Kitty put her hand on his cheek and said, “I believe that Thurlow can hear us. This morning I told him all about the wedding.” She leaned over and called, “Darling!”

Thurlow’s eyes flickered open and sought out his wife, standing by the bed. He murmured something.

“What is it, darling?”

“Cherish,” he said, quite clearly. “Lovely Kitty.”

Gabby could feel tears in the back of her throat. She reached out and laid her hand briefly on top of the viscount’s. “I am very pleased to meet you, sir.”

“Dearly beloved,” Mr. Moir said, his voice gentle. “We are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this family, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony….”

Quill took Gabby’s hands in his large, warm ones. Gabby looked up at him and clutched his hands as if they were lifelines.

“It is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand,” Mr. Moir was saying, “unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding, but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the face of God.”

Quill took a deep breath. Part of his mind still couldn’t believe that he, Erskine Dewland, was marrying Gabrielle Jerningham. As a matter of fact, it was hard to believe that he was marrying at all. He was aware of his father’s inert body at his right shoulder, of Mr. Moir talking of procreation and remedies for sin, of his mother holding his father’s hand to her cheek.

But most of all he was aware of his almost-wife. Of Gabby’s lovely brandy-colored eyes, shining with grief for a man she had never met. Her glorious hair was shaded by a veil that looked like a wisp of cloud.

And he repeated after the priest, “I, Erskine Matthew Claudius Dewland, take thee, Gabrielle Elizabeth Jerningham, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer …”

Gabby was dimly aware that the viscountess was cradling her husband’s hand against her cheek and that Peter was smiling slightly on the other side of the bed. But the room had narrowed to Quill’s deep-green eyes and to his large hands, still holding hers tightly. “In sickness and in health,” she said clearly, “to love, cherish, and to obey, till death do us part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I give thee my troth.”

Quill smiled then, and the smile flew to her heart. He took her hand and slid a ring onto the fourth finger.

“With this ring I thee wed,” Quill said. “With my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow.”

Gabby swallowed hard. The viscountess was weeping silently on the other side of the bed.