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Royal Weddings(8)

By:Stephanie Laurens


He didn’t know if she would, but he was a soldier, a risk-taker—he would risk all to have her as his wife.

He heard her footsteps tapping on the tiles.

She swept out from a corridor, his card in her hand. “Gaston—”

He held up a hand. “I know—you are busy. But that is why I have come.” He caught her cornflower blue eyes. “You are wrestling with the seating for the dinner, are you not?”

Her only answer was a tightening of her lips.

He relaxed. “Well, I have come to assist you—to tell you that, for instance, you need to keep half the table’s length between Robert’s Tante Helene and the Comtesse Vraitot. If you do not, they will be at each other’s throats.”

She frowned, those lovely, unusual, mid-blue eyes narrowing on his, then she humphed, swung around, and waved him to follow. “Very well—come and be useful.”

He followed her down a secondary corridor and into the huge library. She’d been sitting on the chaise before the hearth, uncounted lists spread on a low table before her.

“Why,” she asked, sinking back on the chaise, “are you French so damned melodramatic?”

“Because it makes life more interesting.” He sat alongside her, not so close as to crowd her. He was well aware that his nearness ruffled her senses; he felt the same in reverse. While he was eager to learn what might happen, what it would feel like, when they were even closer, skin to naked skin, she was presently skittish, stepping back, shying away. In terms of persuading her to accept his offer, he would know he’d succeeded when she stepped over the line, when she turned her back on safety and stepped into his arms. He cast a knowing eye over her lists. “What do you have so far?”

He’d been a chevalier—a senior knight—in Louis’s household for nearly a decade; he knew as much about the intricacies of precedence as she. While she knew the English attendees, he knew the French; by pooling their knowledge, they made a better fist of the seating arrangements than she would have managed alone.

“Thank you.” Meg gathered the sheets containing their final plan, leaving him to crumple the discarded versions. “The place cards are already written—now I just need to set them out.” She glanced at the clock. “Great heavens! Is that the time?”

She honestly hadn’t noticed the hours ticking past. Too engrossed with listening to the intriguing snippets about various guests Gaston had constantly let fall. The devil could be thoroughly entertaining when he wished, in a wholly unpushy way. She’d actually relaxed—and now she was going to be late getting ready. She rose.

He did, too, and waved at the door. “Come—fetch your place cards and I will help you put them out. Together we will do it in half the time, and then I will leave you to get ready.”

She met his eyes and nodded. He was right. And he’d done nothing all afternoon to make her wary.

She grabbed the place cards from her escritoire, then they hurried to the formal dining room and paced quickly back and forth down the table, already laden with silver and plate, crystal and porcelain. In ten minutes they’d created the disposition of persons around the table that they’d earlier determined.

“Bon—it is done.” Gaston caught her hand, raised it to his lips and pressed an almost distracted kiss to her knuckles. “And now I must away.” Releasing her, he swept her a flourishing bow as he backed to the door. “I will see you tonight, mignonne.”

Meg stood and stared as he turned and strode from the room. The phantom brush of his lips still burned her skin, sending a wave of heat through her.

The door closed behind him, and still she stared. Mignonne? She was five feet ten inches tall, and wore her dark hair up in a swirling knot, adding an inch at least.

She wasn’t exactly slender, either; Junoesque would be nearer the mark.

“Mignonne.” Her lips twitched, then she glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. “Good Lord!” Grabbing up her skirts, she rushed for the door.

If there was one rule above all others in planning a wedding, it was that the wedding planner could never be late.



June 16, 1820, 10:00 P.M.

Gardens of Durham House, London



“Dare I say it, but that went better than even you might have hoped.” Gaston followed Meg onto the terrace running alongside the Durham House drawing room.

“Thus far.” Meg scanned the moonlit lawns, then spotted her quarry—the affianced couple— strolling with Cicely, her husband Hugh, and another of Robert’s groomsmen farther down the terrace. Appeased, she drew back into the shadows by the wall. “Never before have I had to organize a dinner with three effective hosts, even if Robert’s parents are dead.”