absurd .

Ariadne decided to accept this with aplomb, however. It was her wedding day. Nothing would distract her from her happiness.

Xander had gotten his way in the matter of the special license—or, rather, Ariadne had let him continue to think that it was all his idea, when, really, she’d been as eager to marry David as quickly as possible as Xander had been to see her safely married.

Part of Ariadne had worried that the rush might cause David some distress—he was so wonderfully determined to always do the right thing, after all—but he had shaken his head, dismissing her fears with that heart-stopping, beautiful grin of his.

He had been grinning an awful lot since they had declared themselves to one another. She loved it.

“The sooner we are wed, the better,” he said, demonstrating yet another way in which they were in perfect accord with one another.

“People will talk,” she cautioned him.

But he’d just grinned again. “Indeed, they will,” he said proudly.

“They’ll say ‘Oh, that Ariadne Lightholder must be something special, to finally pin down that reckless ne’er-do-well of a man.

’ And they’ll be right, except for the fact that you’ll be Ariadne Nightingale, and I’ll be the luckiest husband in London. ”

They had held this conversation at Catherine and Percy’s house, as Catherine was determined to squeeze in as many last-minute chaperoning opportunities as possible, and Ariadne lacked the heart to deny her.

“I take umbrage at that,” Percy said mildly from across the room. “I consider myself rather lucky, indeed.”

David had made a rude gesture at his friend, which made Percy scoff.

“Ariadne,” he said, turning to his sister by marriage, “let me tell you this: you are about to marry a liar. Because David will tell you that he did not arrange for me to meet Catherine?—”

“No, I did,” David said.

Percy had fallen silent and stared for several long moments.

“I…beg your pardon,” he had said, startled into politeness.

“I did it,” David allowed. “I invited Ariadne to the party, but I really did it to get Catherine there—apologies, my darling,” he added in an aside to Ariadne. “I didn’t know you yet.”

“That’s quite all right,” she reassured him, absolutely enthralled by this exchange.

“But I’d met Catherine at a party and thought the two of you might suit.” David shrugged, then took a sip of whisky. “I was right.”

“But—” Percy stammered. “But—but you’ve denied it. For years.”

David shrugged again. “I did that to annoy you,” he admitted easily.

“But now you just admit it ?” Percy sounded outraged.

A third shrug. “Well, this time you wanted me to deny it. So I confessed. This, alas, was also to annoy you.”

Percy sputtered, stared, then rose to his feet.

“Catherine?” he called, sounding a touch desperate as he ventured deeper into the house, seeking his wife. “Catherine, you will not believe what David has just admitted!”

Ariadne giggled as Percy departed.

“Do you realize that the two of you will be brothers in truth after the wedding?” she asked.

David’s eyes went wide with wonder. “Oh, no, I had not thought of that,” she said gleefully. “Oh, the possibilities…they simply boggle the mind.”

And though Percy had spent the rest of the evening furiously cross with David, he had, in true brotherly fashion, entirely forgotten the slight when it came time to stand up at the altar for his oldest friend.

Xander had also, in a vaguely threatening manner, insisted that he, too, would stand up for David.

“I think he’s starting to like me,” David had said. Ariadne suspected that this was correct, just as she suspected that David didn’t truly believe it.

“I just can’t believe our little Ariadne is going to be married,” Helen sniffed now, dabbing at her eyes.

“ You can’t believe it?” Catherine asked. “I remember the day she was born!”

Ariadne fought against an affectionate eye roll. They’d been like this all morning long.

But no matter how slowly the morning passed—and, as far as Ariadne was concerned, every minute that she was not yet married to David was a minute wasted—the hour they were set to depart did finally arrive.

Helen blew her nose noisily.

“Do you know,” Ariadne asked mischievously, because she would be a married lady the next time she saw Helen, so it was prudent to get as much little sisterly chaos out of her system before she achieved such a lofty, mature status, “the last time you were this weepy, we met Cornelia six months later.”

Helen paused mid-blow and gave Ariadne the wide-eyed, shocked look of someone who was realizing something very important.

“Do you know,” she said absently, “I think I shall have to meet you at the church. There’s something pressing I must check in my diary…”

She scampered off toward the interior of the house, leaving Ariadne with Catherine, who gave her an indulgent look.

“That was very naughty of you,” she said. Catherine, too, was enjoying Ariadne’s last moments as an unmarried woman by being as motherly as possible.

“Thank you,” Ariadne said pertly.

Catherine’s smile was genuine as they loaded up into the Seaton carriage; the Lightholder conveyance had taken the gentlemen to the church ahead, partially so the women could primp a little longer, partially so that Xander could try to bully David.

“Do you know,” she said, settling herself in next to her younger sister and holding her hand, “I like this change that has come over you of late.”

“You can thank David for that,” Ariadne said, sighing happily at the mere thought of her betrothed.

Catherine shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.

Oh, he might have encouraged this side of you to come out, but I remember you being like this when you were very small—before you realized that other people were watching.

That made you shy. And then you spent all that time trying to act so prim and proper—yes, I knew what you were doing,” Catherine said caustically at Ariadne’s shocked look.

“I’m your elder sister; I practically raised you. I know when you’re not being authentic.” She patted Ariadne’s hand consolingly. “You really aren’t a very good liar, sweetheart.”

“I don’t know why people keep saying that to me,” Ariadne grumbled without any real heat. Then, quizzically, she added, “If you knew, why didn’t you say something?”

Catherine shrugged. “It seemed to make you happier than you’d been when you were so nervous about Society events. But I see now that happiness was a candle to the sun compared to what you have now.”

“You shan’t hear any arguments from me,” Ariadne said agreeably.

The streets outside St. James’ Church were crowded.

Half the ton had come out to see the last of this generation of Lightholders married, while the other half had come to see if the legendary Duke of Wilds really, truly planned to wed.

Ariadne wouldn’t have been surprised to find ladies lying prostrate with grief over David’s vanished eligibility, but she admitted that she was, perhaps, just the tiniest bit biased.

As far as she was concerned, after all, he was the only man in England worth marrying.

But the only response to her arrival was some excited murmuring among the crowd, and a few muttered words about bets about how it seemed to actually be happening.

Ariadne ignored it all. Who cared what they had to say? She and David would be happily wed after all this. Let them print that in the Society papers.

Inside the church, Percy happily greeted his own wife, while Xander muttered irritably about Helen’s delay. Even so, her brother pulled himself together when the time came, offering her his arm gallantly.

“Are you ready?” he asked her, looking down at her with a fond smile.

“Absolutely,” she agreed without hesitation.

They pushed through the doors of the church; dozens—no, hundreds—of eager watching faces turned in their direction.

Ariadne didn’t have eyes for any of them. For, standing at the head of the church, was David, her beloved, her shining, beautiful man. The rake, reformed—but not too reformed, she hoped.

She stepped forward, not at all caring that she moved too quickly for propriety, as she hurried toward him—and toward their future.

The End?