Linda Miles - Last-Minute Bridegroom

She opened her eyes. Chaz was still watching her. He really was devastatingly handsome, she thought irrelevantly. It was hard to believe she’d actually kissed him about ten minutes ago.

‘All right,’ said Tasha. ‘I accept.’

‘Against your better judgement,’ Chaz said acutely. ‘Poor darling. Marriage to the Archfiend versus one thousand disappointed guests.’ He smiled at her, the slightly crooked, uncynical smile that was so disarming because so seldom seen. ‘Never mind, Tash, I’ll try to see you don’t regret it.’

‘I’m sure I shan’t regret it,’ Tasha said stoutly if untruthfully.

‘Liar,’ said her husband-to-be. His eyes were bright with amusement. ‘Don’t look so despondent, darling. We’re in this together. We’ll have a marvellous time. First but not least the wedding—I’ve managed to avoid playing the lead in one for thirty-one years, but if I’ve got to start I can’t imagine a better way than as an understudy. Then there’s my family, most of whom I haven’t seen in donkey’s years—you can’t avoid all of the people all of the time, but you can avoid most of the people most of the time, and since you are deservedly and unreservedly adored by all I’ll enjoy a brief return to favour as the prodigal—followed by a complete severance of relations, with any luck, when I’m unfaithful to their darling within a month of the wedding...’

Tasha suppressed a smile. It was certainly true that the family were going to see marriage as an unexpected sign of good behaviour on the part of their most disgraceful member. ‘You’re so cynical,’ she said. ‘People have been saying to me for years that you weren’t bad at heart, you just hadn’t found what you were looking for, that if you just found the right woman it would make all the difference. They’ll just be happy because they’ll think you’ve found the right person. It’s not their fault that it’s not true.’

The black eyes gleamed. ‘It sounds just the sort of thing they would say,’ he said sardonically. ‘No surprises there. The question is, Tash darling, what did you say back?’

He gave a shout of laughter at her embarrassed expression. ‘Unrepeatable, was it?’ he said, grinning. ‘Thought so. Let’s see, I’ll bet you said if I ever did find the right woman heaven help the woman.’

‘I don’t remember what I said,’ said Tasha.

‘How convenient,’ said Chaz, with a gleaming glance. ‘Well, it’s what I’d say, so I don’t see why you shouldn’t. But enough of me. We have something to celebrate.’

‘Do we?’ said Tasha.

‘Sure we do,’ said Chaz. ‘This calls for champagne. Does your father have champagne?’

‘No,’ said Tasha.

‘Well, let’s stick to Scotch, then,’ said Chaz. ‘We seem to have done all right on it so far.’

He filled their glasses.

He raised his own. ‘To Jeremy,’ he said. ‘The word “cad” has gone out of fashion, but the behaviour never goes out of style. Here’s hoping he gets what’s coming to him.’

‘That’s a horrible toast,’ said Tasha.

‘But one from the heart,’ said Chaz, looking uncharacteristically grim.

‘Well, I’m not going to drink to it,’ said Tasha.

Chaz smiled at her. ‘Well, propose your own, then.’

‘All right, I will,’ said Tasha. She gave him a mischievous smile, and raised her glass. ‘To the right woman, heaven help her.’

Chaz laughed. ‘Well, I’ll drink to that.’ A sardonic eyebrow flicked up. ‘To the right woman, heaven help her,’ he repeated, raising his glass, and he drained it at a single swallow.

CHAPTER THREE

IN THE days that followed Tasha was to find herself looking back on that evening with blank incredulity. She’d been upset, yes. She’d had a couple of stiff drinks, yes. That still didn’t explain how she’d come to kiss Chaz and enjoy it, let alone agree to the most insane proposition she’d ever heard of in her life. The most likely explanation was that she had, in fact, been temporarily insane. The problem was, once she’d agreed to the suggestion in a moment of derangement she was stuck with it when sanity returned.

Chaz had not only had to pay a lot of money for the special licence. He had also had to find a bishop and persuade him that the circumstances requiring the licence were seriously special—on a par with, say, the groom being called off to fight for his country at short notice. Given that he had been able to talk Tasha into it in the first place it was perhaps not surprising that he was able to talk a bishop around as well, but Tasha had a feeling it had not been as easy as he had made it sound.

He had then commandeered the guest list and taken it upon himself to notify all guests of the change. To cancel the wedding now would involve not only notifying everyone again, but explaining how she had come to acquire and discard a new fiancé in a few days’ time. She just didn’t feel up to it.

She found the actual wedding much harder to bear than she had expected.

When Chaz had made the suggestion she’d thought only of the invitations she wouldn’t have to retract, the problem of having to live with Chaz for a year afterwards. It wasn’t until she was actually walking down the aisle on her father’s arm that she remembered the comment Chaz had made, that she’d go through as a charade something she’d expected to be for real.

The whole point of marrying Chaz, after all, had been to avoid upsetting the arrangements. The result, naturally, was that the wedding was in every detail exactly what it would have been if she had been marrying the man she’d expected, only last week, to be spending the rest of her life with.

The dress was obviously the same. It had a bodice of white beadwork that glinted in the soft filmy fabric like tiny pearls, and a long narrow skirt of layers and layers of the same filmy white. Putting it on, she had not been able to help remembering the day she had chosen it, the endless fittings she’d undergone, imagining always the day when Jeremy would see this vision of loveliness walk down the aisle towards him. Now the vision of loveliness was walking up to Chaz, who she suspected would take a completely cynical view anyway.

The jonquils and paper-white narcissus on the pews were just what she’d wanted for a spring wedding, and lining the benches were all the innocent guests she’d invited, for whose benefit she was staging the performance. Quite a lot of the people there had been married to each other at one time or another. She could see why Chaz was so cynical about the whole thing, but she’d taken it seriously. She had practised saying the words she would say, words she wouldn’t have said if she hadn’t meant them. Except that now she was going to say them anyway...

Her bridesmaids paced behind her in the dresses they’d chosen, laughing over colour schemes and designs. The flower girls paced behind them in the tiny dresses she’d chosen for them. She’d never realised how many decisions had to be made in organising a wedding; she’d spent months trying to get everything just right, and all for an empty show.

She had reached the head of the aisle. Chaz was standing there waiting. His eyes met hers, a spark of mischief in them. Well, men didn’t fantasise about their weddings; even as a little girl she’d been imagining hers, and she’d never thought she would stand here with someone she didn’t love. All the same, that conspiratorial glance had warmed her; here was the one person for whom she didn’t have to pretend. Here was someone who knew what she was going through—who’d known better than she had herself what this would be like.

The minister was asking whether anyone could show any just cause why these two should not be joined together. Tasha would have liked to stop the whole thing then and there, but she stayed standing in front of him.