Daring Miss Danvers: The Wallflower Wedding Series by Vivienne Lorret

Author:Vivienne Lorret
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2014-04-15T12:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

* * *

The following morning, the Post made no mention of an encounter between Miss D— and Lord R— scandalous or otherwise.

Rathburn searched the copy again and again to be sure. He even asked Stewart if he was certain this was the entire paper. When the head butler looked at him peculiarly, he realized that he sounded like a crazed buffoon.

He probably was. In fact, he’d lain awake all night, practicing the speeches he’d prepared for his grandmother and the Archbishop of Canterbury, listing the reasons why he required a special license. Why he must marry Emma Danvers.

Yet, in the morning, when it was clear he didn’t need to deliver any speech at all, a rise of unspent energy churned inside him.

While he kept himself busier than usual of late—primarily to abstain from compiling a list of ways he could get Emma Danvers alone in order to prove to her that his intentions were serious—he gave himself another occupation.

Restless, he left the townhouse and drove to Hawthorne Manor. It wasn’t uncommon for him to remove his morning coat and roll up his shirtsleeves to assist the laborers. So, when he came prepared to expend more than his share of energy, the workmen kindly let him apply himself to constructing the massive four-poster bed in the viscountess’s bedchamber.

The servants now referred to it as Miss Danvers’s room, and he’d never bothered to correct them. Referring to it as Emma’s chamber in his own mind was probably the reason why he’d had the plaster workers add sprays of jasmine to the corner molding in the room and over the doors. The finest silk wallpaper decorated the space in a beautiful pearlescent cream color, with ribbons of pink adorning thin stripes of chocolate brown. The colors worked perfectly together, creating a space that was simple and yet elegant, just like the woman who’d inspired his choice.

This is all for her, a voice whispered inside him. Not just this chamber, the sitting room, or even the bathing chamber, but the whole house and the view from each window. Each day, he found himself wondering about her opinion on everything from the colors of the draperies to the buds sprouting from the earth outside. “They’re just beginning to bloom,” she’d said to him that day he’d given her a tour. “It would be a shame not to give them a chance.”

A profound realization coursed through him as sudden and as exhilarating as a summer storm. They were the blooms, fragile, fresh and new, waiting to blossom. Waiting for a reason to end the pretense in favor of a true betrothal.

Rathburn could no longer deny it. He wasn’t pretending any longer, or acting according to his grandmother’s expectations. In fact, he doubted he ever was.

He wanted to marry Emma Danvers.

She’d told him how only a fool would lose her heart to him. Yet, that’s exactly what he wanted from her. He wanted her to lose her heart, or more to the point, to give it to him of her own free will.

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