Lord Deverill's Heir by Catherine Coulter (best books to read all time .TXT) 📗

many times buying the bridegroom. But a tear or two was certainly all right. Besides, she couldn’t help it. Arabella looked so very beautiful, so much like her father, so much like Justin. Ah, but she wasn’t at all like her father.

No, she was good and kind and strong-willed and obstinate as a mule. She was everything a mother could ask for in a daughter. Another tear fell.

The vicar said quietly, “Naturally there would be no one to come between the two of you. Now we will proceed. My lord, will you repeat after me: I, Justin Morley Deverill, take thee Arabella Elaine . . .” He wanted to choke. No, he wanted to choke her. It was odd though. She hadn’t looked even once in the comte’s direction since she had come into the drawing room, looking so utterly beautiful in the soft gray silk wedding gown. Her hair was braided atop her head, several small diamond combs flashing in and out of the thick braids, several long ropes of hair lying gently on her white shoulder.

Why hadn’t she looked at her lover? How quickly had she taken him as her lover? The first day he had arrived? No, that didn’t seem right. Surely she had waited at least three days until she had let him have her in the barn. So she had given herself to him nearly a week now. A week.

Beginning after she had said she would become his wife. Her betrayal was bile in his throat. He should denounce her right here, tell everyone present that she was a slut with no more loyalty than a snake. He opened his mouth. No, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t and wouldn’t beggar Evesham Abbey, he wouldn’t beggar the Deverill line.

“I, Justin Morely Deverill, take three Arabella Elaine to be my lawfully wedded wife . . .”

His voice was low, yet sounding strangely harsh to Arabella’s sharp ear.

She looked up at him as he spoke the words, wishing he would say them to her, but he didn’t. He looked just beyond her, never directly at her. How odd. She thought she heard Elsbeth sigh. She smiled at him, but still, he didn’t look down at her. He was taller than her father had been. It pleased her. Why wouldn’t he look at her?

Lady Ann felt those tears swimming in her eyes. She didn’t want them, but they had gotten there nonetheless. Her only daughter was getting married.

She would be her own woman now. She looked beyond beautiful. She looked so much like her father, so much like her soon-to-be husband. Those gray eyes, that thick lustrous black hair. She didn’t think she would ever be a grandmother to a blond-haired blue-eyed little boy or girl that looked more like her.

Justin was a man to admire, a strong man, a handsome well-formed man, surely a man Arabella could come easily to love. He was standing so straight, so controlled, repeating his vows. He had known he would marry Arabella for the past five years. He had never swerved, never backed away at least as far as Lady Ann knew. Her husband had never said anything about it if Justin had questioned his decision. She wondered if Justin had any doubts now that the day had come. No, she couldn’t believe that he had. There was simply too much at stake. Besides, she had seen the two of them looking at each other. They were luckier than most couples. No, it was more than that. Lady Ann smiled behind her gloved hand. There had been stark desire in Justin’s eyes that first night when she and Elsbeth had arrived unexpectedly early from Talgarth Hall. It would be all right.

“In the presence of God, and by his laws and commandments, I now ask you, Arabella Elaine Deverill, to repeat these words after me.” Elsbeth had strained to hear the earl repeat his vows, his voice deep, yet somehow sounding strangely hard to her ears. She saw Arabella gaze up at him while he spoke, a bemused smile on her lips. An eager smile.

Elsbeth added her own smile.

She had betrayed him. Knowingly, she had deceived him with that miserable little French bastard. She had spoken to him so boldly, and he had believed it from her innocence, her candor, her guilelessness. But it hadn’t been any of that. He wanted to howl his pain. It was near to unbearable.

Arabella spoke her vows in a loud, clear voice, “I, Arabella Elaine, take you, Justin Morley Deverill, to be my lawfully wedded husband, to love, honor and obey . . .”

Obey—Lady Ann’s mind clutched at the simple word. That is quite a concession from my headstrong independent daughter, she thought. She heard herself repeating the same vow to another Earl of Strafford, as if it were only a moment of time ago, her voice unsteady and barely audible in the large cathedral. She had known that her powerful father, the Marquess of Otherton, would kill her if she didn’t marry the man he had handpicked for her.

Obey.

He had hurled the word at her on their wedding night, when she had cringed away from his mauling hands. She had obeyed, had submitted, her fear and pain heightened by his harsh demands. She had always submitted, knowing she had no other choice, and when he did not curse her for lying passively beneath him, he avenged himself on her body in other ways, cruelly demanding ways that made her nights a conscious nightmare. It was a pity that her father hadn’t died before the wedding he had forced upon her rather than being thrown from his hunter only two weeks after she had become the Countess of Strafford.

Life had seemed to be a series of pities. She had hated her husband more than she’d believed it possible to hate another human being. At least he had given her Arabella. If he’d hated Arabella—another girl child—as he’d hated Elsbeth, she imagined that she would have