Scandal would touch not only him—but his title, his family, the unblemished name his grandfather had spent forty years restoring after a previous duke’s fondness for the gaming tables had nearly seen the whole edifice crumble. His mother, in her widow’s house at the dower, who had wept softly at the news of his engagement and called it the first good thing to happen to the family in a decade.
And her.Imogen. Whatever protection his name afforded her now, the absence of it would ruin her absolutely.
His gaze sharpened.
What the devil had she done?
More importantly?—
Why?
And where the devil was his actual fiancée?
A flicker of something unexpected stirred beneath the initial shock, beneath the affront, beneath the cold mechanism ofconsequence already grinding into motion in his head. Not quite amusement. No, this was something sharper. Something dangerously close tointrigue.
He would have assumed that being raised the daughter of an earl, she would have been more suited to laughter in drawing rooms and well-turned remarks at supper, not to bold, irreversible acts of fraud committed at the altar of God before half the gentry of three counties.
He had been mistaken.
And Tristan Somerset did not, as a rule, care for being mistaken.
“Your Grace?” the vicar prompted gently, with the small, encouraging cough of a man accustomed to nudging nervous bridegrooms through the final beat of the ceremony.
Ah… Yes, there was still an audience.
Tristan became acutely aware of the expectant silence that had fallen over the church—the soft creak of a pew somewhere behind him, the faint cough of an elderly relation, the dozens of eyes fixed upon the altar awaiting the final, ceremonial gesture that would release them all into the more comfortable business of congratulation and gossip.
He lowered his head slightly. He forced his expression into something composed. Controlled. Untouched by the upheaval beneath. He had spent thirty-two years cultivating the particular blandness of expression that had carried him through three nursemaids, six years of Eton, and one extraordinarily tedious interview with the Prince Regent. It served him well now.
“I see,” he murmured, low enough that only she could hear, the words pitched so close to her ear that he saw the faint shiver they produced along the soft skin of her temple. “This is... unexpected.”
Imogen’s lips parted, as if she might respond—but he did not give her the opportunity.
Instead, he did what was required of him.
He kissed his bride.
Chapter Three
The kiss was meant to be brief. Formal. A mere acknowledgment of the ritual. Yet the moment his lips met the softness of hers, he was lost.
She waswarm. Softer than he had any business noticing in a church, before God and his great-aunt Cordelia and the bishop himself. Her mouth was pliant beneath his, and there was thefaintest trace of something sweet on her breath. He noticed, with an attention that struck him as wildly inappropriate to the moment, the precise place where her upper lip curved into its small, decided bow.
There was a faint, unsteady intake of her breath against his mouth, and though she did not lean into him, she did not retreat either. She simplyreceivedhim, steady and unflinching, with the same stubborn courage that had undoubtedly carried her down the aisle in another woman’s gown.
Interesting.
Very interesting.
He pulled back before the moment could linger into something inappropriate for the setting, his gaze locking onto hers once more.
There was no fear there in her warm brown eyes. Nor any semblance of regret or embarrassment.
Only a bright, stubborn certainty—and, he saw now, the smallest, treacherous flicker of something else. Awareness. The faintest dilation of those tea-colored eyes, the slightest catch in her breathing that she had not quite managed to suppress. So… the kiss had not been entirely without effect on her either.
He filed the observation away.
Tristan straightened, turning outward as the first murmurs rippled through the congregation—the soft, anticipatory hum of a wedding party preparing to spill from the pews into the aisle. Somewhere to his left, his great-aunt Cordelia was already weeping in the satisfied manner of women who enjoyed weeping at weddings. The bishop was beaming. The vicar was tucking his prayer book beneath his arm.