A Duchess a Day (Awakened by a Kiss #1) - Charis Michaels Page 0,88
cannot predict what you’ll want.”
“I can predict what I want—how very hard is it to know one’s own mind?—and I’ve been predicting it from the beginning. You’ve been the only one to listen. Until now.”
“I am listening,” he said, “but so must you. For once.”
They traveled another block. Helena weighed the odds of challenging him. Finally, she said, “Is that what you want? To marry now and seek an annulment later?”
“It is the best I can arrange for now,” he said. “I cannot, in good conscience, bind you to me in my . . . current situation. I want you to have a way to be rid of me, just in case you—”
He stopped. Finally, he added, “Just in case.”
“So you are marrying me for the moment?”
“I am marrying you, Helena. Please let us leave it at that. The decision to do it was exceedingly hard-met, and very soul-wrenching, but I’ve found a way.
“And I’ve located this priest,” he added. “He even knows a clerk who will sign the license.
“And we don’t have much time,” he finished. “Unless you’ve changed your mind?”
“No,” she said at once.
She elected to leave it. She would not needle him about his “hard-met and soul-wrenching decision.” She would not demand that he explain his current situation.
If she was married to Declan Shaw, even a rushed-up marriage, in total secrecy, by some middle-of-the-night priest, she would be safe from marrying the duke. It would be enough.
And Declan would be hers. Whether it was “for the moment” or forever—fine, he couldn’t say for sure. Helena could.
She knew.
As for consummating the marriage, she would also say nothing.
Here again, she knew.
They arrived at St. Patrick’s in Soho Square. Just as Declan said, the church was presided over by a priest called Father Thomas. He was a slight, irreverent man who was putting cream in bowls for mewing alley cats.
Declan called out in greeting. The priest squinted at him as if he’d forgotten which midnight favor he’d promised this night.
“It’s me, Father. Declan Shaw. Peter’s son?”
“Oh yes, so it is,” said Father Thomas. “The couple in the very great rush. I remember now. Lovely. So be it, better rushed than wasting anyone’s time. Right this way. Do mind the cats.”
The small church bustled with activity. The corridors were crowded with what appeared to be street urchins asleep on cots, watched over by a snoozing nun. A bright kitchen bustled with more nuns serving hot soup to exhausted, ragged-looking vagrants. The door to a room marked “Infirmary” opened and closed to admit a doctor. More nuns followed, carrying basins of steaming water, bandages, and finally a red, mewling infant.
“But your church is so active at this early hour, Father?” Helena asked.
“Oh yes. God’s children sometimes feel the most desperate in the middle of the night. If we intend to be ‘a light in the darkness,’ midnight is our busiest hour.”
“So very noble,” she said, “thank you for . . . accommodating us.”
“There are all kinds of desperation, aren’t there?” He winked at them. “We don’t stand on ceremony at St. Patrick’s. I became a priest to serve. Now, should we have a witness?”
Helena and Declan were married in view of two nuns, three street vagrants, and a prostitute with hair the color of an orange. Father Thomas managed the whole thing in thirty minutes.
Despite the rush, despite Declan’s clear preference for the reversibility of the thing, tears filled both their eyes when they spoke their vows. They repeated the ancient words solemnly, with the feeling and emphasis that sounded like a Heart Oath to God and each other.
When they finally spilled, hand in hand, from the walled churchyard and into Soho Square, she whirled on him, took his face in both hands, and kissed him.
He sighed blissfully and pulled her to him. She whispered, “Make love to me.”
He answered with an anguished moan and kissed her again. They fell against the church wall, locked in an embrace.
“You’ll see your error now,” she teased, rolling away from him, panting against cool stones. “You’ve married me. You’ll not escape my . . . my—”
“Relentlessness,” he provided. He sought her hand between them. They leaned side by side on the wall.
“I was going to say, ‘superior reasoning and clear logic,’ but alright. You cannot drive me away.”
He did not answer, which meant he did not deny it. She smiled into the moonlit square. After a moment she said, “Declan, I want you to tell me whatever it is. This thing. Whatever you feel would