Page 36

Chapter Thirty-Six

Reaping what is sown…

C aleb could see the carriage up ahead. When it halted, his heart seized in his chest. Then Reginald Nutter appeared in the doorway, tumbling backward onto the paving stones. Even from a distance, his cries of agony were audible as the carriage rolled over his legs. But Nutter was not his concern. He only wanted to get to Marina.

With the crowd of people gathering around that side of the carriage and the injured—possibly gravely—man, Caleb went round to the other. Opening the door more forcefully than necessary, he saw Marina sitting on the floor of the vehicle, her arms wrapped about herself. When their eyes met, she simply flung herself into his arms.

Lifting her out of the carriage, he touched her face tenderly. “Are you hurt?”

“No. I’m unharmed. Terrified, but unharmed,” she admitted breathlessly. “How is Uncle Devil?”

“Seaburn helped get him into the church… I took off in such a rush to get to you that I’m not entirely sure,” he confessed. He finally felt as though he could draw a breath, as if the band squeezing his lungs had finally released.

“How did you know?”

Caleb shook his head, still confounded by it all. “You will not believe it when I tell you, but it was Miss Whitmore. She was waiting across the street for Jacob and saw the whole of it.”

“You are quite right. I do not believe it.”

“If we hurry, and if you wish to, we can still make it back to the church to see this done today—if you wish to wait, I understand,” he told her. “But if we do wait, I cannot say how forgiving the gossips will be.”

“No. I don’t wish to wait. Let’s go. Quickly.”

As they walked around the carriage to the sidewalk, Caleb positioned himself to spare Marina the sight of Mr. Nutter. He dared a glance in Jacob’s direction and the other man simply shook his head. Even if by some strange chance Nutter survived, he’d no longer be a threat to anyone.

“Will he live?” Marina asked softly.

“I don’t think so,” Caleb replied. “And I can’t be sorry for it. Not really. Not when he very nearly killed you on multiple occasions… And I cannot help but think, if he were to live and be remotely capable, he’d likely try again.”

She shuddered slightly. “I think you’re right. I should have told him that I had no interest. In trying to spare his feelings, I gave him hope.”

“No. No, you didn’t. No rational man thinks a woman avoiding him for three years wants his pursuit… and further, if Lady Crowden was to be believed, you were not the first young woman whom he obsessed over to this degree. And that other young woman, if she was in fact the only one, suffered a terrible fate likely at his hands. We are both, in this moment, incredibly fortunate to be having this conversation. It could have gone very differently.”

“It very nearly did,” she said with a shudder.

They walked back to the church slowly. He kept her close to his side, not because he feared something would happen but because they both needed the reassurance of one another’s nearness. Once they reached the entrance to St. George’s and stepped inside, they were peppered with questions.

“What on earth is going on?” the Viscountess Seaburn demanded.

“Mr. Nutter apparently did not accept the fact that I had chosen to marry Caleb,” Marina answered. “He attempted to abduct me… and injured Uncle Devil in the process. How is he?”

“He is fine,” Lord Deveril pronounced as he sat up in one of the pews. “Now, let’s get the pair of you married before someone else attempts to interfere.”

*

“For as much as Caleb Halliwell and Marina Ashton have consented together in holy wedlock, and have witnessed the same before God and this company, and thereto have given and pledged their troth, each to the other, and have declared the same by giving and receiving a ring, and by joining hands; I pronounce that they are Man and Wife, In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

As the minister spoke the last word, Marina lifted her head and glanced over at Caleb. It was done. They were well and truly married. Despite everything and everyone that had attempted to come between them, they had managed to get it done.

“Thank heavens,” she murmured.

The minister cleared his throat. How such a sound could ring with disapproval she didn’t know, but that didn’t alter the fact that he’d made his displeasure with her exclamation very clear.

“Indeed,” Caleb seconded, ignoring the minister’s disapproval altogether. “Thank heavens. Now, Countess St. Aiden, let us sign the register and make it entirely official.”

They did so, with Lillian and Valentine acting as witnesses. Once it was done, it felt like such a burden had been lifted from her shoulders. It was finally, really done. She was married. No one had fainted. While she had been briefly absconded with, in the end it had not mattered. She was now Caleb’s wife. And that was truthfully how she thought of it. Not as just being a wife, or a countess. She was his wife. And he was her husband.

As they all adjourned to the house on Park Lane for the wedding breakfast, the weight of it all began to dissipate and a kind of giddiness came in its wake. Happiness.

“What are you smiling about?” he asked her as the carriage halted before the house.

“We’ve actually done it. We are well and truly married. Despite the terrible best efforts of so many people, we’ve made it to the altar and signed our names on that book for all of posterity to see. It feels remarkable.”

“Right. It feels right,” he said. “And inevitable. I think from the moment I first laid eyes on you, this was the outcome that was simply destined to be. You and I, together forever… Starting a life far from London society and all its scheming inhabitants. Will you hate being apart from your family?”

Marina considered it for a moment. “I don’t think I shall be fully apart from them. No doubt they will descend upon us quite regularly no matter where we go. But… I’m far more interested in building a family with you than in clinging to what I already have. Not that I don’t love them and not that I am not eternally grateful for all they have given me both emotionally and financially—but this is how it’s supposed to be, isn’t it? Leaving the safety of what one has always known in order to embark on something new, something that is wholly one’s own?”

“I suppose it is,” he concurred. “I like the notion of starting a family of our own… of building something together that is the best parts of us both. I know I’m supposed to want sons to carry on the title. But I confess to hoping for daughters who will look like you, who will have your spirit and your bright-blue eyes, and who will surely wind me around their little fingers without any real effort at all.”

Marina glanced through the carriage window. “I suppose we have to go in now, don’t we?”

He reached for her, taking her hand and tugging her across the expanse of the vehicle until she was nestled in the circle of his arms. Not that she’d in any way resisted. Not when that was precisely where she longed to be. “What are you doing?”

“They can wait a moment or two,” he said.

And then they didn’t speak at all. He kissed her, his lips moving over hers in such a way that Marina simply didn’t care who was waiting for them. She didn’t care about anything at all except how to make that kiss last forever.