Page 40 of The Prince’s Wallflower Wife (The Wallflower Academy #4)

‘I cannot believe that you talked me into this,’ said Daphne forebodingly.

Christoph grinned. Then, because his wife could not see him, he said, ‘I am honoured by your trust.’

His wife snorted. ‘Excellent. You fill me with confidence.’

The carriage swung to the side as it turned a corner and Daphne put out a hand to steady herself. Her other hand rested on her stomach, which was swollen only slightly. Only someone like he, who knew every inch of her by heart, would notice.

‘We are almost there,’ Christoph said quietly, trying not to fidget in his seat due to his excitement.

Daphne raised an eyebrow over the blindfold that she had put on before they had left the house almost half an hour ago. ‘And where precisely is there , exactly?’

It had taken a great deal of planning. For the first few days after Daphne had returned home, Christoph could not put his idea into motion firstly, because he had not wished his wife to suspect something and secondly, because they had spent almost the entirety of that time in bed. Naked.

But as the weeks had gone by, and Christoph had realised he had never been happier in his life than he was now with Daphne, he knew that he had to do it. He’d known the planning would be a little complicated. But she was worth it.

The carriage rumbled to a slow stop. She was so trusting. The way she had accepted the blindfold this time when he had proffered it… They had come so far. And, if he was careful, they would continue to grow in love and trust with each other.

And today was part of that.

‘You know, when you said that you were taking me on a magical mystery tour,’ said Daphne with a small smile, ‘I thought that would mean that we would actually…you know…go somewhere.’

Christoph stifled a smile. ‘What do you mean? We have been in the carriage for over half an hour.’

‘For all I know, we have gone round and round in circles through London,’ Daphne pointed out. ‘All to bring me back to our home where you have something…interesting prepared in the bedchamber.’

For a swift moment, Christoph saw stars. It was a brilliant idea. Why had he not thought of that himself? He returned to earth and tried to remind himself that this plan, his actual plan, was perhaps even better than that.

It would be a close call, though.

‘Well, sadly I am not about to lead you back up to our bedchamber and ravish you,’ Christoph said with some regret. ‘We’ll be doing something else. Something better.’

Even though her eyes were covered by the blindfold, he could see Daphne’s surprise. ‘Something better than what we share in the bedchamber?’

It was all he could do not to pull up her skirts and take her right here. They had certainly discovered a great number of things in the bedchamber that delighted them, and he had a feeling that their enjoyment of each other was only going to grow with time. Something else to look forward to.

But he had to be careful; he had timed this perfectly, and if he found himself dilly-dallying outside because his wife had said the word ‘bedchamber’, then all his planning would have been for naught.

It had been his planning that had brought them together.

Now, Christoph hoped, his planning would bring them even closer together.

‘Are you ready to disembark?’ he said aloud.

Daphne’s cheeks pinked. ‘Are…? We are not going on a ship, are we?’

‘No! No, I meant the carriage,’ said Christoph with a laugh. ‘Come, give me your hand.’

Without being able to see him, and not knowing precisely where he was going to be in the carriage, Daphne trustingly put her hand out in the air.

Christoph took it with a lump in his throat.

This woman had taught him more about trust in the last few months than everyone else in his life combined over the last thirty years.

There was something so delicate about her, yet as strong as iron.

There was nothing like her. No one like her. And she was his.

The carriage door was opened by a footman and Christoph carefully led Daphne down onto the pavement.

There were far more people about than he had expected, and a few of them stared curiously at what the strange couple were doing.

After all, it was not often that a woman stepped out of a carriage wearing a blindfold. At least, not in this part of London.

‘Can I take this off now?’ Daphne said quietly, her cheeks red.

How did she know that people were staring? It was another one of his wife’s wonders, her ability to sense when she was being looked at. Christoph had so much more to learn about her. And there was so much time for him to enjoy discovering it.

His voice shook just a tad as he said, ‘Yes. Yes, you can take the blindfold off.’

