Mr. Moir put his hand on top of their joined hands. “I pronounce that they be man and wife together.”

Quill stepped forward and put one hand under Gabby’s chin, tipping her face up. He bent his head and his lips met hers. There wasn’t a trace of the intoxicating fever that generally assailed him when he touched Gabby. His lips lingered with a sense of sweet possession.

Gabby’s arms came up around his neck and she clung to him. For a moment Quill forgot where he was in a rush of exultant triumph. He had wooed her and wed her. She was his, this whole enchanting bundle of woman, Gabby, wife.

Then Kitty hurried around the bed, and a second later Gabby was enveloped in a scented hug. “I am so happy, darling, and so would Thurlow be as well. He would wish you all the best. That is, he is wishing you all the best, because I’m quite certain that he is aware of what just happened, Gabrielle.”

“Mother,” Quill said quietly. He was still standing at the head of the bed.

The viscount’s eyes were closed and his hands were relaxed. Gabby thought he had gone back to sleep. But then Quill tenderly laid his father’s hand back on the coverlet, and Mr. Moir came forward, touched the viscount’s head, and said, “Go with God.” Kitty whispered, “Oh, Thurlow, no, no,” and Peter came around the bed and drew her into his arms.

Soundlessly, Gabby retreated to a chair next to Lady Sylvia.

LIKELY, MARRIAGE VOWS always brought with them a terrifying feeling of change, Gabby thought later, back in her room.

One part of her was fascinated by the fact that Quill could—he had the right!—walk into her bedchamber at any moment, even though she was wearing nothing more than a slight chemise. A hastily summoned seamstress was measuring her for a suit of black clothing.

Another part of her was trying hard not to think of her wedding as a turn from white to black, from joy to sadness. That was the problem with an imagination like hers. It was entirely too active and too ready to leap to idiotic suppositions.

Superstition, her father had often said, was the bane of uncivilized cultures. Gabby tried to hold on to that thought.

But it wasn’t until the door swung open and a large body walked through, as if there was nothing unusual about entering a lady’s bedchamber, that Gabby really understood just how much her life had changed.

Quill’s eyes moved down her body, his face inscrutable. His eyes dropped to the seamstress, who was scrawling notations, and then to Margaret, waiting to dress her mistress again.

He jerked his head, and Margaret jumped to her feet and grabbed the seamstress’s arm.

And then, before Gabby could have said Jack Robinson, Quill was standing alone in the middle of her bedchamber.

Chapter 14