The Marriage Miracle

‘Are you sure you shouldn’t be doing your best woman duty and strutting your stuff with the best man?’

There was just the tiniest hesitation before she said, ‘Would you believe he’s married? To the most gorgeous redhead you’ve ever seen. I ask you, what’s the point of a best man who isn’t available for the best woman to have her wicked way with? I can’t believe someone as smart as Guy could get it so wrong.’

‘Shocking,’ he said, almost but not totally certain that she was kidding. Women usually smiled at him. This one didn’t. He’d changed his mind about her flirting, she was flirting, quite outrageously, but she didn’t smile, or bat her eyelashes, or do anything that women usually did. He wasn’t exactly sure what she was doing, but she’d got his full attention. ‘Definitely time for that drink.’ Then, since flirting under any circumstances should not be a one-way transaction, ‘Unless I can offer myself as a substitute?’

‘For the best man?’

‘Since you’ve been so badly let down,’ he confirmed.

Guy had asked him, but he hadn’t anticipated being in London at the time…

‘Are you suggesting that we disappear into the shrubbery and fool around, Mr Wolseley?’

Her gaze was steady as a rock, and that wide mouth hadn’t so much as twitched. For a moment he found himself floundering, as if he’d stepped unexpectedly out of his depth.

He took a slow breath to steady himself and said, ‘Well, to be honest, that’s a little fast for me, Miss Lang. I like to get to know a girl before I take her clothes off. And I prefer to do it in comfort.’

‘That’s no fun. Not entering into the spirit of the thing at all.’

‘I don’t have to know her that well,’ he said seriously. ‘A dance or two—dinner, maybe? Once that hurdle is passed and we get to first-name terms I’m perfectly willing to be led astray.’

‘But only in comfort.’

‘I like to take my time.’

Without warning her face lit up in the kind of smile that took the sting out of his day, so that dancing with her seemed like the best idea he’d had for a long time.

‘You like to dance?’ she asked.

He had the oddest feeling that he was being tested in some way. ‘Yes, but we can pass if you’re hungry. Go straight to dinner.’

‘And are you good?’

Definitely being tested.

‘At dancing?’

‘That’s what we were talking about,’ she reminded him.

‘Was it?’ He didn’t think so, but he played along. ‘I decline to answer that question on the grounds that it might incriminate me.’

‘Come, come. No false modesty, please.’ She lifted her head, listening to the music coming from the marquee, then shook her head. ‘No, that’s a waltz. Everyone can waltz. Can you foxtrot?’

‘Hasn’t that been banned?’ he enquired.

‘Too advanced for you, hmm? How about a tango, then?’

‘Without treading on your toes? That I couldn’t guarantee. But give me a rose to clutch beneath my teeth and I’m willing to give it a try.’

Her laugh was wholehearted and her mouth didn’t disappoint. ‘Well, that’s certainly the best offer I’ve had for quite a while, but don’t panic. Nothing is getting me out of this chair for the rest of the evening.’

He frowned. He’d escaped the marquee once he’d done his duty, fully intent on leaving, but what was she doing out here on her own?

‘Is it such hard work being a best woman?’ he asked.

‘You wouldn’t believe how tough. The hen party was an epic of organisation, and a bride doesn’t get to look that perfect without someone to ensure she gets the attention she deserves on her big day.’

He followed her gaze to where the bride stood arm-in-arm at the entrance to the marquee with her groom, getting some air, chatting to friends. ‘You did a great job. Guy’s a lucky man,’ he said.

‘He deserves his luck. And Fran deserves him.’

That had been said with feeling, and he glanced back at her. ‘You’re close?’

‘More like sisters than cousins,’ she agreed. ‘We’re both only children from the kind of dysfunctional families that give marriage a bad name.’

‘Believe me, if you had a family like mine you’d realise that’s not all bad news,’ he assured her. Then, because he didn’t want to go there, he said, ‘I’ll go and fetch that Scotch.’

Matty didn’t take her eyes off Sebastian Wolseley as he walked away from her. Tall, wide-shouldered, with beautifully cut dark hair that lifted in tiny ruffles in the light breeze, he might have stepped from any woman’s fantasy. And his eyes changed from a dull slate to deep blue-green when he smiled—like the sea when the sun shone.

He was a pleasure to look at, and she’d been watching him ever since he’d slipped late into the reception. Seen the warmth with which he’d been greeted by Guy. But, although he was present in body, he’d clearly been somewhere else in spirit.

‘Matty…’ Toby, her cousin’s three-year-old son, pushed between her and the circular table, dragging at the floor-length cloth and causing mayhem amongst the glasses as he leaned against her knees, laying his head on her lap. ‘Hide me.’

‘From what?’

‘Connie. She says I have to go to bed.’

She rescued Sebastian’s glass as it rolled towards the edge of the table, spilling champagne in a wide semicircle as it went. The stem was still warm from his hand…

‘Have you had a good day?’ she asked, setting it upright, giving her full attention to Toby.

He yawned. ‘Mmm.’

He was already half asleep and she looked around, hoping to see Fran’s housekeeper, Connie. He wouldn’t have given her the slip so easily before the arrival of his baby sister, but he was no longer the dead centre of his small world. Maybe, overwhelmed by an occasion when his mother was the focus of attention, he needed a little one-to-one reassurance.

Ignoring the smears of chocolate decorating his cheek, she lifted him up onto her lap, nestling him against her shoulder.

‘You know, you did a great job today, taking care of the rings. I was so proud of you.’

He snuggled closer. ‘I didn’t drop them, did I?’

‘No.’ She gave him a hug. ‘You were a star.’

Sebastian walked up a shallow ramp into an inviting room softly lit by a single lamp. On the left was a drawing board, a computer workstation—a mini studio lit by a floor-to-ceiling window.

Matty Lang was an artist? He looked around, half expecting to see her work on the walls, but she favoured woven fabric hangings rather than conventional pictures. Or maybe that was her medium. There was nothing on the drawing board to give him a clue.

There was something about the set-up that didn’t look quite right, but what with jet lag, an excess of family disapproval at the funeral and the realisation that while it was possible to dispense with the ‘noblesse’, the ‘oblige’ was inescapable, his wits were not at their sharpest.