Her delicate hands removed the cravat silk that he had used as a makeshift blindfold, and Daphne blinked in the wintry sunlight. Then she frowned. ‘It’s…it’s the church. The church where we were married.’

Excitement fizzed through Christoph’s blood. ‘It is.’

‘And we are here, because…?’ Daphne’s voice trailed off, confusion on her face.

Christoph grinned. Oh, this was far better than he could ever have dreamed. ‘Because…because our wedding was not what it should have been.’

There was a flash of panic on Daphne’s face. ‘Was it not legal? Are we not actually—?’

‘No! No, nothing like that,’ he said hurriedly. Blast, he hadn’t explained himself properly. ‘No, I just meant…it wasn’t what I wanted it to be.’

There was still a crease of confusion between Daphne’s beautiful eyes as she glanced up at the tall building. ‘It does not seem that long ago that we were last here.’

‘In a way, it wasn’t. Two months.’ Christoph inhaled deeply. ‘But in many other ways it was a lifetime ago.’

Daphne fixed him with her enquiring stare and said nothing.

Well, here goes.

‘Daphne, I learned so much in the last few months—not just about you, though that has been wonderful, but about myself. About what sort of world I want to live in, what sort of man I want to be. You’ve taught me that, and helped me discover it for myself and…

I love you. I want you to know how much I love you.

And so I wanted to go back to the beginning. ’

He evidently had not explained it sufficiently, because Daphne still looked puzzled. ‘So we’re…back. At the church.’

‘I wanted to make it up to you. Our wedding, I mean,’ Christoph said gently, pulling her forward through the door of the church and into the vestibule. ‘You married a man you did not know in a wedding which was all about me. My needs. My requirements.’

Daphne was flushing now. ‘It was an arranged marriage. I did not mind.’

‘I mind,’ Christoph said simply. ‘And so I thought…why not do it again?’

Her eyes widened. ‘Get married again?’

‘Not married, as such. I couldn’t find a reverend who was amenable to such a thing, try as I might to explain it to them,’ Christoph said ruefully.

They were infuriating, these English vicars, nothing like the ministers in Niedernlein.

‘But I thought we could commit to each other again. Properly, this time—knowing each other as we do, knowing our faults and our qualities. Promise each other things with real meaning. We can start again.’

Daphne’s flush was deepening, and Christoph could not help but notice just how beautiful she was: the flicker of pink at her collarbone, the way her cheeks brightened her eyes, the soft swell of her curves.

She was all Daphne, and she was all his.

He wanted to do this, to show her just how much he loved her.

How much he appreciated her. Knew her and wanted to keep knowing her.

‘You would do that?’ she whispered.

Christoph exhaled. ‘I would do anything for you.’

They walked into the nave in silence, Daphne’s hand intertwined with his own.

They walked forward, stopping at the end of the aisle just before the altar.

They stood facing each other, hand in hand.

Christoph revelled in the sense of her closeness.

Daphne’s hand pressed into his, their bodies so close he could feel the delicate exhale of her breathing.

‘So,’ whispered Daphne. ‘What did you have in mind?’

Christoph swallowed. What he’d had in mind had felt perfectly reasonable at the time. Now that it was time to tell her, show her, he felt…exposed.

‘I thought… I mean, it was just an idea…but I thought we could make each other new vows. Vows not of the church, but of our hearts,’ he said hesitantly.

Daphne’s beaming smile released much of his tension. Much, but not all. ‘You have given this a great deal of thought, haven’t you?’

‘I have given you a great deal of thought,’ said Christoph honestly, his soul singing. ‘Shall I go first?’

‘I think you may have to, as I have not yet had any time to prepare my vows,’ Daphne said with a small laugh that rippled around the church. ‘Go on, then.’

Christoph cleared his throat as though about to address a royal court. And, in a way, he was. Daphne was a royal, at least by marriage, and she was the person he wanted to court for the rest of his life.

‘Daphne, I vow to always listen to you,’ Christoph said softly. ‘To always hear you, no matter what you say. I vow to protect you from the world as best I can, in the full knowledge that you are more than capable of looking after yourself.’

