Free The Diamond Slipper by Jane Feather Page B

beside the riding school. The guest list had been kept small, butno concessions had been made in the formality of the ceremony.
    The royal family were present, as were the senior members of the French delegation. The duke limped up the aisle, his cane thumping with every step, his niece on his arm. The bishop of St. Stephen’s stood before the altar.
    Where was the viscount
? Cordelia’s eyes darted around the dim chapel. The day was overcast and there was no evening sun to light the stained-glass windows. Shouldn’t her husband, proxy or not, be waiting at the altar for her? No one seemed concerned about this, and her uncle, now mercifully silent, continued his measured progress toward the altar without faltering.
    As they reached it, Viscount Kierston appeared from the shadow of a stone pillar, where he’d been standing in quiet conversation with another courtier. It was almost as if his appearance were an afterthought, it was so casual. Cordelia, mummified in her stiff wedding gown and lacquered, powdered hair, felt a surge of resentment that he should treat this … her … with such insouciance. It was a real marriage. As legally and religiously binding as any. The one that would follow in Paris would carry no extra weight or significance.
    He stepped up beside her, according the duke a curt nod but ignoring Cordelia. His attitude might be careless, but his dress was as formal as hers. His midnight blue suit was richly embroidered with silver arabesques. His hair was concealed beneath a pigtail wig, the queue encased in dark blue silk and tied top and bottom with matching silk ribbons. Diamonds winked from the folds of his lace-edged cravat, sparkled on his long fingers, edged the silver buckles of his red-heeled shoes.
    Cordelia decided he looked intimidating, severe in his elegance—but so very beautiful. Her earlier resentment vanished as quickly as it had arisen. She was conscious of every line of his lithe slender frame, of the sharply etched cheekbones, the sensuous mouth, the long, luxuriant black eyelashes, so startling against the white of his wig. Her pulse raced, her palms dampened in her silk gloves.
    The bishop’s voice droned on over her head, but the words meant nothing. Her uncle gave her away with a clear note of relief in his louder-than-usual voice, and she barely noticed. She heard only the moment when Leo Beaumont said firmly that he took this woman, Cordelia Brandenburg, to be his wedded wife. She closed her mind to the “in the name of Prince Michael von Sachsen,” aware only of her rising excitement, the heady swirl of anticipation. Somewhere at the back of her brain lurked the knowledge that she was being a fool, that to play with this fantasy while she stood at the altar being married to another man was a recipe for disaster, but that didn’t seem to dim the lustre of her fairy tale in the least.
    What if she were really marrying Viscount Kierston? Fueled by this question, her own responses were so fervent they surprised even the bishop, who peered at her in the candlelight.
    Leo’s mouth tightened as he heard Cordelia make her wedding vows. He knew what she was thinking. She had declared that she loved him, and however much he might dismiss this as a youthful fantasy, the ring of sincerity in her voice, the power of it in her eyes, couldn’t be so easily dismissed.
    Any more than he could dismiss the power she held over him, against his will, against his deep-rooted convictions, against all rationality.
    The bishop blessed the rings and they were returned to the little gold ring box, to be presented at the second wedding when the true bridegroom would do his part.
    “Well, that went off fairly well,” Duke Franz declared when they were outside again in the gloomy, high-walled medieval courtyard outside the chapel. “And I wish you joy of your charge, my lord.” He took snuff, flourishing his handkerchief as if waving away the burdensome years of his guardianship.
    Cordelia,