The Inconvenient Bride - By Anne McAllister Page 0,49

inhabited. And she desperately didn’t want to embarrass him.

She loved him, regardless of how he felt about her. And while she didn’t think he had any great expectations of marriage—except of course the sex he wasn’t getting at the moment—she didn’t want him to regret marrying her.

So she was going to try to behave like some finishing school female for the next six hours, even though she thought she might croak.

She wondered again if she should have dyed her hair. She could have gone brown for the affair. It wouldn’t have killed her. She’d been a blonde, after all, for Mariah’s wedding so as not to shock a hundred impressionable Kansans.

But that had been for Mariah’s wedding, because Sierra hadn’t wanted to attract attention that should rightly have been her sister’s. It had been right then to fade into the background.

Somehow, even though it might have made things easier, she couldn’t bring herself to do it here. It would have felt like a copout. It would have seemed, even if only to her, that she wasn’t being true to herself.

So her hair was still pretty purple—sort of more of a black cherry, actually—and she’d done it sleek and shining, then because they would be outdoors for a good part of it, she wore a broad-brimmed pink hat. Her dress was silk, purples and pinks, short and stunning, sleeveless with a high neckline. Very basic, yet very Sierra. Not as funky as some of her clothes, but not likely to turn up in the next issue of Town and Country, either.

It made her feel as if she could almost cope.

“They’re boarding,” Rhys came in to report. The guests, he meant. When they came on board, they would go through a sort of modified reception line, just Sierra and Dominic, her parents and Douglas.

“So everyone gets to meet the bride,” Douglas said cheerfully. “Won’t take long. Then you can move around and visit with people. Then dinner and dancing. You look wonderful, my dear.” He gave Sierra an encouraging smile and looked as if he actually meant it.

She smiled back, then put her hand on Dominic’s black tuxedo jacket sleeve and took a deep breath.

“You all right?” Dominic asked her. He sounded worried.

“Fine,” Sierra said briskly. She gave him her best whistling-in-the-dark grin, and made up her mind that she was telling the truth.

No one was rude to her face.

Of course they were all too proper for that, too well brought up, too genteel. Dominic knew they wouldn’t do anything so impolite as to say what they were thinking, nor would they be so obvious as to catch a glimpse of the bride, then turn and walk away.

But sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, he saw people looking askance. The women, of course, more than the men. He heard mutters. The occasional indrawn breath of astonishment followed, naturally, by disapproval.

He gritted his teeth, smiled politely, said all the appropriate things. And hoped Sierra didn’t hear.

She gave no sign that she did. She was as warm and friendly and engaging as she always was. She sparkled in public, like a jewel.

Costume jewelry, Dominic imagined most people would think, looking at her.

But it wasn’t true. Sierra was as deep and radiant as the finest diamond. Her beauty came from within, not from what she chose to wear.

“Whatever could he have been thinking?” he heard just then, the voice a carrying whisper almost right behind them. Dominic turned slightly to see one of his mother’s old bridge club members, Sylvia Ponsonby-Merrill, using her driving glasses to take another look at his bride.

“I really can’t imagine.” This voice was even more familiar. Younger. Mellifluous and carefully cultured. “I’m sure he wasn’t thinking,” she said. It was Marjorie—she who’d demanded an engagement ring in return for her favors—disapproving now in honeyed tones. “Or,” she added with a small laugh, “certainly not with his head!”

Sierra was speaking to Talitha Thomas, the widow of one of his father’s oldest friends. Talitha was patting her hand and beaming up at her, and Sierra was smiling and clasping the old woman’s hand. She didn’t falter once, but all the same, Dominic was sure she heard the exchange between Sylvia and Marjorie.

He wondered if either of them could swim.

Then his father appeared and invited the two of them to admire the sunset from the top deck, and the conversation turned to other topics.

Sierra went right on talking to Talitha.

On her behalf, though, Dominic fumed.

At first it was awful.

Like the first