‘I should think so,’ murmured Daphne with pinking cheeks. ‘Who was it that discovered the spy in our household?’

Christoph squeezed her hands. ‘I vow never to underestimate you, then. I vow to cherish you as the treasure you are. I vow to worship the very ground you walk on because it is precious. And I vow to come back here with you, every year, and make new vows. As I get to know you better, as we grow in our marriage, we will come here and make new vows so that I am always thinking of new ways to love you.’

All the prepared statements had disappeared from his mind the moment he had looked at Daphne, but that did not matter. Christoph had spoken from the deepest part of him and it seemed that Daphne’s heart had heard him—had heard his intentions.

There were tears sparkling in the corners of her eyes. ‘How am I supposed to follow that?’

‘Just tell me whatever you want,’ Christoph said awkwardly. Perhaps he should have told her in advance. It wasn’t exactly fair to give her no time at all to think of such things. ‘In fact, don’t worry, you don’t have to…’

‘Christoph, I vow to love you as you deserve,’ Daphne said quietly, her attention steadily fixed on him.

‘And that means to love you because of who you are, without fear, with complete truth and with curiosity about the world. I vow to ask you for the truth rather than presume the worst, and to listen to you—truly listen to you.’

There was some sort of knot in Christoph’s throat. He had no idea how it had got there, and absolutely no idea how he was going to remove it.

‘I vow to challenge you when you are wrong and apologise when I am wrong,’ Daphne continued with a wry laugh. ‘I vow to work hard to know the difference. I vow to adore you as the best person I know. And I vow to endeavour to be that for you.’

It was impossible for Christoph to hold himself back any longer.

Such happiness, such understanding between them, was something that had to be celebrated.

He leaned forward, celebrating in the only way he knew how, moaning at the sudden rush of affection that poured through him as their lips touched.

Oh, she was his Daphne, his wife, his woman, the person he…

‘Put that woman down, man!’

Christoph sprang back from a furious flushing Daphne and looked up into the outraged face of a vicar. ‘Ah. Ah, yes, I can see how this misunderstanding—’

‘Do not desecrate the house of God!’ the vicar shouted, his words echoing loudly around the church before he strode away, shaking his head.

When Christoph turned to his wife, it was clear to see she was utterly mortified. ‘Christoph!’ she muttered. ‘We’ll never be allowed back! There’ll be talk all through the ton , we’ll never… You are laughing!’

He was. Christoph could not help it—it was absolutely the most ridiculous thing to have occurred, though he should have known something would.

‘Desecrate the church, indeed,’ he murmured into Daphne’s ear, rejoicing in the closeness, the way he could breathe her in. ‘I’d like to do far more than that in here that would desecrate the church.’

It should not have been possible for Daphne to flush any darker, yet the crimson colour that was spreading down her neck and encouraging Christoph to look at her décolletage was quite something.

‘Christoph!’

‘Thankfully,’ he said hurriedly, ‘we do not have to resort to such a thing. The carriage awaits us outside, and our home is not too far away.’

‘But it took us half an hour to—’

‘There was an element of going around in circles,’ Christoph confessed with a grin, tugging Daphne back up the aisle with him. ‘Subterfuge.’

Daphne rolled her eyes good-naturedly at him, still pink, as she walked with him out of the church. ‘Perhaps we should leave subterfuge behind.’

‘Perhaps. Right,’ Christoph said bracingly, trying not to think of the rigid manhood in his breeches that made walking difficult. ‘Into the carriage and home, where I can make love to you.’

‘Home?’ repeated Daphne as he helped her into the carriage and swiftly followed her, shutting the door behind them. ‘You know… I don’t think I can wait until home.’

For a moment, Christoph stared at his blushing bride and wondered how on earth he had managed to be so fortunate.

‘Well, that is a terrible shame,’ he said in a low voice in the carriage, moving to sit beside his stunning wife as she looked at him with desire-filled eyes. ‘If only there was something I could do to you here, in the carriage…’