Vicar's Daughter to Viscount's Lady by Louise Allen Page A

catch. Inside, on a bed of satin, was a double rope of pearls and a pair of pearl drop earrings. ‘Oh, but they are lovely.’ Elliott has given me these? Her immediate reaction was surprise and delight and then she realised: she was about to marry him, to become a viscountess. She would be required to wear appropriate jewellery at all times. The gift was merely protocol.
    ‘The Hadleigh pearls,’ Daniel said, reminding her that he was Elliott’s cousin and might be expected to know these things. ‘Brought into the family by a seventeenth-century bride.’
    ‘Good.’ Lady Abbotsbury approved. ‘The rest of the Hadleigh gems are in the bank in London, I expect, unless Rafe pawned the lot of them, which would not surprise me in the slightest. The diamond parure will suit you, but this is more suitable for the occasion.’
    But wealth and glitter did not concern her. Diamonds, indeed! She would look ridiculous, the church mouse in the borrowed finery, but she must try to live up to Elliott’s expectations. Society’s expectations. It was her duty. The thought of living up to his expectations in the bedchamber was another matter altogether. You could not learn to satisfy a man in bed by careful study of etiquette, only by practice and intimacy.
    ‘My ears are not pierced,’ she realised in dismay, dragging her thoughts back to the present.
    ‘Pink silk,’ Miss Dorothy suggested, producing a handful of skeins from her bulging embroidery bag.
    Mr Calne insisted on fastening the necklace for her while Miss Dorothy, after carefully matching skin tone to silk, managed to secure the pearl drops.
    He offered his arm. ‘Now are we ready? I fancy we will be the desirable ten minutes late at the church.’
    ‘Mr Calne—’
    ‘Daniel—we are to be cousins, are we not? And I stand in the place of a brother today.’
    His smile was charming, his good spirits infectious. Bella smiled back. Somehow she would make this work. She must, for the child’s sake. ‘Daniel. And I am Bella. Thank you for helping us today. It means a great deal to me that Elliott’s family are not offended by the suddenness of this match.’
    ‘Come then, Bella.’ He checked over his shoulder that Miss Dorothy and Lady Abbotsbury were attired in their bonnets, the dowager leaning heavily on the arm of the tallest, and best-looking, footman. ‘Off to church we go.’
    The church was full of the fragrance of roses and lilies from the estate hothouse. Elliott felt his head swim as he stood at the altar steps, taking deep breaths. Unexpected butterflies were making free with his stomach and he needed to calm them. Just what was he getting himself into? Whatever it was, it was too late now to step back from it.
    Beside him stood John Baynton, stolid and reliable as ever, reading through the form of service. He had already checked that the ring, a band of plaited gold that had belonged to Elliott’s grandmother, was safe; now he looked up and ran a critical eye over Elliott.
    ‘You are as white as a sheet,’ Baynton whispered. ‘Very correct behaviour in a bridegroom. I am impressed.’
    ‘I always endeavour to do the correct thing,’ Elliott whispered back, making a joke of it. What was there to be nervous about? He was doing what he must for the family honour. And he was marrying a young lady who appeared pleasant, well mannered and dutiful.
    True, there was the small matter of the baby on its way, his own brother’s child. And the fact that he now had a vastly increased estate to manage—and drag back from neglect. And his new viscountess had never experienced life beyond a Suffolk village. And he suspected that the Earl and Countess of Framlingham were not going to be best pleased to discover that, far fromcourting their daughter Frederica, he had spent his period in mourning getting married to a nobody.
    Ah, well, a challenge is always welcome. Elliott smiled grimly, saw the Reverend Fanshawe’s startled expression and modified his own