“Well, Lord Kirke, sir. When my daughter informed me that we were going to have a distinguished visitor today, I confess your name did not spring at first to mind,” he said dryly. “It is indeed an honor to meet you. I am an admirer.”
“Thank you, sir. Likewise, in both respects. I have heard a good deal about you from Catherine.”
Her first name, soft and so intimately familiar, rang between them. Her father’s eyebrows went up.
They stared across at each other in mutual fascination and a bit of awkwardness. Given that the last time he’d done this someone had aimed a musket at his face, Dominic thought things were progressing well.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” Mr. Keating asked finally.
Her father of course knew—Catherine had been all quivering, radiant happiness when she’d told him they were going to have a caller, even though she hadn’t told him why—but he was complying with an unwritten, ancient script by asking.
“I have come to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage.”
There was a pause.
“I see.” He steepled his hands and tapped his fingers together. He narrowed his eyes and studied Dominic. “And Catherine has already accepted you?”
“I am indeed just that outlandishly fortunate,” Kirke replied quietly. He suddenly felt raw and green again, and perilously like he might just—for the first time in two decades—blush. His heart had taken up a swift hammering.
Her father regarded him solemnly, furry white brows meeting at the bridge of his nose.
“Sir, she is...” Dominic cleared his throat. “Catherine is my heart.”
He saw the words suffuse the man across from him with something like peace and light.
“Well, that much was clear, sir,” Mr. Keating said. “You gave an entire speech about her, after all.”
Dominic was stunned. “How did...”
“It was an easy surmise, son,” he said gently. “I read the speech to her. I saw her face when I was finished.” He paused at length, and then added, even more gently, “She wept.”
Dominic breathed out carefully. The little hairs rose on the back of his neck, as he imagined her expression the moment she’d first heard that he loved her. Joy lit every cell of his body.
This man’s gentle acceptance, his kind, matter-of-fact astuteness: how soft love could be. Like that sunbeam through the windows. He realized he’d lived his life somewhat like a feral animal, inching toward this sort of gentleness, unwilling to trust it. It was safe in this room to settle into it, he realized. This kind of love—Catherine’s for him, and his for her—would be a feature of his life forever.
“You do know how lucky you are, Lord Kirke?” her father said somewhat absently, turning toward the window, as if studying the view. He gave his fingers a little drum on his desk.
“I do,” he said gruffly. “I vow, sir, to keep Catherine forever safe and happy. I will endeavor the whole of my life to make her proud. She will always be comfortable. And never, ever bored.”
Mr. Keating turned to him and his face split into a smile so like Catherine’s.
“Of that I’ve no doubt. Just as I’ve no doubt she loves you. I am pleased and honored indeed to give the two of you my blessing.” He extended his hand. “I wish you the same lifetime of joy I shared with her mother.”
Lady Wisterberg had, along with Catherine’s aunt, first heard the news from the two of them when Dominic escorted Catherine back to Lady Wisterberg’s town house the day he’d proposed.
Quite the panoply of emotions chased each other across her visage, while bewilderment and hope flickered across her aunt’s. To Aunt Keating, Lord Kirke seemed a fine, famous figure of a man, after all. If somewhat notorious. She didn’t regularly fill her cup at the spigot of ton gossip, like Lady Wisterberg.
Finally Lady Wisterberg sat back and sighed in a sort of surrender. Her bemused expression slowly evolved into something like thoughtful, wicked glee. She was clearly imagining the response of the ton when they got wind of this.
“Congratulations, Lord Kirke, on your exceptional good taste,” she said with great dignity, finally. “Andwelldone, Miss Keating. Congratulations on conquering your season of scandal.”
Less than a fortnight later, Catherine and Dominic stood up before Reverend Bellingham at the church in Little Bramble and, in a quietly moving, private little ceremony attended by only her father, her aunt, and Mrs. Cartwright as witnesses, became husband and wife.
And while Lord and Lady Kirke longed to linger in Little Bramble with Catherine’s father, duty required they return to London for the final few weeks of Parliament.
Catherine was perfectly game to sleep on a mattress in his London town house and make love like a pagan on the floor until they were able to fill the place with proper furniture, but Dominic wouldn’t hear of his wife enduring such a thing when she could be cozily pampered at The Grand Palace on the Thames instead. Luckily, a suite had become available in the annex, despite the fact that the boardinghouse was now nearly full for the season. And as he’d never shied away from awkwardness, politely getting out the words “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand. We regret our previous dramatic exits. And by the way, Miss Keating is my wife now” posed no real challenge.
And he knew the proprietresses were rather unflappable.