“I am a simple man, Charlotte,” he told her. “I would not offer you marriage if I thought either of us would live to regret it. If you are having second thoughts, please tell me now. Otherwise”—he leaped down from the phaeton and held out his hand to her—“my sister awaits, and you have wedding plans to make.”

***

“You are welcome to be married with David and me,” Alasdair’s sister offered, looking up with a smile from where she was embroidering her bridal stockings. “It won’t be a big wedding, but you’re welcome to share it. I think it would be very romantic for all of us to be married at the same time.”

Charlotte thought it would be anything but romantic. Horrific, appalling, embarrassing, not-to-be-borne, a terrible waste of a day that was supposed to be the happiest in any woman’s life, yes, yes, it was all that, but romantic? Faugh!

Patricia turned to her brother with a smile that sparkled in her eyes. “Dare, you wouldn’t mind being married with David and me, would you? It would be such a lovely day. You could join us for breakfast at the hotel, and then we can all go down to the docks to see the ship. I’m sure Lady Charlotte would enjoy that.”

On the contrary, Lady Charlotte was sure she would not enjoy that. Lady Charlotte was equally sure she would not enjoy any other events of that ilk. Lady Charlotte would go so far as to admit to an almost uncontrollable urge to wrap her borrowed lace handkerchief across Patricia’s mouth lest other such suggestions burst forth.

“It might do,” Alasdair said thoughtfully, one finger absently rubbing across his lower lip. Charlotte shifted to a slightly less uncomfortable spot on the worn settee, her gaze following his finger as it rubbed back and forth, her breath doing odd little palpitations in her chest as she noticed for the first time just how handsome his lips were. Lips, she had always felt, were lips. Functional, yes. Pleasing in an aesthetic manner, true. But she had never been a connoisseur of lips in the past, a fact she admitted with no little sense of regret upon viewing the fine specimens Alasdair bore. Clearly she had made a grievous mistake in overlooking lips as a source of enjoyment, his lips in particular, but that fault would be corrected immediately. Or as immediately as it took her to kiss him. “It would serve us both well. We could get both events over with in one fell swoop.”

“I do not wish to be over in a fell swoop, whatever that is,” Charlotte objected. Her musings upon the glory and greatness of his lips were abruptly brought to an end. She felt control slipping through her fingers, and it was not a pleasant sensation. She liked Alasdair’s sister, she honestly did, but if that little mischief-maker thought she was going to do Charlotte out of the grand, glorious wedding due her, she could just think twice!