To Wed a Wicked Prince by Jane Feather

Author:Jane Feather [Feather, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781416564997
Publisher: Pocket Star
Published: 2008-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

T HERE WAS A LIGHT DUSTING of snow on the ground when Livia walked up the aisle of her father’s church on the Saturday before Christmas, attended by her two matrons of honor. Alex stood at the altar, Viscount Bonham beside him.

It had been agreed among his peers after Tatarinov’s information about the viscount that the less they came into contact with Bonham as a group the less risk they would run. Livia had expressed surprise and dismay that he was inviting no one of his own to the wedding, but she’d accepted the fib that only Duke Nicolai and Count Fedorovsky were sufficiently close to him to warrant an invitation, and unfortunately they both had longstanding invitations to spend Christmas elsewhere.

It was a useful fabrication. He didn’t want Livia getting too friendly with his own people. A man who was playing both ends against the middle needed to keep the separate strands of his life well apart lest the spark that would be ignited if they touched turn into a conflagration that would engulf them all.

Now, as he watched Livia’s steady progress towards him and their shared future, he thought how far he had come in this relationship from the early days when he had seen her as his passport to an easy social acceptance in her world. Now it wouldn’t matter if she could bring him nothing. He wanted her for herself, for that lively sense of humor, that delicious bubble of laughter, for the way her eyes turned smoky with passion and her body melted into his. He had never met a woman like her and he wanted to marry her, to keep her safe, to love her and be loved by her.

But he also knew that he was deceiving her, that the entire bedrock of this marriage was based on deception, and he could do nothing to alter that. The die was cast, and he had to maintain the deception if he was to protect her. Only thus could she continue living the life she was used to, a life now enhanced by her married status, by her title, and by his wealth. It was a forgivable deception, surely. He had only to keep her safe from the other side of his world, even as she played an unwitting part in it. A fair exchange?

As she reached him, Livia smiled through the gauzy transparency of her veil. He looked unusually tense, she thought. It was as monumental a step for him as it was for her.

She had not a single misgiving. It had surprised her, but she had woken up that morning happy and full of excitement. Maybe it was a wildly impractical thing to do, to join one’s life with a near stranger simply because it felt right…simply because just thinking of him made her heart sing and her blood surge. But she could not imagine doing anything different. She could not imagine how she could ever have made a different decision. And here on the steps of the altar she still couldn’t.

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