Page 2 of An Inconvenient Vow

“Sabina!” Thora Burrell hissed, pinching her arm. “You will make a spectacle of us!”

Ignoring her mother, Sabina stepped forward and offered her arm to Isemay who was fiddling with her shoe. Her sister seized hold of her gratefully and reached down to slip a stone out of her slipper. “A moment to recover would be appreciated,” the bride admitted with a wince. “The soles on my slippers are so thin that I felt every stone on the approach.”

“A breather would be a boon,” their father concurred, mopping his brow. “For it has grown rather warm.”

Their mother tutted but, realizing she was overruled, flapped her voluminous sleeves in front of her face in an effort to dispel her heightened color and the faint beads of perspiration from her brow.

Sabina took the opportunity to look her sister full in the face to search for any signs of cold feet. He was rich to be sure and Isemay would be a duchess, but Bevis de Crecy was three times Isemay’s age. Noticing her scrutiny, her sister gave her a radiant smile. “I am ready,” she said, straightening up. Sabina dropped back so their father could take her place and lead Isemay into the Great Hall.

*

“I suppose she is beautiful,” the Lady Maud said doubtfully, gazing across the Great Hall at her former brother-in-law’s bride. Her lip curled scornfully. “By current standards at least.”

When her words elicited no response from her depressed-looking second husband or her brooding son, she continued. “In my day, of course, other considerations were given to such an appellation. Refinement, grace, elegance of mind,” she listed. “These were thought just as important attributes when it came to feminine beauty.”

Jeffree de Crecy shifted impatiently from one foot to another. His mother was being ridiculous. Even the girl’s sternest critic could not deny she was a beauty. He gazed with cold disapproval at Isemay Burrell and felt an overwhelming black tide overtake him. He had been holding it at bay all morning, but now it engulfed him like a great wave.

After all, what was the point in trying to put a brave face on it? Jeffree was in a foul mood. Ganford Chase was usually his haven, the place he felt the most at home in all the world. But those days were numbered, passed even. After today it would have a new mistress and it would be her son, not Jeffree, who would one day inherit the dukedom and the ancestral home.

Since he was a boy, his uncle and every other member of his family had encouraged him to look at Ganford Chase as being his eventually. “You are my heir,” Uncle Bevis had told him over and over. “One day you will be Duke of Bethencourt, my boy.” And now look at the old dotard.

Jeffree’s gaze shifted from the radiant youth of Isemay Burrell to the countenance of his uncle. Bevis de Crecy, fifth Duke of Bethencourt, was a well preserved fifty-nine years of age. But even well preserved looked ancient stood next to a maiden of nineteen.

Jeffree huffed out a breath and swallowed down his resentment that he would have to bear witness to this travesty of a wedding.

“Apparently Burrell is nothing more than a country squire,” his mother pronounced contemptuously. “One would scarcely require telling, looking at his barbarous appearance now.”

Jeffree cast an impatient look at the father of the bride. He looked a short, stout little man with an almost fearful expression in his eye as he cast about the huge Great Hall. “He looks what he is,” he agreed shortly. “Overwhelmed.”

“It is outrageous that his daughter thought to thrust herself forward into a role such as Duchess of Bethencourt.” His mother sounded grieved. “Only look at the mother! You can see where she gets her presumption! Resting her hand like that on Bevis’s arm!”

Jeffree declined to pay any more attention to the bridal party. Instead, he turned pointedly to gaze in the opposite direction. “I believe I shall go and have a word with my godfather,” he murmured.

“Poor Sir Charles,” his mother responded at once. “He will feel this insult to our family name most keenly.

Jeffree clamped down his temptation to remind her that she had not been a De Crecy since her remarriage fifteen years ago. Instead, he nodded at Sir Dudley, who nodded glumly back and made his way to where Sir Charles Ellis stood on the opposite end of the hall.

“My boy,” Sir Charles uttered, flickering his flinty eyes over Jeffree. He was a tall, spare man of gaunt appearance with iron-gray hair. He lowered his voice. “A sad day for this house.”

Jeffree gave a sharp nod and fell in beside him. “He will not be dissuaded,” he said, his lips a grim line of disapproval.

“Such madness often takes men in the autumn of their life, or so I understand,” Sir Charles responded with a faint curl of his lip.

Jeffree glanced about; Sir Charles Ellis had been a close friend of the family for years and the close association of their families was long-standing. He would have thought on such an occasion that his godfather’s son and heir, Sir Leland Ellis, would have been in attendance. “Leland is not here,” he observed.

After his own father’s death, Jeffree had been raised in his godfather’s house. He and Leland had learned their lessons together. However, to say they were like brothers would not have been a true statement of fact. They had never been close.

Sir Charles’s face grew even sterner, if such a thing was possible. “Leland disappeared last night, and no one has seen hide nor hair of him since,” he uttered with frigid distaste. “No doubt his destination was the nearest tavern.”

Jeffree made no comment. It seemed that in his son, Sir Charles’s abstemious lifestyle was reversed. Where the father lived a life of strict discipline, retiring to bed early with an improving text, the son caroused and led a life of flagrant dissipation. It was a bitter bone of contention between the two of them.

Jeffree cleared his throat. “Well, it is not as though he will miss much,” he said dryly.

Sir Charles had just opened his mouth when the banging of a door and raised voices distracted him from making a reply. Jeffree also turned his head to see who this late arrival was. Whoever it was, had only just arrived in the nick of time, for the priest had moved to the front of the hall and had been about to start proceedings.

Whoever it was had damnably bad manners, Jeffree thought, casting disapproving eyes toward the door which was barging open. To his surprise, the latecomer was none other than Leland Ellis who swaggered in with a bored expression on his face. What was surprising was the procession of sober-robed individuals who followed in his wake.

“What is this?” Sir Charles muttered sharply. “What is the boy about?”