Always the Rival (Never the Bride #7) - Emily E K Murdoch Page 0,78

less than an hour!”

Mrs. Seton nodded, a worried look on her face. “I know.”

Priscilla waited for more, but no more words came. “Well, you have had just over a month to voice your displeasure, Mother. Why has it taken until this late in the day?”

She turned back to the looking glass and tried to make her veil straighter. It did not seem to matter what she did to it. Did they make them like this, purposefully?

In the reflection, she watched her mother pace up and down fretfully. Priscilla sighed. Her bedchamber was not that large and having her mother moving about like this was akin to being caged with a tiger.

You never quite knew what it was going to do next.

“It just seems…well, very sudden,” Mrs. Seton said as she moved about the room. “Very unlikely. I could never have predicted it, and you know that I love you, Priscilla, but this was not the match I had imagined for you.”

Her mother’s words were an understatement, thought Priscilla. How many other people were thinking the same? That Charles had somehow been hoodwinked? That she was rushing into this, desperate to catch him before he changed his mind?

“It was a surprise to me, too,” she said carefully, trying with one hand to tug the veil without disrupting the delicate curls that Mrs. Busby’s daughter and Annabelle had managed to create. “But I do love him, Mother. Surely that is enough?”

“Are you sure?” Mrs. Seton’s voice was sharp. “Now I speak plainly to you, Priscilla. You were never one to be easily led, I admit that, but you did have fits of fancy that would take you goodness knows where.”

Giving up on attempting to make the veil sit as it should, Priscilla abandoned the looking glass and turned back to look at her mother. Mrs. Seton was biting her lip, and her hands were clasped before her.

“You…I would not want you to simply…” Her mother did not seem entirely sure what she was trying to say, until she burst out with, “Well! I would not want you to simply throw yourself at the first gentleman who asked you!”

Priscilla smiled gently. How like her mother to assume she had accepted Charles out of desperation. It had not occurred to her that the closeness they had experienced as children then adults could possibly be something more.

“Mother, you are worrying yourself over nothing,” she said gently. “Please, listen to me carefully. I am happy. Charles makes me happy – happier than I think I have ever been. Being with him, being his wife, will bring me greater joy than I could ever know.”

A light blush tinged her cheeks at these words. She was not going to mention the pleasure she knew she would experience that evening. It had been a challenge, restraining herself from Charles’s tempting whispers for the last four weeks, but her self-possession would be worth it.

In just a few short hours, she would be his wife – and he could do whatever he wanted to her.

“Hmm.” Her mother did not look entirely convinced, but she threw up her hands. “Well, you are old enough to know your own mind, Priscilla. Just know that you have no need to marry if you do not wish it. Your home here, and your fortune, will protect you.”

Priscilla smiled. She rarely saw this protective instinct in her mother, and it was rather lovely, in a way, to experience it one last time before she ceased being Miss Priscilla Seton and became…

She swallowed. Priscilla Audley, Duchess of Orrinshire. It rolled off the tongue, but it did not sound like her. Priscilla Audley, Duchess of Orrinshire, was a great lady. Not someone who had attempted to catch the eye of her husband at his engagement picnic to another, and eventually been proposed to in an alleyway!

“Please, do not worry,” she said. “I am happier than I ever knew was possible, and it is Charles who makes me feel this way. He is the one I want, Mother, and I would not choose to leave you unless I was absolutely sure I had found someone perfect.”

Mrs. Seton nodded. “And no bridesmaids?”

Even on this happiest of days, it was possible to feel a shadow of sadness. Priscilla swallowed. She had promised herself she would not permit her emotions to overwhelm her.

“No bridesmaids,” she said shortly, her heartstrings tugged by sadness. “No, I had…well, I had always wanted Mary to be my bridesmaid. We had agreed to it years ago when